I remember a man standing next to our swimming pool that night. From my angle, I must have been in the pool because I was looking up at him. Not too close – I think I was standing in the middle of the pool, at the edge of the shallow end before it got too deep for me to stand. I was facing kitty-corner to the diving board, which was out of my field of vision on my right. His back was to the diving board. I had a good profile view. I think he was talking to someone on my left, but my memory was narrowing only on him. I could see him smile, laugh, shake his long, brown hair out of his face and turn toward me to take a draw off the cigarette in his left hand before turning back to whomever he was talking to.
Odd, but in my mind’s eye I could only see him waist-up or knee-down. I have no idea what his swim suit looked like. He had hairy legs, and hairy toes in dark flip-flops. His skin was very tanned, but I could tell it was naturally a little dark, like he was Mexican. I know there are many Hispanic nationalities, but for some reason when I look at him in my memory, the word “Mexican” keeps popping into my ten-year-old head. Makes sense, we were in southern California, but my present-day mind doesn’t think he was Hispanic at all. He didn’t have the square features that hint at the Native American blood found in many Mexicans. He was thinner, almost European, perhaps Greek? Maybe his name sounded a little like the word Mexican? Not that I remember a name. It’s hard to separate my ten-year-old memory from my 49-year-old experience, making me doubt that any of my memories are real.
The arm I could see was muscular. There was a tattoo on his shoulder. The ink looked like a dark green-blue. I don’t remember the pattern, but it wasn’t colored in. It was about the size of a side-ways playing card. I don’t remember any hair on his shoulder, but his forearm and back of his hand had dark hair, just like his legs. He was holding a lit cigarette.
He was good-looking. I don’t remember him looking at me, but he glanced around the pool area while he was talking. He had dark eyes with long eyelashes and crinkles at the edges. An aquiline nose. High cheek bones. Shoulder-length dark brown hair with bangs that parted in the middle and fell past his ears. A dark-brown full mustache, and an unshaven look. I don’t remember what color his eyes were. It was night, and the backyard lights were on (there was a pair of small flood lights attached to the back of the house behind me, near the roof), but his eyes just looked dark. I keep thinking they were dark blue instead of brown, but I can tell that it’s my 2014 mind thinking that, not a memory, and I’m trying to keep this limited to just what I remember. Looking back, I’d guess he was about 30-35 years old.
The thought came to me that his eyes were always smiling, and although I am sitting at the edge of my bed in 2014, my breath just caught and something tightened in my chest. My whole body is tense. I don’t want to remember any more right now. Time to do something else.
Looking back on that Sunday, June 1st, I don’t remember much, but I know the overwhelm took me. I didn’t give in to it – I know what giving in feels like. Giving in is when you come home with drive-thru nachos and microwavable kettle corn, turn on Netflix and binge watch for eight hours. Giving in is my mother with red wine swirling in her morning orange juice. Giving in to overwhelm is a conscious decision to put the world on hold and self-medicate for awhile. It’s a miracle that I prefer salt over alcohol in my worst state. I tell myself that whenever I take my blood pressure medicine. It could be worse.
No, on that particular Sunday the overwhelm took me, without my permission.
My girls say it seemed as though I had the flu pretty bad that day. My walk was unsteady whenever I got up for the bathroom or water, I had no appetite, I was alternating freezing cold and sweating hot, and I mostly slept.
I remember there were nightmares. I think I cycled through just about every recurring nightmare I’ve ever had and then some. My first husband’s fingers around my throat. My sisters screaming. Running and running but not able to get anywhere.
My waking moments were all memories:
Me, falling out of bed and getting my lip split on the corner of the nightstand. Getting stitches. I was 3.
Mom, sitting dejectedly on the end of the couch, cigarette smoke making rings around her tousled hair, her make-up-smeared eyes red and bleary. I had stayed home from school to make sure she didn’t carry out her threat to kill herself that day. I was 16.
Walking stiffly for a drink at the water fountain in the police station, my uniformed escort asking me why I was so formal, and me telling him I was not going to cry. I was 25.
