Uncle Billy

The 1990’s was a time, it seemed, when recalling formerly- repressed childhood sexual abuse was de rigueur in the 12-step recovery world.  Resurfaced memories became answers for past (or present) misconduct and the subsequent self-hatred that drove people to drug and alcohol abuse.  Algebraic thinking, with childhood sexual abuse on one side of the equation equals alcoholism on the other. 

Occasionally an old timer (that is what we called them) might talk about just being “born an alcoholic”.  Perhaps it is so.  But being able to blame something or someone seemed appealing to me.  You see, I was only 26 and didn’t really want to be an alcoholic.  And I really didn’t like the idea of not being able to drink for the rest of my life.  But my present life wasn’t headed in such a good direction and alcohol clearly played a role. So, like anyone facing a tough diagnosis, I sought answers. I hoped, if hope is the right word, that I, too, may unearth some horrible memory. That by getting to what my sponsor at the time called my “core issue”, I might find release from the madness of addiction.  

The truth is that I was a happy little girl and had a happy childhood filled with happy memories.  It was a big family, a loud family, and I was surely outnumbered, but I’ll get to that in a minute. I mean, sure, I was a bit dramatic, or today what may be called neurotic.  But neurotic or not, the fact remains that I had actually been both physically and sexually abused. It happened when I was a teenager. Though I never considered the relationship between those abuses and my alcoholism.  Why would I?  I remembered them, this was not the cliché I was after.  

It was in this environment that I began to hunt through childhood photos, scouring the body language of family members and searching for evidence of guilt.  Who’s guilt?  Well, one of my brothers of course.  Using the crack-shot detective work I learned watching 70’s police dramas, I rounded up the usual suspects and accused. For surely if someone had wronged me in my childhood it was one of them.  To begin, there were just too many of them.  Five of them and only one of me; again, math working against me.  

Literal and metaphorical magnifying glass in hand, I sifted through stacks of old family photos hunting for evidence not knowing what I was looking for, until I found it.  It was in a photo taken at Christmas, circa 1970.  I am pictured with my four older brothers and dressed in our Sunday best posed together in front of the Christmas Tree.

In the picture I am wearing a little baby blue dress, the kind where the white petticoat sticks out from under the skirt.  You know the kind. The kind that itches.  And there it is — my brother Billy is standing directly behind me with his hand hung down over my shoulder, falling to where someday I will develop breasts (I suspiciously note).  But it’s more than that.  It’s the way he is holding me and the look on his face.  He has a look of having just been caught doing something bad, a look of guilt and anger.  

The fact that I have absolutely no memory of my brother Billy ever hurting me is way beside the point; remember this is just the type of memory I am searching for – the kind I would have suppressed!  And surely it was Billy, I mean look at the way he is sort of manhandling me as I lean on my dolly carriage for support.    He is holding me so close – no wait.  He’s actually pulling me toward him. 

Not only would this explain my alcoholism but it may also explain a certain intimacy that Billy and I have.  With a six-year gap in our ages and so little in common, it seems unusual that we would be so close.  Don’t get me wrong, I hate him too -- as much as I do the rest – even more at times.  Wait! Isn’t this all pointing in the right direction?  As-yet discovered abuse would certainly set up this type of relationship dynamic.  

Then again, truly, I hold equal parts love and hate for all my brothers. They couldn’t have all molested me, could they? 

No, my brothers couldn’t organize a sizable game of kickball without fighting with each other and someone storming off in protest. It's impossible to imagine them capable of organizing and/or covering up such chicanery. 

I mention the love/hate for them all, then why Billy?  Well, for starters, Michael is the oldest, the chosen, and is never to be blamed.  Then what of Jimmy or Steven, those other handsome, funny, smart Moreno boys? 

No and no.  Jimmy is too smart, our Spock in our favorite childhood recreations of Star Trek.  It just isn’t logical.  And Steven?  No way – Steven is certainly crazy and wild, but not a molester. He’s more the beast we’d find in space on some red planet in our childhood Star Trek Game.  It falls to Billy, second in line.  Besides, I was always Uhura to his Kirk. A role I resented.

No.

