The story begins with Mrs. Hunt

The other children called her Mrs. Hunt the cunt, but I had no idea what that word meant. I had just graduated from the 4^th Grade class of an unknown American poet named Mr. Palefsky.

He liked trees and New Jersey history. I still carry a bit of his poetry, a line about the weeping willow, on the tip of my memory: “of all the things a tree could do the willow chose to cry.”

I think about that line a lot. It turns in my mind like a mantra. It’s almost a part of me now.

I think I remembered it so completely, so deeply, because at that time in my life, when Mr. Palefsky read it to me, I was crying a lot. And the idea that a tree chose that for its life, maybe that made me feel better about my own life. I don’t know.

The deeper point is this: Mr. Palefsky fed me poetry for an entire school year. Even better, he made it into a contest of memory—awarded a prize for each poem memorized. I had never won anything in my life.

I think it’s important at this point to tell you a bit about the young Charles Bivona—Little Charlie, as my family called him.

My father, of course, was Big Charlie—a stocky 5’8” carpenter with a barrel chest and gorilla shoulders. He had survived one of the worst battles of  the entire Vietnam  War [circa '67] and had the shrapnel in his leg , and the PTSD, to prove it.

The 38 year old PhD student, Charles Bivona, discovered this fact about his father a few months ago. But when I was Little Charlie, I had no idea what was wrong with my dad. I was just terrified of his temper and his violence.

And since living in fear is intolerable for anyone, I slowly trained myself to hate my father instead. It’s how I survived my childhood. Eventually, in my teens and into my 20s, I would rebel against everything that even resembled the man behind the sperm. I would almost destroy myself striving to not be him.

But at this point  in the story—the beginning—Little Charlie just made himself invisible. The way to avoid dad’s beatings, I quickly learned, was to not attract attention. So, I became a shy and quiet loner. I was the chubby kid with the thick Coke-Bottle glasses — Four-Eyes. And I sucked at sports because my father had always told me I was too fat to run.

But that’s another chapter. And like I said, the story begins with Mrs. Hunt.

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» ENTER HERE «

» Chapter Two «

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» PREFACE «

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