The following story lay dormant in my memory for many years. It, along with other experiences, explains a lot of things about how I relate to my family. I have recounted this recollection in the third person. That is just how it came out, and who am I to argue with my muse?
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“Jon showed me something strange today.”
The little girl, perhaps eleven or twelve years old, addresses her family as they drive in the car together. Bellies filled with eggrolls, wonton soup, fried rice and the like, they are motoring home from the local Chinese buffet in Dad’s trusty old Oldsmobile Delta 88.
Dad, a solidly built man with a blond thatch of curly hair atop his large head, is in the front seat, driving. Petite, dark-haired little Mom is riding shotgun, though the little girl wouldn’t learn that term for another five or six years.
In the back, the little girl, little in stature as well as age, sits behind her Dad, while her teenage brother sits behind their Mom. All was customary.
“What was it, honey?” Mom asks.
“It was this vibrating pen. He said he got it from the dollar store.”
Lanky framed Brother begins to giggle.
“Yeah, I bet it was a pen,” he chokes out between guffaws, that mocking, know-it-all tone all teenage boys use in his voice.
“No, no, it really was. Beverly looked at it. She said it had four different colours and that her little brother had one.” The little girl valiantly defends her story, wanting to convey that if a little boy from a Fundamentalist Christian household had this mysterious toy, then it must be okay. It couldn’t be whatever Brother was thinking it was.
Brother keeps giggling… Mom joins in.
“What…what’s so funny? It really was a pen.”
The little girl is starting to tear up, as she is wont to do when she is confused. Dad remains silent, as he is wont to do when he doesn’t want to get involved. Brother and Mom continue to laugh.
A child’s toy that has adult implications. A child’s story that isn’t taken seriously.
What the family doesn’t know, what the family can never learn, is that when Jon, one of the “big boys” (at sixteen or seventeen years) said to the little girl that morning:
“Robin, hold out your hand. I want to show you something.” That when he had said that, she had been fearful, fearful in a way she only half understood, of what he would show her. Holding out her hand, reluctantly, but with fascination, to feel something round, and long and hard, but blessedly buzzing and plastic.
The Delta 88 (a 1985 model) pulls into the driveway, and a normal family gets out. Yet at least one member of the family isn’t the same as she was when she left for the coveted treat of a trip to the Chinese buffet. She has learned subtly, from her usually loving mother’s laughter, that there are some stories she should keep to herself.
Submitted by RM
Isn’t it astounding how stories like that stick out in our heads? The ones that changed the way we thought about sex, ourselves, and everything else. Someone not believing once makes us feel illegitimate forever.