Is It Safe Now?

How do you convince a little girl of five, who has become a grown woman of forty seven, that its safe now? When the grown woman has endured unspeakable abuses, rape and at the hands of those who were supposed to protect her.

I’m forty seven years young, and still have this horrible fear of repetition of events long gone. Only not with myself but with my own children. I am what they call, “over protective” with my own kids. Should I not be? What can anyone do to change how I feel today? In my opinion, nothing. I am going to feel this way until I am six feet under. And I will feel this way about the welfare of my children as well.

The first time I can remember something going terrible wrong, and never feeling innocent again, was when I was about four years old or so. I remember my mother loading me and my sisters up in the station wagon. I sat on the floor in the backseat, one of my special spots. I would sit on the floor and gaze out the window at the sky while we drove. I loved doing that. It seemed to be a long drive, maybe forty five minutes or so until we arrived.

I remember pulling in a dirt driveway, and the entrance was behind the house. It was a two story house, one that I had never seen before. I didn’t know the people in the house, which was an older woman and a younger man. My mother parked in the back of the house and then got out. She went to the door, knocked and the older woman came out. Then my mother told us to get out of the car. We did as we were told, we knew better not to. She told us to come over to the old woman and to go in the house with her. I was scared, very scared. And ran back in the car and sat on the floor. My mother came around to the door, opened it and ripped me out of the car, with great anger. I started to cry, I was frightened of this woman I had never seen before, a house I had never seen before, and my mother telling me I had to go inside with her.

Kicking and screaming all the way through that door. As I turned back and saw my mother climb behind the wheel and drive away. Leaving us there. The old woman threw us in the house, slammed the back door, and locked it. Then made us stand there facing her, I was still crying. She took out a belt and started to hit me, yelling that I had better shut my mouth, or she would do worse. I did.