down on the floor and quickly stripped her clothing off from the waist down. They slapped her across the face repeatedly and threatened her with serious injury if she cried out. The boys pressed her firmly down, arms above her head, yanking her legs apart, as they each attempted penis insertion. Penetration was not possible, and this disappointment enraged the boys who slapped and punched Judith even more violently. Having their goal of gang rape foiled, the boys ran off, leaving a beaten, shocked, eight-year-old lying on the floor of her beloved playhouse, naked on her bottom half.
When Helen discovered what had happened, she rushed Judith to a doctor who examined her and confirmed that her hymen was still intact. Good news, Helen thought. Meanwhile, Uncle Si smashed the playhouse with a heavy sledgehammer, swing after angry swing, until it was a pile of disarrayed pieces of lumber. Judith’s physical wounds healed quickly. The actual memory of the attack was sent away to a distant corner of her brain where it would be repressed.
Judith was not disturbed by the memory of the assault from the neighborhood boys, however, she was disturbed about her lovely little playhouse being destroyed. One day she marched out to the back yard to discover that her playhouse was gone. Demolished. Her mother and Uncle Si gave no explanation. Judith wondered for the next fifty-four years why her playhouse had inexplicably fallen down.
And so, with one vicious attack to Judith’s body and soul, a course that would take her through a series of tragic happenings was set.
Uncle Si, now in his eighties, spent most of his time sitting at the kitchen table in their house. The table and chairs were l950’s diner-style with chrome framework and red vinyl seat covers. A toaster—the kind that opened up in the middle for placement of bread—resided in the center of the table. Uncle Si prepared himself toast at the table throughout the day. Dressed in either denim overalls or jeans with suspenders and a cotton shirt, the toothless Uncle Si sat for hours at the kitchen table chewing tobacco and spitting into a coffee can on the floor near his feet. He was bald with a white goatee beard that hung long and thin from his chin. Wire frame glasses anchored over the top of his large ears and balanced on his strong, pointed nose. Unfortunately, Uncle Si’s declining health prevented him from doing household chores or helping in the garden, but Helen and Judith weren’t concerned. Uncle Si was never a burden. His energy and humor sparked laughter and warmth in the home.
Judith would always remember her mother carrying in potatoes from the garden in the back yard. The garden had one, large, signature, yellow sunflower each year that rose up so high, Judith had to look up toward the sky to get a good look at it. Judith stomped up the back porch and through the screen door that opened into the kitchen, carrying in produce with her mother from the garden for dinner. Countless times she watched her mother’s hands holding potatoes and deftly peeling potatoes with a small paring knife. Sometimes Helen declared, “This potato is just too small to waste my time on,” and she would discard it. Potatoes, it seemed to Judith, brought a sense of normality and continuity to her life and to the household.
On a few thrilling occasions, Judith got permission to run the two-block distance from their house over to Katie’s Corner, a small grocery store, where she would purchase a few pieces of penny candy. Then, she slowly walked home, sucking on something delicious, while happily flicking her skirt in a circular direction around herself with her hands.
Judith felt excited and downright giddy while running down the sidewalk to the end of their street to meet “Clyde” the mailman. She skipped along next to Clyde and prattled at him while he delivered mail to the houses on the block until they reached Judith’s house where they would say goodbye until the next time. Clyde was a nice mailman and one of the characters Judith held dear in her tiny world.
One summer afternoon, Judith was pleasantly surprised when a traveling band of sales people came to the door of their house offering to take pictures of Judith while she sat atop one of their rental ponies in the front yard. They had cowboy hats and related costume garb available for an additional small fee. Helen said yes, of course, always wanting to make life better for her daughter, so Judith donned the cowboy gear and joyfully posed on a pony for a photo.
Uncle Si looked after Judith while Helen went out on occasional dates. Helen had finally accepted her title of “widow” and believed enough time had gone by for proper grieving. She dated casually but always kept her guard up. It would not be easy for any man to penetrate the invisible safety barrier she had constructed around her precious family trio.
One date, however, in 1953, brought a man named George Pillatos right through the front door of their lives. Helen had been set up for a blind date with George by a female co-worker at Boeing. George was the co-worker’s brother-in-law. After a few more dates, it seemed like they had always known George and he slowly became part of their new normal life. Judith liked George very much.
George and Helen dated exclusively over the next two years and George became a welcome, extra hand and sounding board for Helen as she faced a twofold difficulty: One, Judith growing into a bigger girl who was becoming more forceful, physically, in getting what she wanted. And two, Uncle Si’s heart condition. Could Helen continue to manage both issues?
George assisted Helen in moving Uncle Si into a nursing home facility so that he could receive daily medical care and the additional help he now required for bathing and dressing. Fortunately, the proceeds from the sale of his home and land were available to cover the costs for Uncle Si. His heart was failing, and it broke Helen’s heart to see it happening. Uncle Si had been her mother and her father and her everything for her entire life. She closed her eyes tightly and cried whenever she imagined life without Uncle Si. She leaned heavily on George during this time and, with his reassurance, felt convinced moving Uncle Si out was the right thing to do. The couple regularly took Judith to the rest home to visit Uncle Si.
George tried to lighten the mood for his new women by taking them on car trips for fun. They regularly visited “the cow,” otherwise known as Herfy’s Hamburgers in Renton for 19-cent hamburgers. The restaurant had a very large cow statue mascot in the parking lot. It was a fabulous treat for Judith when they got to go to “the cow” for hamburgers.
Occasionally, George drove Helen and Judith to the middle of the state, near Kennewick, Washington, to visit his family. It was on one of these trips that George inadvertently injured Judith. It was August 1954. Judith was ten years old. George was swinging her around in a garage with a cement floor in a playful, familiar exercise they had developed over the past months. On George’s cue, Judith would jump up and wrap her legs around George’s waist. He would then hold her hands while she tossed her head backward, away from his chest, and flipped her legs along after her head, through her arms, making a circle back to the ground, over and over again, squealing out laughter the whole time. “Let’s do it again George. I want to do it again!” Judith begged. On this occasion something went wrong, George lost his grip on her hands, and Judith smashed her head down on the concrete floor with a horrible clunk sound. Judith immediately felt a large bump on the back of her head. Then she had nausea and vomiting.
Short, robust, Judith, with yellow-blonde hair, trusting eyes, and a wide smile, held no anger toward George. She simply viewed it as a bad accident, just like her mother said it was. And she fervently continued to wish he would be her father.
Two months after the accident, a brain seizure disturbance began. Suddenly, the good times ended. Seizure episodes in Judith terrified Helen for years and left Judith with too many gaps in memory, pieces of her childhood forever lost.
Helen took her little girl to see a very special doctor, a neurologist, in Seattle. The two traveled by bus, as Helen had never cared to learn how to drive a car. Judith was put through a series of neurological tests that included gluing wires all over her head. It was all strange and frightening to Judith. She knew that something was terribly wrong with her, and she had never seen the strained, pale look on her mother’s face that she was seeing now. The neurologist diagnosed
