Addressing the Issue of Frank: Part 1, if you haven't already, before you read this:
The Other Girl (TOG) grew up on a farm in the United States. She came from a poor family, who raised and grew their own food, and depended on social assistance, and The Fathers low-wages from his swing-shift factory job, that took him 45 minutes from their home.
The Father had grown up in a Christian family, also on a small sustainable farm within the same "region" of the United States. The Mother had grown up less than a half mile from where The Family eventually resided until The Other Girl was about 14 years old.
The Mother had graduated high school there, briefly attended college in a nearly town, where she met The Father (not a college student). She was a homemaker, and a home business owner as long as TOG could remember, until she left them at Christmas, leaving the then 12 year old TOG to help her father raise The Brothers.
The Other Girl was enrolled in a private Christian school for the first 5 years of her elementary education, and by the time she made it to a real public school she was a bit behind in subjects, given the shoddy structure of education at the private school. Luckily she was smart, and caught up on everything (it was hard)...except for math. Math she was never able to grasp properly, maybe because there was so much more to catch up on, and it was left by the wayside to die. Don't read this as an excuse for being bad at math, she probably could have worked even harder to get better, but she had other things to worry about.
The Other Girl was never popular around the small town in which she was raised, and when she entered public school in the 6th grade, it was no different. Being socially awkward due to the lack of social contact with the world, other than private school each day, and being of large stature and from a family that could not afford proper clothing to fit her body, TOG was often ridiculed for many thing; including her mothers history in that town (The Mother was a bit of a whore). She was tripped on the bus, had food thrown at her (mostly fruit), pants-ed, was called names like "Tatonka" (which means water buffalo in Lakota's or Souix), and had very few friends.
While ultimately this does not seem like a big thing, who isn't somehow ridiculed in middle school; it was what happened at home that made all the difference. You see, TOG could handle the cruelty from strangers and acquaintances. What she couldn't handle, on her own, was the abuse at home.
The Mother had/has some afflictions, similar to our own; this remains one of the reasons we can forgive her for some of what she has done to us. Like our self, she deals with things in her head differently than, what we would call, "normal" people. We are not unconvinced that she had her own issues growing up, ones that we don't know about; we do know about some of them though.
The Other Girl was the oldest of three, she was The Big Sister to Angry Brother (he wasn't always angry) and Baby Brother. They were left at home, on the farm, with The Mother, all of the time, unless they were in school. The Family didn't have any social groups, and had very few friends who visited them on the farm. Overall they were left on their own, the kids, to play in the yard, catch tadpoles in the ditches after the rain, trap daddy long legs under jars, play with the animals in sunshine, and in the case of The Other Girl, immerse herself in books. She read all the time, constantly. The Mother used to like to read a lot too, but The Father used to get on them about all the reading, and the boys of the family took this as a sign not to do it. It was unfortunate for them, that they had no way to escape.
There were countless instances in these children's lives that caused them to have to seek shelter, in hidden places, in their world on the farm. You see; The Mother was full of anger and rage too, just like we are now (it wasn't always this way, it's very new for us). She was so full of anger that she would pound her own head against the cupboard doors, scream at herself, scream at her children, scream at the voices in her head, threaten to harm herself and her children. Sometimes she hit them, sometime she slapped them, sometimes a knife was waived in at them. This scared The Other Girl, who felt she had to protect The Brothers.
After repeated abuse from the outside world, and at the hands of her own Mother, I, Frank, had to intervene. She was just not strong enough to cope on her own anymore, and her survival depended on me, what with The Father being gone much of the time.
One might ask why she never told The Father about these indiscretions, but for a 9 year old little girl, there was the fear of what would happen when left on the farm, once The Mother knew she had told The Father; and the fear that he wouldn't believe the things she said anyway.
So we kept silent, the two of us; there were only two of us at the time. She knew I was there to protect her, she also knew I couldn't be there all the time. So while we hide The Brothers from The Mother, holding them while they cried with fear, we made a pact that I would be there for her when she needed me. And believe me, she needed me lots, and lots...and lots...of times, and it wasn't always because of The Mother.
The Other Girl (& Bethany), before I came along:
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