Amelia

My band director, Jack Pattison was another mean man who had a direct influence on my life. He almost ruined music for me. What kind of a person does that to a kid? Especially a guy who was supposed to be teaching you the appreciation of music.

I had a gift for the flute. That talent and love revealed itself in my flute solo Autumn Leaves. It was a beautiful piece and I never tired practicing and playing it. It was also something that man wanted to take from me. Whenever I’d play and lose myself in the famous crescendo, it would set something off in him.

My mother and I used to watch Susan Hayward on old black and white TV movies. A favorite, The President’s Lady in which she played Charlton Heston’s wife, the story of Andrew Jackson’s bigamy. But the one that I watched most often was Susan in I’ll Cry Tomorrow. It terrified me on a number of levels. My mother never could carry a tune like Susan in the movie, but their drinking habits were much the same. In fact, the movie in its way made the drinking kind of a norm to me. If they did it on television, then it must be kind of acceptable in a strange and warped way.

Jack Pattison, my band director, looked like an East Tex version of Richard Conte, the method actor who played Susan’s husband in the movie. He beat the shit out of her and even more horrifying, became a captor who psychologically enslaved her. He used her addiction to…