December 7, 2023 • 48 mins
Brittany’s early life is defined by the road; she and her mom are vagabonds of sorts, never settling for too long in one place. But at least they have each other. That is, until they don’t.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. This episode contains
discussion of sexual assault and drug abuse. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Trying to follow a specific memory to any kind of
conclusion is like driving toward a semi blinded by its headlights,
compelled by survival instincts to swerve away. No amount of
holding the steering wheel and place can keep you on
the road.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
If part of you.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
However small, wants to survive. Thankfully, there's a lot of
me that wants to survive.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
That's Brittany Means, writer and editor, an author of the
recent memoir Hell If We Don't Change Our Ways. Britney's
is a story of extraordinary resilience and ultimately the triumph
of an indomitable spirit trapped an impossible circumstances. It's an
object lesson in the idea that as long as we're
(01:04):
alive and breathing, anything is possible. I'm Danny Shapiro, and
this is family Secrets, the secrets that are kept from us,
(01:26):
the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we
keep from ourselves. The place that I always begin, and
in your case, it's particularly complicated and rich. I think
to talk about is. Tell me about the landscape of
your childhood and that could mean anything to you. Your
(01:49):
childhood had a lot of landscapes.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah, well landscape I think of Cornfield literally. But for
the most part, it was me and my mom. We
lived in a car a lot of the time. We
were always on the move, and we stayed if we
weren't in the car, we were in shelters or with
(02:12):
friends or with family. You know. We stayed all sorts
of different places, like a biker community, we stayed on
an ostrich farm, we stayed with distant family. In Mississippi,
there's always something new and people.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Who were new.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Did it feel like an adventure or what was that
like for you?
Speaker 2 (02:34):
It didn't feel strange to me that we were moving
so much because that was what I knew. So I
didn't really think to ask like when are we stopping
or where are we going to stay? Because to me,
like being in the car and always being somewhere new,
it was just how things were, and the most important
thing to me was just that I was with my mom,
(02:56):
So I didn't I didn't really care too much about
the instability because it didn't feel strange and she was there,
My mom had me when she was nineteen, so she
was fairly young when she started parenthood. And my conception
was the result of a sexual assault. I think she
was just a very traumatized person from her upbringing and
(03:19):
from what had happened, and from being a single mother
and then being in an abusive relationship. And I'm aware
of all of those things now because I have a perspective.
But when I was a kid, she was like the
sun to me, and I loved her more than anything.
She was like the source of all warmth and happiness
(03:40):
and affirmation. You know. She could be very energetic and
verbally loving, and we would like go on trips and
go play laser tag and put putt and all these
fun things. And then the next day, or maybe even
later that same day, she would be like very emotionally
(04:01):
just regulated. She would sleep for days, she would scream,
she would have outbursts. So yeah, just in another way,
not a lot of stability.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
How old were you when you knew that you were
the result of your mother having been raped?
Speaker 2 (04:19):
I honestly don't really remember a time when I didn't
know that. I wish I could remember the exact moment
and how I felt about it, but it feels like
something I just always knew. When I picture her, the
first image is you know how I saw her When
I was a kid. She had like brownish reddish, like
rusty brown hair, and it was always a little frizzy,
(04:42):
which is where I got it blue eyes. When I
was a kid, she had like a gap between her
two front teeth, and she ended up getting dentures later
in life, and I remember my uncle actually crying because
he was like, I loved the gap between her teeth.
It gave her a personality like fit her very well,
(05:02):
and she had a very pretty smile. She has like
dimples and eyes that are really bright.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
One of the moves Brittany and her mom make is
precipitated by Mark, her mom's ex boyfriend at the time,
but now they're running away from him. They flee to
Britney's grandparents' home just off Indiana State Road sixty seven.
Britney's grandparents are Pentecostal, and life there is extremely different
from the life Britney is used to.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
The main thing was the contrast. When we first got there,
my mom and I used to love going to horror movies,
we watched TV. We really loved like unsolved mysteries and
watching like the Rose Red series. And then we also
had no rules. We just kind of did whatever out
on the road. And when we were with my grandparents,
(05:55):
they were like, no TV because that's the sin. So
suddenly this huge thing that we shared together was gone
and I couldn't even really talk about it without.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Getting a speech.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
And there were all these rules like about when we
could come and go and the things that we could
say and what we had to wear and cutting our hair.
And it was really hard at first because I was
so aware of the alternative to that, Like I knew
(06:27):
there was a world out there with like beautiful, delicious television,
and then there was this world where I only really
got to listen to Bible stories.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
And the reason at that point that you were staying
with your grandparents was because your mom had pretty much
run out of gas.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Yeah, we didn't have money, and my grandparents would send
money sometimes, but I think it was the situation was
that they were like, we're not sending any more money.
You need to come here and figure things out, and
so that's what we did. I think that was around
like kindergarten age. I have a really hard time pinning
(07:07):
down exact ages, just because we were moving so much,
and we went back to some places a lot at
different ages, and so sometimes if I'm comparing a story
with someone, I'll talk about a memory and they'll be like, oh, yeah,
you were like nine when that happened. And I'm so
shocked because I remember being very little in the same place,
(07:30):
and the memories that I think I remember happening at
one age happened at another. But I'm pretty sure when
we were living with my grandparents in the house by
the highway, it was some time.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Before I started school.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
My earliest memories of going to church include just feeling well, one,
really aware of how my mom and I didn't fit in,
because you know, all the women were in like very
long jean skirts down to their ankles or like long dresses.
They all had very long hair, either hanging down their
(08:05):
back or piled up on their head, and the men
were in suits, and everyone was very clean and buttoned
up and smiling and calling each other brother and sister.
And my mom was wearing blue jeans and like a
T shirt and had makeup on, and her hair was
(08:26):
cut pretty short, and I was wearing the dress and
my grandma.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Gave me, but I just felt really out of place.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
It felt like way too nice of a place for
us to be dressed the way we were, and I
was embarrassed, but I was also kind of irritated because
I didn't want to be there and I didn't have
this language then, but now I understand, like I just
didn't want to be.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Judged on terms that I didn't care about. And my grandma, I.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Remember people asking her like is she adopted about me?
And my grandma telling at least one of her friends like, no,
she's a rape baby, and you know, people telling my
mom like, I'm so glad you came back.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
But also I could see the way they.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Were looking at her, and you know, her pants and
her hair and the makeup, and yeah, it was it
was just a lot to take in and try and
understand at a young age.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah, do you have any memory of what it felt
like to hear your grandmother describe you that way?
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I don't remember feeling any kind of emotion about it,
because I already knew the circumstances, So to me, it
was just a fact.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
I didn't really have.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
The concept that I should be insulted or embarrassed or
anything like that. So when we first got there, I
had this feeling like my mom and I were kind
of in cahoots and that we were both like, yeah,
this sucks, but we'll get through it. It didn't occur
to me that everyone else there knew her as someone
(09:56):
who used to be very involved in the church and
seeing in the and very you know, like godly and innocent.
I never met that version of her, so I didn't
know that that was something she would go back to.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
And then she stood.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Up to give testimony and basically said she wanted to
come home, which to her meant like come back to
the church and feel that community that used to make
her feel safe and loved before so many things went wrong.
I think she just wanted to get back to that
and feel like all of the missteps that she had
(10:32):
taken and all the things that had happened to her
could be washed away. I imagine was an irresistible feeling.
And to me it was a shock because I was like,
what do you mean you're buying into this? I thought
we were gonna leave, and yeah, I just felt really
alone because I didn't have my partner in crime anymore,
(10:53):
and I also like I didn't connect with this church setting.
I didn't feel what it seemed like everyone else was feeling.
So I also had a lot of guilt like why
can't I go there with her? And again, just a
lot to try and implement into my way of thinking
as I was forming a sense of self well.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
And also the message that God sees everything and knows
everything doesn't help.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
With the guilt, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
For a while, Brittany and her mother live with her grandparents.
