Chapter 8 1-22-22 Mommy Fearest & the Homestead Farce
Our time in the city {Newark, NJ} was over. Mom & Dad had enjoyed the limelight in our Lithuanian Community, much of it based with the Church. Dad had started a ‘SaturdayCulturalSchool’ for the kids. There were paid teachers, we all met at the Church of the Annunciation auditorium. I loved it. Later it shrank into one class, the kids in my family & a couple other families, that was it – don’t know why – Maybe the fee parents had to pay. Our teacher was not Dad but a nice Lithuanian man, it was like a ‘one room schoolhouse’ where all ages were taught at the same time. The location was a room in the church.
At the same time my Mom had become a director of the Lithuanian pageant/play for Christmas, with all us kids in the family & teen Lithuanian thespians.
I had a good part in the play, my bro played a crow, cawing in Lithuanian, ‘Bus maitos, bus maitos’ – his only lines, meaning ‘There will be karma, there will be payback.’
All I remember mostly – I was 6 – is there’s a Christmas tree on stage with baubles. I get a stool, climb up to one inviting bulb, squeeze it & & break it, look at Mom in the wings if she approves – she nods yes – My attempt at drama. We did our play in two different Lithuanian settings, I recall walking around the audience in pajamas after my scene & a grown man sees me & exclaims “Ahh!”, I get scared & run away.
I’m not sure who organized our yearly cultural event, where each child was required to prove abilities & talents. Some sang or played musical instruments, I always recited poetry. My best gal pal Ruta read from an adult Lithuanian book, like a 6-year old reading Shakespeare.
Below myself age 41 enjoying a farm in Connecticutt. Soon after I bought my own acres upstate NY in part a replacement & replica of the farm I enjoyed as a child, except my newfound Paradise is even greater & no family abuse – although there is the socital abuse one suffers by being in the adult trade – ostracism.
Time ripened & as it did, all patterns fell into place; Mom had her usual affairs, first with the young priest but threw him over for the Church organist. That was the beginning of the end.
Mom said the priest ‘denounced her’ from the pulpit. I doubt it sincerely, he probably gave a sermon on adultery or deception – he could not have said her name. She knew she was guilty so felt it. The priest was guilty also, I think the problem was getting cuckolded with the organist, Marius Bernotas, so his shackles were up.
From then on in I heard Mom & someone else in the family say ‘The Priest is Crazy.’
I told that to one of my Catechism buddies as a secret, she blurted it out to the Nun Superior, the nun demanded where I got such an idea, I cried & said ‘so & so’ & by the time we got home I was hysterical in tears, blurted it all out to Mom. Now she knew it was public knowledge about her & the priest, there was scandal.
Wherever Mom went there was drama. She did not get along with people – arguments, fights. Her affairs were legend, getting pregnant four times while still with Dad.
The older lady & husband who sponsored us from Germany were going to set us up with a house & equivalent of 50k today – a distant relative of Dad. But Mom couldn’t get along with her & forfeited that, we went to live in a little house in Kearny next to the rr track – the wrong side of course, with a tiny garden behind, the 90 yr old man stooped down & showed me his plants under upside down jelly jars. The 5 yr old was impressed.
It was after that we got involved with the Church in Newark, I recall a storefront in Kearny with us a few floors up, then Delancey St. in Newark, then Van Buren St. 3 floors up, next to the library, my room looking right into the window of the children’s section a floor below. That was the last of our city dwellings, Marius Bernotas had moved in with us & had his own room. There were fights over the paternity of the last baby, a girl. We no longer had much quarter with the Church, but Dad did get a loan from the old Priest for $500 {today would be $5k} to buy a farm. I recall seeing the receipt in his archives, still have it if I dig. Dad kept a lot of things, that’s how I know the teachers in his school were paid.
OK enough said on that era. Now we move to this farm, which was a quasi-homestead or intended that way, where I believe Mom intended to live out a life like the Old Country, being semi-independent from the fruits of the fields.