Being slammed into the bathroom wall of the Pink Garter, a stranger’s lips forcibly taking mine. She had followed me in and had me pinned, her whole big, muscular body crushing me against the wall. I struggled and fought and was thankfully released to run when someone else walked in. I never thought a woman would ever do such a thing. I was 18.
Mom, kicking me as I lay curled up in a sleeping bag on the floor in my room. Kicking me again and again, screaming horrible insults at me. I was 15.
A door being slammed in my face. More stitches. I was 7.
Carrying a ringed pillow from class to class in junior high, telling everyone I had chipped my tailbone from a fall off my roller skates. I was 13.
Daddy #3’s finger in my face, threatening me literally into a corner, and Mom behind him telling me to just say yes, daddy. I was 17.
The videographer who offered to drive me home from an evening SCA event, pulling into the back of a grocery store and telling me he was in pain and only I could help him. He unzipped his pants. I convinced him that I was on my period. He said that’s okay, I could still help him and I wasn’t going home until I did. It was him or face a metal cooking spoon for missing my curfew. I was 14.
Walking six miles in the middle of the night, jumping into shadows any time a car came by, not knowing if my parents were after me. I carried a small bag of clothes and was headed to an older friend’s apartment. I didn’t know where I would go from there, but I was never, ever, going home again, not until I had made enough money to rescue my sisters. I was 17.
My sisters and I, all neatly dressed and sitting on the couch facing the CPS investigator. We told her we were fine, happy, that there was nothing wrong. No way were we going to let this stranger separate us girls from each other. I was 15.
Being slammed into the coat closet door and then rocked onto the living room carpet. Being straddled with his hips on my thighs and his knees on my hands and his hands around my throat, squeezing and squeezing until the black cloud came and I knew I was dying, knew I would never see my little girl or my sisters again. I was 25.
That’s but a handful of the memories I cycled through that day. And now I had four new memories:
1. Me in the pool, looking up at my naked, nine-year-old sister on the diving board.
2. Me, ten, running from the pool, tripping, hearing men’s laughter.
3. Mom, sitting in a pale pink wrap in the patio set by the pool, smoking and saying “just say yes daddy” over and over.
4. A man standing by the pool, between the diving board and the patio set. But that’s for tomorrow’s post.
One night, when I was 15, I knelt before my bedroom window, looking up at a full moon. The house was quiet. My youngest sister, Beth, silent in the next room. They had beat her hard that night. Her screams and sobs still rang in my ears today, but all was quiet and the house was dark at that moment in my memory. I remember kneeling there with my hands folded in prayer, appealing to the distant, peaceful orb that hung in the night as if that were God’s face, blurred by my powerless tears, and not the man in the moon.
Please, God. Please don’t let me wake up tomorrow. Please, take me to heaven tonight. Please. I can’t do this anymore.
That’s how I felt on June 1st, 2014. But in my despair that overwhelming Sunday, I knew then what I didn’t know for sure at 15. The morning was coming, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was going to wake up.
I could hear one of the girls in the shower across the hall from my room. The rhythm of the running water pattered me into a slightly wakeful state. I was aware of my bedroom, aware that I had been sleeping soundly, aware of the weight of my body on my stiff twin bed.
Someone was laughing. A few someones. Male. My mind was drifting back to 1975, and I was scrambling out of the pool. I tripped and fell, splat, on the concrete. They were laughing. Don’t look back, I thought. Run. I clambered up and ran, bare feet making wet splats toward the side of the house.
I opened my eyes. My bookshelf swam into view. It was dusty. I need to dust my bookshelf, I thought, shivering with cold as if I had just gotten out of a pool and walked into air conditioning. I didn’t move from my side, tightly curled and shivering, staring at that bookshelf.
I was there. I couldn’t deny it anymore. My sister, nine-year-old Meg, was naked on the diving board. It was night. I was in the pool. I’ve been remembering being in the pool. And now …there’s more: I climbed out of the pool. I was running. I was afraid. I tripped. Men were laughing.
