Now it wasn’t merely one child’s word but two. Then three. Soon it was half a dozen children. The specifics might have differed but the broad strokes, the gist, was the same. All the students who used to tease Sean were fusing the DNA of his story into their own personal accounts, whether they knew it or not. His narrative became the foundation for everyone else’s. Kids who pushed Sean around were following his lead, changing their stories to sound like his.
Because Sean told it best.
As more classmates gave their statements, coming forward to speak, their testimonies coalesced into a single narrative. They spoke in one voice. No longer their own, but one.
Sean. His was the voice of a generation.
DAMNED IF YOU DON’T
RICHARD: 2013
“Tamara?”
“…yeah?” she manages, her eyelids fluttering open. “Don’t forget to…” she starts, but she’s already gone. Tamara never has any problems passing out. I envy her ability to turn off at night. We’ll lie on our backs and chat for the last few breaths before sleep takes her away.
Now I’m on my own. In bed. Alone.
Liar.
An arched window looks out onto the backyard where the tree swing had been. Our bedroom is a triangular converted attic space with sloping ceilings. It’s like living in the tip of a pyramid. I’ve knocked my head on the wooden beams plenty of times. There’s not much room for furniture up here. We’ve had to make do with a shared dresser that juts out a few inches from the wall, thanks to the slant of the eaves. There are only a handful of picture frames perched on top. A photo from our wedding. Another of her family. I don’t have any photos.
“There’s something I need to tell you.” My voice is barely above a whisper. Tamara doesn’t answer. “I need to come clean.”
Isn’t that what Miss Kinderman always said?
Don’t you want to be clean?
Imagine a fib you told as a child. A little white lie. Now imagine that lie taking on a life of its own. Imagine having no control over it. If you ever did. Imagine it spreading. Growing. Imagine the consequences of that lie affecting everyone in your life. Imagine it consuming everything around you—your teachers, friends, family—until there’s nobody left.
No one to love you. Imagine that lie haunting you for the rest of your life, following you no matter how far you run away from it.
Sean Crenshaw was five when he told his mother his kindergarten teacher abused him. She told the authorities, who roped in more adults. All these unfamiliar faces surrounding Sean wanted, needed his story to be true. Remember, this was 1983. Think about the country back then. Think of the Russians infiltrating our water systems. Think of the white van without windows rolling down the street at night, trawling for kids. Think about Dungeons & Dragons and the witchcraft it possessed. Think about the incantations backtracked on your Black Sabbath album. Think about the direct line to the devil and the new slew of 1-900 numbers kids could dial up. Think about The Smurfs and the other animated incubuses sneaking into your home through the cathode portal of your TV screen. Think of the wave of paranoia sweeping the nation, riding a tide of Coca-Cola and holy crusaders sobbing on the airwaves.
Everybody felt it. The lies. The deception of our pastors, our politicians. There was always this sense that someone you knew, or thought you knew, wasn’t who they said they were.
Sean was never alone now. He had an audience. He had believers, followers hanging on his every word. He became a star witness. As more adults asked him different versions of the exact same question, feeding him key details, the boy repeated whatever he thought these adults wanted to hear. People’s hearts went out to the boy as he spoke the truth. From the mouths of babes. When he spoke, the nation listened. Why would he lie? His story made its way into the newspapers. On the nightly news. The judge tried to put a lid on the press, but the trial spilled into the court of public opinion. Everyone was talking about these kids. What their teachers had done. It wasn’t just one teacher that had abused him and his classmates anymore, but practically an entire faculty of devil worshippers. There was a cult hiding in plain sight, right here in their school, performing midnight rituals with its students…and people believed.
Six faculty members were charged with sexual assault. Never mind that there was no physical evidence, no hard-line proof to substantiate any of these stories. The students’ claims were eventually debunked, but by then it was too late for the faculty at Greenfield. Sean couldn’t keep the narrative from spreading. He didn’t know how. Marriages were destroyed. Families were torn apart, children sent to foster homes.
All because of Sean. All because of me.
“That’s not who I am,” I whisper to Tamara. “I’m a different person.”
Sean was just a little boy. Just a kid. He was scared.
Now his fear has become my fear. I’m scared because I don’t remember everything that happened. I’m scared because I can’t say for sure what’s happening now. I’m scared because this emotion does not belong to me. It belongs to someone else.
Sean is dead.
And for all intents and purposes, he is. It was easy for me to bury him, especially after I became Richard. I’m a believer in fresh starts.
But lately I feel like I’ve been living on borrowed time. Like I sold my soul to the devil thirty years ago. Now he’s coming to collect.
There were so many faces back then. Strangers emerged behind flash bulbs, bright and blinding, searing my eyes before fading. Nothing but shadows now. There are shapes within those shadows, silhouettes that take on the form of people Sean hurt. People who suffered.
I barely remember my mother. Even calling her my mother seems strange. She’s the one piece of the
