Chapter 6: Don’t Ask the Question if You Can’t Handle the Answer

The next morning, I peeled a few potatoes to make hash browns for my children’s breakfast. Inside the largest potato lurked a curving black scar of rot. I tried to cut out the blemish, but it went so deep I gave up and threw the potato away.

It felt like an omen, like an archetype of my life. Yesterday, I had no inkling a skeleton as dark as sexual abuse lurked in my own personal closet. Now, it was all I could focus on.

My mind worried at the idea like a child picking at a scab. Part of me didn’t want to touch it, it was too painful. Part of me wanted to bury the flashback the way I’d buried the scary pajamas, and never tell anyone. The abuse of a child is so unthinkable, such a horrific crime, that even the words “sexual abuse” seemed to leave 3rd-degree burns on my psyche.  I didn’t want it to be true. 

While it was a horrible thought, it did make a lot of my personal quirks make sense. I’d only met one mom who was equally paranoid about her children’s safety, and she was kidnapped and sexually assaulted as a child. The more I thought about it, the more I realized it would explain a great many things about my behavior.  It was almost like being the heroine of a gothic novel. A huge, complex mystery lurked all around me, with clues everywhere, but until I realized something was rotten in the State of Wyoming, I hadn’t been able, or hadn’t allowed myself, to see them.

 Something terrible happened to me when I was little, and if I understood the Spirit correctly, last night’s memory was only the tip of the iceberg. But I faded in and out of denial, because I didn’t want the vision or whatever it was to be real.

Like an automaton, I went through the morning routine with my children. I fed them, made them lunch, and walked the two oldest to school, all on autopilot. My mind was stuck in a feedback loop. What would this newly-discovered information do to my family? How could I tell them? Dared I tell them? Did anyone else in my immediate family already know, and could they fill in the details I was missing? I hadn’t spoken to my father for two years, still furious about his treatment of my mother during their divorce, and I was reluctant to break the silence in order to ask if he were a child molester.  Not exactly the best conversation starter, was it? Even if I were audacious enough to ask, he possessed what my family of origin called the “Exaggeration Gene” and I’d never get the truth out of him. “You know Dad,” my brother Cody once said. “If he’s got a nickel in his pocket, he’ll tell you it’s a dime.” 

But my mother called nearly every day to vent about whatever was happening in her world. If anyone knew what happened to me, it would be her, right? Protecting my children was a responsibility I took seriously, probably too seriously, and if anything happened to them, I was sure I’d know about it. So my mother was the logical person to ask. She was the kind of person who kept painful secrets to herself, in an effort to both protect people from hurtful information and to protect herself from painful confrontations. She was also a ninja at avoiding direct language regarding things unpleasant or indelicate, and she sometimes lied by omission in order to prevent arguments, but I’d never known her not to answer a direct question.

I screwed my courage to the sticking place and picked up the phone. “Hello, Mom? I need to ask you something.”

“What’s that, honey?”

I took a deep breath. “Was I ever sexually abused?”

Silence on the line, then a small, trembling voice—“You might have been.”

Her answer rocked me back on my heels. You might have been? Not yes, no, or I don’t know, but a sideways dodge that took no responsibility and yet didn’t outright lie.

Her words hit me hard. I had been, and she had known. “I’ve gotta go, Mom. I’ll talk to you later.”

All this time, she knew. And she’d said -- nothing.

XXXX

Although the Monster in the Dark memory indicated by the question, “Why, Daddy?” that the identity of my rapist was my father, a psychedelic swirl of color overlaying a shadowy face was my only visual clue. How could I prove the strange, bizarre creature in the vision was my father? In something like this, wasn’t it vital to be certain? I ticked off the possibilities as I examined the evidence.

The pain in the flashback was explicit. It had to be a man, that much was clear. The odds of the person being a family member were high, as my parents didn’t have many friends, and only family members ever bunked out on the couch or living-room floor.

My father was the most volatile member of the family, the least honest, and given to abrupt, irrational bouts of anger. One memorable evening, he’d slammed me into a wall and held me there, suspended by the throat, as he screamed in my face because I’d refused to choose between corn and green beans for dinner. Usually, he restricted himself to verbal abuse, but he wasn’t averse to violence. He was selfish, too, and treated himself to steak lunches and trips to Alaska while my mother struggled to stretch a pound of hamburger far enough with noodles and tomato sauce to fill six hungry stomachs. He had ostrich-skin boots; we had threadbare jeans patched so many times the patches had layers. He had new airplanes; we had rusty, second-hand bikes.

 He also had a long history of sexual transgressions, including adultery, and had been excommunicated from our church twice as a result. He was the most logical choice.

Still, I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, because although my father could be a fearsome Mr. Hyde, he had his Dr. Jekyll side, too. He took my brother and I fishing, he took our family camping, and he took us for rides on his motorcycle and in a succession of airplanes he owned or borrowed. Some of my favorite memories involved trailing after my father through the mountains and foothills of Montana. If it weren’t for him and my Grandpa Jack, would I have been able to indulge my deep love of and appreciation for the natural world?

He was lavish in his praise, as well. He praised my fishing skills (which mostly involved the ability to sit still and wait until the trout forgot about me). He’d bragged on me to his friends, to my mom, and to anyone else who’d listen when I earned all A’s on a report card or won a prize in the science fair. He’d taught me the value of hard work, (although the tasks he asked of me were often too much for a child; I began mowing the lawn when I was so little the handlebar was over my head and I had to use the second rung to push the mower). He’d helped me with my homework and with school projects. When I failed to get the leading role in a musical, and expressed my disappointment, he laughed and shook his head and said to Mom, “Only Heather would try out for a major production with only a few hours’ notice, and do such a great job she still got a part.”

I didn’t want him to be guilty of child abuse.

It makes no sense to pop a happy bubble of denial by asking a question when you can’t handle the answer. I didn’t want to ask anyone this question.

I held out until November, when Grandma and Grandpa invited my family to visit their ranch for Thanksgiving. My mind raced, because I knew I’d have to protect my daughters from Dad if he were the abuser. He might show up for Thanksgiving at the ranch despite the fallout over his relationship with his first cousin. I wasn’t sure what to do. I had to know the truth.

My stomach twisted in pain, but I forced myself to kneel in prayer and ask the question I didn’t want to ask. Had my father been the man who abused me? In response, a black-and-white montage of scenes rushed through my head. Each was shot from my perspective, and each featured a younger version of my father; by the time the images stopped flashing through my mind, little doubt remained. My father was a child molester.

As I knelt there, a little girl’s voice in my head said, with hope in her voice, “Then I’m NOT bad, HE’S bad. Jane was right. He’s a bad, BAD MAN!” Apparently for me as a young child, “bad” was the worst pejorative there is, the most stinging, vicious word that could be used to describe someone evil, because when she used the word “bad” it held all the force of a deadly curse.  Being the “Bad Guy” is irredeemable; children live in a black-hat-white-hat world.

Shaken, I got off of my knees and thought about the old saying, “Ignorance is bliss.”

Denial is an unusual place. You can’t live in it without losing your grip on reality, but it’s a great place to visit when you’re overwhelmed and have questions you’d rather not ask. I was going to miss it.

Confused, I wracked my memory for the answer to the question I did want to ask—Who was Jane?!