More fact than fiction

Melissa Owens sits in her living room overlooking a pond in Anderson, Ala. The slim 33-year-old wears jeans and a purple, long-sleeved T-shirt, her dark hair pulled back and makeup expertly applied - she used to be an aesthetician.

Claireece "Precious" Jones, from Harlem, N.Y., is illiterate and about to become a mother for the second time. She comes from the imagination of Sapphire, a writer who made her the heroine of the 1996 novel, "Push."

The two women come from worlds as different as their skin tones and at first might seem to have little in common.

But they have far too much they could sit down and talk about.

Both suffered physical abuse from parents and sexual abuse from their mothers. Both had two children by high school graduation. And both chose to create new lives for themselves.

Child abuse affects all classes and races. According to the Alabama Department of Human Resources, 19,610 possible cases of child abuse were investigated in 2007, with 141 in Colbert County and 375 in Lauderdale County. Statistics from 2008 were not available because of problems with a new data system, DHR officials said.

At a young age, Owens became a statistic. From 3 to 6 years old she and her siblings suffered sexual abuse from a neighbor in Tennessee. Years later, after both of her parents became alcoholics, they abused her. She learned to overlook the physical abuse - it was the aftermath that created another kind of abuse.

"There was a lot of physical abuse, but that wasn't the worst part of it. The worst part was basically the neglect," said Owens, while her children watched TV in the next room.

By 7 years old, Owens was cleaning her mother's vomit from drinking binges and putting her to bed.

"Looking back now, that was more emotional abuse. I was constantly having to take care of her," she said.

Owens is calm and matter-of-fact when talking about such childhood horrors. She widens her eyes sometimes as if to say "yeah, this really happened."

She and her sister even decided to laugh about their upbringing instead of the alternative: cry.

Taking care of her mother led to Melissa wrecking her own health.

"I remember filling up one of my mother's old pill bottles with Peach Snapps when I was in the third grade and carrying it to the bathroom and just downing it," Owens said. "It wasn't a big deal."

But it became a big deal, so much that after she made peace with her past, she feels the need to talk about it in a book, tentatively titled, "Missy's Story," a reference to her nickname growing up.

Though two sisters support her, "most of my siblings didn't want me to write the book," she said. To respect that, she rarely mentions them in her writing.

The point of the book is for teachers and social workers to notice the warning signs of abuse.

"There were so many people that just missed it," Owens said. "I was labeled as the bad kid, not the kid who had issues at home." By the time she was a teen, she turned to drugs and promiscuity to fill the void.

On hearing about the film version of the novel "Push," "I thought it was awesome," Owens said. "I mean anything Oprah does is phenomenal. To me, one of the most impressing pieces about the book is how (Precious) got into this school and how the teachers cared about her."

A teacher also noticed Owens' potential. Anita Himber, a former teacher at Brooks High School in Killen, met Owens when she was a pregnant 10th-grader. Like the teacher played by Paula Patton in the movie "Precious," based on the novel, "Push," Himber believed Melissa would rise from her past.

"This is one kid who has broken the cycle," Himber said. "Her children will never go through what she had to go through."

"She's just such a hard worker and wanted to succeed. If anyone's been knocked down, it's Missy."

Himber became the mother figure in Owens' life. "She bought my senior pictures and paid for my senior fees," Owens said. She sent her Mother's Day cards for years.

Owens' turning point came after she was married with three kids at 22. She called Himber crying, saying she had to leave her then husband, who she said was abusive. They came up with a plan that included going to college. Her classes began on her daughter's first day of kindergarten.

After remarrying and quitting her aesthetician job, Owens spends most of her time with her kids, volunteering and writing. And she still keeps in touch with her parents. Her father lives next door and her mother lives up north. When her mother moved home after a terminal diagnosis, Melissa took care of her until she noticed old, manipulative patterns reoccurring.

"When I was a kid, she could play me like a fiddle," Owens said. She hesitates to call her parents bad, settling on "neglectful" instead. She demonstrated the same loyalty as a child by never telling anyone about the abuse, because she knew it could separate her from her parents.

"(Children) are not going to tell," Owens said. "It doesn't matter how abused a kid is, how wronged they are. Children love their parents. It's a natural, God-given thing. They're always going to protect their parents."

For all the pain she's been through, she came out smiling wide on the other side.

"I never want anybody to look at me like 'that poor child, look what you went through.' " My favorite saying is 'you can't really, truly laugh until you've really truly cried. I'm a Christian. I've got three children who are beautiful, healthy babies. I married the best man in the world and I can go outside now, and you might see a pretty day. I see brilliant oranges in the trees, and the wind blows. It's like I can feel God's spirit on me. Everything is so intensified if someone has been through that kind of darkness."

Like Claireece "Precious" Jones, Owens finally breathes easy.

Jennifer Crossley can be reached at 740-5743 or jennifer.crossley@timesdaily.com.