Her mom has been saved and is accepted back into
the fold. It seems like life may continue to proceed
this way, a new Pentecostal life. But Mark, the ex
boyfriend they'd been running away from, he finds her. He
shows up at the house on Indiana State Road sixty seven,
(11:43):
and he takes her mother away.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
This is something I didn't actually know about for a
long time. I learned when I was an adult and
my mom told me this story. He had found us,
and he showed up in the middle of the night
and he had a gun and he threatened to shoot
my mom if she didn't come with him. He basically
(12:07):
forced her to come with him, and they didn't take me.
I don't really know why, because I really wasn't aware
that all of this was going on. I just knew
that I woke up and my mom was gone, and
I was alone in this place I didn't want to be,
and didn't have the context for why any of that
happened for.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
A long time.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
I mean, it strikes me that your mom probably was
trying to be protective of you by not bringing you
in a situation where she's basically being abducted. Yeah, but
I imagine that to be a kid like so young
and to just wake up and your mom's gone and
you don't know why, and nobody's talking, nobody's really filling
(12:47):
in the blanks for you.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Brittany is left with her grandparents for a few months
before Mark and her mom come back for her. During
these months, she and her grandparents move from the little
house by the highway into a barn.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
So the barn was an old carriage house. There were
horse stalls in it. It was an actual barn, had
a black wood sighting and these two big silhouettes of
rearing horses that were like bright white. So they stuck
out against the barn and my grandpa converted it into
(13:28):
He called it a mansion. It had thirteen bedrooms all together,
and even put up a sign at the end of
the driveway that was like, come see the thirteen bedroom mansion,
and then people would show up and be super confused.
It was like way out in the middle of the country,
(13:48):
like surrounded by cornfields on one side and woods on
the other.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
And then inside the barn itself.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Like it had this really lush red carpet with all
kinds of vines and flowers on it. There was like
a giant chandelier when you came into the dining room
in front of this huge window, and it had these
octopus arms.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
That's how I always thought of it.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
It looked like a giant octopus like holding a bunch
of little moons. And he put all kinds of furniture
imported from I want to say.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
France, but yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
It was like there was so much nice, expensive stuff
in it. And then my grandpa really loved cutting corners,
so then in between these really beautiful elements would be
pretty cheap linoleum and Christmas trees from like big lots
that were on sale or.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
Something, and missing arms.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
It was a bizarre place in part because of how
beautiful and decadent, and the fact that it was converted
from a barn, and also that my grandparents were hoarders.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
There was I mean, when we very first.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Got there, I didn't really think that that was going
on because everything was in boxes and it took forever
to unpack. So I just assumed that that's what it
was like when people moved. And then as I got older,
stuff accrued and this long, beautiful hallway was just so
full that you had to walk sideways to get through it.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
So your brother been three and a half years younger
than you, Yeah, and was the product or relationship that
your mom had with someone other than Mark? Was his
father someone that you knew when your mother was with him?
What was the background of that.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
It's basically my uncle's friend.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
So you was just hanging out with all of them
all the time, and they were young, so they were
like why not, and their condom broke and they got
pregnant and the rest of Ben's history.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Right, So it wasn't the result of a serious relationship.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
No, no, not at all.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
We'll be right back. Ben comes and goes during Brittany's childhood.
(16:33):
He lives with his father some of the time and
other times he spends with Brittany and her mother wherever
they might be. Another on again, off again presence in
Brittany's childhood is Mark. He and Britney's mom get back together,
and Brittany even begins to think of him as her dad.
But then their lives slide into a very dark place
(16:55):
when Mark puts Brittany's mother to work as a stripper,
and while Brittany's mom is out doing this, Mark begins
to sexually abuse Brittany. In a grim parallel, Brittany and
her mom are both doing things with their bodies that
they don't want to be doing. It's a harrowing time,
and at a certain point, someone reports the family to
(17:18):
child protective Services.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
I believe it was a family friend, is what they
guessed at the time, but I don't think we ever
really got exact confirmation.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
You know, it could have been.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Someone out of school, It could have been someone near
one of the motels where we were staying. Really could
have been anybody.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
So the thing that I was so struck by is
that your mom and Mark essentially coach you in terms
of what you should say to child protective services. So
that certainly implies that your mom knew that there were
things that you could say that would have you taken
away from her.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah, Mark knew exactly what they were going to ask
and anticipated how I could answer without sounding like I
had been coached. And I remember going through that coaching
and just being like, I don't.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
Want to do this. I'm bored.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
I want to watch TV because I you know, so
many awful things had been normalized. I wasn't thinking like
this is going to keep me from getting help. I
was thinking like, I got to get the answers right
so that we can stop doing this boring thing.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
And do something fun.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
And you are at this point around how old.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
I'm almost positive this is also before school. I might
have started kindergarten, but I was homeschooled for some of kindergarten,
so it's really hard to say.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
You also try to tell other people and really bravely
try to talk to Mark's sister Dana, and she doesn't
believe you. No, she did not, So there's there's no
protection at that stage in your life. I mean, you try,
and you I would imagine that would have felt like well,
(19:13):
and there's just no point trying because no one believes me.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Yeah, like I remember the conversation pretty vividly, and her
telling me, like, you shouldn't make things up. And even
though I knew I wasn't making anything up, and if
people told me I was lying about something, when I
was a kid, I would get mad. If I knew
I wasn't lying about this thing, I wasn't mad. I
just felt immediate shame, like I had done something wrong.
(19:41):
And I didn't have this language then, But now I
think it was that I understood that it wasn't so
much that she thought I was lying, but that saying
it out loud to someone was somehow as bad as
a lie.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Now I understand. I think she just couldn't or didn't
want to believe it.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
And it was easier to assume that, like a kid,
was making something up, because then you don't have to
do anything.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
You can just scold the kid and walk away.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Whereas if she had believed me, her whole life would
have been upended and it would have led to a
lot of hard conversations. And that's not totally understandable, no problem,
just more that I can see how someone makes a
really bad decision. I can understand all of the even
subconscious things that are happening to lead to them doing
(20:31):
something that creates ripples for the rest of someone's life.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Along the way, there are people who reach out to help,
who try to intervene and offer sanctuary, including Britney's mother's brother,
her uncle John, but their situation is constantly too much
for friends or relatives to handle. Britney's mom and Mark
are on the outs again, so when Brittany is ten
(21:00):
and Ben is six, they moved back to the barn
with their grandparents. Brittany a door's Ben and Relish is
the time they get to spend together, but this time
there's nothing but fear and worry.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
My brother and I were staying with my grandma. I
believe my mom was at a doctor's appointment, and he
went out to play and I was playing on my
game boy, and my grandma asked me to go check
on him, and instead of going outside, I just looked
out the window and I saw him playing. He really
(21:34):
liked building forts out of stuff, and my grandpa had
all kinds of materials from his business, so he was
building a fort. He had like a little plywood roof
on some saw horses, and then you know, I sat
back down and I remember my grandma sighing because I
was being lazy and she wanted me to go outside
(21:55):
and ask. But rather than tell me, like hey, I
wanted you to do, this was just.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Sighing so I would feel bad, which I did.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
But then sometime later I had a friend who lived
in a little house at the end of the driveway,
and I went over to see her, and then when
I came back, he was gone. I assumed that he
was inside with my grandma, but when I got in,
she was panicked and she couldn't find him.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
So we looked all over the barn.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
We looked in the backyard, and again there were cornfields
on one side for miles and then woods on the
other side for miles. It was just very quickly, like
this horrifying thing, like did he get lost? Did someone
take him? And honestly I didn't have any reason to
(22:45):
think that he had been taken, but that's where my
brain went because when we were kids, I think, just
because things were so hectic, we were always hearing, you know,
don't talk to strangers, don't get anyone's car, kids get
taken all the time, don't walk for me in the store,
And that always felt like someone taking you away. Whether
it was CPS or a stranger or the boogeyman, it
(23:09):
was like the worst thing that could happen, and so
my mind went to the worst thing, and I just
built this story in my head that someone had taken him,
and that's what happened.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
And I eventually saw an.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Ambulance down by the highway and ran to it, and
he was in there, and the police took us to
the hospital, and my mom showed up, and they did
all kinds of tests on him, and he ended up
going back with his dad that night, and I didn't
see him.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Again for a while.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
But what had happened was that a man who had
been kind of infamous in the town called the Reverend,
had sexually assaulted other young boys in the community, but
he hadn't ever gone to jail for it. He'd been
in treatment after committing arson. But he told these boys
(24:02):
that if they told anyone, he would kill their families,
and so of course they didn't want to testify against him.
