I remember I was as tall as a door knob - I guess that would make me about four years old. I’m not sure, but I remember looking straight at a doorknob. I was standing on a hardwood, highly polished floor. I think it was parquet flooring, but at the time I didn’t know that word, of course. It was a bright, sunshiny day. The sun was streaming in the windows. This is still all so damned clear to me that I can even remember the tiny dust motes floating on the sunbeams.

I was wearing black patent leather Mary Jane shoes. It seems I always wore those kind of shoes when I was little. You know, the kind with straps. I was standing there, kind of rooted to the floor. I was scared…Geez, I was so scared. I couldn’t move. I knew I wasn’t allowed to. Oh, I was so scared. My heart was beating like a tiny bird, it was going so fast. And I wanted to run. I wanted to run and run and run and just keep on going and never stop. I wanted to run fast and free like the wind, maybe to some magical land of fairy Godmothers and unicorns. Maybe just to the cellar.

A man came out a door into the room. The doorway between the hall where I was standing and the bedroom he came into was wide open. Of course, being only as tall as a doorknob, I had no idea what a naked man looked like, and certainly did not know the proper names for body parts. He was so big, and the part of him that should have been inside his pants was so big and so ugly and so hairy. God, it was almost kind of grayish. I couldn’t move, and he kept coming. I kept looking. I couldn’t figure it out. All I really remember were my shoes and the sunlight and how big and ugly he was. The funny thing is that he had no face. I honestly can’t tell you who he was.

I suppose this was my first introduction to sex. I don’t know what he did or what happened after he came toward me. I’ve totally blanked it out. I guess it’s true when they say, "What’s too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget." I blocked it. Maybe I couldn’t handle it. Even now, I dream about it once in a while, and he still has no face. I keep saying, "Daddy, is that you?" but I never get an answer. I don’t think it was my Daddy. I don’t know. Maybe I don’t want to know.

Thank God I’ll never be as small as a door knob again! I’ll never have to wear Mary Jane shoes again. I grew up. I’m a survivor Life goes on.