I squeezed my eyes shut, blocking out the sound of the running shower, trying to return to that lucid state, to 1975. I could remember the pool. Liver-shaped. Small. It was night. I could see the pool light from under the water. I pushed up from the bottom, enjoying the buoyant feel as I broke the surface, blinking back the chlorine and taking a deep breath of fresh, cool night air.
Who was there?
Meg was on the diving board at the far end of the pool. I was on the right, by the house. I tried to turn the eyes in my memory to the left, but like a scratched DVD, the scene skipped to me tripping on the concrete. I remember picking myself up. Run. But I did turn at the sound of the laughter. My back was to the pool, and I turned slightly right. Not far enough to view all around that side of the pool and to the diving board, but just a little. My wet bangs hung in my eyes, but I could see her. Sitting in one of the black wrought-iron chairs, a wine bottle sitting on the matching round, black patio table.
It was Mom.
There was a knock on my door. No, I thought. I’m almost there.
The door opened and my firstborn peeked in. “Mom? You okay?”
Mom. My mom was wearing her faded pink terrycloth robe. I remember it had a pattern in the fabric, little raised square bumps. It was knee-length. She sat there with her legs crossed, bare legs under a short, pink wrap. She was smoking. She was saying something. I strained to hear it.
“Mom?”
My daughter’s voice pulled me reluctantly into the present. I nodded, accepting that the memory was gone, and started to sit up. My mouth was so dry, and my eyes were burning from the chlorine. No, wait – what was real? I shook my head as if to clear it. My daughter sat on the end of my bed, looking concerned. I tried to speak, but could only clear my throat.
“It’s okay,” I finally managed. “I think the road trip just took a lot out of me. I am so beat.”
She offered to drive her sister to her friend’s house. I had forgotten. That’s why she was in the shower. I accepted and we talked about dinner for the girls and how she had done her sister’s laundry so I could sleep. I assured her I’d be back to normal tomorrow, and smiled as she left, shutting the door behind her.
I sat looking ruefully at the door. The whole day was wasted. I failed my girls today. My stomach tightened. Then my throat. My eyes grew hot and misty. The room blurred, and I was back in 1975.
I was there. Meg was naked on the diving board. It was night. I was in the pool. I climbed out of the pool. I was running. I was afraid. I tripped. Men were laughing. And Mom was smoking a cigarette. She was saying, “Just say yes, daddy.” Whispering it, over and over.
Faintly, I heard the front door shut. I think the girls called out goodbyes and feel betters before the door shut. But the blood was pounding in my ears. I was there. Meg was there. Men were there. Mom was there. I was afraid.
The room was dark and I felt stiff and cold, sitting still so long. I reached tiredly for my phone. 11:02 p.m. I had just lost six hours.
I snapped out of my reverie and looked up to see my youngest standing in my bedroom door.
“Hm? You need something? What time is it? You must be hungry.”
“No, I had cereal – I just wanted to know if you’re doing laundry today. I need jeans.”
I reached for my cell and was surprised to see the morning had flown by. My Kindle was in sleep mode. I must have spaced off after the show. I rubbed a hand tiredly over my face.
“Yes, of course. Give me a minute. Can you put your laundry by the front door and I’ll take it down? I just need another minute.”
She left the door standing open, and I could see my firstborn peeking in from down the hall. I smiled and called out a good morning, and she good-morninged me back and disappeared, apparently satisfied that I was fine.
Of course I was fine. Just tired. It was a long, cramped drive home yesterday. Anyone would be bone-weary tired after that. I sighed and looked around the room absently, running over the checklist in my head. I had forgotten to take my blood pressure medicine, so I washed it down with the cold dregs of my coffee, and got up to change into old clothes, my housecleaning day wear.
The girls had done a great job in the kitchen. I was afraid I’d come home to a sink full of dishes and piles of trash bags waiting to be taken out, but all was neat enough. There was leftover pizza in the fridge. A few days of junk food was to be expected. I added grocery-shopping to my list for the day, and then just froze, one hand on the closed door of the fridge, staring at the shopping list held up by a magnet, but not seeing it.