And then he took my brother.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
He threatened him with.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
The same thing he assaulted him, and they ended up
finding him and he did end up going to prison.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
It was a big shifting moment.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
In our childhoods, because like things were already hard, but
then there was this huge evil event and then my
brother was gone, and then I also got moved away.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Where did you get moved to? I moved back with Mark,
so the barn was deemed not suitable for kids, so
you were moved back to Mark because that would be
more suitable. And where was your mother?
Speaker 3 (24:51):
I really, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
That's also a time that I really have trouble tracking
because it was in a series of traumas.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
It was like the big trauma.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
I think a lot of older sisters understand this feeling
like it's it's your job to keep your little siblings safe.
And even if you punch them in the face sometimes
or force feed them soy sauce, which I did to
the end, you still always, when it comes down to it,
you think like you would do anything to protect them
from someone who wanted to hurt them. And it was
(25:27):
like I failed the ultimate test of being a big sister.
And then and then he was gone and I couldn't
even talk to him about it or apologize or make
sure that nothing else happened. And then I was in
this new place with Mark and Mark's new family, and
I didn't even really understand that that was upset for
(25:48):
myself being back with this person who had abused me,
because I was like completely distraught about Ben and it
felt like he had died and I would never talk.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
To him again.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Her grandparents drive to Indianapolis to essentially to rescue you.
You know, it's so interesting about your story, Brittany, because
there's so much in it that is, you know, people
behaving in some of the most difficult ways that human
beings can. And also, I mean, your grandparents were not easy.
Would it be fair to say they were trying to
(26:20):
be protective of you?
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Yeah, I think that's exactly it. I think they were
really complicated people, and they didn't always know exactly what
would be the healthiest for a kid because of their
age and their backgrounds and their own traumas. But yeah,
when it came down to it, they really did want
(26:43):
to keep us safe. You know, my grandma had guilt
for a really long time, I think, honestly, probably until
she passed away about what happened with Ben because she
was watching us. But it's not like she could get
up and down the stairs to check on him.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
That's why she asked me.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
And they never wanted any of the things that happened
to us to happen to us.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
They loved us.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
In a fractured and constantly shifting life, the Barn continues
to be a strange and gothic home base. Britney wanders far.
At one point she lives in a biker camp with
a boyfriend of her mom's, but inevitably she returns. Rural
Indiana isn't an easy place to be, not for a
brown girl surrounded by a landscape of whiteness. Nobody in
(27:30):
high school wants to be different, and so Brittany tries
to maintain the image of the white girl who at
the time she wants to be. She avoids the sun,
she dyes her hair, she tries to blend in.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Just a very small town.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
And you know, it was the nineties and then early
two thousands, and yeah, I didn't have basically any exposure.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
To people who looked like me.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
You know, my mom had blue eyes, my brother had
blonde hair, blue eyes. A lot of my family they
were you know, blonde, blue eyes, pale. And I knew
on some level that I was different, and I understood
why at least the basics of why. But I was
kind of in denial. At a certain point. I was
(28:20):
embarrassed of how I looked, and I avoided the sun.
I saw a magazine in the store and I picked
it up and there were tips on how to lighten
your skin if you have dark spots, and translated that too, Okay,
I'm going to add lemon juice to my bath and
I would dunk my hair and bleach.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
And the thing is, I'm biracial. My mom's white.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
And it's not like I looked incredibly different, you know.
I just looked different enough that I was aware of
it and ashamed of it, and I really wanted.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
To change it.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
And you kids will find any reason to make fun
of you if you're a little bit different at a
certain age. And yeah, I had kids who made fun
of me. I had the nickname.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Mexico, which is like, at least be creative. You know.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
It was hard and isolating, but everything felt hard and isolating,
so it was like, why.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Not this too.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Eventually, Brittany does see Ben again. He resumes his rhythm
of going back and forths between his dad and mom,
but at some point he emphatically wants out. Brittany's sad
about it, but she understands why Ben wants to leave.
Their mother has become addicted to drugs. She's always used,
but it's not until now that her addiction really comes
(29:39):
to define her. When Ben says he wants to live
with his dad full time, their mother reacts with horror
and fury. At this point, young Brittany assumes the role
of the parent, the mature adult. She polices her mom,
even confronts her about her addiction.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
She used through most of my child I wasn't really
aware of it, and it's hard to say how much
of her behavior can be attributed to drug use and
how much of it was you know, she was struggling
with her mental health and with emotional regulation, like my uncle.
(30:18):
I tried to explain it to me when I was
younger that my mom had an addiction. Other people had
tried talking to me about it, but I never wanted
to listen. I just wouldn't accept that, you know, she
could do anything wrong. And then when I was in
middle school, it started to become undeniable.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
If it was just that I was more aware, or
more self possessed or that she was using something different,
or struggling more with how much she was using. May
have been a combination of all of those things. I
just know that I found some of her paraphernalia, and
I tried kind of her about it like one time,
(31:01):
and it basically broke the biggest rule, which is, like
it was never a spoken rule, but it was an
unspoken rule, which is, don't acknowledge this thing and don't
challenge me on it. Just love me back and go
with me wherever, and be okay when I'm not here.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
To be okay when I'm not here turns out to
be a prescriptive sort of warning. When Brittany is a
freshman in high school, she and her mom move into
another little house by the highway, a property owned by
her grandfather. One day, her mom leaves without any indication
of how long she'll be gone or where she's going.
(31:45):
A week goes by, then another Britney is running out
of food.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Yeah. I spent many years in denial about things and
just kind of avoiding the conversation. And then suddenly I
was alone in the house, waiting to see if she
would come back, and feeling like maybe she won't this time.
And maybe it's because I addressed things and it was
like being trapped in a bubble of actually acknowledging that
(32:14):
things were as bad as they were.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
And that led you to call this guy named Clay.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
We had dated in middle school through the beginning of
my freshman year, and we broke up. He wanted to
date another girl. I was a kid, and I was devastated.
And then we stayed friends and we would talk on
(32:42):
the phone sometimes and it was usually just me feeling
really sad that we weren't still together, but happy that
he still talked to me. And so it was also
close to his family because we had dated for I
think a year. And then when my mom left, I
called him because it really know what else to do,
(33:03):
and I told him what was going on, and then
he told his mom, and his mom came and picked
me up and said that I could stay with them
until my mom came back. I was staying with them,
I want to say it was for two weeks, and
they realized that my mom had already been gone.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
I told them it was a week.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
I was trying to know Doll the edge a little
bit of the situation, but it had been two weeks
by the time I called them, and then it was
two weeks at their house and they were like, she's
been gone for almost a month. Does this happen often?
And the truth was that it did. She was never
gone for that long. She would leave for like a
(33:48):
few days sometimes and I might be alone, or I
would stay with someone else, or she would stay gone
for longer, maybe a few months if I was with
my grandparents. But yeah, I told them that it was
it's fairly regular for her to leave, and so they
were like, well, that's not a good situation for you,
and what do you think about staying here indefinitely? Which
(34:11):
was like a dream come true for me.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Living with Clay's family, the Smiths, is life altering. Clay's
older brother Luis has been deployed to Iraq and Brittany
(34:42):
stays in his room. The Smiths are like guardian angels
to Brittany. They've offered her the kind of sanctuary that
has eluded her all her life. But her relationship with
Clay becomes complicated.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Because we had dated, we had a history, he had
a girlfriend, and so my assumption was.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Just that's done.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
I'm going to try to like not make my heartbrokenness
to a parent. I just want to be good and
not make trouble in the house and.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
You know, keep clean.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
And I wanted to feel like I was worthy of
being in a place that felt so nice. We were
teenagers and living together, and even though the Smiths had
told us like you can't, I think the exact phrase
they use was no hanky panky while you're living under
the same roof, which is what any responsible person would
(35:39):
say in that situation. But we were young and we
had a history, and so we ended up fooling around
and secret and it turned into well, for a while,
it was fooling around and me not being sure, like
why is he still with his girlfriend? And am I
a bad person? And then even after they broke up,
(36:00):
it was still a secret because we knew that I
would have to leave. And then it's hard to say
that there was any one moment where things turned. But
he would get very mad at me, and you would
say really awful things to me. At the time, I
just thought of it as rough housing, like he would
(36:21):
hit me on the arm, or hit me on the leg,
or do this weird crimping thing to my finger that
hurt really bad. It was always some little thing to
just hurt me a little bit, and it didn't feel
I was like, well, he's not hitting me in the face,
or he's not like pushing me on the ground and
wailing on me.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
And I had seen that in my life.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
So I didn't think that it was anything exceptionally bad,
just you know, playing around, and if I would say,
like stop and get serious, I was ruining the fun.