RD #3, Freehold New Jersey, MonmouthCounty, on the corner of a dirt road named {I think} Eli Harmony & the house right up to a paved road whose name I can’t recall.
The question is, what was Mom’s intention with this quasi-homestead? Family wise, psychologically, she had this new bf/husband, Marius Bernotas, with whom she cuckolded Dad, but being a master manipulator/liar she convinced Dad they were platonic & nothing was going on with him & her at the farm.
Dad did not move with us to the farm because of employment. Not sure where he worked, if it was still at the awful hat factory laboring nights when we lived at Delancey St.
It was believed by all – certainly Dad & myself – that he was going to move in with us soon. Mom assured me of this, as he was my everything. He visited periodically {by bus, he never had a car or drove} puttering around here & there, working, helping repair things, reconnoitering in the swamp planning a Boy Scout Camp, & the two arguing incessantly – where I was dismissed each time they chatted like ‘go feed the dogs’ or do this or that.
Below, Mom on the left, Aunt Ara on the right, Xmas time in the upstairs Uncle Henry built, – it did not have the ambience that the downstairs, furnished by Mrs Grant of Wacabuc, had. Notice the clutter of house plants. Mom & Ara are in their 50′s, this was one of Mom’s last Xmases, I wasn’t there.
After much distance & years I’m able to put together the pieces of why, how, what for. I think she kept him ‘on the string’ for two years, placating him & lying about what she wanted. She said he was to move in with us & we would all work together running a profit-earning farm & he could have his Boy Scout Camp.
(Dad was a Boy Scout leader at the time we were in the Displaced Person’s Camp in Germany. I am told it was not a confined atmosphere; people came & went whenever they wished – we had site-seeing trips to castles & such – & Dad even took the Scouts on a trip to Paris!)
Below Dad & his Scouts, he’s in the middle with glasses – we who read & study every day end up with glasses, bro Jimmy is below – he must have been about 4 – We were at the Displaced Person’s Camp then – it wasn’t a prison, we went many places – Here it’s explained how Dad wished to set up a Boy Scout Camp on our land near Freehold – we had 10 acres, a good deal of woods & swamp
These were dreams that Mom used to quell Dad & myself: Dad, so he would keep the money coming although there was another man – me, because she knew it would break my heart to lose him. I was 8 when we moved there, by age 10, 5th grade, it became known Dad would never be with us again & I lost all passion for life. I could no longer draw, lost my faith in God temporarily, my vision even went bad. I was the only one in my family other than Dad to ever wear them, & they got worse & worse as I read non stop.
But to go back to my original intention in this chapter regarding the homestead & what Mom planned, why she thought she could achieve it, why she failed.
A homestead or farm-for-profit is a business of selling. There are several facets to a business – one is having a product, two is selling the product. You can have a product & it may be great, but if you don’t have step two – a market– your business fails. That’s why Mom’s homestead failed. She could produce the products – fruits, vegetables, berries, eggs, but she was unable to market properly.
And so, she – with the help of all of us, Marius in particular {he went to the swamp, I went with him at times, to get water – we had a barrel with wheels – it was cumbersome & back breaking} – grew the most wonderful products. Our foods were better than in the market. But what she did not do was go to the markets – whatever they were – outdoor, indoor market’s, farmer’s markets – & arrange sales ahead of time.
And when the food was ripe, from corn to strawberries, peaches, melons, turnips & tomatoes, you name it, she & Marius randomly went to markets & tried to sell them, & most of the foods were rotten before sold. It was such a monumental tragedy to see that waste.
Of course, she canned, dried, preserved enough for our family through the winter, but where was the money you needed – as you always need money for, say, the jars to preserve food in, the sugar to make preserves, etc. You have to have both products & cash.
How a Business Succeeds
Years went by, as a grown woman I was at loose ends around 1987 when my stripping career was getting rough. I was tired of it, never had any money to spare & I wanted to quit – But what to do next? Most strippers either went into prostitution or got married. I could do neither as I was celibate by 1978, a promise to God.
