by Donna Bishop
There I am, a little girl running and skipping on a breezy ocean beach. The thread between us is thick and bright, pulsing like a living umbilical cord. It joins our hearts — the energy she projects is strong. I resist merging with her, imagining myself as this younger version of me and feeling also like she is not me, not who I am now.
It’s White Rock beach, near where I grew up. I see the big white, painted and repainted rock.
This was my favourite place in all the world when I was a girl. I loved having the freedom to explore and discover the treasures that washed up on the beach. The rock was the biggest one I had ever seen, a graffiti rock since the 1920’s. I loved reading all the words and seeing the hearts, names and swear words that would appear each year, before they repainted it white again in spring. No matter how far I’d wander out in the shallow tidal pools, I wouldn’t get lost because I could always count on being able to see that rock and figure out where my family was in relation to it.
She’s six years old, wearing a red bathing suit with a white ruffle, like a skirt, below the waist. God, she looks so much like my little Molly!
Dreamily, I float and hover very close to my little self. I can see silver glints in the distance as the salty sea breeze gusts and blows her blonde puppy dog tails loose and strands of hair brush across her freckled nose.
Her small footprints in the sand fill in with water and are erased and absorbed by the beach. They’re tentative prints — she dances lightly and gingerly around the bubbling holes in the dark grey, wet sand, not wishing to disturb the clams, sand dollars and tiny crabs below. Delighting at the sensation but worrying about the responsibility.
Art, my oldest brother, catches up and grabs little Liv by the arms and twirls her around in the shallow, warm tidal pool. Her laughter bubbles up straight from her belly and touches my adult heart with such a happy jolt that I can no longer resist joining her and being one with her.
Quickly, though, my laughter turns to shrill screams as Lee and Gord, seven and twelve years old, pick up bullwhips — those long strappy, olive-coloured strings of bulbous kelp — and swing them at Art and me, whipping our legs! The salty brine stings my eyes as it splashes up. Art says, “Bug off!” and they run away, flinging sand at each other.
There’s Mom, down the beach, calling us to come and have some fish and chips on the logs. We run.
My baby brother, Alex, is fast asleep in a buggy upholstered in faded teal vinyl beside Mom. His black hair is shiny and thick and his chubby cheeks are rosy, like baby Snow White.
Mom hands out the fish and chips, bundled in newspaper — little me delights in the mouthwatering crunch of golden-brown crispy fish with a splash of sour, malty vinegar and unpeeled potato fries smothered in dark red ketchup. Root beer in beer bottles from home are uncapped by Gordon and passed around. Froth foams down the sides, as they have been shaken.
Dad is sitting off to one side with his sunglasses on, drinking a bottle of real beer, the one with the green and red label with cowboys and Indians on it. He smiles toward our mother and motions her to bring him his fish and chips. It isn’t the drunk smile I spent my childhood running from. It looks real. When we’re finished eating, Mom asks Dad to help us build a sandcastle and, to my surprise, he gets up willingly.
We have one large orange plastic sand pail — an empty Neapolitan No Name brand ice-cream bucket — and two red plastic shovels, as well as some wooden pixie stick spoons. We each have a job. Mine is to fill the bucket with sand. Art and Gord take turns dumping it and shaping the mounds into a castle, while Lee takes a shovel and begins to dig a trench all the way around. Dad has some good ideas about making moats and bridges using driftwood and explains that this is because he’s worked as a bridge builder. I tell him that he’s a good builder. My six-year-old heart is soaring and I am feeling like I’m in an episode of Father Knows Best or Leave it to Beaver — I like to imagine belonging to families like them. The sand castle is spectacular! No one is fighting or yelling or crying.
Art and Gord run down the beach in search of a piece of driftwood to serve as a drawbridge and Lee heads to the picnic basket for a drink.
Dad picks up his beer and downs the last mouthful, looks at me with this funny, sort of twisted smile and then he touches my leg, up high beneath the white skirt of my bathing suit. I flinch and freeze, bracing for more, terrified that someone will see. Quite suddenly my sandy legs are covered in goose-bumps and I can’t stop shivering. He moves his hand away.
