by V. J. Banis
For the first time in my life I felt a sense of shame for being female. Sorrow filled me as I continued to witness the man’s body heave with racking sobs.
It had taken all my courage to dial the incest support group in Vienna, Virginia. When a kind voice at the other end answered—I quickly hung up. I continued dialing and hanging up. After awhile the kind voice didn’t answer anymore. I vowed I would do better in the morning.
The following morning, I forced myself to redial the number. This time I stayed on the line. I heard myself tell the kind voice I suspected my father sexually abused me as a child. I had always been too ashamed to tell anyone. It had been the awful secret I’d kept for forty-three years. The kind voice reassured me she’d heard this many times before, sometimes from men and women older then me. She quietly persuaded me to attend the incest support group meeting on Thursday.
* * * *
I found myself among a room full of strangers, all experiencing the same feelings of terrible shame as myself. I was ashamed of where I had come from. I was ashamed of the way I had been treated. I was ashamed of how little I thought of myself. I was ashamed of the poverty I had endured as a child.
The strangers spoke the unspeakable. Two different men, who came from families very successful in business, had not only been molested, but spoke of being set on fire by family members. Two women whose fathers were Holocaust survivors suffered terrible abuse by them. There were several ritual abuse survivors, men and women who came from different parts of the United States and Canada all giving similar descriptions of adults willing to sacrifice children in exchange for power from Satan. There were others who had been abused by an alcoholic family member or a trusted family friend. One woman had been forced to give birth two times due to incest.
I was surprised sexual abuse of children was so common. We all feared the same thing: no one would believe what had happened to us. In 1989 and earlier, therapists and the general population considered incest rare.
* * * *
The only incident of sexual abuse I recalled took place when I was nine, going on ten. It was in the summer of 1954, and I was going to be in fifth grade in the fall. It was the same summer Aunt Dot, Uncle Herb and my cousins, Donna and Daphnia visited. They were the only relatives I and my two younger brothers, Bobby and Ralphie, had ever known. We didn’t see them very often. Mama said, “They usually come when they want something.”
My body was just beginning to develop. I carefully ignored my budding breasts, hoping they were not visible to anyone else. My heart sank when I realized I was beginning to grow pubic hair. I found my father’s razor and carefully shaved each hair as it emerged. I didn’t want to grow up. I didn’t want to become a woman. Mama was a woman and it seemed a miserable occupation.
We lived in a rat-infested house alongside of Lakeville Highway, in Petaluma, California. The cesspool was leaking and had overflowed into the crawl space. The house didn’t have regular flooring. There was a sub floor, which was rotting. Mama tried to cover the holes with throw rugs. The stench of raw sewage filled the room when a rug was accidentally moved off a hole. We saw an occasional mouse during the day. At night the rats came out.
My brothers and I gave our beds to Aunt Dot and Uncle Herb and older cousin, Daphnia. Encased in our wool blankets, supplied with a pillow, we kids listened to the scratching sounds the rats made as they ran across the yellow Formica kitchen counter. I put my pillow over my head to drown out the sound in order to sleep. Sometimes I would awaken with a start to the lumbering bump of a river rat jumping off the kitchen counter to the floor below. The last sounds I heard before I fell asleep were those made by the rats as they ran throughout the house.
* * * *
I remember it was a bright and sunny day when my father and uncle molested me. My brothers, cousins and I, were playing dominos in the house with my mother. Always troubled by lack of concentration, I soon grew restless and went outside to play. My brothers and cousins promised to be out soon. I was standing near the parsley in the garden and was looking up at the fig tree, thinking to myself how pretty the large green leaves were against the bright blue sky.
Suddenly, my reverie was broken by my father’s hand. He grabbed my breast. I was shocked. I turned and faced him. He laughed and walked away. Then Uncle Herb walked up behind me and grabbed my breast and laughed as he walked away. I was stunned.
I wondered, what have I done to cause not one man but two, to grab my breasts? What is wrong with me?
