“I’m just going to put this wet washcloth on your head to help cool you off,” she said impatiently. “You have a fever.”
But I didn’t believe her. It was a trick. She wanted me to stay still so she could murder me. I kept on kicking and screaming until she finally gave up and left me alone. I fell back to sleep, weary and on guard.
I was afraid of my mother after that. I knew she was capable of killing me at any time, especially when she was drunk. Later, when I was a teenager and had my own room, she would get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and would often wander into my room by mistake. I would tell her in my bravest voice, “Go back to bed, Mom,” but deep inside the fear remained, no matter how I fought it with logic.
Some psychotherapists might say I was afraid of my mother killing me because I had so much guilt over what I’d done to Linda, or that it was a manifestation of my own self-loathing. Those things may be true. But I also had a deep sense that my mother hated me at times, especially when I embarrassed her or kept her awake at night. And I believed that she resented having to take care of me so much that she was capable of at least contemplating murdering me. I too sometimes had overwhelming urges to hurt people, both conscious and unconscious. So I guess you can say that it takes one to know one. We both had a lot of darkness in our hearts.
Nothing that had been done to me or that I’d done to others at this point in my life compared with what was about to happen. In order to make some money, I started babysitting. I was now eleven years old and in the sixth grade, and this meant that some people thought I was old enough to watch their children.
My first job was babysitting a one-year-old boy. He’d been sleeping when I arrived, but now his parents were gone and he was crying and needed his diaper changed. I was nervous about doing it. I’d always been afraid I’d accidently stick babies with the safety pins if I changed their diapers, and now this was my first real diaper-changing experience.
When I took his diaper off I became fixated on his little penis. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Suddenly I had the overwhelming urge to suck it.
A wave of disgust rushed over me like a river of raw sewage. I was horrified with myself. I felt filthy and rotten and inhuman. I stood motionless, as if I were a statue made of stone.
Slowly the sinister impulse drained out of my body and I was left with only feelings of horrendous shame. “What’s wrong with me?” I heard myself say out loud. And silently, What kind of a monster am I?
I don’t know what stopped me from molesting that little boy, but something did. Something inside me stopped me from doing what had been done to me. Something so good or so strong that it was powerful enough to override my dark impulse. Thank God.
The fact that I hadn’t acted on that horrible impulse and molested that little boy didn’t take away the fact that I’d thought about doing it, however. In that moment I felt like I had discovered who I really was: a monster. I made a decision right then to never babysit that boy, or any boy child, again.
After Steve molested me, strange sexual feelings seemed to course through my body. I never had the urge to masturbate, but I rubbed my vagina up against doorknobs to ease the anxiety and uncomfortable feelings I had in my genitals. I convinced the twins to take off all of their clothes. I pretended to take nude pictures of Linda. I had so much envy and hatred in my heart for Linda—who was still innocent, who had a mother and a father who cared about her and protected her—that I let go of her hands and sent her flying.
But this was more than I could take. Now I was as bad as Steve. I had the same kind of sick, horrible thoughts as a child molester. I just couldn’t seem to stop myself from thinking and doing nasty, dirty things.
My mother didn’t believe me about Steve.
Ruby hated me.
I’d lost Pamela, my closest, dearest friend.
I couldn’t fit in with kids my age and I wasn’t supposed to be around the older kids that I could relate to.
I was completely lost and alone. Not even Jesus could help me.
part three
the danger zone
“A person who has nothing to lose is the scariest person on earth.”
—Shannon L. Alder
chapter 19
I was going to be entering junior high and my new school was too far for me to walk to from Lake Street. Since my mother still didn’t have a car, it made sense for us to move again. Our new house was also a lot closer to my mother’s new job at Pipkin’s Drug Store in Hillcrest.
When I heard we’d be moving, I felt happy to be leaving Lake Street. So many bad things had happened to me there, and the entire neighborhood knew what a horrible person I was. This was going to be my chance to have a fresh start. I was going to a place where I could turn over a new leaf, a place where I could look people in the eyes.
The events of the past few years had toughened me up. We were moving too far away for Pam to walk to my house, but I now knew how to handle loss a lot better. Besides,