I couldn’t do it. I just knew, I could not leave the house that day. I couldn’t picture myself able to get into the car, much less drive it. I gripped the refrigerator door handle tighter, my nails digging into my skin. My heart starting pounding. My breath was shorter and quicker. I felt suddenly cold all over. I couldn’t do it. I almost wanted to whimper out loud, please don’t make me do it, but felt ridiculous in this unreasonable fear. What was wrong with me? It’s just grocery shopping.
I scolded myself into letting go of the door handle, but as I walked out of the kitchen, I turned back down the hall to my room instead of toward the laundry in the living room. I paused in my doorway, both hands on the frame, holding myself up. I called out to the girls that I was more tired than I thought, and would do laundry in a couple hours. I just need to nap a bit more.
I crawled into bed, shaking like a leaf, and eyes brimming over onto hot cheeks, pleading silently to the empty air – please don’t make me. Make me what? The walls slammed down on all sides, and I went limp, like a puppet with cut strings. My heart called for my sisters, and a welcome memory appeared of me and my sisters as adults all hugging each other and grieving together, one big huddle of sisters. Breathing easier, I fell asleep.
I slowly became aware of birds chirping outside my bedroom window. I knew I was laying curled up on my left side, sheets wrapped tightly around me, but I wasn’t quite awake yet. My body was floating down from sleep and into the real world. I let my mind push back awareness of the birds and cotton sheets, just to drift a bit longer with the luxury of no alarm clock on a Saturday morning.
In that lucid state, an image of short, tumbled dark hair against faintly lit trees and a night sky drifted across my mind. A memory. I let my memory’s eye travel from hair to face. It was my sister, Meg, as I remembered her from our childhood in southern California in our Cass Avenue home. She was grinning at me.
The image pulled back, and I could see her on the diving board of our backyard pool. She was looking straight down at me, grinning, and poised as if ready to cannonball and splash water all over me. She was naked. The flood lights on the side of the house lit her up, making the floodlight in the water under the diving board almost unnecessary. I could see the trees behind her, and a bit of night sky, and the tops of the tall, wooden privacy fence.
From the angle of the memory, I knew I was in the water. I was on the side of the pool closest to the house, looking up at my sister on the diving board. It was night. I was there.
My eyes flew open. No, I wasn’t. I sat straight up in the grey dawn, burying my face in my hands. NO. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there.
My breathing stabilized and I dropped my hands. Of course I wasn’t there that night. My sisters and I skinny-dipped tons of times in that pool. The privacy fence, trees and shrubs made it impossible for anything but a helicopter to be able to see into that backyard, and no one lived there except four female children who swam like fish and one mother. We must have skinny-dipped tons of times. Didn’t we?
I pushed away the doubt and reached for my cell phone. 6:42. No reason for me to get up yet. I needed to unpack and do laundry, but I had all day. I decided to get some coffee and curl up with Netflix on my Kindle.
At this point, I wasn’t stepping toward the hospital, I was tumbling uncontrollably downhill toward it.
TRIGGER WARNING
Saturday, May 31, 2014 2:00 a.m.
I woke up drenched in sweat, breathing heavily and my heart pounding as if I had been running a marathon. My jaw hurt, and I forced myself to stop clenching my teeth. My ears were ringing with screams, even though my small bedroom was dark and silent as the grave. I rolled onto my back, kicking off my sheets, and just lay there for a bit, letting the nightmare finish receding.
Another nightmare. Again. How many nightmares have I had? How many more will I have?
The ebbing fear was being replaced by rising anger. I pulled the spare pillow into my arms and squeezed it punishingly, my arms becoming boa constrictors, reveling in the pain of unaccustomed muscle strain. My throat was tightly holding back my voice, my limbs were consciously keeping me in my bed, but every other part of me wanted to stand up and scream into the blackness – she was raped! and Mom just watched!
