Walnut (Chapter Five)
Lions and tigers and ??? OH MY!
During the school year, our upstairs neighbor would pick me up from school while also picking up her daughter, Barbara, who was my classmate. Barbara and I had already had a friendship before my father had died and we were bosom buddies. Two shy awkward girls feeling safe in each other’s company. She was shyer than I was. I would do anything to make someone laugh and I was pretty good at being a real silly goofball. I had zero confidence in anything I was doing but laughter was my remedy and buffer. We played outside together and in our apartments being silly and innocent.
These innocent frolicking of two young girls came to a screeching halt forever one day. Like when the needle on the record scratches, the hair on the back of your neck stands up and the feeling pierces through your soul. Since my mother was at work and my sisters always out somewhere after school and almost never home, I was left at home alone after school until my mother got home or my sisters. Some days I’d play at Barbara’s apartment or in the yard or we did homework together or I’d just stay in my apartment doing homework and watching TV and my mother knew I had the neighbor if I needed help with anything. Barbara’s mother was always home but for whatever reason, she wasn’t this particular day or moment.
I went to their apartment to hang out with Barbara and walked into her room. She was there but so was her older brother. Her pants were down and she was laying on her bed and he was touching her where no one should be touching her. I stood in the doorway paralyzed, unable to speak but fighting back nausea. He was not ashamed nor did he stop and he looked at me in a threatening way.
He was at least 4 or 5 years older than us and about fourteen or fifteen. Physically bigger than us and taller. He looked old for a teenager, with no discerning facial features that made him handsome or ugly. He was unremarkable in his looks & personality. I was paralyzed by the sight of something I didn’t understand. We were all frozen or maybe just I was, in this moment of horror together but shocked back into reality by the sound of the keys of her mother at the apartment door. Like mice we all scattered. acting like nothing had happened. Barbara seemed unphased by it all. I carried on as if nothing had happened as well but I felt a knot in my throat and I was scared. A new kind of sacredness, that was worse than my paralyzing fear of thunder and lightning, where I would sleep under my bed and keep away from any windows.
Barbara didn’t say anything about what I had just witnessed and I couldn’t formulate words that made any sense to ask her anything nor could I verbalize what I had just seen. I didn’t stay to do homework with her that day in their apartment. An apartment and people until that day, I had considered a second home and family. I had spent at least one or two Christmas Eve’s with them watching them open their presents and they had a present for me too. The Yule Log was on the TV in the background. It was their tradition. My family didn’t open presents until Christmas morning, because that’s how Santa Claus did it, duh! They were following their mom’s German tradition and opening gifts on Christmas Eve, which I didn’t understand. I was a firm Santa believer now and for many more years to come. Their mom had a strong German accent that was hard to miss along with her buck teeth. But she was pleasant enough. Barbara’s father was an Italian American, born in the USA. Think they met while he was overseas in the army. He too was pleasant enough, it seemed.
I had spent countless afternoons playing with Barbara in their apartment for years. These were people I trusted. They had a mother and a father, the apartment was always clean and bright and tidy. Theresa did laundry constantly and ironed all of their clothes to perfection. Meanwhile, I was no stranger to grabbing my school uniform out of the hamper of dirty clothes and wearing it to school just as it was. By all appearances they were perfect. There was that ominous leather belt hanging on the back of the living room door though. Once I had finally asked what that was for and was horrified it was for their father to beat them with when they misbehaved. GULP! That should've stopped me from going there but it didn’t. I had never witnessed their father being violent so I thought, maybe it’s there just to scare them. He would never use it, right? Their oldest son is a pedophile, Barbara is painfully shy and nervous and their youngest son seemed afraid of his own shadow. I was in a house of horrors just with a pretty, clean-smelling facade that lulled me into thinking I was safe.
Who could I tell that to? It was too horrifying to repeat. I would maybe have told my best friend but in this case, I can’t because she’s a part of it. She had been the victim but I was soiled and tainted by this too now. My sisters, I was sure would say I was nuts and making things up, as they often did and my mother, I felt couldn’t handle more bad news.
This was my first mistake, not saying something for Barbara’s sake and in turn saving myself the same fate. Predators study their victims. He knew I was on my own after school, no male figure, protector at home. And most days I would be playing with his sister in the backyard or in their apartment. I can’t tell you if it happened once or fifty times but it happened. There was a shed underneath the house, off the backyard. He would lure us into there on some pretense, get a ball, a bike, etc. but then our pants would be down and we were now exposed to him and each other. He would touch us with his hands where we should never have been touched. He exposed himself on one or more occasions and we were told to touch him. He was pretty proud of his hideous purple-esque limp thing between his legs. I was not impressed at all and thought what a hideous thing to have to drag around everywhere. I was clueless to the demoralizing physical and emotional pain it could have caused had he gotten more violent in his abuse. His touching and controlling us was painful enough. I know we were threatened to not say anything because WE, she, and I would be in trouble.
