Writers Tricks of the Trade SPRING 2017 ISSUE 2, VOLUME 7 | Page 25

Life Stories
W HY W E N EED N ATIONAL C HILD A BUSE
P REVENTION M ONTH
B ELLA C APO ’ S TRUE STORY —E XCERPT FROM “L A B ELLA M AFIA ”
This might not be easy to read, but it is a day in the life of a child abuse victim/survivor.
Bella told her story to help others. This happened when she was 11 years old.
Bella was left on her own when her abusive father went out of town on business. She
made the mistake of throwing a wild party, and when he returned and saw the state of
the house, what followed was not pretty.
When he found out about the party, I endured the beating of my life. I’d been naive
enough to think I had already experienced my father’s worst rage. As often happens
with PTSD, I have no memory of what happened first, but I do remember that we
were upstairs and he was drunk. He suddenly picked me up by my hair, called me a
slut, and kicked me all over my body with his steel-toed boots. Then he tossed me
from room-to-room by my hair, kicking me all the while.
I remember flying through the air as though I weighed nothing. He’d drop me hard
and pick me up again, throw me in the air once more and when I landed, slam me with
full-blown punches to my face.
Finally, he threw me from my room into my bathroom and I landed hard in the
bathtub. I tried to shrink away from him as he came back at me, but he pulled me by
my hair again and kicked me down the winding stairs that led to the first floor. I
bounced like one of those lightweight bouncy balls and landed in a crumpled heap at
the bottom of the steps.
“I had endured so
much, I was
beyond feeling
anything. Because
I believe in angels,
I had a crying
angel tattooed on
my back so it could
cry for me when I
couldn’t cry for
myself.”
Bella Capo
Not done yet, he picked up my square, hard suitcase—the one that was packed for
my trip to see my mom—and hurled it at my head. It caught me full-on. Not only was
my body broken, so was my heart. How could the daddy I loved so much do this to
me? At that moment my love-hate relationship with my father began. Although I would
continue to despise him for what he did to me, he remained the person whose
approval I sought above all others.
But the violence of that day wasn’t quite over. By now his face had turned
beet red. He snatched up the phone and called my mom in California. Somewhere in
my head, through all of the pain, I heard him scream into the phone, “You better talk to
your daughter because I’m beating the shit out of her.” Then he shoved the receiver into
my hand.
Mom’s voice was shaking but firm as she said, “Do whatever you need to, but get
to me.”
Thomas B. Sawyer
Head Writer and
Show Runner,
Murder She Wrote
TV Series
Well, I was supposed to go to California the next day, anyway. While my mom kept
W RITERS ’ T RICKS OF THE T RADE
P AGE 17
S PRING 2017