But of course, I didn’t. It would wake my daughters. Thinking about them had a calming effect, and I could feel my anger relax into cynicism. Bad things happen to children all the time, and this news was forty years old. Can’t do anything about old news but set it aside and forget about it. Anger was a waste of time. Statute of limitations was long gone, and who would put a new widow in jail for something that happened so long ago? Certainly not Meg. If she were to press charges, she would have done it already. No, there was nothing that could be done. This was old news. Children were raped all the time, were probably raped today, even this very minute. There was absolutely nothing that I could do.
The pillow slid to the floor, and the tears came.
P.S.
In less than an hour, I cycled from fear to anger to helplessness to depression. Worse than that. I went from bone-crushing fear to violent anger to a puddle of helplessness to the bleakest depression. The difference? It was just as much in my body as it was in my mind and soul. Adrenaline, blood pressure, heart rate, muscle contraction, even sweat glands – dozens of physical responses to dozens of emotions were tumbling uncontrollably downhill together, and all I knew was that something wasn’t quite right with me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Beth’s flight was delayed, which would have put her behind for work, so she and I drove back up the East coast together. I was working on about four hours of sleep after hearing what Meg had to say, and by this point, Meg had told Beth. As you can imagine, it was part of the conversation on our way home.
We told each other that we didn’t remember it ever happening to us in childhood, but shared stories of incidents that had happened in our teenage years. One thing that has often puzzled me, is the question – is it rape if it doesn’t physically hurt?
My second year of marriage, my husband and I had a pretty strained relationship. He had put a sledgehammer into the dining room walls and told me that if I ever disobeyed him again, I would be next. I had left him the next day when that happened, but as a young mom with an infant, I had nowhere to go and very little money, so I went back to him.
Anyway, I was pretty scared of him and terrified of sleeping in the same bed, but equally terrified not to. Every morning, he would have sex with me, and I would lay there pretending to be asleep. I’d be laying on my side, facing the wall, keeping my eyes closed and my breathing as even as possible while he did what he needed to do. Then he got up to take a shower, and I cried quietly.
It didn’t hurt. I don’t know if it was because I had a baby by then and I was bigger than before, or if it was because he was a fairly small man, as those things go (I have no idea why I’m trying to be delicate, habit I suppose), but whatever the case, the only thing that hurt was my heart. I was 20 years old and felt completely powerless, too scared to say no, and feeling I had no right to say no even if I could say it out loud.
If he had tried to wake me up, whispered my name or shook me or something, I would have pretended to wake up and pretended to enjoy it. I learned at a very early age how to tell what someone else was feeling or what they wanted, and to respond in kind so as to appease. Appeasing people is the best way to avoid pain. I know different now, but back then, obedience and a believable smile was my M.O. for survival.
Anyway, on the drive home from North Carolina, Beth tactfully told me she thought what he had done was certainly a violation. (Guess where she learned tact? From the same metal cooking spoon that I did.) We shared other stories of rape and molestation that had happened to us at various ages (statistically, it’s not uncommon for women to be assaulted more than once in a lifetime – no, it doesn’t just happen in crime-ridden urban streets or third-world countries).
And, we talked about Mom. Imagine a 12-year-old girl in the mid-1950’s living in rural Spokane, her mother was in and out of the hospital with who knows what, and her father could only visit her once a week. I have no idea why. I never met my mother’s parents. I don’t even know their names, and I don’t even know if they are alive. Mom doesn’t know either, although in 2014, it’s pretty sure they aren’t alive now. Anyway, this girl was raised by her grandmother, a strict Victorian-like woman who believed children should be seen and not heard. Who made Mom go out to the backyard and pick the branch that she would be beaten with. Who turned a blind eye whenever her son would come for a visit and spend time alone with his little girl sitting on his lap.
(At least, this is what we think happened to her, based on bits and pieces she’s said to us over the years. Not everything she said matched with what she said at different times to each of us, but so far this much seems to be true. We don’t know enough family on her side to know for sure what happened. She didn’t like us to be in touch with anyone on her side of the family.)