My brother Billy did not molest me.  No memory ever surfaced.  It turns out I am an alcoholic because I am an alcoholic.  None of my older brothers molested me.  They were all too busy living their ridiculously wonderful childhoods too. They were busy being handsome, popular, and smart.  They were too busy playing sports and getting the girls; to molest me, their torture was more the lock-her-in-the-bathroom type of torture.   

Examining the evidence again I see he is holding me with the same detached arrogance he’d hold a football.  He wasn’t the star quarterback, I’ve explained, that role went to Mike.  Billy played one of those positions where you must catch and run with the ball to score the touchdown. 

When we weren’t playing Star Trek my brothers were playing football, or some other sport and  I was busy trying to avoid learning anything about their stupid games. I think Billy was a good football player too -- All County or something. 

There it is! 

He’s holding me because he was probably told too.  After all, I was always running away from the lot of them. And he is probably annoyed because Mike wasn’t told to do it.  Mike had had his fair share of babysitting me by then and in those stories, I was never easy to watch (think dirty diapers and a penchant for exploration). 

I guess that on that Christmas Eve it was Billy’s turn.  And I didn’t run from Billy. I let him hold me.  I let him hold me because I loved my brother Billy beyond measure.  That is the real reason he is holding me closely, if not a little angrily, because I let him and because he loved me.  

My beloved brother Billy, the brother I may have been the closest with in many ways.  Irresistibly handsome in his army uniform, it was Billy who first treated me like an equal, taking me out all night drinking around town and introducing me to my first after-hours bar. He even brought me to one of his frequent hang-outs - The Village Inn. This was a decade or so before our parents bought it for him. There, the owner let us in at 9:00 AM for my first after, after hours party. It didn’t get cooler than that.  

Billy was a vet.  Billy was a Floral Park Legend.  Unfortunately, like me, he was an alcoholic too.  Today his army picture waves on a flag across the street from that bar he drank into ashes.  When I posted the picture on Face Book hundreds wrote me in awe and admiration for the handsome hometown hero, my brother.  

Billy enlisted in the U.S. Army at 21 years old, right after he’d dropped out of college. He was there on a Baseball Scholarship.  Because he lost his scholarship, there wasn’t enough money to carry on.  And he lost his scholarship because he quit the team when he didn’t make first string— storming off in anger and arrogance. 

That is the look on my brother’s face when he wasn’t smiling ear-to-ear, anger and arrogance.  Before Billy got sober the world was always screwing him.  Him!  Bill Moreno, All County Tackle, FPM Class of 76’.  But once he’d got sober, the ear-to-ear smile became permanent, the anger gone. 

Billy’s gone too. My brother died of esophageal cancer three years ago. The last happy memory I have of him is from a birthday party we threw for him in October to celebrate the November birthday we didn’t think he’d make. 

At the end, after the cake and the candles, and the celebrating a birthday he wasn’t going to have, my brother pushed himself up on his cane and gave a speech.  I am standing right behind him, neurotically air-holding him up, smiling with love at my family, and at my big brother.

Billy spoke of a conversation with his doctor. The doctor was amazed with his attitude and his good cheer and asked him how it was that he’d stayed so positive through everything he went through?  Billy told him – “my family”. 

He went on,

“Throughout all of this, from the very first diagnosis to today, there hasn’t been one day, one moment where I didn’t feel loved and supported, not one day when one of you wasn’t there for me, letting me know…” 

Which is when I interrupt and say, “And she said she wished she could prescribe that!” 

Billy turns to me and says, “And I don’t even get to deliver the punch line?” 

Everyone laughed. 

I laughed too.

But I didn’t a year later when I watched the video on the anniversary of his death.  I thought he sounded angry with me and I cringed. Because I was heartbroken and missed my brother and angry that cancer had taken him from our lives, from my life, and because I was looking for someone or something to blame for my brother’s death, all I saw were the flaws. I saw my flaws, my brother’s flaws, and our beautifully flawed, and perfectly normal relationship as siblings. 

Billy finished, clearly not angry with me. Clearly seeing the true nature of our relationship and the nature of family, and I’ll let him have the last word.

He called it miraculous.