This Time There Are Flowers
“Lying in my mother’s bed, tangled in the scent of her Jontue perfume, I closed my eyes and waited for it to be over.”
Alabama | October 1976 | By CLAIRE ADELSAY BROWNE
Tags: sex abuse
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The Price of a Bowl of Cereal“I’m not thin; I’m average, at 145 pounds and 5 feet 6 inches. I don’t binge and vomit, though I do sometimes gag before or during mealtimes, but never purposely. Perhaps the biggest difference between me and most people who suffer from an eating disorder is that I don’t think that I’m fat. But I go through weeks where I can’t eat.” | It all stemmed from a singularly tragic event. A Shadow Lifted“I had to reread the line several times to make sure it wasn’t a mistake, to make sure I understood. A group for students who’d been abused. Could it really be? Were there really other kids like me walking around these same hallways? And were there enough of us to make up an entire group?” | She told her friend. Then the counseling began. The Blood that Haunts“Ya know we’re not really kin, you and me,” he said in the thickest twang. He shifted toward her as she shifted away, and his left hand grazed her leg as his right hand found its way to her shoulder. “I mean, I am yer cousin,” he slurred, “but I ain’t blood.” Boarding the PlaneUnder any other circumstance, she would take a Xanax as soon as she boards the flight. She would fall asleep and wake at her destination. Unfortunately, she was pregnant and couldn’t even have a glass of wine to relax, and she would be traveling alone — not a good combination. What Grandfather DidFrom the outside the family appears to be nothing more than a loud but typical group of educated, vaguely liberal people. But there is a family secret. A proper secret. Not just, “Oh, we don’t talk about that!” We have a secret guaranteed to bring conversation to a screeching halt. Under the Weight of My Mother’s PastShe walked in on her daughter shoveling ice cream into her mouth. Straight out of the carton, barely stopping to breathe. Her daughter swallowed — slowly — and said “hello” to her mother. Slowly, the daughter told herself, return the carton to the freezer and get out of the kitchen. Summer ClingShe’d told her mother when it first started. His roaming hands. The nights he sneaked into her room - almost every night now. He said if her mother knew she’d be sent away, and he was right, because here she was, suitcase banging closed, being told to not make a sound. Good IntentionsThe morning of the rape she was just out of the shower when someone knocked on the door. In her robe, she peered out the peephole. “What the…. Wes, what are you doing here?” “I need to talk to you,” Wes said, holding his baseball cap in his hands and looking at his shoes. Feeling of HomeThe girls exited the reality of living in the 1990s. They were Wyoda girls: gay and fresh as daisies. This was their first foray as jungle women. But that year a darkness invaded Camp Wyoda. Their un-chaperoned skinny-dipping had attracted deviousness.  |
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