Whatever Mother Says... Read Online Free PDF Page B

haul out a sledgehammer.
    But working outside the home began to give him a new perspective on life.
    “I was seeing more of life and started to realize that these weren’t right, you know, that beating kids wasn’t right,” he says.
    As well as questioning his mother’s orders, Howard actually began standing up against Theresa Knorr on behalf of his other brothers and sisters. The punisher was transforming into the protector.
    She was no longer physically strong enough to stand up against Howard, but she had no intention of stopping the punishments being inflicted. She just tried to make sure he wasn’t around when she handed out her own special brand of discipline.
    Howard never actually hit his mother, but he did come close to it frequently. One time he grabbed her and threw her against a wall. Then he smashed the wall right next to her head with his fist and put a hole in it. The children used to snigger every time they walked past the dent in the plaster.
    But it was sisters Suesan and Sheila who got the brunt of their mother’s vicious temper. Howard and Terry both remember one day when Theresa Knorr pulled Sheila’s canine tooth out with her bare hands because it was not growing straight.
    At school Sheila’s big ears earned her the nickname Dumbo. Life was extra tough on her. Physical abuse at home and verbal taunting at school. Was there no escape?
    Theresa Knorr’s drinking also got so excessive at this time that she frequently would pack all six children in the family station wagon and leave them in the car outside bars she liked to frequent in Orangevale. Visits to drive-in movies were just as distressful for the youngsters.
    “She’d end up getting bombed. She’d pass out and we’d have to wait for her to wake up to go home,” recalled Howard.
    For many of their childhood years the kids veered from malnourishment to being force-fed vast quantities of fatty food. Sometimes teachers would take pity on some of the Knorr children and provide them with sandwiches and the occasional hot meal. But it is tragically clear the diet inside that household had serious effects. By the time he was twelve, Howard’s diet included a daily consumption of alcohol and drugs, packs of cigarettes, and the occasional slice of bread smothered in peanut butter, jelly, or cheese. These years of inconsistent, damaging diet, especially during childhood, may well have resulted in stunted development of some of the Knorr children. It also created levels of stress and fear that no ordinary family should ever have to suffer. But there was much worse to come …

Three
    If my mother loved you, she loved you greatly. But if you were on the outs with my mother, she would make you feel like you were all alone in the universe, that nobody cared about you and you weren’t worth anything. So you always wanted to be on the good side of my mother.
    Howard Sanders
    That’s odd, neighbor Sean Martin remembered thinking as he walked out into the backyard of his house opposite the Knorr family home in Orangevale, the dog is not moving.
    Bijou just lay there deathly still as twelve-year-old Sean tried desperately to wake him up. He pulled and tugged at the animal, but there were no signs of life in his tiny body.
    A few minutes later Sean Martin and his big brother Chris started flashing a light down the dog’s throat. They just could not accept that their pet—part cocker spaniel, part poodle—was dead. When it dawned on them what had actually happened, both boys began to cry.
    Life on Bellingham Way had been littered with odd incidents ever since the Knorrs moved in nine years earlier. Those who visited the house likened it to an out of control runaway train ride consisting of drug taking, excessive alcohol, and repeated violence toward one or another of the Knorr children. The family got a reputation in the area, which meant they were blamed for just about every strange occurrence on the street.
    To make matters worse, Howard Sanders