Arriving at the Hartman house, I wasn’t greeted with a positive reaction. It was more like wanting me to explain what I was doing there. I couldn’t imagine being married to a guy and having a newborn baby only a couple weeks old, and not be expected to want to figure out what was going on.
The scenario went against everything I had envisioned. Looking back the best thing I could have done was not chase after them. I was desperately trying to construct some sort of civilized family, but it just was not going to happen.
It was made very clear to me that Cameron was not going anywhere, and if I chose to stay my room would be downstairs off the party room. It had a closet wide enough for a crib but Cameron would spend the majority of the time upstairs with Janice.
My decision to stay didn’t come without consequences. Jesse and Caleb kept the party room filled with pot smoke anytime of day they got the urge to light up. The black lights and heavy metal music only stopped when they decided to leave the house for somewhere else to party.
Enduring the Consequences of Bad Decisions
On more than one occasion, I was in the bed asleep when Jesse came home. If you can imagine being fast asleep and someone backhanding you across the face. That’s a terrible way to wake up. Having him throw the covers back and grab my leg and pull me out on the floor, all the while yelling for me to get up and fix him something to eat. Grabbing me by the hair to pull me up off the floor and sling me across the room. And of course, Cameron screaming to the top of his lungs.
I have to give Caleb credit, he wouldn’t do anything to intervene but he would make a statement to Jesse, “Man come on, what ‘cha doing that for”. Caleb never did anything except try to stand up for me, and I appreciate that and remember it to this day.
Plenty of mornings I would walk upstairs with a busted lip, a black eye, bruises on my arm. No one said a word. It was though nothing had happened. I would take Cameron upstairs with me and let him rest in Randy’s crib during the day if I was gone.
Nine children in that home was nerve-racking. Jesse, Caleb and myself were downstairs, Janice, Leon, and seven other children were upstairs. Also, Cameron which made a total of 13 members of the household. Small children running, playing, throwing things down the hallway. Janice and Leon smoking like a freight train and the crap going on downstairs. It literally was a madhouse, no doubt about it.
Deciding to Find a Job
I thought it was only fitting to put forth the effort to find a job. That would get me out of that house everyday and around some normal people. There was no Internet back then, so all I had to go on was the classifieds in the newspaper. There wasn’t much to pick from but I did apply to several different ads. Believe it or not, a funeral home hired me to sell crypts in a mausoleum. Hilarious, I know.
The job was quiet, I’ll give it that much. I went to people’s homes to present the information to them. Most were very kind, but I never sold anything what little time I was there.
Realizing the Truth of the Matter
During this time Janice made a comment about the future possibility of having another baby. Cameron wasn’t even 2 months old yet. I had no intentions of having another baby. According to her the more babies you have the more welfare money you receive each month. I made it clear to her that I didn’t want to live off welfare, which is why I was trying to sell burial plots.
It was then that I realized why she had nine children. I don’t know how much she received from welfare for each child, but that’s the reason she kept having them. Slowly but surely my eyes were opening as to the type of people I was dealing with. The only problem was I didn’t know how bad it would get.
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