Therapeutic Letter to my Father

No Broadway show tunes for you, you bastard.

While "Grandpa" may have left me confused and struggling to sort out the good from the bad, I don't have that luxury where you're concerned. I have two, TWO, happy memories of you from my entire childhood. (When I was four, we went to a dance in the school gym. I remember you and I danced. You let me stand on your feet, and you twirled me around the glossy wooden floor and it felt like flying. On the drive home, the tree branches overarching the road felt close and comforting. Then when I was five you and I got up before Mom and you helped me bake her a cake for her birthday in my EasyBake Oven. We decorated it with leftover Valentine's Day candy hearts.) Two happy memories. And, to be charitable, one neutral memory. (When I was a bit older, eight or so, you drove Mom and I out to a big empty field and you waited in the car while she and I flew my Baby Bat kite in the spring wind.) Everything else is evil. Evil, stupid, horrible, sadistic.

I don't want to chronicle everything here. I can't chronicle everything here. Where would I start? The time when I leaned out the car window to wave goodbye to my friends at church and you rolled the window up catching my neck in the window and laughed while I struggled to breathe? The time you left me in the truck on Christmas Eve while you went into the bar and got drunk out of your mind? The time my friend Sharla spent Sunday afternoon at our house and fell asleep on the couch and you poured ice water into her ear to wake her up? All the times you beat me with your belt until I was covered in bruises and all the kids at school saw them and I made up stupid, unbelievable lies about how they got there? The time we went to the county fair and they were doing some idiotic "jail" fundraiser, and you paid them to lock me in the cattle racks and then left me while I screamed in terror? The time you got angry with me for "talking back" pulled over on the highway and made me get out at a rest stop and drove off and LEFT ME THERE?

I can't even.

No, let's concentrate on the worst. The first time you ever called me a whore. I was eight. I'd been being molested by our neighbor for at least a year. I was being molested by the neighbor that you trusted to babysit me while you and mom went to your doctor's appointments at the VA, the neighbor you let me visit frequently. The neighbor you packed me off to their house for overnight visits with the admonition: "Be good. Do as you're told. Don't make me give you a whipping for talking back."

I was in the third grade. My behavior at school was so bizarre that my teachers must have talked to you and mom about it, and I was taken to a doctor. I remember nothing about the exam, just sitting in the waiting room forever with Aunt Sue and my cousin Carolyn while Mom talked to the doctor. Later, decades later, I would find out from Aunt Sue that the doctor had told Mom that I'd been molested. Mom denied it, at first denying that the visit had taken place. When I pressed the issue, telling her every single detail I remembered, she finally admitted that the visit had taken place, that we were there, but it was my cousin Carolyn who'd been examined, not me. That Carolyn had been abused, not me. Crazy making much?

I never forgot what happened afterwards though. You and I were in the backyard. You were leaning on the propane tank and I was standing there with you. We were talking about something, when you leaned over and you said to me: "I know what you're doing over there with that dirty old man." I froze. I stopped breathing. You continued. "You're a dirty whore. You're no good. You're going to burn in hell if you keep that up."

That was your sole contribution to protecting me. To blame me. To insult and shame me. To threaten me with eternal damnation. To put the responsibility for somehow extricating myself from the situation on my shoulders, on an eight year old child. I tried, G-d, I tried. Because even though you knew what was going on, YOU STILL SENT ME OVER THERE. The next time I found myself alone, scared, with a pedophile lifting up my shirt to fondle my nonexistent breasts, I said "We can't do this any more. My Daddy suspects something is going on." "Let him suspect!" he said, and continued planting sloppy kisses on me, the saliva drying on my skin as I stood there and waited for it to be over.

I guess I lied. That's not the worst, come to think of it. Believe it or not, that's not as bad as it gets. The worst is the terrifying flashback that is always there. The nightmare that won't go away. It's not at the neighbor's house. It's not in the cellar. It's not in the workshop. It's not riding his too-big-for-me bike in the lane behind the garden with his fingers slipping inside my shorts yet again. It's not in his upstairs bathroom with a too-small washcloth clutched to my chest, staring at the light fixture in the ceiling pretending that if I can't see him, he can't see me . It's not in the study trying to perfect a headstand with his hands steadying my legs before they, inevitably, slip between my thighs. I am in my bed, in my room. I remember the padded white headboard. I remember the window and the starlight outside. I remember my nightgown around my neck, choking me. I remember the sensation of my hair being pulled. I remember heaviness on my chest. I remember feeling stiff. I remember the pain in my throat as I wanted desperately to scream, or cry, but I didn't, and the ache of holding that all back. And I remember. . . nothing else. Not who it was on top of me, not any sensation at all below my waist. Not what actually happened. Not who did it. But I suspect it was you.

Who else would have had access to our home? Who else would have been there in the middle of the night? Who else would have had that kind of power over me that I wouldn't scream for help?

I've felt confident enough to change my name. I've felt confident enough to come out to our family. I've felt confident enough to say "My father raped me." I've told my story over and over. Besides Mom, who (let's be honest here) had a stake in denying it, not one person has ever said to me "No! That's not possible! Your father would never have done such a thing." I've heard "That explains what a weird kid you were." I've heard "We suspected something was going on." I've heard "He always was a creep." I've heard "We knew it was going on at the time but what could we do? It wasn't our place to interfere." Two separate women in our family have even privately come to me and said "He did it to me too." And that's good enough for me.

But it's not good enough for my brain, apparently. The flashbacks keep coming. The memory keeps clawing at my subconscious. I don't want to remember that fully. I don't want to know any more. I don't want to be plunged any deeper into despair and terror. I just want it to go away.

But it isn't going away.