The Long Story: Part 1: Petrification

If you haven't already, please first read the introduction,
Strength comes from refusing to be shamed.

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The first time I felt truly powerless was when I was six years old.

By the time I started first grade, my mom had taken daytime job to save for a down payment on our first house. No longer would I walk a few blocks to the school in my neighborhood. I needed before and after school care, so I was dropped off at a home a few miles away, walked to the school in the sitter's neighborhood, and walked back to her house after school, where I stayed for several hours until my mom picked me up.

I remember the house was a tri-level. The main living area was on the right as you looked at it from the street, although I don't remember what the outside of the house looked like. On the left, upstairs, were the bedrooms and bath. The bath was at the front. As you walked through its door, there was a large counter on the left, first, with the big mirror, and a medicine cabinet on the wall by the door. At the end of the counter was the toilet, next to the window that faced the street. The room I was made to nap in was at the far front corner upstairs, the door directly at the end of the hall. A bunk bed was beyond this door, at the back corner of the room, with the foot of the bed facing the door.

Downstairs there was a rec room, with a fireplace along the inner wall and windows toward the street. Behind this was a door to a large bedroom with a bed to the left of the door, and a small window above it.

As I write this, it becomes immediately apparent to me why I remember these details of the house.

Have you ever had the opportunity to check a memory? You know, perhaps you visit a family member and decide to look for the park you remember from your youth. There's a satisfying feeling of confirmation when it looks "just like you remember." Well, I've done this with a few bad memories, too. A later one felt devastating when I discovered part of my memory failed me. But this one, well, for me it meant that time didn't distort my memory.

I cannot, of course, go back in the house. I don't remember names or streets. But I do remember the name of the school and the walk to the house. Which side of the road the school was on, how we walked down a short hill and crossed a two lane wooden bridge over a small canal. How we turned left to go down a street with the canal on the left, and long perpendicular neighborhood streets to the right. How we went two or three blocks and turned right on one of those streets, walked down less than halfway, to a trilevel on the right. The path taken, the landmarks, the sense of distance are vivid in my memory. A year ago, 33 years later, I was playing around with Google satellite maps to look at places I used to live. It struck me to look at this place, and that's a scary thing to do. What if I can't find it? What if it's not like I remember? What would it mean? If it is like I remember, what can I possibly gain from it? But dammit, the satellite confirms that my memory is not a lie. The area looked exactly as I remembered it.

My visual memories of this time, though, are like blurry, colorless snapshots or mere seconds of film. The sound is muffled. The feelings are strong.

The youngest daughter was a year older than I. There were older siblings, one or two boys I think, but its all muddled because of the sundry neighborhood kids running in and out all afternoon. The daughter and I would sit and play Operation, or with her dolls in front of the fireplace in the rec room. I remember not knowing why her dolls clothes were all mismatched and old, or why the dolls all had chopped hair and markings on them. Kids will do this to their toys, I know, but at the time it bothered me just enough, and I didn't know why. Perhaps it's simply because it may have been the first time I came across such poorly cared-for toys. But I don't know this for sure, so it bothers me, because that's just how these things go.

What makes this memory stand out from other memories I have of that place, is that it's the only one that had nothing to do with incidents that bring back feelings of terror and fear in the eyes of a 6 year-old. That time with the daughter was otherwise normal, but it felt lonely, isolated, and sad, and its all I remember of her specifically. Was it her that was sad, or me? All I know is that those are the emotions that attach to the memory.

On to the other memories. There was the time, after school, when I remember the boys discovering a dead cat in the road. They were on their bikes, and decided it would be cool to run over the cat with their tires. There was this glee, this drive to keep doing it that fueled them. They were enjoying flattening this cat, over and over, until it wasn't enough that it was flattened. They wanted to see if they could do it enough to get it's eyeballs to pop out. I remember standing there, frozen, repulsed, shocked at the energy of their excitement for this poor creature.

