11

1980

My father saw me off to school or he would drive me to school, himself. I remember the way he looked at me right before I got on the bus. I could see a mixture of pride and warning in his eyes. He wanted me to know how much he loved me and he wanted me to know how dumb it would be if I was a bad girl. I read many things in my father's gaze and not all of them were pleasant. He would run his fingers through my auburn hair and send me off for another day at kindergarten.
My grandmother would wave at me from the window of the house as I got on the bus. Sometimes, when my aunt was visiting she would stand there beside my grandmother and wave as well..if she wasn't fussing with my clothes as I got on the bus. Mother was rarely around in the morning because she worked at the factory in Holly Springs. She worked for Sunbeam for years and years of her life.

 My mother never drove because she was afraid of cars. I was told that it was because she had almost ran off a bridge once while learning to drive. Everywhere that mother wanted to go, my father or a neighbor had to take her. She could not read either and relied on us to read things for her. Even the grocery papers made my mother frustrated and she would sit and wait for someone to walk by and read to her. Sometimes if my grandmother wasn't busy, she would read to my mother. They became very close.

My father, as most other men, was an avid sports fan. His favorite sport was basketball. He would attend all the games that the Ashland team would play. He loved to take me with me...I figure he wanted me to love the game as well and to also show off his daughter to his friends. When George realized that basketball season was coming he would always come down the little dirt road and ask my father if he could go.  I knew what would happen when he went with us.
 The sexual abuse by my cousin George got worse. George would touch me all the way to the game and back home again. I was confused but I still let it happen. In the dark of my father's truck you could not see when George slipped his hand into my pants. You could not see his hand in my shirt nor could you hear him whispering that I should never tell. I didn't tell....not for a years and many years to come.

As I got used to kindergarten, I started to speak to others. But the only language that we had in common was fleshly pleasure. Of course, this was something that should never have existed but it did. Some children were developing feelings and wondering about things that adults did. Some of the girls on the bus would put their hands in my pants and I would do the same. Death told me that I started this habit. Later on, when my sister brought my neice, who was two years younger than me, to visit; I would show her part of my body and she would do the same to me. We had a special place in my grandmother's room that we would explore ourselves and play doctor. It was behind a big plush chair. As feelings of horrible dread eat away at me, I remember more. I was letting the disease spread which came from George. When he touched me, I would show the girls and my neice just what he did. I was becoming a childhood monster and gaining a form of control that I had never before experienced.
There were many demons....many demons which walked that little dirt road to my house. There was George, the pedaphile. There was Rodney the bully who, on a regular basis would beat me up and take my bicycle, hiding it in the woods. There was the two blonde sisters who came to visit acting as if their shit didn't stink. Telling me that I was strange and ugly then smiling those sickening saccarine smiles before returning back up the road. There were others... There was Cami and her brother. They came every day as George did. Cami was a little girl with waist length thick blonde hair and blue eyes. She always had an evil look on her face, just behind the smile. But I needed Cami.
Cami was a constant source of friendship during the seasons. She would walk down that little dirt road and play with me, she never called me ugly and so she thought I was obligated to be her friend. We played pretend in the woods, my room and behind my grandmother's house. She was always very bossy, not at first, but she always pulled me very gradually into being her pet. I was her make believe patient, her make believe lover and her slave. Once I was Elvis and I had to kiss her over and over, as she was Pricilla. When she wanted me to be the baby, I had to pretend to take a nap. I would lie there for a very long time with the covers pulled to my chin while she played with my dolls. When she was finished she made me get up and clean her mess. I was a dutiful slave then...but something crackled inside and flaked away gradually. After a while, a fire began to burn inside. It got hotter and hotter and it burned my skin. When I saw her walking down that dirt road one day, I grabbed a thorny branch on my gandmother's rose bush. I squeezed that branch tighter and tighter. The closer she got to my house, the harder I grasped the branch. As she walked up my driveway, I released the thorny branch. I remembered Cami's face as she looked down at my bloody hand. She really looked shocked.
Mommy made us Kool Aid and cookies. We watched television as Momma fussed over my hand. I was numb for a long time...but I stared at Cami's face. All I could see was the bones beneathe her skin. I hated her.