The Cousin

(Warning: Adult content)


When I was a little girl, maybe 4 or 5, my sister and I used to go and visit an aunt, uncle and cousin in the country. We went to stay on their farm. It was supposed to be fun. It wasn't.


My uncle ran the farm, but was also a truck driver, so he was gone a lot of the time. My aunt was Scottish. How a woman from Scotland wound up married to a farmer in rural Tennessee I've never known. She was harsh and abrupt -- totally different from my other relatives. They had one child -- a daughter. In truth they were my great aunt and uncle, and she was my second cousin, but because of our ages . . . well you get the idea. She was 5 years older than I and 2 years older than my sister. Since she was an only child, we were intended to be her playmates, while the benefit for us was getting to spend time on the farm. City cousins and country cousin. 


The primary memories of these times, which span perhaps 5 years, are horrific. The expectation was something of a cross between Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Charlotte's Web, but the reality was completely different. Even all these years later, as I sit and type these words, I feel my breathing quicken, my chest tightens, as do the muscles in my shoulders and abdomen. An ache begins low in my belly, and bile begins to creep up my throat. The headache begins as my hands start to shake. 


The desire as always, is to escape. To get away from the events, the memories, the sensations. And yet I am driven to tell the stories. 


Time is fluid in memory, and perhaps especially so in the memories of the very young. I can't tell you which episode occurred first or last. There is no scale to rate which was the worst, or for that matter the least painful. In truth there are only flashes, which over time have been pieced together to form a sort of timeline. Early on there is the suggestion of game to be played. It will be fun she says, or at least implies. But it's not. It is scary, painful, shameful and degrading. She touches me and makes me touch her. I don't want to, but I don't know how to make it stop.


Over time things escalate. It's interesting to me that when I sit down to write it all out, I invariably find myself rushing through it. Part of me wants to look at each incident and get it sorted out. But another part of me wants to move past or through it as quickly as possible. Which is better? Hard to know.


Later on there will be incidents in the chicken coop, the barn, the pig pen. More things will happen in her bedroom and the den. Where was my sister? Where was my aunt? How is it that no one knew? There will be soiled clothes (vomit, blood, whiskey, excrement). I will be reprimanded by her mother for creating extra work. My sister will later confirm that she remembers episodes of sickness, and yet no one ever intervened to say something is not right here. How is that possible? 


I have never been able to put the episodes in chronological order. No one else seems troubled by this, but it eats at me. If indeed all these things happened, why can't I organize them correctly? 


1. The game in bedroom.
2. The cat on the carport and later the swingset where she strangled it.
3. The box of small skulls.
4. The threat of being drowned in the well.
5. The Jack Daniels pouring down my throat as I am forced to hold a pistol.
6. The purse strap that strangles me.
7. The broom handle she uses to rape me.
8. The incident in the barn that involved much planning and time to be executed.
9. The episode at my grandmother's house with the scissors and the buttonhook.
10. The final (I think) episode in my own bedroom while my sister slept in the same room.


How do I come to grips with these memories? How do I move on beyond them? The short answer is by the grace of God. The longer answer is prayer, hard work, time, therapy, and acceptance that the memories won't go away. That I'm not a bad person for not being able to "forget" about it all. That it's okay to need to think and talk about it. These recent memories have been triggered by recent news events: the shooting in Arizona, the suicide of the Princeton grad student. There will always be triggers, because we live in a fallen world. The only hope for peace and contentment is in the love of God, which He extends to us all.