I have no problem feeling compassion for my mother. Even if her story isn’t true, I know enough about human nature to know that something terrible happened to her. No way could she be like this and have had a loving, safe, childhood. No way. I completely understand why she spent the rest of her life self-medicating with alcohol and feeling less than whole without a man. I even understand why she beat her children. Given all that, my sisters don’t understand why I struggle to forgive her. With the new information that she stood by and allowed a man to rape Meg made me even more angry with her, and less inclined to forgive her – ever. And Beth and I spoke a lot about that on the way home.
I can’t do it because her life got better, and she did nothing to heal. Her fourth marriage was comfortable. No children, a good middle-class income, travel, a garden, great health care, and no worries. Plenty of time to get counseling, join AA, get to know her children as the bright, successful women they turned out to be.
She didn’t do any of that. She wallowed in self-pity. She snapped and criticized her girls, and criticized the way we raised our own children. She would be drunk by noon, making it pointless to call her because she wouldn’t remember the conversation anyway. My sisters and I led this horse to water time and again for decades, and she refused to drink it. She prefers to believe she never beat us, she never caused us any harm, she doesn’t have a drinking problem, and her life is just fine, thank you very much, and we should butt out.
Three of us girls have children, and we have never left our children alone with this woman. No way. And, we have never beaten our children. We don’t even spank them. And guess what? The kids – most of them are adults now – are really great people who do good in the world. Spare the rod and spoil the child? You bet. If providing a loving, safe, encouraging, filled-with-laughter home is spoiling a child, you bet. We did it, and we’d do it again. Yes, I hold Mom to my standard. I grew up in violence, too, but I didn’t take it out on my kids.
My mother belongs in jail, and I said as much to Beth. I believe what she did to us was criminal. And if the only way I can hold her accountable is to insist that she speak to me with respect or not speak to me at all, then so be it. If I decided to cut her off from her grandchildren because her drinking is inappropriate, so be it. My sisters disagree and believe that her tragedies grant her compassion and leeway. I grant her the compassion, but not the leeway.
I dropped Beth off at her car at the airport, and pulled into a nearby restaurant to sit quietly and think. I thought about Meg and the diving board. I thought about Mom. I thought about my two marriages. I thought about my conversation with Beth and her reaction. My mind chased thought after thought, as if there was some kind of answer in the muddle, but the clouds just got thicker, darker. There was a hot, angry storm on the horizon, but I kept averting my eyes, holding onto the numb cold.
After about an hour of staring at the menu and nibbling on french fries, I got back in the car and drove the rest of the three hours home. I walked in the door, was hugged by my daughters, and burst into tears. And it wasn’t because of the 14-hour drive, lack of sleep, or the funeral. I was safe, loved, not required to be responsible for anything, and my mind and body knew it. Now I could collapse.
Mom had gone to bed early with a bottle of something or other, her reward for not showing up drunk to the funeral, and to be fair, I probably would have done the same thing if I had lost a husband of 30 years. Her early withdrawal allowed the four of us sisters to relax and sit up talking late. We were all stressed and exhausted, and as much as I missed my sisters, I really needed to lay down, so I, too, eventually retreated to the guest bedroom at Mom’s that I was sharing with Meg. I remember being comfortably stretched out, reading my Kindle in the dark, waiting for Meg as she finished her bedtime routine in the guest bathroom.
It was a small room. The daybed with its trundle pulled out took up almost the whole space. There was cat hair everywhere. I had made the mistake of setting my black dress down on the bed before putting it on, and ended up swiping off hair throughout the funeral. It wasn’t really a funeral – more of a wake. He had chosen to be cremated, so the vase was sitting on a table surrounded by pictures of him throughout his life. Over about four hours, a good hundred people came through to sign the guestbook and share their condolences with Mom. She bore up very well, and was visibly grateful for the many kindnesses expressed to her.
