1985, Craig, Colorado

By Melissa Lee

I sat petrified in my bedroom as the telephone rang. Listening to the sound of my mother’s heavy footsteps on the floor above as she hurried to answer, my heart pounded in my ears. Though it was summer, a cold sweat overtook my body.

I listened with fear as my mother hung up and her footsteps crossed the kitchen, stopping at the top of the stairs. “Melissa,” she called down to me. “Get up here.”

I could hardly swallow the lump in my throat as I dragged one foot after the other up the stairs to our kitchen.

“What, Mom?” I managed to ask through the lump as I stood before her and my aunt.

“That was Pastor Bryan on the phone. He said he has something important to talk to me and your dad about so we have to meet him at the church in an hour. Is there something you want to tell us? Did you decide to become a missionary while you were at youth camp? You did, didn’t you? That’s what he wants to talk to us about, isn’t it?”

She glanced at my aunt, who was sitting at the kitchen table, smiles lighting both their faces.

Again I swallowed and did my best to match their smiles, my pounding heart nearly deafening me. “I can’t tell you, you’ll just have to wait and see,” I replied.

“Fine, be that way,” she said as she rushed to get ready, a knowing look on her beaming face.

I glanced quickly at my aunt as I turned to retreat down the stairs to my bedroom. My legs threatened to send me plummeting to the bottom of the steep flight. Back in my room, I lay on my bed, heart still pounding madly as I listened to the sounds of my mother singing hymns with the Christian radio station as she and my dad got ready to go.

Much too quickly for my liking, I heard the front door close and the house become quieter; the only sound was the slight murmur of my aunt reading to my two young sisters upstairs in the living room. I lay watching the clock on my nightstand, waiting in agony for half an hour to pass; the amount of time pre-set by Pastor Bryan for him to be alone with my parents before I was to go to the church and join the meeting.

I walked to the church in a daze, chilled to the bone despite the heat of the day. Before I was ready, though I don’t know when that could have possibly been, I stood outside the pastor’s office door and raised my hand. My knock was a death sentence to my terrified heart. As the door swung open the 14 years of my life passed swiftly before my eyes.

The pastor’s body blocked my parents’ profiles from my view. “Come in, Melissa,” he said gently, moving aside for me to pass. My parents were seated side by side, facing the pastor’s desk. My mom stared down at her hands as though she wasn’t aware of my presence. My dad turned his head to look at me, his face red and tear-streaked. “I’m so sorry, Missy,” he sobbed, holding his arms out to hug me.

My mom didn’t look at me as I passed; instead she continued to stare at her hands, her face wet with tears. Like a good little girl, I let my dad take me in his arms and cry on my shoulder, trying to ignore the numerous memories of other times when he would cry and ask my forgiveness, telling me that his “soul was willing but his flesh was weak.”

I shed no tears. I felt only fear, uncertainty, and shame.

Finally, our pastor placed a third chair beside my mom and indicated for me to sit. Relieved, somewhat, to be able to get away from my dad, I quickly obeyed. Pastor Bryan returned to the chair behind his desk and looked directly at me as my dad continued to sob and my mom continued to stare at her hands and weep silently.

“Before you arrived I informed your parents of your discussion with the counselors at camp and our discussion when you arrived back at the church this morning. I told your mother that your father has been sexually abusing you for years, which he admitted. As I told you this morning, under the law I am required to contact local authorities, which I have done. Officers will arrive shortly to take your dad into custody and he will not be allowed to go back home before his court hearing. You and your mother will go home after you visit with a police officer at the Social Services’ office. You and your sisters will remain at home with your mother until after the hearing, when a judge will decide what is best for all of you.”

I remained silent, staring at the corner of the pastor’s desk though seeing nothing, overcome with the heavy guilt of what I had done to my mother, to our family.

The pastor and my dad remained there, awaiting the arrival of the local authorities, while my mother and I left to go to the Social Services’ office. As we walked out of the church, my mother still having not so much as glanced at me, I felt cold, alone, and leaden with the weight of my guilt.

We sat in the car in silence for a moment. I stole a sideways look at my mother’s face, blotchy and swollen from crying. “I’m so sorry, Mom,” I choked, as tears gushed from my eyes.

She continued to stare at the steering wheel as she said, “You don’t need to be sorry, you didn’t do anything wrong.” She glanced at me briefly and started the car.

Thus was the beginning of the end of our “perfect” Christian family.

Melissa Lee was born and raised in Craig, Colorado, and currently resides in Central Oregon. She has written numerous short stories and is hard at work on a novel, which she hopes to complete early next spring. She is using a pseudonym.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Friday, November 10th, 2006 | Email This Post

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