I never saw my father or uncle grab at either of my cousins, Daphnia or Donna. Both were older then me, but hadn’t shown any signs of developing. I wondered if my developing breasts had caused my father and uncle to act this way. After that, I felt even more self-conscious about my body. I felt guilty about the incident. I kept thinking there is something I must have done to have caused this. What was it?
I’ve often wondered why I’ve felt so much emotion about this one incident. Some of the others in the group were recalling rapes. I hadn’t been raped. It was just that my father and uncle hadn’t been respectful of me. They had embarrassed and frightened me. I felt humiliated by their actions. I never trusted either of them again. Nor did I trust that I could do much to prevent a recurrence. I’ve often wondered what else could have happened to me when I was a child.
* * * *
My earliest memories go back to when I was about three and living in the hamlet of Fernbridge, population 120, in northern California. We moved there when I was two, and my younger brother, Bobby, a baby. We didn’t have much. Our former residence, a small shack my parents had rented in the tiny town of Miranda, located amidst large redwoods, had burned to the ground. My mother saved Bobby and me, and the family picture album. Everything else was lost. Mama had many times begged my father to tell the landlord the wiring was giving off sparks, but my father never bothered to say anything.
Our apartment in Fernbridge was located along Highway 101. It was an ancient yellow store, box like, with large storefront windows. The high front porch had probably been a loading dock. Bobby and I were forbidden to leave its confines. We spent endless hours on that hard, wooden porch, grayed with age. I felt life, like the cars we watched, was running past my brother and me.
Bobby and I developed our own special language when he was three and I was four and a half. Bobby was remarkably creative at a very early age. He was the one who invented most of the language. The only word I can remember is “batty bola,” which meant “crazy.” We were little more then toddlers, yet we felt the need to have a word for crazy.
Bobby and I happily spoke our language in front of Mama. We were pleased she didn’t know what we were saying. I have since learned it is much more common for twins, rather than non-twins, to have their own language.
About this time, I began to realize that I could see things others couldn’t. When I closed my eyes while sitting on the porch, I saw wonderful things. I called them “my pictures.” I saw gray stone castles on high hills.
I saw churches and cathedrals with ceilings almost reaching the sky. I didn’t know the term “flying buttress” as a child. The churches and cathedrals I saw had ceilings supported by flying buttress masonry. Most were in the Gothic style. The churches were huge and had many pews of fine polished wood. I was in awe of their beauty.
I saw ivy covered stone cottages with thatched roofs in vast green fields. Some of the cottages had stone fences around them. During this time and later, I often dreamed about the castles, churches and cathedrals, and the ivy covered stone cottages. The dreams were so real; I felt I was right there.
In kindergarten and first grade, when the teacher read us a story, we were told to “put our heads down to rest.” I discovered when I closed my eyes I could see “my pictures” of the ivy covered stone cottages. Sometimes my teachers would get annoyed because they thought I had fallen asleep. I wasn’t asleep. I was listening to them as they read their stories, and intently watching “my pictures.”
Bobby and I often played in the dirt in the large wooden flower boxes on the front porch. On the outside of our apartment, thirteen hard, wooden stairs led up from our residence to the one above, where the elderly landlord, Mr. Bailey and his anxious German wife lived. In 1948, Mr. Bailey owned most of the real estate in Fernbridge. This consisted of a water tank house, where a family of five lived; a couple of houses in poor repair, several houses in fair shape, and a couple of nicer houses, plus the two story “apartment building” we lived in. All the buildings were at least fifty years old then.
Mr. Bailey was the richest man in Fernbridge. He was the only man who could afford a topcoat in winter. Mama said birdlike Mrs. Bailey never ate anything, “She lives off cigarettes and coffee.” I wondered how anyone could live without food.
Mrs. Bailey had a grown son, Durante. He was about forty years old and big. Durante had a big red nose, and a big red face. He was always drunk and angry. Sometimes we heard loud fights upstairs when he visited Mr. and Mrs. Bailey.
