Cruelty

Anne's family is truly vicious.

For all their charms, and for the accomplishments of a select few, there should be no doubt that they are fundamentally a debased group of people.

This evening I received a telephone call from an infuriated Anne, complaining about something I'd written on my blog.

Many of you will remember a similar incident in November, when after the Thanksgiving holiday she was sent into a flurry of indignation because I'd posted that she ate dinner with the television on.

On that occasion, I'd been foolish enough to check my blog on her computer, thus leaving the address in her viewing history.

This time, though, she received an anonymous e-mail from someone who tempted, "If you want to read about yourself, click here."

The link took her to my post, "Discoveries," which obviously revealed some harsh facts about her past.

The reason for my anonymity has always been to ensure that I have freedom to total honesty, to unfettered venting of my feelings. Were I operating a blog under my real name, I wouldn't reveal half of what I do.

To her complaints I responded, "I'm sorry, but that's why I'm anonymous. No one on there knows who you are. That's my place to be open, and I'm going to continue to write about whatever I want."

She didn't like that at all.

I think the fatal error, which I'm kicking myself over now, was checking my blog while up at my grandmother's house last weekend. I thought I had deleted the viewing history, but evidently one of my unseemly relatives stumbled upon the site and overdosed with greed at the discovery of a serrated treasure that could cut to my birth-mother's core.

They saw something they thought would hurt her, and they sent it right away.

That's the kind of people she deals with, the snake pit into which she was born. Her intelligence, beauty, creativity, and talent made her an early target for abuse that spawned lifelong insecurities and that I only now realize is behind the temper tantrums she's thrown over the years.

Powell and I have never engaged in the absurd chess game played by that crowd, and I refuse to start now. As soon as I learned of what had happened, I changed my web address.

Sacrificing the URL I've used for over a year will likely leave many of my readers displaced, and furthermore is a personal loss; as I wrote in November, that address felt like home.

The transfer, however, will allow me to continue here free of unwelcome eyes, so it's been done.

In the meantime, as my grandmother nears her end the vipers show their fangs. Aunt Heroin has lost her head at the prospect of her mother's passing and proven no help at all, while Uncle Nosehair recently called from Mexico to scream curses at his dying eighty-one-year-old mother when she refused to give him more money.

The usual beggars, addicts and alcoholics who have bled my grandmother dry for decades, are surfacing now that her time is short.

If one good thing comes from Grand Ma leaving, it will be that we can finally sever our ties with that disgraceful horde.