By 1985 I was thinking what next – how do I survive? By good luck Annie Sprinkle, the porno lady, hired me for an article for one of her magazines. She took polaroids & gave me a free add & even paid me. That article I could call the beginning of my mail order business, as I got about a hundred letters & got a hundred customers.
I’ll make this short as I spoke about this business elsewhere. I gathered a mail-order list of men who wanted to buy my pictures & later videos. It started out with fans, but branched out, because I discovered a place I could advertise for free – in underground domination, fetish publications, newspapers & magazines. They would give you a free ad if you send them an appropriate picture. I did this & the biz began to grow.
It started with just images of me, which they paid well for, then videos of me dancing. After a year or so I hired other females & males for photos & videos. Then I’d send the pictures to magazines, for free, even big magazines like Hustler Erotic Video & Gent, & the exchange was pictures for free ads.
This worked. I produced a product. The product was pictures & videos. I obtained a market – the market was men who wanted my product, & by 1995 I had a list of 3k paying customers. This was successful & lucrative & I bought my property upstate NY in 1989 with the money, & I lived high off the hog with this for ten years.
What Mom failed to fathom was the market. You have to spend almost as much time with marketing as you do with production. They spent 95% production, 5% marketing.
Again, you could be the world’s greatest actor or singer or dancer, but without promotion, you can’t get a following, you can’t draw a crowd & make money. For all sales, marketing one way or the other is as important as the product. Indeed some people don’t do much marketing, but its word of mouth. They have a product or service so great that people rave about it, & that’s marketing one body to another.
As I thought about Mom & her wasted efforts I feel pity. During this time, when I was age 10 to 15 when we moved out of there, I knew the greatest poverty & discomfort of my life.
When Dad was with us, & also Marius moved in, we had all we needed. Never did we suffer or lack money for food. But now I recall with pain, going to this local general store that had groceries, Mom asking the old Jewish man again & again to borrow the money for our stuff. He always obliged, God Bless him. But where was Dad? That’s what they argued about.
Once Mom gave him the slip, which was about 2 years down the line, he knew they were finished, I think he was stingier with money. Why would Mom have to borrow for food? Dad’s children were now wanting, he could have stepped up to the plate, but he didn’t. I can only surmise as an adult why she hated him so much.
He might have excused himself with the thought, ‘She left me for another man, let him carry the weight.’ But the weight was too heavy.
Eventually Marius did less work on the farm & got not one job, but two. I don’t know when he slept. He even found a church to play the organ for Sunday Mass. Mom got a job at Brockway Glass Factory. She took us kids there once. Between the two of them & whatever Dad sent, we barely made ends meet.
The Next Man Improves Our Lifestyle
When Mom broke up with Marius, there had to be another man, there’s always another man to provide. It turned out to be the Chevy salesman in Freehold. They went to buy a car, they bought a balloon for cheaps, which my dumb bro drove into a ditch in the field where it stayed. Then they got a decent car & I recall Marius teaching Mom to drive, & wow, was she daft. He says ‘turn left’ into our driveway & she turns into our wheat field where I feared her going into the 8’ deep garbage hole.
Anyway, poor exhausted, maddened Marius is gone. First he was thrown out of the house & lived in the garage, then good bye. Now this old, paunchy man named Mr. Riley appears & starts visiting. Because of him our lifestyle improved. Here we now got central heating & all the windows replaced with storm windows. What a difference! The house was warm – no more wood furnace in the living room & coal/wood stove in the kitchen – Everything so convenient. And a big plus – hot water! How awful it is to live without hot water, how do you take a bath? No wonder Tibetans stink, no running water, no hot water, freezing climate.
And so, despite all her talents at agriculture & homesteading, despite the great help from Marius, Mom could not cut it as a farmer & eventually got a job as a chef with the Salvation Army Retired Officers, & went from there to a life of gastro-success. Dad continued partially supporting us until the day I left the house & went to live with him.