Oh God, I don’t want to remember what my dad did to me. But I want to spend more time with my family and with little Liv.
“It’s okay. Take a deep breath and just go a little further, to where you’re feeling safe….”
Mom calls to me. “Honey, you look cold! Come and get a towel.”
Relieved, I run to her. She’s moved Alex closer to where we built the castle — he’s awake now and splashing in the shallows and shoving sand in this mouth. She pulls me into her lap, wraps me in a towel and gives me a warming snuggle. She’s wearing red lipstick and her hair is dark red and done in pin-curls — the kind where you roll little bunches of your hair around your finger up to your scalp, then fix them with two bobby pins in the shape of an X. I notice she’s forgotten to take out one of the bobby pins.
Wrapped up on her lap, I feel so warm and safe. I recognize the perfume she always wore — White Shoulders, kind of like flowers and sweet spice mixed together. I touch her skirt, it’s soft cotton, a tropical print in shades of green and purple. Then I reach up to touch the stiff collar of her loose-fitting white shirt — a man’s shirt, my Dad’s. I see the outline of her white bra.
Looking up into my Mom’s jade green eyes I see the reflection of the sun and the sea. I suddenly realize that had had my mother known my dad was sexually abusing me, she would have protected me. My mother most certainly loved me. My brothers weren’t monsters. My father was sometimes an okay dad. There must have been other times like this.
In the distance, across the bay towards Point Roberts, I see a flash of fin and a silver splash — a whale is breaching and it takes my breath away. I jump out of Mom’s lap, run to one of the great driftwood logs and clamber up, hoping to see more of the whale. It breeches again and, against a watery field of shimmering blue, I see its magnificent body rise up and arch over, creating a powerful splash. As its tail sinks tantalizingly out of sight, I reach my arms up in the air and breach my back like the whale. I jump down off the log and run across the sand, feeling freedom in my limbs. Carefree!
Breaking away from little Liv, I leave her in this beautiful state of childish wonder — she’s down at the waterline, playing a game with the ocean, chasing the waves as they retreat and trying to evade them when they rush to shore. She’s revelling in the sensations of being alive — the wind in her hair, the sun on her skin, the yielding sand beneath her feet.
As I retreat, I can’t take my eyes off her — she’s a splash of red and white engaged in a private dance with the ceaseless ocean. I’m struck by the metallic reflection of the sky on the tips of the waves, and then the light kind of lifts off the water and gathers around her like a living aura. With her every movement it follows her, wavering and glowing.
I whisper a promise to her that I’ll keep her safely in my heart and I’ll tell her story if she wants me to. And I want to.
Celeste waits through several seconds of silence, and then speaks in a gentle, soothing voice.
“Liv, I’m right here. Join me in the present.” Liv opens her eyes and meets Celeste’s gaze with a look of utter sadness, then closes them again.
“You can tell me. You’re no longer in hypnosis, but I’ll leave the recorder on if you like and you can tell me.”
“Okay.” Her voice is very soft.
“In my tiny bedroom, I would lay awake, listening. I could often hear mice scurrying around inside the walls, a sound that didn’t faze me. My imagination worked frantically to create stories about the families of mice. They would le
ad me into their world. The water stains on my ceiling became constellations of stars. The stars would become dolphins and swim in the sea with mermaids and starfish and the mice would be on little boats made of matchstick boxes, bravely trying to stay afloat.”
Liv’s voice grows louder and more sure as the words, long unspoken, are set free.
“As his footsteps crept down the hall I shut my eyes tight and pulled the blankets over my head. I couldn’t bear to see the last vestige of light from the moon disappear when he quietly closed the door behind him. My stomach would begin to churn. My heart would beat faster. It was then that my imagination couldn’t take me far enough away. Even the mice ran into their dark holes. There was no hiding. It was a little bit like the hypnotic state I’m learning about with you, except I wasn’t in control. As my father came closer to me and pulled my covers down, I gave up and became a witness to what was happening to me. I realize now that was when Hannah’s spirit would come to me. I’m sure of that now. I sensed her presence. She would take my hand and we would bond, just as we have in our sessions.
