runningfromhellwithel

Little El sits really still and doesn’t move.  He hunts her.  They are coming.  If I were there with her now, with the rest of her family hovering over her and screaming at her, maybe I would finally say all the things she buried and stuffed inside.

The best times in my childhood were the ones I spent hoping and dreaming for something better to happen.  I never lived in the moment because the moments hurt too much.  I dreamed of a different life in a place where I felt safe; I roamed through galaxies and across oceans and skipped over decades and leaped forward into the creases of a future I could never make come alive.  The miracle is not so much that made it to the here and now: the miracle is that I made that future come alive.

And there is something I need to take care of for little El.  I need to travel back and provide a reckoning.  And this time, I write the story.  This time, I speak for little El and protect her and while it’s just a fantasy, the child inside me needs this.  She needs a reckoning.

Big El walks into the new house and little El runs to greet her.  In the split-second before they hug, the adult body transmogrifies with a successive, cascading version of little Els, until younger versions of me rejoin and reunite inside of me.  I am little El and Big El and I carry her easily inside of me and when I breathe, she does too.  I got you now, little El, and if you need to talk, I will say it for you.  They can’t touch you anymore.  I feel her relax and lay her head on my shoulder and I know she’s staring at my weathered boots.  Yep, still got them.  It’s ass-kicking time.

I’m three years old and my hair tumbles over my shoulder.  My bathing suit is red white and blue.  I hate the sand.  Someone shoves a finger under my bathing suit and I don’t know who it is but I kick him in the head and run, yelling like a German Warrior Princess, into the ocean’s welcoming arms.

I’m four and Mom sends me upstairs to give Dad a massage and hands me funky tools from the kitchen.  I glare at her and throw the sex toys right back at her.  One of them hits her face and she cries in shock.  “What did you do that for?”  Over my shoulder I yell, “Don’t pretend you don’t know you fucking idiot.”  And I slam the door behind me.

Dad lies on the bed waiting for me, and I laugh at the green bedspread.  He waits and I break his whiskey bottle over his head.  “The priest I talked to said that you need to ask God to forgive you.  It’s above my pay grade apparently.  And here’s an extra blow to your head for the weird stirring I feel in my vagina.  Y’all are the ones who created the synaptic connection between getting turned on sexually and people hurting me.”

I’m 5.  I take Tonto and Lone Ranger away from Barbie.  They are raping her and I won’t stand for it.  “Boys, don’t touch my doll.  If you can’t play nice, you can’t play in my home,” and I ceremoniously cut their heads off and lay them into the trashcan.  They’re lucky I did not quarter them.   Quartering hurts more but I don’t believe in torture.

I’m 11.  Vaughan struts past me and stares at my breasts through my white blouse.  “Ooh, boobs,” he exclaims, and reaches out to grab them.  Before he lays a hand on me, I cold-cock him in the head and knock him to the ground.  “Vaughan, you better study harder in college because your NFL career will only last 4 years.  Oh and remember what your coach will yell at you when you drop easy passes: ‘NFL stands for Not For Long if you can’t hold on to the ball.’”

I’m 11.   I smell his whiskey and hear the ice cubes tinkling in his Manhattan glass.  He motions for me to sit on his lap and when I do, he runs his hand over my breasts.  I reach over to the lamp where his glass rests and pour it over his head and punch him in the face.  “Don’t ever touch me again you sick drunk bastard,” I yell, and I run out of the house and never stop.

I’m 12.  I got drunk the night before and passed out unconscious in the basement.  That is when the rape occurred and it may have taken me years to piece this together and I still doubt the shattered shards of images but the blood and the aching in my loins don’t lie.  I sit on the porch retching and my demon-mom is screaming at the top of her lungs, “You little bitch!  You slut!!  How could you do this!!  I hate you! You make me sick you little bitch, and now you will run and keep running until I say you can stop.”

She grabs her Schwinn and I stride over to her and slap her upside the head as hard as I can.  And with super-human strength I throw her copper-colored Schwinn.  It levitates and flies higher and higher until it breaks into as many pieces as my soul once was in.  And then I stalk towards her and in a measured voice I state, “You failed me.  You failed me over and over.  You want to know why I took my love and held it tightly inside me, where you cannot access it?  Because you are unworthy of me and everything that I am and was and will be.  I never asked to be raped and molested.  No girl ever asks for it. And stop crying.  For once this isn’t about you.  This is my story and you need to get your sick self back in the house and leave me alone.  Go hunt down your son or your husband and figure out who did this to me and get me the help I need.  Don’t ship me off to summer camp tomorrow morning.  Don’t pretend everything is okay and pat yourself on the back for holding this shitbox of a family together.  This is your chance and if you fail me now, you failed me forever.”

