felt as if I were burning, even though there was a small breeze caressing my skin. I sat on the porch and looked out at the cars zooming on the interstate. The reds, the blues, and the greens were all a blur. I wondered about the people in the cars and if some of them held the same secret I now held. I wondered if their worlds allowed people like me to live in them despite the awful thing I had just done. I thought about Pee Wee upstairs on the couch, gulping down the Kool-Aid, tasting every grain of sugar. I wanted nothing more than to be away from him, riding in one of those cars, transformed into a red, green, or blue blur. But I knew that could not be. There wasn’t a car big enough to carry my family and the secret I now owned. So, I sat on the porch and looked at the black oak, waving in the wind, strong, tall, solid. The opposite of me.
There’s a learning curve to being a victim. It’s not something most people know how to immediately do well. Just as the first time a child sets out to ride a bike and her feet search for ground, there is a yearning for balance, a straggling between the lines of victimhood and survival. The abuse continued, but life happened in between. Pee Wee no longer had to threaten me. He could smell my fear whenever he hugged Momma or picked up Mary.
After the first time, I knew exactly what would happen when Momma left the house. And when it didn’t happen, I wondered what was wrong, what had hindered him from calling me into the room and “doing his thing.” It was on those days fear set in. If he wasn’t doing it to me, whom was he doing it to? I started watching Champ and Dathan, praying I wouldn’t see the same haze in their eyes I imagined everyone saw in mine.
On the days it did happen, I lay still, soaked in Pee Wee’s sweat, counting the birds that flew by the window, counting the pumps of his pelvis. I sometimes pondered what Momma was doing at work and if she was thinking about me. I wondered if she’d cook biscuits that night, and how I needed to work on my dough-rolling technique. I wondered when it would be over and then I wondered when it would happen again.
As life grew from day to day, month to month, I learned my mind didn’t have to reside where my body did. If I tried hard enough, thought hard enough, there were other places in the world I could be. Like on Virginia Beach, sitting in the sand with Momma, watching her hair blowing in the wind and her flat stomach pressed against the front of her bathing suit. I wondered how we’d all fit in there, whether there was enough of her left inside after we left her body. I’d see Momma take two of our hands and then instruct the others to do the same. She’d take all four of us, all of her kids, and walk us into the ocean, letting the waves beat at our feet, then our knees, then our waists. The sun would shine so heavily on our backs and shoulders we’d retreat farther into the water, thwarting its attempts at burning flesh. We’d form a small circle, allowing the water to make us all one body, and we’d drift together, unafraid of the vast sea, keeping each other afloat.
On good days, I could make an image like that last from beginning to end. On not-so-good days, I was jolted out of my dreams and hurled back into a moment of stabbing pulses, splitting me like a nut. On those days, I felt everything, the softness of the bed as Pee Wee pushed me deeper and deeper into it, the saltiness of the sweat that dripped from his chest to my lips. I heard the panting from deep inside of him, smothering me with its weight. On those days I panicked. I feared I’d never feel, smell, taste, or hear anything else again.
One night Momma agreed to let us put our mattress on the living room floor because Charlie Brown was coming on television and we kids had been celebrating since we’d seen the commercial. While Mary and I jumped around the room singing about Charlie Brown’s big head, Champ was trying to kick an invisible football. He kept falling on his butt, which caused all of us to grab our bellies and laugh. Just before the show came on, there was a hard knock at the door, one that made us scurry into Momma’s room where safety was supposed to be guaranteed. Momma had also heard the knock and quickly put on her robe, making her way to the door. Champ, Dathan, and I stood peeping out of her bedroom door, ready to pounce, but just as happy to remain in the quiet of the room. Momma opened the door and two policemen were standing there with hands on guns and scowls on their faces.
“Ma’am,” one of them said. “Is Louis Thomas Carr here?”
“No,” Momma replied, “I haven’t seen him.”
“We have this as his address and it’s imperative we locate him.”
Momma asked, “What’s wrong? Maybe if I know what’s wrong, I can get a message to him.”
“We can’t share that with you, but I can say it’s extremely important we find him.”
“Well, when I see him, I’ll be sure to call the police.” Momma softly pushed the door closed and then erupted into action. I couldn’t understand what was going on, but she was going through all of the papers in the living room, leaving whatever popped out of the drawer on the floor. Her hands moved so fast I could barely see them. She then went into her bedroom and combed through her junk drawer, which was filled with miscellaneous papers. Momma found what she was looking for and rushed to the door.
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