I slept in my parents’ room when I was four and a half, in an iron crib with blue chipped paint. Bobby slept in the small bedroom off the kitchen, with The Little Boy Blue wallpaper. My crib was located under three, tall store front windows, which were about six feet high.
One night I suddenly awoke to bright lights, loud voices, moans, and the sound of my father swearing. When I got out of bed, I nearly walked into broken glass that was on the floor all around me. I went to the living room and peeked out the front door. There on the porch was my father in his underwear, yelling at the top of his lungs to a cowering Durante.
“Durante, you are nothing but a goddamned son-of-a-bitch!”
My father, a Humboldt County deputy sheriff, already had him in handcuffs. I heard sirens in the distance.
Durante, drunk, had beat up his mother and stepfather, then rolled them both down the thirteen hard, wooden stairs. After that, he broke all the windows in the front of the apartment, except the one above my head. All the curtains and shades had been drawn. Durante had no way of knowing where I slept.
When the police arrived, they saw my father, still in his underwear, standing over Durante, swearing and pointing his police revolver at him. There was no fight left in Durante. He looked scared, and more sober than I had ever seen him.
An ambulance took Mr. and Mrs. Bailey to the hospital. They never returned to their upstairs apartment. My parents marveled at why Durante hadn’t punched out the window I slept under. They often told me, “Wanda, you could have been scarred for life!”
I was thankful I had been spared.
* * * *
There are so many things I don’t understand, like why do I have so much rage? My rage resembles endless lava spewing from a volcano. At times, I can’t become angry enough to express the intensity of my feelings. Anger nudges me, even when I’m not provoked. My stomach hurts from carrying it. My anger gets heavy and tiresome and has been with me for as long as I can remember, even in early childhood.
I recall an incident in third grade, when I was eight. The elementary school I attended was south of Fernbridge, in the small town of Fortuna. It was a chilly day. Mrs. Ogle, our diminutive teacher, allowed my best friend, Sarah, and me, to stay indoors because we both had colds. Our classmates were at recess. At first, Sarah and I happily drew pictures on the blackboard. I soon became tired of it and suggested we look inside our classmate’s desks. Sarah hesitantly went along with my suggestion. In Janet McDonald’s desk I found a ring with a blue stone.
Janet wore a clean starched dress to school everyday, and her hair was neatly braided. She had all the food she wanted. Janet bordered on being plump. Sometimes she whined. I considered Janet a whinny crybaby. Before Sarah or I realized what I was doing, I put Janet’s ring on the floor and jumped on it. I remember feeling a sense of satisfaction when I saw the stone was bent almost out of the ring. Sarah, who usually wore a smile, looked at me in horror.
Our classmates returned from recess. Sarah sat quietly at her desk, her face pale with fright, her brown eyes focused on her folded hands. I sat at my desk waiting.
When Janet McDonald opened her desk and saw her ring, she let out a cry.
“My ring! Someone’s broken my ring!”
The class sat in stunned silence.
“Who did this?” Mrs. Ogle demanded.
The silence in the classroom continued. Suddenly, as if she could stand it no longer, Sarah blurted out, “Wanda did it!”
Stern Mrs. Ogle marched to my desk. She had been a WAC in WWII.
“Stand up!” she demanded.
Mrs. Ogle always stood ramrod straight. She was little more than a head taller than me. She gripped my face up to hers. “Why did you do such a thing?” My stomach had a knot in it and my neck hurt from Mrs. Ogle gripping my face.
“I don’t know,” I said. I knew ‘I don’t know’ was a lame excuse. Janet McDonald had never done anything to me.
“We will have to call your mother, Wanda,” Mrs. Ogle said.
“I know,” I said, as my heart sank.
Mama did what I knew she would do. She offered to spank me with the wooden paddle she always used. I was spanked a lot more often, harder and longer, than my brothers, because Mama said, “You are a lot brattier.”
Mrs. Ogle didn’t like the idea of my being spanked. She suggested my mother and two brothers have a special treat and not include me. My mother, who rarely had more then twenty cents at a time in her purse, was able to fund 7-Up floats for her and my two younger brothers. I remember I didn’t care.