It got to be a really bad situation. But I
didn't feel like I could tell the Smiths because I
knew that I would have to leave. And it was
(37:02):
the first time I had had like a clean, stable,
otherwise loving environment, and I was finally getting good grades,
I was taking ap classes, and I just didn't want
to risk all of that, And even if that meant
living in this terrible situation where I just had no
self worth. I never knew what version of him I
(37:26):
was going to get.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
It was hard.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
And then your mom eventually does show up, and you're
also in this situation where she wants you to come back.
You do not want to go back.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Yeah, you know, one of the worst things about that
time was that I just blocked everything out because I
was in this all consuming relationship. So I didn't even
know if my brother, who I loved and had been
through so much with, was like back with my mom
or with his dad or just visiting, or like what
was going on in his life.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
Had tunnel vision.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Well, you were trying to save yourself.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
In the meantime, Britney's mom signs over a third party
custody to the Smiths, making it legal. Brittany has another
very real family. Others continue to try and help her too.
More guardian angels appear, more hands reach out. Many are
from trusted and supportive adults.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
At school, you know, I was like a kid from
a movie who eats lunch in the stairwell crying because
things were bad and I didn't feel like I fit anywhere,
and everything was hard. And I had an English teacher,
mister Wagner, who would let me eat lunch in his classroom,
and I had my guidance counselor mister Brown. He would
(38:49):
let me come in and just vent and cry, and
then he was the one who really pushed the idea
of college. And until then I just never felt like
a possibility. So I didn't know why I would bother
thinking about it. And then I joined the Academic to caathlon,
and my coach for that one encouraged me to go
to college and helped me figure out how to write
(39:10):
things for applications and how to do interviews. And I
had a creative writing teacher, Kenneth Barrett, who was the
first person to tell me that I was talented writer
and that I should take it more seriously. So I
had all of these people who created space for me
and made sure that I knew that I could get
(39:32):
out and that they were there for me through that,
and I'm endlessly thankful for them.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
The encouragement Brittany receives in school inspires her to really
focus on getting out, going to college, and starting a
new life for herself. She cobbles together grants and scholarships,
she works a bunch of jobs, and soon she's admitted
to Ball State. Ben too has successfully gone and out
(40:00):
and gets a full ride to another university. These are
impressive achievements for anyone, but ones that had previously seemed
impossible for Brittany and her brother. For some of college,
Brittany and Clay continue to have a romantic relationship, but
eventually they end things. She is still very much part
(40:21):
of the family though, and when she comes back for visits,
Louise is home from Iraq now and she's able to
get to know this big brother figure in whose room
she has lived. Some years later, Brittany is in graduate
school and she's found her person, a man named Jeff.
She and Clay have lost touch, but one day Clay
(40:41):
calls with terrible news Louise has died from a drug
related overdose. Britney's phone rings again soon, this time from
missus Smith, Diane, and she's calling about Louise's ashes.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
So the Smiths were in Indiana and at the time,
I was in Iowa in the graduate program, and Diane
called me and said, Louis's ashes are in this car
and it's been impounded and they're going to basically destroy
the car with the ashes in there.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
And I asked if they would mail them back, and
they're refusing.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
And this was in San Diego, so I got a
ticket and I flew there, and luckily I just happened
to have a friend who lived there and picked me
up from the airport and drove me straight to the
impound lot and I went in and kind of I
felt like tearing the place apart with my bare hands,
(41:41):
but I just explained and I'm really sorry. I know
this is an inconvenience and all of this, and eventually
they let me go in and look around the car
and I found his ashes.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
And then, you know, because my flight was the next day.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
Oh, it was Thanksgiving also, so like everything was closed,
and I had a friend who lived there and was
letting me stay at his place, but he was out
of town for the holiday, so I was just alone
on the other side of the country. I had never
flown before that, I had never been to California with
these ashes. And then yeah, I brought them back and
(42:20):
I had them with me in Iowa for a little
while until I went back for the holiday and I
took them home, and yeah, it was it was a
wild trip, and it was like a brief journey.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
Yeah, well in a journey of a kind of repair
in a way.
Speaker 3 (42:37):
Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
To the degree that repair was possible.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
I think before I wrote the book, it all felt
like just something that I was holding all the time,
and it was overwhelming and it was loud, and I
couldn't stop thinking about certain things, and I was having
panic attacks and nightmares, and I wrote the book and
(43:01):
part to process it, and I went to therapy and
like actually committed to therapy rather than what I'd done
when I was a kid, which was lied to the
therapist because I didn't want I heard like CPS will
take you away. And so I finally I started going
to therapy and telling the truth and really committing to
(43:23):
taking care of myself.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
And I talked a lot to Ben, like we.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Just like delved through everything that had happened, which the
more I think about that lately, it's like when you
go through a lot with someone, it would be completely understandable.
If I had tried to call him one day and
say like, hey, you remember that time this awful thing happened.
If he had responded like, I'm out of that now
and I don't want to talk about it, I would
(43:49):
have understood. But the fact that he immediately was like, yeah, let's.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
Let's talk about it.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
How messed up was that I was huge just having
someone who like understood it intimately and could confirm things
and deconstruct them with me and affirm like, oh, we're
both here now, and it's not like perfect but we're
making it.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Indeed, they are making it. Brittany is a published author
living in Albuquerque with her partner Jeff. She gives public
readings to large audiences, some of which include the very
teachers from her past that made this journey possible. Ben
is a family counselor. Britney's relationship with her mom is okay,
(44:38):
but continues to be fraught when she tells her she's
going to write this book. Her mom tells her to
do what she needs to do.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
I feel like I've kind of exercised it in a way.
It's not like anything will ever be completely easy, or
like those things didn't happen a that I've written about them,
But I feel like I'm not so obsessed with thinking
about these things, and I have way fewer panic attacks.
I can't say I have none, but mostly I just
(45:08):
feel like I processed it.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
I did what I wanted to do.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
And now when I have people who will come to
me and say your book gave me context for things
happening in my own life or helped me find ways
to talk about it, that means the world to me,
because I didn't just write it to process it. It
was a huge part of why I wrote it, but
just the idea that it can go beyond me.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
It's like everything.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
Near the end of her memoir, Brittany also includes a
moving scene in which she shares draft after draft of
her manuscript with Ben. She hopes and praise that he
won't feel she has somehow usurped his story by telling
her own. She writes, is that what I'm doing to you?
I ask Ben after he reads my latest draft, I'm
(46:00):
telling your story too. Someone had to tell it, he says.
I'm glad it's you, and so are we. Here's Brittany
reading one last passage from her powerful.
Speaker 3 (46:13):
Memoir, The truth is.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
I spent so long imagining a perfect future so I
could get through a profoundly imperfect present. I'd close my
eyes and build beautiful houses where nothing could ever go wrong.
I needed that to hold me up. But now I
have to let it go. The world will never be
entirely safe. Troubles will come, loved ones will die, and
(46:39):
landlords will reject my offer of free eggs in exchange
for an exception from the terms of my lease. Now
I'm the clattish adult who controls my life, so I
have to stop waiting for perfect conditions and trust that
I can handle what comes. Planting a seed is easy.
Tending to it so it can grow is the hard part.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly Zaccur is
the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.