Meg came in and we lay in the dark talking some more. She told me she thought it was very brave for me to put aside my pain and anger to help Mom through this time. I admitted to her that I didn’t do it for her, but for my sisters. I would always be there for my sisters. Not that I had been – my roller-coaster life was more about my own survival and that of my kids than it was of being any help to my sisters, and I still carry a lot of guilt about that. I ran away from home, swearing to come back for them, and I never did.
I remember she and I talking about that guilt for a bit. Then we talked about how hard it was for me to reconcile the sad, fragile widow of today with the scary child-beater I remembered from decades past, and the snide, contemptuous termagant I had known throughout adulthood and as recently as four years ago.
Meg is a family therapist and lay minister. Her practice has been growing steadily. We talked about that, too. Then she told me about a therapy she had about ten years ago. I don’t remember what it was called at this moment, but basically it was body-based. The therapist has you focus on certain parts of your anatomy that are physically troubling you, with the idea that there is a memory “stored” there. Not really stored, but triggered or associated with that spot. Somatic! Yes, that’s the word.
Then she said there was something she wanted to tell me, a memory that had resurfaced through somatic therapy ten years ago, but that it was difficult to hear. I said “of course” and wondered aloud why she’d wait ten years to tell me something that was troubling her, and told her she can always talk to me. And she said this was different. Then she told me.
She remembered being about 9 years old and waking up from a bad dream. (This was in our home out in California, after Mom’s divorce from Daddy Two, whom we thought was Daddy One back then.) She got up feeling scared and went to go look for Mom, and found her in the back of the house by the pool. She wasn’t alone. She told my sister that they were skinny-dipping, and invited her to join them. So she took off her clothes and did.
When Meg said she remembered standing naked on the diving board, I felt myself suddenly feel cold all over, and I reached out across the space between our two beds to take her hand. We held hands over the empty space in the dark as she finished her story.
She remembers being at the side of the pool and someone pulling her up by the arms out of the water. She doesn’t remember any faces, but she remembers a penis being put in her mouth. They didn’t stop there. She remembers being raped. At 9 years old.
The room was dark and silent. I think I whispered her name once, but for the most part I just lay there, holding her hand and feeling what I am feeling now as I type this. Cold. Numb. Tears brimming but not spilling over. A tightness in my chest and difficulty breathing.
She asked me if I was okay, and I think I said something like “you’re the one that this happened to – are YOU okay?” And my concern tumbled out of me in dozens of choked words. We talked about her treatment, how she was able to handle dealing with Mom over the years, who else among the sisters knew at this point (Amy knew), that I thought she should definitely tell Beth, and why she was telling me now.
She said she wanted me to understand that if she could forgive Mom, then I could. That’s a big thing to forgive, but she did. She said she wanted me to try somatic therapy to see if it would help me get to the bottom of my anger toward Mom, so I could heal. And she asked if she could walk me through it right then.
No way. I withdrew my hand gently and told her that it had been a long day and I had a long drive back to New York ahead of me, and we should go to sleep. I told her how much I love her. I don’t remember if we hugged or not, but it wasn’t necessary. Us girls can hug with just words and feel the same. We are all very close, much more than sisters. Almost like survivors of a war camp.
I didn’t tell her that I felt weakened, that I just knew that if I tried to find memories associated with that bothersome area on the side of my abdomen right then, I was pretty sure I would do more than just cry. I don’t know what I would have done, but every instinct in my body was screaming – don’t think about it! Don’t touch it! Just don’t anything! So I shut down. You ever do that? It’s a mental shut down, but I can feel it. My body was just laying there, unmoving, but my senses could feel myself withdrawing as if I were shrinking to something smaller than my skin and bones. I shrank until there was nothing but my mind, then I shuttered that, too. Eventually, we fell asleep.
At this point, I could have sworn that I had never been sexually assaulted as a child. Looking back to this night, I think my body was remembering but my mind was still protecting me. Gosh, I’m tired. I need another cup of coffee.
P.S.
About ten years ago, the four of us girls had an intervention with Mom about her drinking and the abuse. That’s for a later blog, but I remember that she told us that her father had molested her every Wednesday when he came to visit her, and it had gone on for as long as she could remember. I wonder now if that time with Mom is what triggered Meg’s memories. I’ll have to ask her.