So much for living off the land. I sincerely believe it takes at least 3 strong & skillful adults to run a homestead or a farm. Two cannot do it. It’s just too hard. Yes you can try, but wow, will you suffer.
Channeling my Mom, who I call Mommy Fearest. My question: Mom, did I get it right about your intentions for this Homestead/farm? Explain in your own words.
MF: {Mommy Fearest} I wanted to find a place where I could be independent, support myself & the family with some help from Marius & your Dad. It was harder than I expected. No matter what I did, how hard I worked, I could not make money from it.
You said it right when you explained the marketing situation.
ME: How did you feel about Dad? Were you lying to him for two years & was it because you wanted to get the max amount of money from him, to keep his hopes up?
MF: You got that right; I had no intention of having him live with us. Picture it this way. I now have a new husband, Marius. I could lie to Dad about what went on because he was not in the house all the time. I could be with Marius when your Dad was at work. But now, he works at home, helping with the farm. And he sleeps with me in the bed.
How am I going to be with Marius unless I was practicing polyandry & they both agreed?
I could not have my cake & eat it too; it had to be one or the other. I didn’t love or desire your Dad any more. He turned me off, I wanted no part of him, but of course I wanted him to support the kids. This is mostly what we fought about. It was stressful lying to him for two years then in the end, the truth had to come out.
ME: Explain why you hated me so much.
MF: It wasn’t just because you loved your Dad. There were two other reasons. One was, you were sexy & desirable to men & they all asked about you & wanted you. So I was jealous. Besides that, you were virtuous, I was not. Those who are less than spiritual hate those who are, as it makes them feel inferior.
ME: From Heaven some months ago you appeared to me offering me something. I’m not sure what it was but I wasn’t that interested. Could you explain that more clearly as it’s nebulous to me, what you wanted?
MF: I wanted to tell you that I was sorry, to offer you my love from Heaven.
ME: I’m glad you’re sorry & I accept your love from Heaven, but I’m not keen on spending any time with you when I get there. I might say hello briefly, that is it. So you will understand.
MF: I do understand, I don’t deserve you wanting to spend any time with me there; you will have other things to do.
ME: Indeed, my ecstasy in Heaven & you don’t seem to blend. I am happy you were saved, of course, I would not wish Hell on anyone.
Now another question. Weren’t you ashamed at any time of trying to frame me for stealing Mr. Riley’s credit card?
MF: As you know, my personality, people like me – psychopaths – we have no shame. We just do what we want to do & that is it – no morals.
ME: OK Mom, over & out. Thanks for the good you did.
PS I recall an anecdote of where I was when finding out Mom had 6 months to live. I was at a theater in Providence, Rhode Island. It was a lonely, desolate place in a large building the owner owned where he had a sort of ‘entertainment center’ with room & billiards, only no one was in it except my two co stars & their ratchet boyfriends. And there were a few rooms – he gave me one of the best, it even had a phone. No one but I got the room with the phone, the ratchet fellows begged me to use it but I refused because it was then super expensive to do long distance, I was the caretaker of the phone, I did not want to incur an expense on the owner. But one of the creeps persuaded me it was an emergency & the call would be local. As soon as he dialed I knew he was a liar as he’d called his Mom in NY – he spoke in Spanish. He threw 5 buck at me, which I later gave to the owner. So maybe I overreacted.
Anyway I was told by a relative Mom had been diagnosed with 6 months to live – she got lung cancer. I always went to Church, including Holy Communion, at every place I worked – even if I had to go without sleep for early bird Services. In this location the Church was but a couple blocks away. Every day after the Matinee there was a service, & every day I went. After the service the place cleared out but I stayed one hour – as I usually did – for prayers.
Those prayers then went like so: Do Not let Mom go to Hell, I will pay for her sins. I received Holy Communion for her every day, said the rosary for her as well.
Years later I had a vision, where I saw her as an infant, dressed in blue & white with a blue & white bonnet, in a baby chair, chubby, bucolic. God said to me,
“Your offer to pay for her sins gave her the Grace to make a final repentance {while she was dying in the hospital}. She was saved from Hell because of it.”