If you have a family secret you'd like to share,
please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear
on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight
eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also
(47:46):
find me on Instagram at Danny Ryder. And if you'd
like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
check out my memoir Inheritance. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
(48:24):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. This episode contains
discussion of sexual assault and drug abuse. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Trying to follow a specific memory to any kind of
conclusion is like driving toward a semi blinded by its headlights,
compelled by survival instincts to swerve away. No amount of
holding the steering wheel and place can keep you on
the road.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
If part of you.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
However small, wants to survive. Thankfully, there's a lot of
me that wants to survive.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
That's Brittany Means, writer and editor, an author of the
recent memoir Hell If We Don't Change Our Ways. Britney's
is a story of extraordinary resilience and ultimately the triumph
of an indomitable spirit trapped an impossible circumstances. It's an
object lesson in the idea that as long as we're
(01:04):
alive and breathing, anything is possible. I'm Danny Shapiro, and
this is family Secrets, the secrets that are kept from us,
(01:26):
the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we
keep from ourselves. The place that I always begin, and
in your case, it's particularly complicated and rich. I think
to talk about is. Tell me about the landscape of
your childhood and that could mean anything to you. Your
(01:49):
childhood had a lot of landscapes.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah, well landscape I think of Cornfield literally. But for
the most part, it was me and my mom. We
lived in a car a lot of the time. We
were always on the move, and we stayed if we
weren't in the car, we were in shelters or with
(02:12):
friends or with family. You know. We stayed all sorts
of different places, like a biker community, we stayed on
an ostrich farm, we stayed with distant family. In Mississippi,
there's always something new and people.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Who were new.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Did it feel like an adventure or what was that
like for you?
Speaker 2 (02:34):
It didn't feel strange to me that we were moving
so much because that was what I knew. So I
didn't really think to ask like when are we stopping
or where are we going to stay? Because to me,
like being in the car and always being somewhere new,
it was just how things were, and the most important
thing to me was just that I was with my mom,
(02:56):
So I didn't I didn't really care too much about
the instability because it didn't feel strange and she was there,
My mom had me when she was nineteen, so she
was fairly young when she started parenthood. And my conception
was the result of a sexual assault. I think she
was just a very traumatized person from her upbringing and
(03:19):
from what had happened, and from being a single mother
and then being in an abusive relationship. And I'm aware
of all of those things now because I have a perspective.
But when I was a kid, she was like the
sun to me, and I loved her more than anything.
She was like the source of all warmth and happiness
(03:40):
and affirmation. You know. She could be very energetic and
verbally loving, and we would like go on trips and
go play laser tag and put putt and all these
fun things. And then the next day, or maybe even
later that same day, she would be like very emotionally
(04:01):
just regulated. She would sleep for days, she would scream,
she would have outbursts. So yeah, just in another way,
not a lot of stability.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
How old were you when you knew that you were
the result of your mother having been raped?
Speaker 2 (04:19):
I honestly don't really remember a time when I didn't
know that. I wish I could remember the exact moment
and how I felt about it, but it feels like
something I just always knew. When I picture her, the
first image is you know how I saw her When
I was a kid. She had like brownish reddish, like
rusty brown hair, and it was always a little frizzy,
(04:42):
which is where I got it blue eyes. When I
was a kid, she had like a gap between her
two front teeth, and she ended up getting dentures later
in life, and I remember my uncle actually crying because
he was like, I loved the gap between her teeth.
It gave her a personality like fit her very well,
(05:02):
and she had a very pretty smile. She has like
dimples and eyes that are really bright.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
One of the moves Brittany and her mom make is
precipitated by Mark, her mom's ex boyfriend at the time,
but now they're running away from him. They flee to
Britney's grandparents' home just off Indiana State Road sixty seven.
Britney's grandparents are Pentecostal, and life there is extremely different
from the life Britney is used to.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
The main thing was the contrast. When we first got there,
my mom and I used to love going to horror movies,
we watched TV. We really loved like unsolved mysteries and
watching like the Rose Red series. And then we also
had no rules. We just kind of did whatever out
on the road. And when we were with my grandparents,
(05:55):
they were like, no TV because that's the sin. So
suddenly this huge thing that we shared together was gone
and I couldn't even really talk about it without.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Getting a speech.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
And there were all these rules like about when we
could come and go and the things that we could
say and what we had to wear and cutting our hair.
And it was really hard at first because I was
so aware of the alternative to that, Like I knew
(06:27):
there was a world out there with like beautiful, delicious television,
and then there was this world where I only really
got to listen to Bible stories.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
And the reason at that point that you were staying
with your grandparents was because your mom had pretty much
run out of gas.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Yeah, we didn't have money, and my grandparents would send
money sometimes, but I think it was the situation was
that they were like, we're not sending any more money.
You need to come here and figure things out, and
so that's what we did. I think that was around
like kindergarten age. I have a really hard time pinning
(07:07):
down exact ages, just because we were moving so much,
and we went back to some places a lot at
different ages, and so sometimes if I'm comparing a story
with someone, I'll talk about a memory and they'll be like, oh, yeah,
you were like nine when that happened. And I'm so
shocked because I remember being very little in the same place,
(07:30):
and the memories that I think I remember happening at
one age happened at another. But I'm pretty sure when
we were living with my grandparents in the house by
the highway, it was some time.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Before I started school.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
My earliest memories of going to church include just feeling well, one,
really aware of how my mom and I didn't fit in,
because you know, all the women were in like very
long jean skirts down to their ankles or like long dresses.
They all had very long hair, either hanging down their
(08:05):
back or piled up on their head, and the men
were in suits, and everyone was very clean and buttoned
up and smiling and calling each other brother and sister.
And my mom was wearing blue jeans and like a
T shirt and had makeup on, and her hair was
(08:26):
cut pretty short, and I was wearing the dress and
my grandma.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Gave me, but I just felt really out of place.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
It felt like way too nice of a place for
us to be dressed the way we were, and I
was embarrassed, but I was also kind of irritated because
I didn't want to be there and I didn't have
this language then, but now I understand, like I just
didn't want to be.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Judged on terms that I didn't care about. And my grandma, I.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Remember people asking her like is she adopted about me?
And my grandma telling at least one of her friends like, no,
she's a rape baby, and you know, people telling my
mom like, I'm so glad you came back.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
But also I could see the way they.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Were looking at her, and you know, her pants and
her hair and the makeup, and yeah, it was it
was just a lot to take in and try and
understand at a young age.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah, do you have any memory of what it felt
like to hear your grandmother describe you that way?
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I don't remember feeling any kind of emotion about it,
because I already knew the circumstances, So to me, it
was just a fact.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
I didn't really have.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
The concept that I should be insulted or embarrassed or
anything like that. So when we first got there, I
had this feeling like my mom and I were kind
of in cahoots and that we were both like, yeah,
this sucks, but we'll get through it. It didn't occur
to me that everyone else there knew her as someone
(09:56):
who used to be very involved in the church and
seeing in the and very you know, like godly and innocent.
I never met that version of her, so I didn't
know that that was something she would go back to.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
And then she stood.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Up to give testimony and basically said she wanted to
come home, which to her meant like come back to
the church and feel that community that used to make
her feel safe and loved before so many things went wrong.
I think she just wanted to get back to that
and feel like all of the missteps that she had
(10:32):
taken and all the things that had happened to her
could be washed away. I imagine was an irresistible feeling.
And to me it was a shock because I was like,
what do you mean you're buying into this? I thought
we were gonna leave, and yeah, I just felt really
alone because I didn't have my partner in crime anymore,
(10:53):
and I also like I didn't connect with this church setting.
I didn't feel what it seemed like everyone else was feeling.
So I also had a lot of guilt like why
can't I go there with her? And again, just a
lot to try and implement into my way of thinking
as I was forming a sense of self well.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
And also the message that God sees everything and knows
everything doesn't help.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
With the guilt, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
For a while, Brittany and her mother live with her grandparents.
Her mom has been saved and is accepted back into
the fold. It seems like life may continue to proceed
this way, a new Pentecostal life. But Mark, the ex
boyfriend they'd been running away from, he finds her. He
shows up at the house on Indiana State Road sixty seven,
(11:43):
and he takes her mother away.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
This is something I didn't actually know about for a
long time. I learned when I was an adult and
my mom told me this story. He had found us,
and he showed up in the middle of the night
and he had a gun and he threatened to shoot
my mom if she didn't come with him. He basically
(12:07):
forced her to come with him, and they didn't take me.
