But other than the teasing, I was living pretty much a normal life. Oh, yeah, Daddy was the assistant manager of the neighborhood A & P, so he was a workaholic, and once Momma had gotten Mark in school she went back to work at A&P to as a bookkeeper. So I'd come home from school and be babysat by Grandma Bourg (who was actually my great-grandmother) until Momma got home from work and scraped up some supper. But latchkey kids were probably a dime a dozen even in 1973, so I guess you'd have to say I was having an average childhood.
Until that day, of course. It was a Saturday, so Momma was at work until 1 and we kids were playing with the babysitter, some neighborhood girl. I had invented some new games in honor of the day, St. Patrick's Day, and tried without success to get my brothers to play. "You're too weird," they laughed, and so I just went off and made up new games to play by myself. I looked like a little leprechaun, decked out in green and frolicking around on that sunny March day.
When Momma came home from work, I asked if I could go ride my bike, and Momma said yeah. So I went riding around the neighborhood, a pinwheel stuck in my right handlebar, and ended up at my school, which was only a few blocks away. Standing in the driveway was a teenaged boy I had never seen before, but as I had never been told not to talk to strangers I thought nothing of riding up to him. I told him hi, he told me hi back, and then he said the strangest thing I ever heard:
"I want to see your pussy."
I wish I could give you a happy ending to this story. I wish I could tell you that I went straight home, told Momma everything, and the police tracked down that animal and he was sentenced to the electric chair. Or that, after Momma told Daddy, he tracked that bastard down and killed him with his own two hands. That when the town heard the story, all the kids in school who had teased me so mercilessly never teased me again. That my parents got me the very best therapy, I was a straight A student, and now I am a famous neurosurgeon or astrophysicist. Unfortunately, none of these things happened.
This is what did happen. I rode my bike home, expecting the worst, and Momma didn't even get mad becuase her pinwheel was broken. I went straight to the bathroom and looked down at myself; whether there was blood or semen, I was never sure later, but there were lots of leaves stuck to my private parts. And since I was deathly afraid of the man, and didn't have the words to describe what happened anyway, I did not tell a soul that day, or the next. I tried to put it out of my mind, pretend it had just been a bad dream, but how could I do that when everyday I could look out my classroom window and see the scene of the crime?
I finally got a clue about what had happened to me a few months later. I had a few of my girl friends over at my house, playing school. Then Clara, the oldest girl, decided that she would give us a special lesson, about the birds and the bees. Or more precisely, dicks, pussies, fucking, and babies. Upon hearing this, I wanted to die. "Oh, my god," I thought as I fled to the bathroom, "I'm gonna have a baby!" I found out through encyclopedias and such that if I were actually pregnant, I'd be showing, and so it was likely I wasn't. It wasn't until I saw a movie about rape a few months later that I had a word to say to my parents, and that I should, indeed, say it to them.
Six months after the rape, I finally told them about it. Momma suggested bringing me to the doctor, and of course I pleaded with them not to. All I knew is that I didn't want anyone else touching me down there; how was I to know someone needed to? Foolish parents that mine were, they obliged me, saying, "Well, it's been six months, she's not pregnant." And then -- nothing. No police badgering me for information, no doctors making sure that creep hadn't given me any diseases, no therapists helping me to understand that it wasn't my fault. Nothing. And meanwhile, the teasing continued, Daddy and Momma continued to work, and I spent more and more time in my bedroom. It became my one and only refuge from the world, the only place where no one could hurt me. Except myself, of course.
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