A Child Called “It”

A CHILD CALLED “IT” is the story of one child’s struggle to survive and overcome his wretched life of daily torment and humiliation.

Worth Quoting: Book Excerpt

A Child Called “It”

Written by Dave Pelzer

Published by Health Communications, FL; 1995

Selected by Linda “iLham” Barto

Every year, hundreds of thousands of children are brutalized, neglected, and tortured by their own parents. As an abused child, Dave Pelzer was determined to survive. His compelling book gives the reader a horrifying view of life through the eyes of a tormented child. Dave Pelzer’s alcoholic mother subjected him to daily depravities, such as being forced to eat feces from the baby’s diaper and to breathe poisonous fumes from a mixture of ammonia and chlorine bleach. Here are excerpts from his shocking, true story.

“About a month before I entered the fifth grade, I came to believe that, for me, there was no God. As I sat alone in the garage or read to myself in the near darkness of my parents’ bedroom, I came to realize that I would live like this for the remainder of my life. No just God would leave me like this. I believed that I was alone in my struggle and that my battle was one of survival.

“By the time I had decided that there was no God, I had totally disconnected myself from all physical pain. Whenever Mother struck me, it was as if she were taking her aggressions out on a rag doll. Inside, my emotions swirled back and forth between fear and intense anger. But outside, I was a robot, rarely revealing my emotions, only when I thought it would please The Bitch [Mother] and when to my advantage. I held in my tears, refusing to cry because I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of my defeat.

“At night I no longer dreamed, nor did I let my imagination work during the day. The once vibrant escapes of watching myself fly through the clouds in bright blue costumes were now a thing of the past. When I fell asleep, my soul became consumed in a black void. I no longer awoke in the mornings refreshed; I was tired and told myself that I had one day less to live in this world. I shuffled through my chores, dreading every moment of every day. With no dreams, I found that words like hope and faith were only letters randomly put together into something meaningless –words only for fairy tales.

“When I was given the luxury of food, I ate like a homeless dog, grunting like an animal at Mother’s commands [to eat within a given time]. I no longer cared when she made fun of me as I hurried to devour even the smallest morsel. Nothing was below me. One Saturday while I was washing the morning dishes, Mother scraped some half-eaten pancakes from a plate into the dogs’ dish. Her well-fed pets picked at the food until they wanted no more, then walked away to find a place to sleep. Later, as I put away some pots and pans in a lower cabinet, I crawled on my hands and knees to the dogs’ dish and ate what was left of the pancakes. As I ate, I could smell traces of the dogs, but I ate anyway. It hardly bothered me. I fully realized that if The Bitch caught me eating what rightfully belonged to the dogs, I would pay dearly, but getting food any way I could was my only means of existing.

“Inside, my soul became so cold I hated everything. I even despised the sun, for I knew I would never be able to play in its warm presence. I cringed with hate whenever I heard other children laughing as they played outside. My stomach coiled whenever I smelled food that was about to be served to someone else, knowing it was not for me. I wanted so much to strike out at something every time I was called upstairs [from the basement garage] to play the role of the family slave, by picking up after those slobs.

“I hated Mother most and wished that she were dead. But before she died, I wanted her to feel the magnitude of my pain and my loneliness for all these years. During all the years when I had prayed to God, he answered me only once. One day, when I was five or six years old, Mother had thrashed me from one end of the house to the other. That night before getting into bed, I got down on my knees and prayed to God. I asked Him to make Mother sick so she couldn’t hit me any more. I prayed long and hard, concentrating so much that I went to bed with a headache. The next morning, much to my surprise, Mother was sick. She lay on the couch all day, barely moving. Since Father was at work, my brothers and I took care of her as though she were a patient of ours.

“As the years passed and the beatings became more intense, I thought about Mother’s age and tried to calculate when she might die. I longed for the day when her soul would be taken into the depths of hell; only then would I be free of her.”

In fifth grade, Dave Pelzer had a rare experience in success when his entry was selected for the name of the school newspaper. His teacher wrote a complimentary letter to the child’s mother. Pelzer recalls the experience:

“Elated, I ran to Mother’s house faster than ever before. As I should have expected, my happiness was short-lived. The Bitch tore the letter open, read it quickly, and scoffed, ‘Well, Mr. Ziegler says I should be so proud of you for naming the school newspaper. He also claims that you are one of the top pupils in his class. Well, aren’t you special?’ Suddenly, her voice turned ice cold, and she jabbed her finger at my face and hissed, ‘Get one thing straight, you little son of a bitch! There is nothing you can do to impress me! Do you understand me? You are a nobody! An It! You are nonexistent! You are a bastard child! I hate you, and I wish you were dead! Dead! Do you hear me? Dead!’”

Pelzer considers himself one of the lucky ones because he survived and escaped his nightmarish life. He writes, “My dark past is behind me now. As bad as it was, I knew even back then, in the final analysis, my way of life would be up to me. I made a promise to myself that, if I came out of my situation alive, I had to make something of myself. I would be the best person that I could be. Today I am. I made sure that I let go of my past, accepting the fact that that part of my life was only a small fraction of my life. I knew the black hole was out there, waiting to suck me in and forever control my destiny –but only if I let it. I took positive control over my life.

“I’m so blessed. The challenges of my past have made me immensely strong inside. …. Instead of dwelling on the past, I maintained the same focus that I had taught myself years ago [while forced to live] in the garage, knowing that the good Lord was always over my shoulder, giving me quiet encouragement and strength when I needed it most.”

Summarizing, Pelzer writes, “As a child living in a dark world, I feared for my life and thought I was alone. As an adult, I know now that I was not alone. There were thousands of other abused children.”