Me Too

The #MeToo movement opened some old wounds for me.  These are just a few examples.  There will be more before I reach 30.  I am now 47.

My first recollection was with Grandpa O as told in a previous entry.

It wasn’t long after that that a neighbor man with no children invited me and others into his house to show us his newborn kittens.  I remember him giving us candy, and nothing inappropriate.  I remember hearing my mother’s frantic calls, as she searched for me.  When I went outside, she took me home and told me that I couldn’t go with strangers because they might try to see my panties.

I don’t remember learning about sex.  I’ve just sort of always known about it.

When I was four years old, my mother married a man in the military, and consequently, we moved to Germany when I was six years old.  We were pretty isolated, as we didn’t know anyone, and it was too expensive to call home.

We lived in an apartment building, on the third floor.  Our downstairs neighbor was John, a 13-year-old boy, and his young sister, Tina.  One day John was home alone.  He came upstairs to ask if I could come over and play board games with him.  I was about seven years old, then.  I remember my mom taking me aside and telling me that I could go, but to be careful because he might try to hurt me.  I told her that if he hit me, I’d scream and come home, and she said that wasn’t really what she meant but she didn’t elaborate.

We played “LIFE.”  Out of nowhere, John jumped on top of me, covered my mouth and nose with both hands, and held me down, while I struggled to pry his hands away so I could breathe.   I started to cry, and that made him stop.   I threatened to go home if he did it again.  I never told anyone about it.  I was always so desperate for attention, I think the threat of John no longer wanting to hang out with me was more dangerous to me than being suffocated.

We moved to Texas.    I was ten years old, when one night, my mom went to work, and our dad took us to the park.  There was a man sitting on a bench, playing a guitar.  I loved to sing, so I asked him if he knew a song that I particularly liked.  He didn’t know it, so I sang it for him.   He told me that I had a beautiful voice, which, at the time, was the best compliment anyone could ever give me.  He then went on to tell me how his hobby was diving in the river for freshwater pearls.  He told me that he had a couple of these pearls that were the size of softballs in his car, and if I came with him to his car, he would give them to me.  I was about ten years old, then, and all I could think was, “We’re going to be rich!”  I asked my dad if I could go with the man, and he said no.  He told me to stay away from the man.  I thought it would be too rude to just ditch the man, so I went back to him and told him that I couldn’t go.  I asked him if he could go get one and bring it back.  He said that he couldn’t, and that he had to leave.  Then he left.

A few months later, a man knocked on our screen door.  Mom was at work, and our dad was on the dozing on the sofa, while my younger siblings and I played in my brothers’ room.  We all ran to the door, including our dad.  The man said he was selling doughnuts and wanted to know if we wanted any.  Our dad told him we weren’t interested.

The four of us kids went back into my brothers’ room to play.  After a while, that same doughnut salesman knocked on the bedroom window.  He said he wanted to know if we wanted any of his doughnuts.  He opened the box and showed them to us.

I told him that our dad had said no, and we’d get into trouble.  He asked if I was sure, and when I said I was, he shrugged and walked away.  I woke our dad, who had fallen asleep on the sofa, and told him what had happened.

When our mom came home from work, that night, she woke me and asked me to tell her the whole story, so I did.  The next day, she went to the home of a neighbor who was a police officer.  She told the man and his wife about what had happened, and the wife said that he had come to her house, too.  He had come into their house and discussed training the older daughter how to sell doughnuts door-to-door.  The police officer nearly flipped.  He was shocked that his wife had let this man into their house.  It turned out that the police were looking for these men who had pulled a girl into their van and tried to rape her.  I don’t remember the details, but there was some discussion about doughnut salesmen in that case, as well.  My mother slept with a machete under her pillow, after that.

After nearly three years in Texas, my dad got orders to transfer back to Germany.   We returned to California to have some time with family before we left.  He went ahead to Germany in order to find us a place to live and we would join him at a later date.

We spent a lot of time catching up with family.  When my mom had been young, she spent a great deal of time with the family of her best friend.  They became a second family, to her, and I grew up calling them Grandma Bear and Papa Bear, and referring to my mom’s friend and her many siblings as aunts and uncles.

It was a very confusing time for me.  The last time I had seen these people, I had been a six-year-old girl.  Now I was 11, and developing a woman’s body very rapidly.  Everyone treated me so much differently, and I didn’t understand why.

One day we were at Grandma and Grandpa Bear’s house, and my mom was in the kitchen with Grandma, while my siblings were outside playing.  I was sitting in the front room with Papa Bear, talking his head off, while he smoked his pipe and drank his beer.  He patted his lap and said, “Come sit on Grandpa’s lap.”  That made me uncomfortable because I was tall and healthy, and he looked kind of weak and frail.  I did as I was told, however, and sat on his lap, trying not to put too much weight on him.  He said, “Give Grandpa a kiss,” so I kissed him.  He slipped his tongue into my mouth.  I was absolutely horrified and shook my head and pulled away.

On the way home, I told my mom what had happened.  She said, “That old pervert!  Well, you’re too big to be sitting on his lap, anyway.”  That was the beginning of me feeling like it was my fault that things like this happened to me.

More to come….