Chapter 7

Chapter 7 of 56 · 7-minute read

“Lauren, you are gonna go on a date with Dixxie, aren’t you?” My mom pulls me out of my rabbit hole into the past. “Do it for me if not for yourself. You’re not getting any younger, you know.”

“Mama, I’m fine. I don’t need a man.”

She shrugs as if she can’t fathom my words. “I know you don’t, but I don’t want you to be lonely.”

“I’m not lonely, Mama.” I finish putting away the groceries and turn to her. “I enjoy my own company. I do whatever I want. Mom! Mama, just stop, please. I’m content.”

She sighs. “If you say so. I just hate the idea of you ending up old and all alone.”

Like her, she means. Even though I know there’s a part of her that’s thankful she no longer has to deal with my dad’s abuse and that she is, at eighty, finally free for the first time in her adult life. I’ve made choices in my dating life to not be like her because I like my freedom, and I’ll never give it up again. But her heart is in the right place. She wants only the best for me, even if it’s what she thinks is the best.

“I’ve been thinking, Lauren. About you not being eager to remarry.”

“Mom—”

“No, hear me out. Does it have anything to do with your Uncle Bobby?”

Instinctively, I press both hands to my stomach, over my third chakra of personal power and self-worth. “Mama, why are you talking about this now? We haven’t talked about him in, like, forty years.”

My mom shrugs. Her shoulders are sharp, and her short-sleeved blouse hangs over frail arms and skin devoid of muscle. “It’s just been on my mind lately.”

Virgil’s red car. He comes over regularly to check on my mom, and it’s been forty years since a red car appeared at least once a week at her house. That must be what’s triggering old memories. Back then, I tried to talk to her about Bobby so many times, but she wouldn’t hear of it. The most she would say was for me to be careful not to make my dad mad because I’d get “what-for?” which was the silent question we all asked when Daddy picked up a stick to beat us with or threw a hammer at us.

“What’s on your mind, Mom?”

She pauses. She’s afraid to ask. As long as she doesn’t have a firm answer, she can deny her part in my childhood trauma. I recognize that trait in myself and past marriages and wince.

“Um, did your Uncle Bobby ever, you know, touch you in a way he shouldn’t have?”

Her words come out in a rush that pushes me away. I stumble backward. My spine hits the 1970s honey birch paneled wall, and my breath spits out a loud, “Oof!” I flatten my palms against the wall behind me to steady myself.

“Every time, Mama. Every. Fucking. Time.”

The anger in my voice surprises even me. Instantly, I feel guilty for using that tone on my mom, even if I didn’t know it was there.

My mom’s face goes ashen, and she takes a step back, as if she is trying to distance herself from the conversation. Her gaze shifts around the kitchen, looking at anything but me. I know she’s trying to process what I said, but it looks like her mind is unable or unwilling to accept the truth of what happened those many years ago.

“Well—well—” She cowers. “You don’t have to use that kind of ugly language in front of me.”

I sigh. She’s talking about words and I’m talking about life-altering childhood trauma.

“Mom. Uncle Bobby molested me every Sunday like clockwork. He was more regular than the church services we were at in the morning. I begged you every week to keep him away from me, and you just sent me right back to him. Daddy was oblivious, but you had to have known. You had to. Because I kept telling you as best as I could. Jesus, Mama!”

She flinches at the Lord’s name in vain, but I wave it away.

“I told every adult I trusted, and none of you did anything. Not my teachers at school or at Sunday School. Not the preacher. Not my school guidance counselor. None of you.”

If it’s possible for my mom’s face to turn any paler, it does. “I-I wasn’t sure.”

“That camping trip he took me on⁠—”

“Yes, Bobby wanted to take you to the National Forest down in Florida at Wakulla Springs to camp for the weekend. I convinced him and your daddy that you should camp in our woods so you’d be close by.”

I remember all too well. My dad had agreed but not out of concern for my safety. No, I might not mind his adored stepbrother or might get bored learning survival skills and whine to come back home.

“Mama.” My voice cracks. “Bobby was going to rape me. Whether in the National Forest or in your woods.”

She shakes her head to block out my voice. “No, I knew he wouldn’t do anything if you were still on our property. That’s why I never let him take you off the farm except to buy ice cream.”

Ice cream!

I shudder. “Mama, not taking me away from your property never stopped him from molesting me every single week right under your noses. He didn’t rape me but he would have if⁠—”

I swallow my words. No one, not even my mom, knows what happened to Bobby. All anyone knew was that he’d abandoned me in the swampy end of the woods and was never seen again.

“I never knew. Not for sure.” Her voice shakes.

What she means is that she didn’t see it herself and didn’t believe the only person who had—me. Why do people find it so hard to believe victims of sexual abuse?

“I’ve thought about it all these years, but I never knew. He was your daddy’s big brother. And… and a deacon in his church.”

I watch her shoulders tremble as she tries not to sob. I’m causing her this pain, even at my own expense, and I don’t want to hear more or see more. I want to bury the memories just like Bobby is buried in mud and never think of them again. My mom is too old, too fragile, for this confrontation now when she’s finally willing to talk about the things she’d shushed me about forty years ago. I can’t talk about this with her now. Not just for the rage it unleashes in me, but for the fear that my attempt to hold her accountable for her failures will shatter her.

After several deep breaths, she seems to pull herself together. “Well, I guess it could have been worse. I heard a story on the TV news a while back about a girl who was hiking up in North Carolina and she was raped and murdered.”

I stare at her. What I want—what I need from her—is for her to take responsibility for not protecting me instead of her asking for absolution in the most passive way possible. But that’s my mom—always the path of least resistance. This is one time I need to be heard and accepted. I needed it as a kid, but I’ll take it now. I never received that acknowledgement or apology from my dad, and never will, but he wouldn’t have believed Bobby had ill intentions anyway because he never witnessed it. If it didn’t happen to him, then surely it didn’t happen to anyone else.

“But you knew,” I whisper. “You knew in your gut that he was molesting me and he would have raped me if⁠—”

“I would never have let that happen!”

Yes, she would have. She would have felt terrible about it, but she would’ve convinced herself that she was powerless. That she was as much a victim as I was. All these years and we’ve never talked about Bobby because she wouldn’t let me, and now that she’s frail and nearing the end of her life’s journey, she wants to dredge up what I’ve become comfortable keeping hidden. But all she can do is distance herself from her part in it and offer excuses.

“Anyway, Lauren, you’re fine. I was watching this movie on TV the other night about how this girl who rides a dragon got raped by this warlord and⁠—”

I cannot hide my disgust. My mom’s words fill me with a mix of rage and sorrow. No matter how many times I’ve tried telling her I was molested, she doesn’t seem to understand that her wishing it away does not make it disappear. But she continues, as if the story of this fictional character can somehow comfort or excuse how she failed to protect me from Bobby.

“It’s not real, Mama,” I say firmly. “Stop discounting what happened to me by telling me someone else had it worse, especially fictional victims.”

“Well, I declare. I didn’t mean to get you upset.” Her face falls and she looks away from me, no doubt realizing the truth in my words. She sighs and looks up at the ceiling as if seeking reassurance. “Besides,” she adds softly, “it was a long time ago now and that man is gone.”

“Yes, he’s gone, but what he did still haunts me to this day. The only thing that haunts me worse is that the people who should have protected me from him did nothing.”

The hurt on her face slices through me. I do the only thing I can, the thing that kept me sane growing up here.

I walk barefoot out the back door, letting it slam behind me, and head for the perimeter of the farm.

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