WORSE!

kathe kollwitz, rape, 1867-1945

I started a new school, again. I made a couple of friends. I just hung out with them, watching, listening, observing.

How would it be to be just a kid...?

To just be a kid. I would never know. I had never known. I loved being included and it was fun to be with kids my age.

But who was I???, I really didn’t know.

I made a good friend. She was fun and always made sure that I was included with her friends. She was there, day in and day out that year. She treated me like I had always been her friend. I was really starting to have a good time. I even had a boyfriend. I was in the eleventh grade, my boyfriend was 26. But he was really nice to me. He never touched me or tried anything. In fact, when I made him touch me once he never called me again. Oh well, I said, he is not normal. All men usually want is sex, so not worth it.

The summer came and my friend left for a while. That was okay because another girl lived down the street and we spent every day together. Now I had two really great friends. Things were going really well.



Then it happened, my baby sister came to me and told me something that destroyed my world. I will remember it to be the worst day of all my life. Yes, truly the worst, worse than all I had been through, was going through, worse.

She told me he was touching her. She told me he was touching her in her private places. I had always told her it was never okay to let anyone touch her, so she was telling me that he was touching her where it was never okay to let someone touch her.

I have never to this day cried as hard as I did that day. The day he started to hurt my baby sister. Hadn’t I done enough for him? Wasn’t I enough?

Why couldn’t he just have left her alone? I would have, I did do anything and everything I could to keep him from hurting her. I would have forever if he would have just left her alone. I went to my friend Martins house that night. I was out of my mind. But I didn’t tell him that. I would have slept with him, but my mother called. I was past curfew. I needed to come right home. She demanded that.


I didn’t go right home. I went to my girlfriends house. I told her. I told her everything. We should call the police, she said. We should tell her parents, she said. But I had not really told her everything. I knew if I really told, he would kill me.

He would put that gun to my head with a bullet this time and he would really kill me. He would kill my sister. He would kill my brothers. I knew he would. He could kill with his bare hands. He was a Navy Seal and that was what he would do.

Some of the worst that I never shared was in those moments, when he held me down, with a gun to my head and told me that if I ever told, he would kill me. Even years from now, he would find me. I would be asleep in my bed, I might have a daughter, he would say. HE would do things to her first, he would kill her first, he would come after me. I could never hide. He makes things disappear. He makes people disappear. I would be one of the things he would make disappear. I could never sleep. If I did, that would be when. So I could never tell, my life, my future, my baby sister, anyone I cared about would pay if I did.

No, I had to go home and tell my mother. I finally had to tell her. She would make it right. Everything would be okay.