1984

'I hate you!' I screeched as I slammed the door behind me. Dressed in cut off jeans and a yellow T-shirt that had been washed so many times that Ms. Pac Man was only a faint outline of black with a red bow, I ran from our house on Sarah Drive to the Bethpage State Park, less than a block from our door. It was 1984, my thirteenth year of life. I had thirteen years of callousness on my soles so the floor of the forest did not frighten my bare feet. Although a solid C cup, I ran through the forest braless, not realizing that that summer, the summer of running, I was treading over the broken and deformed bodies of my Barbie dolls toward a murky and unknowable teenage-hood.

It wasn’t the first time I had fled my father. It was almost two years since my mother died and he was at the lowest point of his life. He had gone from a state of abject misery where he accomplished nothing to a state of incessant rage where he accomplished nothing. The lack of movement in his life enraged him even more, a continuing cycle of self and other hate. Today we were supposed to be going to a Parents Without Partners barbecue so my fat and disgusting father could pick up the string of pathetic women who seemed to line up to date him. It wasn’t his dating I was opposed to -- when Daddy got laid, the whole family was happy because it calmed his temper for a few days, and I was all for that. It was that I was supposed to dress my little brother, age eight, in a particular shirt which fit into my father’s deranged scenario for the day. I couldn’t find that particular shirt and then discovered that I hadn’t washed it. This crime was so great that I was at first sentenced to a few harsh pokes in my sides as I was castigated. I spoke back, however, which increased my punishment to getting thrown against a bookcase at which point several rather good novels came raining down on my head. When I threatened to throw a heavy volume of Plath back at him, the punishment seemed as though it would get even more severe, so I escaped. Youth, if nothing else, provides excellence in speed.

I took my usual summertime escape route, through the chain fence with the big gaping hole, to the forest, jumping over logs at the correct points without really having to look. I believed I was the only one in the world who knew about this path, the path that lead from Sarah Drive to the center of the west side of the park, the play ground. My usual activity there was to sit on the swings and sing sad songs to myself. Self -pity was my occupation.

Once the forest thickened around me, I slowed my pace to a jog and noticed the annoying burning pain in my unteathered breasts. Although they had been growing there for some time, it was only this summer that I found them painfully annoying. Puberty’s carnage of my body began when I was ten but its passage never alarmed me as much as it did that summer. My breasts went from being hard little knobs of annoyance which I tried to hide, to being these unwieldy masses of flesh which seemed to be growing disproportionately to my little body. Boys – even men – stopped teasing me about them and started staring silently and in earnest. My back hurt from trying to slouch enough to make them less noticeable but it got to the point that this was impossible. As I jogged along my path in the woods, I experimented with holding them up. My back, bruised anyway from the impact with the bookcase, immediately felt better, so I jogged along, enjoying for the first time the sensation and weight of my breasts. I forgot about my annoyance at my body for betraying me and just basked in the pleasure of it.

I got to the spot where I always rested -- close enough to the playground I could hear the whoosh of kites flying and the thwack of soccer balls being kicked but where I was entirely concealed by the bush. It was a clearing where, although I didn’t know it yet, teenagers came at night to build campfires and get drunk. Although I saw evidence of their forays, I obstinately believed I was the only one who really knew where this was. The sun shined in speckled patches through the lattice- work of the leaves. I stopped in one sunny spot, imagining myself some sun worshiper of ancient times, and threw my arms up to the sun, allowing it to caress and mother me as my mother no longer could. I imagined it was my mother from the heaven I then believed in sending the sun in her stead.

The bruises on my back sang their woes and I decided to pull my Ms. Pac Man T-shirt up around my neck and let the sun warm me, heal my bruised back and perhaps my bruised soul as well, the way my mother would with magic kisses.

As the sun worked its way into me, I moaned in pleasure.

“That must feel very good,” a lightly accented male voice said.

Shocked, I scrambled to put my T-shirt on.

He laughed. “Keep it off. You look good that way.”

I tried to locate him, but my eyes were drenched with the sun and couldn’t see into the dark perimeters of the forest. He stepped into the light quickly and I almost screamed.

He was much bigger than me and blocked out the sun like an eclipse. I could only see his silhouette. I struggled to pull my T-shirt down but he forced it up over my breasts. I stared dumbly at his hands, thinking how tan they seemed next to the bareness of my skin. It was the first time in my life anyone had ever touched my breasts. A combination of fear and pleasure swept through me. I knew no one could see -- he could rape or kill me and no one would see, but a scream would bring concerned parents running from the playground. I didn’t scream.
I guessed that he wasn’t an adult but still much older than me, maybe sixteen or seventeen. He used one hand to catch both my arms behind my back and the other hand to run across my nipples. I was surprised at the sensation that ran through my body, like electricity straight to nether regions which I explored alone in the darkness of my bed.

We remained like that for several minutes. I closed my eyes and didn’t struggle. He loosed his grip on my wrists but didn’t entirely let go. He whispered softly to me with his accent very thick, “You are a very pretty girl, very pretty... gold hair... very pretty.” I didn’t think about his words, just the sensation of his hands, restraining me, caressing me, causing a sensation which I had never felt before.

He pressed his body against mine and grabbed on of my hands from behind my back and placed it on his crotch. I pulled my hand away and pushed him as hard as I could. He tried to hold on to me but toppled over as I bolted away like a frightened deer. I took the shortest path back to Sarah Drive, but I could hear him following. It was my terrain, I knew where to place my feet. He was less sure but following quickly. I passed through, making little sound or disturbance, but he broke every twig and branch that he passed. The forest screamed in his wake.

Just before the street there were a series of logs which I knew from hours of sitting and playing on them. Two were obvious and one hung down, dead, lying between two trees. This one didn’t need to be avoided it you were under five feet. I was. As I felt my feet slapping the black top of Sarah Drive, I heard the thump of his head on the dead log. I didn’t pause. I ran straight to my house and locked the door.

My father and brother were dressed and waiting for my return.

Mr. Hyde had left and Dr. Jeckyl remained, calm and urging me to get ready, we were late. Wordlessly, I retreated to my room. As I removed my T-shirt I felt it tear. I looked at the tear and began to shred with my hands. When my hands no longer sufficed, I took scissors from my desk and continued the carnage of Ms. Pac Man. Finally a mass of yellow fuzz remained. I gathered it into my hands and shoved it into my underwear drawer, unwilling, as of yet, to part with it.