“Moments ago, in hypnosis, with little Liv on the beach, I felt Hannah was with me again. When my father touched my leg, I sensed her rushing to my rescue. When times got rough, she would be with me and together we would roll into the deep waves, knowing we could tumble and bruise, but we could never fall in and drown, no matter how stormy it got.
“We were like two pirate princesses in a glass bottle, in our own world of make-believe. I was never truly alone. Her eyes would reassure me that I would survive the rough waves, rough hands, the bitter smell of tobacco mixed with alcohol and spit… my stolen childhood.”
Celeste shifts over onto the couch beside her. She reaches for the ever-present box of tissues, hands several to Liv, and takes a few for herself.
“Oh Celeste, thank you for being you and for not being freaked out by my past. I’ve never told anyone about the abuse, because the last thing I ever wanted was for people to pity me or even to feel hatred towards my dad.”
“Liv, I sit in honour of you, and in rage about the sexual abuse you suffered as a child. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry for what you went through.”
Celeste pauses for a few moments and wraps Celeste in a warm embrace.
“There is no need for you to relive that, Liv — we won’t use hypnosis to return to that time again. It was never, ever your fault or your responsibility.”
“I know. I know that now. But Celeste, I think I need to tell you about what my father did to me. Are you okay with that?”
“Whatever you need to say, I am able to hear.”
“My memories of the abuse are strong and some are very detailed and disturbing. But I couldn't tell you how often it happened. I think it started when I was very small, three or four years old, maybe earlier, but it’s definitely tied in with my earliest memories.
“I know it was happening before I started school because it was when I had an orange cat named Penny. Our cats weren’t allowed indoors but some nights I sneaked her in through my bedroom window and she would gratefully curl up on my pillow, and her purring in my ear would finally lull me to sleep. One night she came in with a tiny newborn kitten in her mouth. She dropped it onto my pillow then pounced out the window to retrieve three more mewling kittens. I stayed awake all night, watching them in awe and afraid if I fell asleep they would disappear.
“A few days later, looking out my bedroom window I saw my dad pushing a burlap sack into a bucket full of water. He held it there for several minutes, long enough for him to smoke a cigarette, and then he threw the sack in the fire barrel by the garage. I couldn’t bear to look. I knew it was the kittens.”
“Your father betrayed you in so many ways, my friend.”
“After that, when my dad would come into my room and shove Penny off the bed, I felt less in a dream state, but instead more alert, afraid and angry. How could he do that to her? How could he do this to me? Before then, I hadn’t known what to feel.
“Penny was hit by a car and killed when I was in grade one, so the abuse was happening when I was five, and even younger.”
“Oh, poor Liv. Penny was a comfort to you and then she was gone.”
“It always happened when he was drunk and that was either when he was out of work or during the weekend. When he was sober, he was the quietest man, usually pretty negative and critical, but he never raised his voice. We all lived in fear of him when he was drinking. One time, he was out of his mind on what Mom called “moonshine.” Mom knew he was going to get violent when he started shouting, calling her terrible names. She quickly herded us into the boy’s bedroom and we pushed with all our might against the door as Dad was bashing his body against it, trying to get in and shouting horrible things. Finally, Mom yelled at him to stop and said she would come out and they could talk. She told him to sit down at the kitchen table and calm down. But when she went out he must’ve hit her in the face because we heard a loud crack and then she shouted that her glasses were broken and there was no money to buy new ones because he was a ‘useless piece of shit.’ Then we heard breaking plates and the front door slammed, the car started and peeled down the long gravel driveway so fast the rocks sprayed the bedroom window.
“He would hurt my brothers in different ways. It would usually start with him demanding they do something, and if they didn’t cower or appease him to his satisfaction, he would call them names or lash out and slap them or kick them.