Another time they were in the street in front of the house. There was a three-legged dog, and with that same fervor and sick joy they threw things at it, kicked it, this disabled animal. I retreated into the house but could still hear them out there.

In that bathroom upstairs, someone was in trouble for something. It's the only memory I have of the mom, the babysitter. She was determined to punish a child by literally "washing their mouth out with soap." She was angry, intimidating, and several kids were all around to witness this. That same bathroom is where I sat on the toilet in what I thought was privacy, when the door burst open and they were there with what seemed like the whole neighborhood, throwing grasshoppers at me. It sounds silly, but my naked butt was on the toilet, and these insects were landing on me and in the toilet, and I was horrified and just wanted to be invisible.

I don't remember the sequence of any of these events. They all have that same emotional feel for me. I was scared of these people, intimidated by them. The following incidents are the hardest to tell.

That back room in the basement. Right on the other side of the wall from the rec room where the daughter and I played, the only room where I was sad but not terrified. The back room was dark, the light from the basement window seemed to be the only light in the room. One of these boys was on a bed near the window, someone else was in the room off to my right. I was on the floor at the foot of the bed. He had his pants undone. I was told to kiss it, to put it in my mouth. I did, hesitant, but without question. It was so damn confusing to me, why someone would want to do this with something they pee with? Why they wanted to do this to me. I felt powerless. I was fucking six years old. And of all the memories of this place, the snapshots in my head, this is the only one I repressed for well over a decade.

That would seem to be the worst memory, but it's not. Maybe it was repressed as a way for the blow to be softened, or it was because it was the least comprehensible for me at the time, the most violating. The worst memory though, is all about the emotion. The one memory that seems to encapsulate the whole experience, to seal my instinct to retreat, cower, and hide, took place in the upstairs bedroom.

I know this memory is a composite of an ongoing thing. The babysitter insisted that I nap in the afternoon, even though I was not tired. I resented that. I felt I had no choice, though. I would lay on the top bunk of that bed, unable to sleep, and just hope the time would pass quickly and be done, uneventfully. Many times, though, I was not alone. These boys, whether it was two brothers or a brother and a friend, often came in. I would pretend to be asleep when I heard them coming, hoping that I did it in time, scared of what would happen if they found me awake. They would stand near the foot of the bunkbed and tell me they knew I wasn't asleep, sometimes poking and prodding me to see if I'd instinctively stiffen. It seemed to go on forever. We can see your eyelids flicker. We can see your toes move. Your fingers. We know you're awake and can hear us. Your chest is moving, you're breathing is too fast. You started to lick your lips. You stiffened when we nudged your leg, that proves you're not asleep. It went on and on for what seemed like a tortuous eternity. Did my eyelid really move? I need to concentrate more on that. Control my breathing better. Make sure my toes and fingers and eveything else doesn't move, doesn't attract their attention. Stay quiet an still, yet relaxed, and hope they go away, hope this will be over soon, hope they will become convinced that I cannot hear them, that I really am not here, as if I am invisible, so it can end. This was an ongoing thing.

I don't know how old these boys were. Old enough for me to see them as authoratative as adults. Middle school-aged, maybe. I don't know for sure. For that reason, sick and horrid as they were, I realize that perhaps this sort of thing didn't begin with them. That they were not yet old enough to be held completely responsible for knowing right from wrong. That there was likely a lot more going on than I remember, than I knew.

This is, of course, an adult realization. It doesn't change the stage it set for me at the time. I'd spend a lot of years mentally trying to be invisible, submitting when confronted, hiding within myself, silently absorbing the distress, and when it finally was expressed it outwardly, turn it back upon myself with self-loathing behavior.

The next decade would be uneventful. There were no major challenges to confront that could serve as victories that would strengthen my resolve and build my true confidence. When things would get tough later, I had nothing else to draw on, I suppose, than the instinct to passively hide.

updated 3/13/06