slashing in the neighborhood. At that time, White policemen routinely entered the homes of Black people without knocking. That day, one went to the back door and another to the front. Without knocking, they strode into our house, grabbed Robert, and took him to the Jefferson County Children’s Center.
My father wasn’t home, but when he heard what had happened, he was furious, insulted that they had crashed in and frightened my mother that way. He hired attorney Leon Shaikun to get Robert released from the Children’s Center and to challenge the officers’ behavior. Within a short time, Robert was released into my father’s custody, and later the two policemen were fired. I felt so proud of Pop. After that, I thought he could right any wrong.
Money was not my biggest worry as a child. I always thought my father had lots of it. Of course he didn’t, but he made good money for the time, more than some of the professional people on our street. He bought new cars, Fords, while many people owned second-hand cars or none at all. If my father didn’t have it, he could always get money for whatever I needed.
I felt close to my father. As long as he was there, I felt I was safe. He was not demonstrative with Mom or us children, but he was a good and loving man. During the Depression, Pop was not only good to us, he was good to everyone. He was literally his brother’s keeper—a true, practicing Christian. Through the Depression, he worked three days a week making fourteen dollars a day. When neighbors with children had their water or electricity turned off, Pop paid to have it turned back on. Once a month we went to Nelson County to Aunt Celia’s farm to get food for the neighbors and us. We would bring back smoked meats—ribs, backbones, sausages, and hams. Pop would load the car with a hundred pounds of potatoes, canned fruits and vegetables, jellies and jams, bags of pears from the orchard, and other foodstuff. Back in Louisville, he’d divide the food and send it around to the families with children.
I’m sure other members of my family would say he was partial to me. He was quick to stand up for me whenever I needed his support, and he made sure that my brothers never hit me. He whipped them with peach tree switches for their frequent misdeeds, but he gave me only one small spanking, though I probably deserved more, during my entire childhood.
Who doesn’t remember being thirteen?—that in-between time when you’re neither child nor adult. Overnight I seemed to stop being a child, yet I wasn’t a woman either. Confusion and restlessness reigned. Along with wondering what I would do when I grew up, I was now trying to cope with puberty. No one told me anything about the changes that were occurring in my body. Even with all those babies born in our home, I didn’t understand the reproductive process. I just knew that having babies caused my mother to get terribly out of shape, with swollen ankles and a swaybacked walk. Why do girls have to have babies, I wondered. Why not boys? It wasn’t just having them, either—it was all the work afterward. I felt that it all fell on Mom.
Boys had all the advantages. My brothers had to work in the garage and learn to be mechanics as soon as they were old enough. They probably thought I was the one who had it easy, but I wanted to work in the garage with them. I begged my father, but he refused to let me.
“What are they doing in there that I can’t do?” I protested.
“Now, now,” my family placated me.
Like her sister Mary Kaufman, Mom was also religious. She continually told us to be good and to avoid sin. On any appropriate occasion, and on some occasions that I considered inappropriate, she would quote the Bible. One of her favorite exhortations was “What doth it profit a man if he gain the world and lose his soul?” I’m sure setting her children’s thoughts on higher matters was ultimately very beneficial. However, during the years I went through puberty, it became painfully apparent that it was my body, not just my soul, about which I needed more information.
My breasts started to develop and my brothers teased me, pointing to them and laughing. One morning I woke up in a pool of blood. I screamed. Mom and Cousin Frances came running. Two years earlier, Frances had asked me to go to the store to get her a box of Kotex.
“What’s Kotex?” I had asked.
“Never mind,” she had said, “You’ll find out soon enough.” I found out that morning.
Frances lent me an elastic Kotex belt and pad, then Mom sent me to the bathroom to wash and put it on. “You’ll have to wear this until your menstruation stops. Change the napkin often, wash often, but don’t get in the tub,” she admonished.
That’s all she said! Nothing about pregnancy or sex, just that I would bleed for three or four days every month. How disgusting, I thought. I know people can smell the odor. I don’t like this.
I didn’t understand about sex, and certainly not love, except I knew it made people miserable sometimes. About that time, Cousin Frances—my beautiful Cousin Frances with the cafe-au-lait complexion and impish freckles—had fallen in love with a married man who had broken her heart.
When I was fifteen, I learned about sex the crudest way a girl can. A man, who was ten years older than I, lived down the street with his mother. Fie had a thin build, curly black hair, and walked with a limp because one of his legs was shorter than the other. He was always nice to me, giving me candy and other treats when I visited his mother.
One afternoon he saw me on the sidewalk and said, “Georgia, let’s go to my house and make some candy.” It sounded like fun and I loved candy, so I went.
Once there, he said, “Come out back to get some coal for the stove.” When we got inside the shed, he grabbed me. He forced me down onto the dirt floor, pulled open his pants, and stuck his penis into me. It hurt badly. I yelled, kicked, and tried to push him off.
“Let me up, you dirty dog!” I screamed, but he kept on moving inside me. Though I fought with all my might, he was much too strong. Finally, he let me up. Blood streamed down my leg. Sobbing, I ran straight home, went to the bathroom, and began to wash. I didn’t understand what had happened and I didn’t feel close enough to anyone to talk about it. I kept the awful secret to myself, but I suffered over it for a very long time. Now, as I reveal what happened for the first time, I feel relieved to finally break my silence. If I’d had a daughter, I pray to God I would have built enough trust and love between us so she could tell me if anyone had violated her body.
In a way, though, I was luckier than many women who have been raped; I’ve never been tortured by the idea that it was my fault or that there was something I could have done to prevent it. I did not tell anyone because I felt dirty. I felt that I had been tarnished by losing my virginity, but I always knew whose fault it was. The rapist had abused me and I hated him for his crime, but I did not hate myself.
After the rape, the man stopped coming to my house and I didn’t visit his mother again as long as he lived there. So, I was surprised when, months later, I came home from school and met him coming out my front door. I looked away and said nothing, just passing by him and going straight inside.
Later I learned that the man had come to ask my parents if he could marry me after I graduated from high school. As I entered the house, I heard Pop saying angrily, “If he ever touches my daughter, I’ll cut off his head and throw it out in the snow!”
I just stood there, afraid to say anything. I had never heard my father speak with such anger. It made me uneasy, so I just kept quiet. I thought to myself, sadly, You’re too late, Daddy, he already