I don't really know why, because I really wasn't aware
that all of this was going on. I just knew
that I woke up and my mom was gone, and
I was alone in this place I didn't want to be,
and didn't have the context for why any of that
happened for.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
A long time.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
I mean, it strikes me that your mom probably was
trying to be protective of you by not bringing you
in a situation where she's basically being abducted. Yeah, but
I imagine that to be a kid like so young
and to just wake up and your mom's gone and
you don't know why, and nobody's talking, nobody's really filling
(12:47):
in the blanks for you.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Brittany is left with her grandparents for a few months
before Mark and her mom come back for her. During
these months, she and her grandparents move from the little
house by the highway into a barn.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
So the barn was an old carriage house. There were
horse stalls in it. It was an actual barn, had
a black wood sighting and these two big silhouettes of
rearing horses that were like bright white. So they stuck
out against the barn and my grandpa converted it into
(13:28):
He called it a mansion. It had thirteen bedrooms all together,
and even put up a sign at the end of
the driveway that was like, come see the thirteen bedroom mansion,
and then people would show up and be super confused.
It was like way out in the middle of the country,
(13:48):
like surrounded by cornfields on one side and woods on
the other.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
And then inside the barn itself.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Like it had this really lush red carpet with all
kinds of vines and flowers on it. There was like
a giant chandelier when you came into the dining room
in front of this huge window, and it had these
octopus arms.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
That's how I always thought of it.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
It looked like a giant octopus like holding a bunch
of little moons. And he put all kinds of furniture
imported from I want to say.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
France, but yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
It was like there was so much nice, expensive stuff
in it. And then my grandpa really loved cutting corners,
so then in between these really beautiful elements would be
pretty cheap linoleum and Christmas trees from like big lots
that were on sale or.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
Something, and missing arms.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
It was a bizarre place in part because of how
beautiful and decadent, and the fact that it was converted
from a barn, and also that my grandparents were hoarders.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
There was I mean, when we very first.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Got there, I didn't really think that that was going
on because everything was in boxes and it took forever
to unpack. So I just assumed that that's what it
was like when people moved. And then as I got older,
stuff accrued and this long, beautiful hallway was just so
full that you had to walk sideways to get through it.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
So your brother been three and a half years younger
than you, Yeah, and was the product or relationship that
your mom had with someone other than Mark? Was his
father someone that you knew when your mother was with him?
What was the background of that.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
It's basically my uncle's friend.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
So you was just hanging out with all of them
all the time, and they were young, so they were
like why not, and their condom broke and they got
pregnant and the rest of Ben's history.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Right, So it wasn't the result of a serious relationship.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
No, no, not at all.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
We'll be right back. Ben comes and goes during Brittany's childhood.
(16:33):
He lives with his father some of the time and
other times he spends with Brittany and her mother wherever
they might be. Another on again, off again presence in
Brittany's childhood is Mark. He and Britney's mom get back together,
and Brittany even begins to think of him as her dad.
But then their lives slide into a very dark place
(16:55):
when Mark puts Brittany's mother to work as a stripper,
and while Brittany's mom is out doing this, Mark begins
to sexually abuse Brittany. In a grim parallel, Brittany and
her mom are both doing things with their bodies that
they don't want to be doing. It's a harrowing time,
and at a certain point, someone reports the family to
(17:18):
child protective Services.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
I believe it was a family friend, is what they
guessed at the time, but I don't think we ever
really got exact confirmation.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
You know, it could have been.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Someone out of school, It could have been someone near
one of the motels where we were staying. Really could
have been anybody.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
So the thing that I was so struck by is
that your mom and Mark essentially coach you in terms
of what you should say to child protective services. So
that certainly implies that your mom knew that there were
things that you could say that would have you taken
away from her.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah, Mark knew exactly what they were going to ask
and anticipated how I could answer without sounding like I
had been coached. And I remember going through that coaching
and just being like, I don't.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
Want to do this. I'm bored.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
I want to watch TV because I you know, so
many awful things had been normalized. I wasn't thinking like
this is going to keep me from getting help. I
was thinking like, I got to get the answers right
so that we can stop doing this boring thing.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
And do something fun.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
And you are at this point around how old.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
I'm almost positive this is also before school. I might
have started kindergarten, but I was homeschooled for some of kindergarten,
so it's really hard to say.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
You also try to tell other people and really bravely
try to talk to Mark's sister Dana, and she doesn't
believe you. No, she did not, So there's there's no
protection at that stage in your life. I mean, you try,
and you I would imagine that would have felt like well,
(19:13):
and there's just no point trying because no one believes me.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Yeah, like I remember the conversation pretty vividly, and her
telling me, like, you shouldn't make things up. And even
though I knew I wasn't making anything up, and if
people told me I was lying about something, when I
was a kid, I would get mad. If I knew
I wasn't lying about this thing, I wasn't mad. I
just felt immediate shame, like I had done something wrong.
(19:41):
And I didn't have this language then, But now I
think it was that I understood that it wasn't so
much that she thought I was lying, but that saying
it out loud to someone was somehow as bad as
a lie.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Now I understand. I think she just couldn't or didn't
want to believe it.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
And it was easier to assume that, like a kid,
was making something up, because then you don't have to
do anything.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
You can just scold the kid and walk away.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Whereas if she had believed me, her whole life would
have been upended and it would have led to a
lot of hard conversations. And that's not totally understandable, no problem,
just more that I can see how someone makes a
really bad decision. I can understand all of the even
subconscious things that are happening to lead to them doing
(20:31):
something that creates ripples for the rest of someone's life.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Along the way, there are people who reach out to help,
who try to intervene and offer sanctuary, including Britney's mother's brother,
her uncle John, but their situation is constantly too much
for friends or relatives to handle. Britney's mom and Mark
are on the outs again, so when Brittany is ten
(21:00):
and Ben is six, they moved back to the barn
with their grandparents. Brittany a door's Ben and Relish is
the time they get to spend together, but this time
there's nothing but fear and worry.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
My brother and I were staying with my grandma. I
believe my mom was at a doctor's appointment, and he
went out to play and I was playing on my
game boy, and my grandma asked me to go check
on him, and instead of going outside, I just looked
out the window and I saw him playing. He really
(21:34):
liked building forts out of stuff, and my grandpa had
all kinds of materials from his business, so he was
building a fort. He had like a little plywood roof
on some saw horses, and then you know, I sat
back down and I remember my grandma sighing because I
was being lazy and she wanted me to go outside
(21:55):
and ask. But rather than tell me, like hey, I
wanted you to do, this was just.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Sighing so I would feel bad, which I did.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
But then sometime later I had a friend who lived
in a little house at the end of the driveway,
and I went over to see her, and then when
I came back, he was gone. I assumed that he
was inside with my grandma, but when I got in,
she was panicked and she couldn't find him.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
So we looked all over the barn.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
We looked in the backyard, and again there were cornfields
on one side for miles and then woods on the
other side for miles. It was just very quickly, like
this horrifying thing, like did he get lost? Did someone
take him? And honestly I didn't have any reason to
(22:45):
think that he had been taken, but that's where my
brain went because when we were kids, I think, just
because things were so hectic, we were always hearing, you know,
don't talk to strangers, don't get anyone's car, kids get
taken all the time, don't walk for me in the store,
And that always felt like someone taking you away. Whether
it was CPS or a stranger or the boogeyman, it
(23:09):
was like the worst thing that could happen, and so
my mind went to the worst thing, and I just
built this story in my head that someone had taken him,
and that's what happened.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
And I eventually saw an.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Ambulance down by the highway and ran to it, and
he was in there, and the police took us to
the hospital, and my mom showed up, and they did
all kinds of tests on him, and he ended up
going back with his dad that night, and I didn't
see him.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Again for a while.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
But what had happened was that a man who had
been kind of infamous in the town called the Reverend,
had sexually assaulted other young boys in the community, but
he hadn't ever gone to jail for it. He'd been
in treatment after committing arson. But he told these boys
(24:02):
that if they told anyone, he would kill their families,
and so of course they didn't want to testify against him.