I’m all different ages and Dad leers at me and grabs my ass and I take my elbow and whack him in the nose.  Blood flows down and I hiss, “Leave me the hell alone.”  My brother punches me over and over and I grab a hammer from the garage and take it to him.  He yelps in pain and screams, “But you made me do it!  It’s your fault I beat you every day.”  I shake my head and reply, “You will become a drunk just like your father.  Have fun with that.”

I’m 15 and yet again Mom launches into an hour-long tirade.  Instead of tuning out the jaded speech and storing it in my brain to listen to on auto-replay, I jump out of bed and argue with her ferociously.  “You stupid bitch,” she screams.  “Bullshit.  I have a 145 IQ. “  She stares at me in shock, and then continues, “You’re an ungrateful piece of shit and you’re fat and you’re going to end of working at K-Mart and never amount to anything.”  I laugh at her angrily.  “No, Mom.  I graduated from William and Mary Law School with top grades.  I represented some of the largest corporations in the country and was earning $145,000 until I get pregnant with my children-the very same ones you will tell me not to have.  I had them and I love them and it’s kind of ironic because the one thing you said I could do, write fiction, is what I’m doing now.  But I don’t write for you or for Dad or for anyone.  I write for the same reason a bird sings: because I have to and I love to and I must and no one, nothing, can take that away from me, not even you.”  With that last retort I grab her my the shoulder, fling my door open, and in a booming voice cry out, “Now get the hell out of my room and stay out!”

I’m 18.  My brother is home from college and I’m wearing tight Guess jeans and I’d trade a few years off the end of my life to have that lithe body back, right up until the time he throws me down on the sofa and climbs on top of me.  I cannot move and his dick is pressing into me and it hurts through my jeans and I don’t know what to do . . . but wait, yes I do.  “GET OFF!!!  Get off me or I swear to God I am going to kill you.”  I fight back with all I have and that is when his girlfriend walks into the room, and his eyes get all luminous and he lets me go and grabs her and starts to grind into her instead of me.  I don’t walk out of the room.  I give him a boot to the head and as he examines the tread marks I’ve left, I glare at his future wife and say, “He’s a sick pervert.  Didn’t you see what he was doing to me?  Do you really want to give up your career as a rocket scientist for an alcoholic asshole?  And brother, you had better hope there are no unsolved crimes in our neighborhood.”

I’m 25.  I keep having rape nightmares and when I tell my Mom, I don’t accept her response.  She says, “Well, your brother always was a horny bastard, but I don’t remember him doing anything like that to you,” and instead of staring at the phone and acquiescing silently, I say, “Bullshit.  You let us sleep together. You sent me up to give Dad massages.  You knew what happened the night I was raped and you blamed me.  You hit me and screamed at me and abused the hell out of me, all of you, and now you’re too much of a coward to face it.  Just know this: I know what all of you did.  And I will pray that you find a reckoning for your sins.”

I’m 32.  My daughter is 6 months old.  We’re visiting my parents’ house and my mom volunteers to change her diaper.  My Dad watches and then he says in front of my husband and in front of me, “Wow, she is gorgeous.  Maddie reminds me of an angel in a centerfold.”  My husband and I stare at one another in shock.  I had told him about the flashbacks and dreams and jigsaw puzzle-like memories that inhabit my brain, but it doesn’t click until he hears my father speak these chilling words.  Instead of laughing uncomfortably, Travis grabs my father by the shirt collar and throws the older, smaller man up against the wall.  “You touch my girl, and I will fucking kill you,” he growls.  Travis nods at me and runs upstairs to collect our daughter.  “Go warm up the car, El,” he orders.  “I’ll be right out there with the baby.”

It’s the present day.  My hands are shaking and it feels like a freight train crashed through my private parts but I am safe here, and so is little El.  This is my story and today is my reckoning day.  And it was a long time coming.  I tell you this story not to save anyone or even myself.  I tell it because it needed to be told.