Forbidden Memories

Toward the end of that year the murderous thoughts were no longer present. It all seemed to have been just a bad dream. But the fear that something was terribly wrong with me still lingered at the edge of my consciousness. Why had I suffered such a devastating breakdown? One day, in Dr. Wallace’s office, I voiced the question. He replied vaguely, speaking about brain chemicals, synapses, or, he said, “Sometimes it could be a delayed reaction to childhood trauma.” “But I’ve never had any trauma. My childhood was perfect.” “Well, Michelle, we’ll just have to keep working. You’re doing great!” I didn’t feel great. I felt unsettled. Something was wrong. I could feel it bubbling and gurgling just below the surface. Every time a bubble popped up I quickly batted it down. Not yet, not yet. A few days later I was in a bookstore browsing through the self-help section. I always had the hope that some new book would come out and give me that “aha” moment, and fix me so I could be the happy, self-confident mother I had always dreamed of being. The book my eyes kept gazing at was a collection of stories by women who had survived incest. Almost involuntarily, I found myself picking it up. Why? I questioned myself. This has nothing to do with me. This is so creepy, so awful! As if someone else was in control of my body I walked to the clerk and paid for it with a check. At home I devoured the pages. I couldn’t stop. I read it in the bathroom; I read it in the kitchen while making dinner, and in bed when I was supposed to be sleeping. I was horrified by what had happened to these women and the havoc it had caused in their lives. As I read, my hands were trembling, my heart was pounding, and I felt hot. I kept feeling my forehead to see if I had a fever. I lost my appetite for anything but reading the book. I took the book with me to my next session with Dr. Wallace. “Do you think I could have been sexually molested by someone? Is it possible to forget something like that?” “Children often repress trauma that is too painful to deal with,” he explained. “How do they remember? How could I know if something like that ever happened to me?” “If something like that happened to you, you will remember it when you’re ready. Repression acts as protection when it’s too hard to deal with a traumatic event, like in the case of rape, or war, or any kind of violence. The memories usually come back when you’re in a time and a place where it’s safe to remember.” One Friday afternoon, after putting Finn down for a nap, I lay down myself. I wasn’t thinking about much, just drifting, when my body began to shake involuntarily. Suddenly I was in another time and place. I looked down: I am in my three year old body. I am wearing a yellow swimsuit with a green leaf pattern. I look up. I see my brother Bart dragging me down the hall of our house. He is fifteen years old. He called me in from the front yard where I was running through the sprinklers with the girl from next door. He holds me by one arm and throws me on the bed in my parent’s bedroom. My teeth click together. My legs shake like the legs of a dangling puppet. Bart locks the door and walks toward me unbuckling his belt. I look into his eyes. It is the scary Bart. I scramble backwards on the bed but he reaches down and grabs my ankle. He yanks me back to the edge of the bed so forcefully I bite my tongue. “I don’t know why you have to be such a bad little girl,” he sneers, “so I always have to do this to you.” “I’ll be good,” I whimper, my little mind searches frantically for what I could have done to make him so mad. “Shut up,” he snaps. Bart takes his penis out of his pants and tells me to open my mouth. A steel door slams shut on my thinking. My eyes scrunch tight, my little fists ball so tightly that my fingernails dig into my skin. When Bart is finished I am left with goo dripping down my chin, onto my new yellow swimsuit. I gag and cough. “Get out of here,” he whispers, “and if you tell anyone I’ll kill you!” I run into my bedroom. My dolls are still lined up on the pillow. I pull off my swimsuit and throw it in the corner of my closet. I put on my pink flannel nightgown and climb into my white armoire with the little pink lamb applique and shut the door. I stay there, in the dark, curled up in a ball, shaking, until I hear my mother come home. I climb into my bed, where she finds me. “What’s wrong? Why are you in bed honey?” “I don’t feel good Mom.” I say. She feels my forehead. “You are a little feverish. Just stay in bed and I’ll bring you some soup for dinner.” The next day I take my yellow swimsuit out to a field behind the house and pee on it. I leave it there—never to be worn again. Gradually I came back into my adult body. Oh my God! Oh my God! Was it real? Did I make it up? The next day I called my mother and asked her if I ever had a yellow swimsuit with green leaves on it. “Yes,” she said, “it was the cutest thing. I bought it for you at Bon Marché, when, gosh, you must have been three or four. Why?” “Oh nothing,” I answered. “I just remembered and wondered about it.” I hung up the phone. I felt like I had no ground to stand on. My body was suspended in the air. It didn’t belong to me anymore. Over the next few days, more memories came. I could be in the middle of anything and all of a sudden I would feel myself transported back into my little girl body and there would be Bart and two of his friends looming over my naked body, or Bart sneaking into my room in the middle of the night. In one memory, Bart was lying on top of me in his bedroom one afternoon when our mother was out and I worked up the courage to whisper, “I’m gonna tell Mom.” Bart quickly gets up without a word and drags me into the laundry room. I try to resist, I try to keep my feet firmly on the ground, but he’s too strong and moving too fast. I hardly have time to think what he might do to me when he stuffs me into the clothes dryer. The dryer starts to move. I am whimpering in the dark, my hands and feet scramble, I try to keep my body from being turned over. It seems desperately important to stay on my hands and knees. Then the dryer stops, and all is quiet. What next, I think. I’m gonna die. I can’t breathe, and I lay my head on my hands. Suddenly I feel a warm white light around me. I feel safe, and I think to myself, Jesus is with me. I’m Jesus’s little girl. After a time, Bart opens the door and yanks me out. “Are you going to tell Mom?” His grim face inches away from mine. I shake my head no, and collapse like a heap of sand at his feet. He carries me upstairs and puts me into bed where I stay all afternoon. Another day, and another memory surfaced, this one of my brother Keith.I am 12 years old. Keith and his wife Elizabeth are visiting us for Christmas. They are given my room and I am sleeping with all the kids on the living room floor. In the middle of the night, Keith wakes me up and leads me to the basement. My older brother Bart, waiting in his twin bed, lifts the covers and tells me to get in. Keith joins us. I am in the middle, squished. Bart gets on top of me and does that awful thing to me and Keith watches. Then Keith does that awful thing to me and Bart watches. Afterwards Bart tells me to go upstairs and back to bed. “You’re a bad, bad girl,” he says, “get out of here.” I pull my wet sticky pajama bottoms back up and walk upstairs. I am ruined. I am so alone and no one will help me. Memories kept flooding me, many of them at night. I’m staying at old Grandpa Griffith’s house, my father’s dad. I am four years old. I’m seated on his lap. He’s fondling me under my dress. My grandma walks into the room. She swats at him like you might a pesky old fly and says, “Are you at that again, you dirty old thing?” She keeps on walking through the room into the kitchen, leaving me alone with him