And then he took my brother.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
He threatened him with.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
The same thing he assaulted him, and they ended up
finding him and he did end up going to prison.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
It was a big shifting moment.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
In our childhoods, because like things were already hard, but
then there was this huge evil event and then my
brother was gone, and then I also got moved away.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Where did you get moved to? I moved back with Mark,
so the barn was deemed not suitable for kids, so
you were moved back to Mark because that would be
more suitable. And where was your mother?
Speaker 3 (24:51):
I really, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
That's also a time that I really have trouble tracking
because it was in a series of traumas.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
It was like the big trauma.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
I think a lot of older sisters understand this feeling
like it's it's your job to keep your little siblings safe.
And even if you punch them in the face sometimes
or force feed them soy sauce, which I did to
the end, you still always, when it comes down to it,
you think like you would do anything to protect them
from someone who wanted to hurt them. And it was
(25:27):
like I failed the ultimate test of being a big sister.
And then and then he was gone and I couldn't
even talk to him about it or apologize or make
sure that nothing else happened. And then I was in
this new place with Mark and Mark's new family, and
I didn't even really understand that that was upset for
(25:48):
myself being back with this person who had abused me,
because I was like completely distraught about Ben and it
felt like he had died and I would never talk.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
To him again.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Her grandparents drive to Indianapolis to essentially to rescue you.
You know, it's so interesting about your story, Brittany, because
there's so much in it that is, you know, people
behaving in some of the most difficult ways that human
beings can. And also, I mean, your grandparents were not easy.
Would it be fair to say they were trying to
(26:20):
be protective of you?
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Yeah, I think that's exactly it. I think they were
really complicated people, and they didn't always know exactly what
would be the healthiest for a kid because of their
age and their backgrounds and their own traumas. But yeah,
when it came down to it, they really did want
(26:43):
to keep us safe. You know, my grandma had guilt
for a really long time, I think, honestly, probably until
she passed away about what happened with Ben because she
was watching us. But it's not like she could get
up and down the stairs to check on him.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
That's why she asked me.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
And they never wanted any of the things that happened
to us to happen to us.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
They loved us.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
In a fractured and constantly shifting life, the Barn continues
to be a strange and gothic home base. Britney wanders far.
At one point she lives in a biker camp with
a boyfriend of her mom's, but inevitably she returns. Rural
Indiana isn't an easy place to be, not for a
brown girl surrounded by a landscape of whiteness. Nobody in
(27:30):
high school wants to be different, and so Brittany tries
to maintain the image of the white girl who at
the time she wants to be. She avoids the sun,
she dyes her hair, she tries to blend in.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Just a very small town.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
And you know, it was the nineties and then early
two thousands, and yeah, I didn't have basically any exposure.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
To people who looked like me.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
You know, my mom had blue eyes, my brother had
blonde hair, blue eyes. A lot of my family they
were you know, blonde, blue eyes, pale. And I knew
on some level that I was different, and I understood
why at least the basics of why. But I was
kind of in denial. At a certain point. I was
(28:20):
embarrassed of how I looked, and I avoided the sun.
I saw a magazine in the store and I picked
it up and there were tips on how to lighten
your skin if you have dark spots, and translated that too, Okay,
I'm going to add lemon juice to my bath and
I would dunk my hair and bleach.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
And the thing is, I'm biracial. My mom's white.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
And it's not like I looked incredibly different, you know.
I just looked different enough that I was aware of
it and ashamed of it, and I really wanted.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
To change it.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
And you kids will find any reason to make fun
of you if you're a little bit different at a
certain age. And yeah, I had kids who made fun
of me. I had the nickname.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Mexico, which is like, at least be creative. You know.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
It was hard and isolating, but everything felt hard and isolating,
so it was like, why.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Not this too.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Eventually, Brittany does see Ben again. He resumes his rhythm
of going back and forths between his dad and mom,
but at some point he emphatically wants out. Brittany's sad
about it, but she understands why Ben wants to leave.
Their mother has become addicted to drugs. She's always used,
but it's not until now that her addiction really comes
(29:39):
to define her. When Ben says he wants to live
with his dad full time, their mother reacts with horror
and fury. At this point, young Brittany assumes the role
of the parent, the mature adult. She polices her mom,
even confronts her about her addiction.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
She used through most of my child I wasn't really
aware of it, and it's hard to say how much
of her behavior can be attributed to drug use and
how much of it was you know, she was struggling
with her mental health and with emotional regulation, like my uncle.
(30:18):
I tried to explain it to me when I was
younger that my mom had an addiction. Other people had
tried talking to me about it, but I never wanted
to listen. I just wouldn't accept that, you know, she
could do anything wrong. And then when I was in
middle school, it started to become undeniable.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
If it was just that I was more aware, or
more self possessed or that she was using something different,
or struggling more with how much she was using. May
have been a combination of all of those things. I
just know that I found some of her paraphernalia, and
I tried kind of her about it like one time,
(31:01):
and it basically broke the biggest rule, which is, like
it was never a spoken rule, but it was an
unspoken rule, which is, don't acknowledge this thing and don't
challenge me on it. Just love me back and go
with me wherever, and be okay when I'm not here.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
To be okay when I'm not here turns out to
be a prescriptive sort of warning. When Brittany is a
freshman in high school, she and her mom move into
another little house by the highway, a property owned by
her grandfather. One day, her mom leaves without any indication
of how long she'll be gone or where she's going.
(31:45):
A week goes by, then another Britney is running out
of food.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Yeah. I spent many years in denial about things and
just kind of avoiding the conversation. And then suddenly I
was alone in the house, waiting to see if she
would come back, and feeling like maybe she won't this time.
And maybe it's because I addressed things and it was
like being trapped in a bubble of actually acknowledging that
(32:14):
things were as bad as they were.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
And that led you to call this guy named Clay.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
We had dated in middle school through the beginning of
my freshman year, and we broke up. He wanted to
date another girl. I was a kid, and I was devastated.
And then we stayed friends and we would talk on
(32:42):
the phone sometimes and it was usually just me feeling
really sad that we weren't still together, but happy that
he still talked to me. And so it was also
close to his family because we had dated for I
think a year. And then when my mom left, I
called him because it really know what else to do,
(33:03):
and I told him what was going on, and then
he told his mom, and his mom came and picked
me up and said that I could stay with them
until my mom came back. I was staying with them,
I want to say it was for two weeks, and
they realized that my mom had already been gone.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
I told them it was a week.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
I was trying to know Doll the edge a little
bit of the situation, but it had been two weeks
by the time I called them, and then it was
two weeks at their house and they were like, she's
been gone for almost a month. Does this happen often?
And the truth was that it did. She was never
gone for that long. She would leave for like a
(33:48):
few days sometimes and I might be alone, or I
would stay with someone else, or she would stay gone
for longer, maybe a few months if I was with
my grandparents. But yeah, I told them that it was
it's fairly regular for her to leave, and so they
were like, well, that's not a good situation for you,
and what do you think about staying here indefinitely? Which
(34:11):
was like a dream come true for me.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Living with Clay's family, the Smiths, is life altering. Clay's
older brother Luis has been deployed to Iraq and Brittany
(34:42):
stays in his room. The Smiths are like guardian angels
to Brittany. They've offered her the kind of sanctuary that
has eluded her all her life. But her relationship with
Clay becomes complicated.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Because we had dated, we had a history, he had
a girlfriend, and so my assumption was.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Just that's done.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
I'm going to try to like not make my heartbrokenness
to a parent. I just want to be good and
not make trouble in the house and.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
You know, keep clean.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
And I wanted to feel like I was worthy of
being in a place that felt so nice. We were
teenagers and living together, and even though the Smiths had
told us like you can't, I think the exact phrase
they use was no hanky panky while you're living under
the same roof, which is what any responsible person would
(35:39):
say in that situation. But we were young and we
had a history, and so we ended up fooling around
and secret and it turned into well, for a while,
it was fooling around and me not being sure, like
why is he still with his girlfriend? And am I
a bad person? And then even after they broke up,
(36:00):
it was still a secret because we knew that I
would have to leave. And then it's hard to say
that there was any one moment where things turned. But
he would get very mad at me, and you would
say really awful things to me. At the time, I
just thought of it as rough housing, like he would
(36:21):
hit me on the arm, or hit me on the leg,
or do this weird crimping thing to my finger that
hurt really bad. It was always some little thing to
just hurt me a little bit, and it didn't feel
I was like, well, he's not hitting me in the face,
or he's not like pushing me on the ground and
wailing on me.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
And I had seen that in my life.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
So I didn't think that it was anything exceptionally bad,
just you know, playing around, and if I would say,
like stop and get serious, I was ruining the fun.