While they were enjoying their floats, I asked, “Can I go up to Peggy Wilson’s house and swing on the wood swing?”
Maybe my mother wanted me out of her sight, but she gave me permission to do one of my favorite things.
“Oh, go on,” she muttered, as she looked at the floor in disgust.
I remember thinking to myself; this isn’t much of a punishment!
Peggy Wilson’s house was on top of the hill. She was president of the PTA. We often saw her car speeding on the way to somewhere. Mama used to ask, “Why doesn’t that woman stay home once in awhile?”
Peggy wasn’t home that day. Sometimes she called Mama to send me up to her house so that she could do my hair. Mama often said, “I think Peggy Wilson is a frustrated beautician.” She usually made my blond curls into ringlets. Peggy had a daughter, Patty, who was my age. Patty’s hair was straight as pins. My brother, Bobby, and I had blond curly hair and big blue eyes. Sometimes even strangers stopped our parents on the street to say what beautiful children we were.
At times when Peggy was fixing my hair, she’d say things like, “Wanda, if you ever need any help just let me know.”
Come to think of it, other neighbors told me the same thing. I remember once, a girlfriend of one of my father’s friends mentioned the possibility of my needing help. Whenever anyone told me this I would think to myself, now aren’t they nice. I would feel warm and cared for, and vaguely wonder why they brought it up.
It was wonderful swinging high above the green rolling hills of Fernbridge. Mama said, “Fernbridge is a place you want to drive on by.” To be sure; it got foggy, rained a lot, and sometimes you didn’t see the sun until afternoon, if at all. The moan of foghorns could often be heard coming from the bay in Eureka, north of Fernbridge.
The bay city of Eureka and the hamlet of Fernbridge are located in Humboldt County, California, a place I’ve always considered God’s country. Much of the county is covered with high mountains. In my childhood, redwood and pine forests were abundant. Many trees still stand.
On this particular day, the sky was bright blue with cotton clouds. A gentle breeze played on my cheeks as I looked down the hill to the once tame, variegated roses, now growing in wild pink-white profusion. The roses were one of my secret joys. I loved their fragrance and the cool silken feel of their petals. As I stretched my legs to pump the swing even higher, I too, wondered why I had stepped on Janet McDonald’s ring.
Years later, Mama said she and Mrs. Ogle had a number of meetings about me. At one meeting Mrs. Ogle told my mother she thought I was emotionally disturbed. She had wanted to adopt me. Mama declined. I never realized, as a child, how much stern Mrs. Ogle cared for me. As an adult, I learned several other people had also wanted to adopt me. My parents were unwilling to relinquish me.
Later one of my therapists would tell me, “A child has to stand out in a very negative way for people to offer to adopt her, particularly when she has two living parents.”
* * * *
My decision to attend the incest support group had been a good one. Prior to this, I’d seen therapists off and on since I had been on my own as an eighteen-year-old. I desperately searched for answers. I’d set goals for myself. I would begin to feel hopeful and promise myself, I’ll find out what is wrong with me by the time I’m twenty-one.
Age twenty-one would pass without my learning what the big problem was. Then I would set a new goal for age twenty-five, and then thirty.
Because I had few memories of actual sexual abuse, and was too scared and ashamed to give the details of what little I did remember, therapists would end up telling me I was neurotic. This diagnosis made me feel I was weak willed and stupid and that the problems were really my own fault.
I spent a lot of time blaming myself for the symptoms I lived with. There were recurring bouts of depression; times when I was particularly shaky, and had no appetite, and rapidly lost weight.
I lived with a lot of fear. I was afraid someone would hurt me or my two children. I rarely attempted to learn anything new because I was so afraid of failure. I thought when I failed at something; it was a sure indication I was a failure. I had never been told that failures are just a part of learning; everyone fails at one time or another.
I didn’t know the meaning of relaxation the first forty-six years of my life. I was usually “wired” and reactive. People commented on my defensiveness. Feeling anxious was a natural state for me.