“My brothers saw me as the favoured child because Dad didn’t yell at me or hit me like he did them — they didn’t know my abuse was secret, carried out in the middle of the night.
“I’m sure my mother never knew what he did to me. She would have left him, for sure. Or would she? She didn’t leave when he struck her and belittled her and my brothers. As an adult with kids of my own now I see that at night, she was probably exhausted from looking after us, trying to make ends meet on no money, and grateful when he passed out in his chair rather than joining her in their bed. Their room was at the opposite end of the small house and the TV was always blaring until after the 11:00 news was over, so she wouldn’t have heard anything from her bedroom. She also took pills to help her sleep. Mother’s Little Helpers, like the Rolling Stones song….
“I was so young, I wouldn’t have had words to describe what he was doing to me. But somehow I knew it was wrong and dirty — my mom had taught us not to talk about our private parts or anybody else’s. I didn't want to be wrong or dirty. I wanted to be a good girl.”
“It wasn't your fault or your choice, Liv. You were a good girl.”
“What he did — it wasn't intercourse. I guess you'd call it molestation. He would pull my pajama bottoms down and rub my vagina and stick his fingers inside with one hand. I would hear the sound of his pants zipper coming undone. With his other hand he touched himself and I imagine he ejaculated into a wad of toilet paper he would take out of his pocket. I remember the sound of the paper and the smell of his hands and his breath. There were no words from him, only ‘shhhh’ if he sensed I was waking up — but for the most part, I kept my eyes tightly closed and pretended to be asleep. Somehow, I knew I had to do that. I have a vague memory of him putting his hand over my mouth and nose to stop me from talking or crying or asking questions. I think it would have been intercourse eventually, like he was grooming me for it. He put my hand on his penis when I was a bit older, nine or ten, wanting me to rub it I guess, but I continued to pretend I was asleep.
“From preschool age onward, I got terrible yeast infections and stomach aches. Mom took me to the doctor several times, and even to the hospital on a few occasions. The pain in my abdomen was so bad once, and the infection count so high in my blood, that the surgeon was about to remove my appendix. A last-minute urine test confirmed it was a severe urinary tract infection, so the surgery was called off. Soon after, our doctor told me I had to clean myself more thoroughly and gave my mom a talking to about keeping the bathroom clean — he assumed
it wasn’t being kept clean enough with seven people sharing one toilet, the boys peeing on the seat, and so on. Of course, all I heard was that I was dirty. So, I started to clean myself all the time, trying to clean my disgusting body, rubbing and rubbing, using lots of soap, especially on the mornings after my father’s visits to my bedroom. I got so sore.
“I remember my mom giving me heck for using too much toilet paper. She told me not to wipe myself so much. She got a huge box of cornstarch — I called it my rooster powder because it had a picture of a rooster on the box. I remember crying in pain in the morning after peeing, blood on the toilet paper, running to my mom to tell her, ‘I need my rooster powder.’ She’d make a paste and put it on my vagina to soothe the flaming skin. When I got to be a bit older, I put it on myself.”
“What was that doctor thinking?” Celeste’s voice is incredulous. “You would think he would suspect that a little girl whose vagina is being rubbed raw is being interfered with.”
“I know, Celeste. I sometimes wonder that too.”
“I guess things were different then. Sexual abuse was a hidden, unacknowledged phenomenon, but it existed all the same. Now we know how common it is — there are statistics showing that one in three girls and one in six boys are sexually abused. Nobody knew that then and nobody talked about it. I am so glad that even in elementary schools now, they teach kids that it’s okay to talk about this stuff and to ask for help.”
“Yeah, there wasn’t anything like a Children’s Help Line I could have called back then. There were some kind people who knew our family was struggling and they kept an eye out for us kids, but I never considered telling them about the abuse. Pop, for instance, the dairy farmer next door. He must have known something was off with our family. He hired me for twenty-five cents a day to help him round up the cows every afternoon. I reveled in our calm, gentle control of the cows as we clapped our hands and yelled ‘come-on ladies’ and marched them up the hill.