WARNING!
When I was seven years old, something happened. Something really bad. Something really scary. Something that made the me I had been shut down, which left another me to deal with what happened.
We come from a very big family. Our father has many brothers and sisters, who all have many children of their own. During the decade of the sixties, in the Deep South where we grew up, children were seen and not heard. When the family gathered for meals, the children ate whatever was left when the adults had finished stuffing their bellies. The matriarch of our family was an obese woman with a very sharp tongue. The cousins knew there were only certain areas where they were allowed to go. Mostly they stayed outside, playing in the yard or on the front porch. This was not one of our favorite places to go, except that we got to play with our cousins.
When we were seven years old, our aunt was visiting from up north. She had married into a higher class of society and had a pair of silver high heels she brought to give to our cousin. Our cousin was eight years old and the eldest female grandchild. As we all gathered at the grandparents' house, our aunt told our cousin to go upstairs to the bedroom and look under the bed for her surprise. The cousin did not want to go upstairs by herself. She asked us to go with her.
We were very close to our cousin, but we considered her a sissy. We, on the other hand, could best any of the boys and we were proud of it. We usually went along with whatever the girl cousin wanted, but we had a better idea this time. We told her no and ran from her to keep from getting pinched. We were going to teach her a lesson. We sneaked in the house, through the back door, through the kitchen and up the stairs like a flash. We went into the bedroom where our aunt's things were and rolled beneath the bed. We were going to give our sissy girl cousin something to be scared about. And how!
As practical jokes are wont to do, this one backfired on me. My memories are disjointed and out of sync, but I have no doubt that they are true.
At some point, I moved from beneath the bed to get between the bed and the wall. The feel of the bedspread on my face as I crouched and waited is as clear as anything to me. At last, my cousin came into the room. She was alone. I had to fight to keep from bursting out in squeals of delight at the very thought of scaring her silly. But, just as I readied myself to jump out at her, I heard someone coming up the stairs. I peered out from under the bed to see a man coming into the room. I thought my heart was going to burst. I did not understand what happened next, but I knew beyond any doubt that it was very, very bad. The worst. Unbelievable and unacceptable for me.
I remember the sound of my cousin whimpering, begging for him to stop. I remember the sound of his voice, soothing and trusted. I think I lost my mind that day. I know that I split into separate identities. The girl I was could not reconcile what was happening to make it fit with her concept of reality. Where uncles and fathers and grandfathers were adored and admired and, most of all, trusted. Yet, here was the most trusted man in her life -- in their small community, in fact -- doing unspeakable things to her cousin.
Over three decades later, we spoke of this event for the first time. We were in therapy. The memory had always been with us, but disconnected. In our adult memory, our cousin had been caught doing something very bad and had gotten a terrible spanking. We were hiding and witnessed it. That was our adult memory, but there was something not right about it. There was something that begged to be given attention and when we did, that's when the truth began unfolding. That was no spanking. That was a sexual assault against a little girl by an adult family member. And we witnessed it. And our cousin never even knew we were there.
End Trans.
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