ME: Mother God, did I pay for her sins?
MG: You paid for a lot of people’s sins, lol.
ME: No wonder life’s been so much fun.
Below I can’t find the article spoken of, I have it in print files but can’t find in the scans, but here’s some articles from my dancing days – as you can read, they are making what I do into a joke. Oh well, they say no publicity is bad publicity in show business. And it says ‘West Warwick RI” so this might have been the theater only this is UPI – they contacted me – not the local paper I spoke about.
There were other anecdotes. The townspeople of Providence noticed my treks & presence in the Church each day. When the Providence paper interviewed me, they had me down as a saint – The name of the article ‘He said he saw an Angel.”
The article referred to a local man who maybe worked at the station. He heard about me & asked God was I for real?
That night he was awakened by a woman standing near his bed & she told him that I was ‘for real.’ Can’t recall her exact words or her description.
And I have no idea who the lady was as she could have been the Holy Mary, a saint, an angel, or my God Self, but his prayer was answered.
On the other side of the spectrum when I returned to New York I got a call from my Aunt needing help for something, to get my half sister to sign a paper regarding money from social security, which she refused to sign. I was to persuade her – she still strongly looked up to me – I practically raised her. So, that mission was accomplished.
While there Aunt Dagmara {Ara} took me to see Mom at the hospital where she was dying. I asked her if I could pray for her, she said alright, & I did pray.
On the way home in the car, Ara driving, she told me how dare you pray for your Mother? God will not hear you – YOU SELL YOUR BODY.
She held a cigarette in her right hand & it was shaking from rage.
I will now channel Aunt Ara. Ara, why were you in such a rage? Did you really believe I sold my body & God wouldn’t hear me?
AA: {Aunt Ara} We were all ignorant fools & because of this & other reasons, most of us hurt you. Bringing it up is not pleasant for you. Do I apologize? You already know I’m in Heaven & so of course I see the error of my ways. How can our apologies help you now? God saved you from us; you saved yourself by loving God. Just be glad it all ended & you’re safe. You did not become an addict, derelict or failure because of what we did to you, God sustained you but we went to our graves as transgressors & paid for what we did.
ME: Ara, how do you think my life story & movie of it will fare?
AA: It will be a joke on us so to speak, because all we did will be like comedy, where Mommy Dearest took the wire hanger & screamed & beat Christina with it. We will be seen as shrews, ignorant bitches, abusers – mostly your Mom but I will get a piece of it. We will all become characters in your life story at whom people will twitter & wince, shake their heads, laugh & cry. Your pains will become your profits, & we gave you the material.
ME to Mom: What do you now think of my life story & the subsequent movie/movies to be made?
MF: {Mommy Fearest} You now look at us as clowns, which when much distance passes, the wounds are healed, we were. Ugly clowns who hurt people give some a big laugh, like WTF? What kind of human does that? You have more incidents of our absurdity than Carter’s got pills. But you lived through it all, all done, the past is gone, the future looks bright.
What do I think of our future films or movies or TV stories? It’ll be a sensation. You will thrive. You will finally get the recognition you deserve, which no one gave you. Prior to this, when they interviewed you they often made fun of you, saying things like, ‘Her elevator doesn’t stop at the top.’ But now, when the entire spectrum of your life is shown, you will be a subject for college courses, book reviews, movie analyses & more books. You will be heralded all over the world for your activities & insights & us? Most of us will be in the lowest places in heaven. When you die your real happiness will begin, you’ve already seen your place & it is glorious, you can’t wait to go there again, it isn’t too long Yes, like Padre Pio said, life is so long. That’s how it feels to you you’ve suffered too long.
ME: OK Mommy Fearest, thanks for having us watch ‘Life is Worth Living’ with Bishop Fulton J. Sheen {now venerable} every week. As you know, the last 3 weeks of your Purgatory, he was with me & assisted me in your cleansing & rise up into Heaven So good works do pay off. Over & out. {End Chapter 8}