Step one, to recap previous posts, was my already cycling up depression. Step two began with my visit to Kansas City this past Memorial Weekend to spend time with family. I hadn’t been back there in about a dozen years, and I missed it. I stayed with Meg and her family – it was wonderful to be with them again after all this time. We had dinner on the Country Club Plaza, drove around Swope Park, and spent plenty of quality time together. Amy drove out to meet us, so only Beth was missing of the four of us sisters this time, and miss her we did.
Saturday morning, very early, one of my sisters came in to wake me up. I don’t remember which one. Mom’s husband had died. The three of us called Mom on speaker phone, and she was incoherent in her grief. They had been together 30 years. She was also completely wasted at 7am. We spoke with a neighbor of hers who had thankfully responded to Mom’s call and was there with her, and able to tell us what happened.
It wasn’t completely unexpected, just six months sooner than any of us thought. He had been diagnosed with cancer in March, during my 100-hour work-week marathons, and I hadn’t even called him until Friday, while I was waiting for my flight at O’Hare to KC. I told him how much I valued his kindness to me over the years, how glad I was that he was a part of our lives, and joked with him about subscribing him to a sherbet mailing list, so he could get gallons of orange sherbet mailed to him every week. The cancer was everywhere, but it hurt his throat most, and the sherbet was almost the only thing he enjoyed eating anymore. Then, less than 12 hours later, he was gone. He had gotten up at 2 in the morning to use the bathroom, fell, and was gone. Mom called her neighbor, then started steadily drinking. I was so thankful I had spoken to him, and horrified that I had almost missed letting him know I cared about him. He was Mom’s fourth husband, but I didn’t meet him until a couple of years after they were married, so there was never any attempt at a father-daughter relationship, just a natural one between two related adults. There was respect, and laughter, and no pressure to be anything except ourselves. We didn’t agree politically and in a number of other areas, but neither of us felt it necessary to convince the other of anything they didn’t want to hear, so we just agreed to disagree and focused on the lighthearted. I wish I could have at least have had that with my Mom.
Back to that Saturday morning. After we hung up with Mom, we called Beth, and then all worked out travel plans so Mom wouldn’t be alone. Amy and Beth were with her by Sunday, and I went ahead and kept my flight home Monday to New York, and drove to North Carolina to be there Tuesday evening. I was uncomfortable as hell about going, but I kept telling myself that this is a 69-year-old woman who had just lost her husband of 30 years, who needed help more than I needed to stay away from her. My phone call on Friday to my stepfather was the first time I had spoken to her in four years.
To use my mantra yet again, I was done. Four years ago, I had a conversation with her that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and I realized I was done with her. I asked her not to contact me or my children ever again, not even during the holidays. I wasn’t angry, I was just done. No more toxic people in my life.
Anyway, I called work and let them know that I would be taking the week off to help with the funeral. Little did any of us know that it would be over a month before I would spend a day at my desk again.
I remember helping Grandma hang clothes out to dry in this backyard. I remember Grandpa setting up a badminton set, and my sisters and I gamefully trying to hit the birdie. I remember Grandma teaching me to sing those old Croatian songs she loved so well, and Grandpa letting me stand on his toes as he taught me to dance to them.
I have several very happy memories from my childhood, and I promise to do my best to post them here, so this blog does not become filled with gloom, despair, and agony on me – woe!
I didn’t meet my real grandparents until I was in my late 20’s, but thankfully, these two wonderful people (who were the parents of my mother’s third husband) stepped up to the plate and treated me and my sisters like their own ever since I met them when I was 11 years old. Grandma taught us to bake apple strudel; Grandpa taught us to fish and play pool; and they both taught us the importance of family gatherings around the table, with cards and popcorn and plenty of laughter.
I am simply grateful for the love and influence of these two good souls in my life, who have now joined the angels. I love you Grandma and Grandpa.
Erase and Start Over 