Barbara and I were people, pleasers, good girls not upsetting anyone in any way. Being in trouble was foreign and ominous to us. What would that entail? The worry of the punishment for what we let him do to us, as he put it, could possibly be worse than this? Two Catholic school girls following all the rules of church and family and then this to be exposed, what would become of us? He touched the part of our bodies that were still a mystery to even ourselves that now he has tainted. We were innocents in the purest form and now he’s taken that away. How long ago did he take Barbara’s innocence? I can’t tell you how long each of those episodes lasted but they felt like an eternity. Once was too many times already and I couldn’t cope with what had happened nor could I make any sense of it. How could I? I wanted to pretend it never happened. But it marks you even when you do everything in your power to push it out of your mind. I had to survive this somehow.
Even though they lived above us in the same apartment building, I had mentally moved them to Mars. Barbara who I trusted and loved. Loved so much that I wrote on the hallway stairwell of the apartment in a magic marker, MARRY ME BARBARA for all to see not that long ago. Girls, friends, made pacts back then, to be safe to watch over each other and it had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with feeling loved and safe. She and I were far far away from knowing who we were in that department just yet. My only confidante is no longer an option now. She won’t talk to me about what was happening to us and I didn’t talk to her about it either. We had been like sisters or what I imagined sisters acted like, since my two were so much older than me we weren't able to connect on the same level. It is another death. I am once again alone with no one I consider safe with thoughts, my security, my heart.
I wanted to tell my mother but I thought she wouldn’t believe me and because of the tremendous shame, I felt for letting it happen to me. The kind of shame that steals your self-esteem and makes you feel shame and tainted, instead of realizing you were a victim. How do I say these words out loud? How do I describe what happened without feeling violated again by the exposure? But I also wondered, what if I tell her and she does nothing? What if she prefers we keep it to ourselves? I could never trust her again if she didn’t fight this battle for me. She was all I had and I had to live with her for many more years. I could never look at her again if she didn’t scream bloody murder for me. I kept my family even further at bay after this, mad they didn’t save me from this happening, which was irrational because they never knew. But I now had more resentment because I guess I thought they should have noticed how isolated or contrary I had become afterward. Too many questions and doubts for a ten-year-old to make sense of all by herself. Toss this into your imaginary backpack and keep it moving Laura. In true genetic fashion, if you don’t speak of it, it isn’t real. Ahh yes, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
As if I already didn’t have insecurities about my body, being molested made the disconnect even bigger. I may have looked the same and acted the same after that but I wasn’t. I started wearing bigger clothes, almost moo moos to hide in when I wasn’t in my catholic school uniform. I had trouble with hygiene and bathing. Getting naked for a bath forced me to see where I was violated and relive those scenes in my head. I didn’t want to see or touch my own body at all. I developed a loathing for my own body. No part of it was good in my eyes. It could only cause me pain I was certain. And men, who were usually my heroes whether real or imagined, were now the enemy. People I now needed to distrust.
At home, I was already quiet but television and afterschool snacks that I bought on my way home, yodels and a soft pretzel, were my attempts at self-soothing. Stuffing my feelings down with food. Junk food = love, even if it was fleeting. I relished being at school and would have stayed there until night if I could. I was popular and smart there. I had rage swirling in my head and heart. Mad at myself and the world but mostly at myself. And I’m carrying this big secret that is weighing me down no matter how I try to forget it. I’m functioning through the motions of life but there’s that shame and a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach when I least want it or expect it, which I quickly stuff down with food. I don’t know how to deal with feelings, good or bad so I suppress them. There was no place to put this rage and shame so I just carried on as usual.
If my sisters taunted me or teased me, I wouldn’t react at the moment but I would appear an hour or so later like a raging lunatic with smoke coming out of my nostrils and a hairbrush in my hand and beat my sisters on the back until they screamed for mercy. I didn’t have the skills to express my rage so it came out in the most bizarre way. Not that they didn’t deserve to be punished for mocking or teasing me but I obviously needed better coping skills because doing that didn’t make me feel better. If my sisters were already keeping their distance from me, this would give them more reason to just ignore me. If they were home with me before my mother got home from work, they didn’t engage with me other than to order me to clean a plate I had used or to turn off the TV while doing my homework. But, mostly if they were home they argued with each other sometimes even throwing an appliance or two at one another. Either they giggled with each other or fought, it was nerve-wracking.
I realized at that time that violent outbursts upset me and would do anything to avoid them, like my mother. I was much happier while at school with order and routine or at home alone in the apartment or at my grandmother’s house. At my grandmother’s house, none of this would be tolerated and there would be order, not chaos, and most importantly, I felt safe. I was soon learning that I was a creature of habit and silence was golden. I liked knowing what was comin’ round the corner. No more surprises, please. This girl can’t handle change.