It got to be a really bad situation. But I
didn't feel like I could tell the Smiths because I
knew that I would have to leave. And it was
(37:02):
the first time I had had like a clean, stable,
otherwise loving environment, and I was finally getting good grades,
I was taking ap classes, and I just didn't want
to risk all of that, And even if that meant
living in this terrible situation where I just had no
self worth. I never knew what version of him I
(37:26):
was going to get.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
It was hard.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
And then your mom eventually does show up, and you're
also in this situation where she wants you to come back.
You do not want to go back.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Yeah, you know, one of the worst things about that
time was that I just blocked everything out because I
was in this all consuming relationship. So I didn't even
know if my brother, who I loved and had been
through so much with, was like back with my mom
or with his dad or just visiting, or like what
was going on in his life.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
Had tunnel vision.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Well, you were trying to save yourself.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
In the meantime, Britney's mom signs over a third party
custody to the Smiths, making it legal. Brittany has another
very real family. Others continue to try and help her too.
More guardian angels appear, more hands reach out. Many are
from trusted and supportive adults.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
At school, you know, I was like a kid from
a movie who eats lunch in the stairwell crying because
things were bad and I didn't feel like I fit anywhere,
and everything was hard. And I had an English teacher,
mister Wagner, who would let me eat lunch in his classroom,
and I had my guidance counselor mister Brown. He would
(38:49):
let me come in and just vent and cry, and
then he was the one who really pushed the idea
of college. And until then I just never felt like
a possibility. So I didn't know why I would bother
thinking about it. And then I joined the Academic to caathlon,
and my coach for that one encouraged me to go
to college and helped me figure out how to write
(39:10):
things for applications and how to do interviews. And I
had a creative writing teacher, Kenneth Barrett, who was the
first person to tell me that I was talented writer
and that I should take it more seriously. So I
had all of these people who created space for me
and made sure that I knew that I could get
(39:32):
out and that they were there for me through that,
and I'm endlessly thankful for them.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
The encouragement Brittany receives in school inspires her to really
focus on getting out, going to college, and starting a
new life for herself. She cobbles together grants and scholarships,
she works a bunch of jobs, and soon she's admitted
to Ball State. Ben too has successfully gone and out
(40:00):
and gets a full ride to another university. These are
impressive achievements for anyone, but ones that had previously seemed
impossible for Brittany and her brother. For some of college,
Brittany and Clay continue to have a romantic relationship, but
eventually they end things. She is still very much part
(40:21):
of the family though, and when she comes back for visits,
Louise is home from Iraq now and she's able to
get to know this big brother figure in whose room
she has lived. Some years later, Brittany is in graduate
school and she's found her person, a man named Jeff.
She and Clay have lost touch, but one day Clay
(40:41):
calls with terrible news Louise has died from a drug
related overdose. Britney's phone rings again soon, this time from
missus Smith, Diane, and she's calling about Louise's ashes.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
So the Smiths were in Indiana and at the time,
I was in Iowa in the graduate program, and Diane
called me and said, Louis's ashes are in this car
and it's been impounded and they're going to basically destroy
the car with the ashes in there.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
And I asked if they would mail them back, and
they're refusing.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
And this was in San Diego, so I got a
ticket and I flew there, and luckily I just happened
to have a friend who lived there and picked me
up from the airport and drove me straight to the
impound lot and I went in and kind of I
felt like tearing the place apart with my bare hands,
(41:41):
but I just explained and I'm really sorry. I know
this is an inconvenience and all of this, and eventually
they let me go in and look around the car
and I found his ashes.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
And then, you know, because my flight was the next day.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
Oh, it was Thanksgiving also, so like everything was closed,
and I had a friend who lived there and was
letting me stay at his place, but he was out
of town for the holiday, so I was just alone
on the other side of the country. I had never
flown before that, I had never been to California with
these ashes. And then yeah, I brought them back and
(42:20):
I had them with me in Iowa for a little
while until I went back for the holiday and I
took them home, and yeah, it was it was a
wild trip, and it was like a brief journey.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
Yeah, well in a journey of a kind of repair
in a way.
Speaker 3 (42:37):
Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
To the degree that repair was possible.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
I think before I wrote the book, it all felt
like just something that I was holding all the time,
and it was overwhelming and it was loud, and I
couldn't stop thinking about certain things, and I was having
panic attacks and nightmares, and I wrote the book and
(43:01):
part to process it, and I went to therapy and
like actually committed to therapy rather than what I'd done
when I was a kid, which was lied to the
therapist because I didn't want I heard like CPS will
take you away. And so I finally I started going
to therapy and telling the truth and really committing to
(43:23):
taking care of myself.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
And I talked a lot to Ben, like we.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Just like delved through everything that had happened, which the
more I think about that lately, it's like when you
go through a lot with someone, it would be completely understandable.
If I had tried to call him one day and
say like, hey, you remember that time this awful thing happened.
If he had responded like, I'm out of that now
and I don't want to talk about it, I would
(43:49):
have understood. But the fact that he immediately was like, yeah, let's.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
Let's talk about it.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
How messed up was that I was huge just having
someone who like understood it intimately and could confirm things
and deconstruct them with me and affirm like, oh, we're
both here now, and it's not like perfect but we're
making it.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Indeed, they are making it. Brittany is a published author
living in Albuquerque with her partner Jeff. She gives public
readings to large audiences, some of which include the very
teachers from her past that made this journey possible. Ben
is a family counselor. Britney's relationship with her mom is okay,
(44:38):
but continues to be fraught when she tells her she's
going to write this book. Her mom tells her to
do what she needs to do.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
I feel like I've kind of exercised it in a way.
It's not like anything will ever be completely easy, or
like those things didn't happen a that I've written about them,
But I feel like I'm not so obsessed with thinking
about these things, and I have way fewer panic attacks.
I can't say I have none, but mostly I just
(45:08):
feel like I processed it.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
I did what I wanted to do.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
And now when I have people who will come to
me and say your book gave me context for things
happening in my own life or helped me find ways
to talk about it, that means the world to me,
because I didn't just write it to process it. It
was a huge part of why I wrote it, but
just the idea that it can go beyond me.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
It's like everything.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
Near the end of her memoir, Brittany also includes a
moving scene in which she shares draft after draft of
her manuscript with Ben. She hopes and praise that he
won't feel she has somehow usurped his story by telling
her own. She writes, is that what I'm doing to you?
I ask Ben after he reads my latest draft, I'm
(46:00):
telling your story too. Someone had to tell it, he says.
I'm glad it's you, and so are we. Here's Brittany
reading one last passage from her powerful.
Speaker 3 (46:13):
Memoir, The truth is.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
I spent so long imagining a perfect future so I
could get through a profoundly imperfect present. I'd close my
eyes and build beautiful houses where nothing could ever go wrong.
I needed that to hold me up. But now I
have to let it go. The world will never be
entirely safe. Troubles will come, loved ones will die, and
(46:39):
landlords will reject my offer of free eggs in exchange
for an exception from the terms of my lease. Now
I'm the clattish adult who controls my life, so I
have to stop waiting for perfect conditions and trust that
I can handle what comes. Planting a seed is easy.
Tending to it so it can grow is the hard part.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly Zaccur is
the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.
If you have a family secret you'd like to share,
please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear
on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight
eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also
(47:46):
find me on Instagram at Danny Ryder. And if you'd
like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
check out my memoir Inheritance. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
(48:24):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Family Secrets News
Host
Dani Shapiro
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