(Repressed memories: Trigger Warning for child molestation.)
Let’s talk repressed memories and how they happen. Or at least, how I made them happen when I was roughly five or six and how I found some of them again while trying to obtain an MRI at 58. While I’ve written about the incident with Mr. White before in ‘Not Happy Mother’s Day’, this entry specifically deals with the development of duplicate memories and the subsequent realization of what was repressed.
If you know me at all, you probably know that I’ve had migraines since I was about nine years old. I’ve had tons of tests and doctors who said doctorly things and still there were and are migraines. In the past, I’ve always said, if it’s the worst health thing I have to face, well then I’m pretty lucky.
In late 1966, our family lived in Riverside, California. We lived just short of the limit for kids to be bused to school and so, my brother and I walked each day. As older siblings do, my brother would often leave me behind since I was two years younger and, as little sisters often are, just a bother. To his credit, he usually only left me behind when the school was in sight which was right at the top of the last little hill.
There was a house on the corner above the school owned by an older man (he was probably in his late 60s at the time). He used to stand out in his yard and offer us candy or change if we would stop and talk with him. Many of the kids told me he was creepy, but no one ever said why. People didn’t have the conversations about unwanted touching back then that they do today. Even Thomas, the old crossing guard told me not to talk to him and made me throw out the candy that Mr. White gave me. He would only tell me that he was a bad man, but he never said why. I just thought Thomas didn’t like him because Mr. White was white and had said bad things about Thomas (who was black) and that sort of thing still went on, even in California. In my young mind, I wanted to fix things and so I wasn’t a terribly hard kid to catch.
Mr. White used to slide his hand down the neck of my coat and clothing and I’m sure he masturbated, but I didn’t know what that was. I just remember that he kept his other hand in his pocket a lot and that if I talked, there were times that he would tell me to be quiet. After a while, he started to ask me to come into his house for a minute. He’d say he’d forgotten to put candy in his pocket and I could have some if I just came inside. Enough to give my friends some, if I wanted. I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to go inside a stranger’s home and said something to that effect. He told me that he wasn’t a stranger, because he talked to me every day and gave me candy and here I was, an ungrateful little girl, hurting his feelings. I didn’t know how to process that, but I remember I said I would ask my parents if I could visit him. He dropped it and sent me on my way.
One day, not long after this, he convinced me to go into his house. He had seen me in the car with the mother as we were driving by and had waved at me. She asked who he was and I told her that he hugged me a lot. I was telling him some stories I knew, I said. As a child, this made me feel far more secure because surely, if there was something bad about him, he wouldn’t wave at us like we were friends. So the next time I saw him on my way to school, he convinced me that it was okay and that he had seen the mother at the store or some such thing. Starting up the walkway, I got very nervous and uneasy and I started to pull away. Fast as lightning, he moved and grabbed me by my arm instead of my hand. I remember there was a huge hedge that hid the walkway and the door from the street. He got very angry and called me a tease. He said he’d had enough and started to drag me into the house. I remember it was very dark inside, even though it was sunny outside. Up until very recently, I never fully remembered what had happened next except that I remembered running from the house down to Thomas. He was already gone that day and I was late for school. I didn’t want to get in trouble for not coming straight to school, so I just didn’t give an answer for why I was late other than I dawdled instead of hurrying. The teacher supplied the answer I gave when she asked ‘Did you dawdle on the way?’ She made it so easy to just say yes and complete the lie to protect the abuser. (Try to avoid these types of questions when you work with victims.)
When I got home, I told my brother, who insisted that I had to tell the mother or he would. I told her and I remember she called my father at work, who came home and called the police. At some point, my brother asked me if I’d gone inside and here’s where the memories split and why. I knew I wasn’t supposed to go inside anyone’s home that my parents didn’t know. I didn’t know why this was so, only that it was. I knew I had lied about accepting candy from him and about why I was late for school and I didn’t want to get in trouble. And even though Mr. White had scared me, I didn’t want him to get in trouble anymore than I did. I have often remembered this internal debate, but never what the actual truth was. I decided to tell my brother that he had tried to get me to go inside, but that I hadn’t gone in and that I’d run away after he started to walk up the driveway. Once I decided that, I made it to be true. I reminded myself when the police questioned me that that was what I needed to say. That’s the memory that I carried with me for years, with just the shadow of another memory underneath. Nothing I ever looked at too closely, but when I glanced that way, I always saw myself pulling away before leaving the driveway and running down the hill towards the school.
Fast forward to me at 58 years old and needing an MRI because migraines and brain stuff. I’m claustrophobic enough that during the first MRI I had many years ago they had to bring my then husband into the room to try to keep me calm. The recent CT Scan I had (in an older tube) was way too much and so I asked whether or not the now necessary MRI could be open. Hah. Open. That’s a bit of misnomer. You’re on a table, with a mask that holds your head in place (think Hannibal Lecter) and then they still slide you under a machine. I was nervous, but I was okay. Until the sliding motion of the machine. Now I’m getting flashes of images: the door, the bushes, dark furniture, white walls, a coffee table (am I under it?), intense weight on me. I can’t breath. I start waving my hand to get the technician’s attention. He told me to wave if I needed him. I need him. Help. Help me. I’m fucking trapped and I can’t sit up.
He is so very sweet. His name is Malcolm. “Are you alright? No, no. You’re not alright. Let me get you out. Hold on. Hold on.”
I sit up. I’m wringing my hands. I’m hyperventilating. I’m crying. I’m as close to hysterical as I ever allow myself to get. I’m apologizing because I’m not in control. I’m always in control, god dammit. Always. Except now. These are memories I’d done away with and yet, I know they’re mine. I’m sure somewhere in there, I’ve always known they were there. But I haven’t seen them in over fifty years.
I can’t go through with the MRI, even though he offers to wait and try again. I need time to process what I saw, to put myself back in control. To be in control of this, even though I know there is still part I don’t remember. A smaller part that whispers *the house*, but that’s still hidden behind the protective portion of my brain that says ‘Not yet.’
Because this isn’t the first time that I’ve dealt with memories that I tucked away. The first time, I was able to sit and process them and move through them again slowly enough to realize what I was seeing. Now that a week has passed, I’ve been able to look at some of this and I remember everything up to the door. How I started getting more and more scared as we turned left and then right on his front walkway. How far away the driveway and the street seemed and how there was no noise from the street anymore. How Mr. White became meaner and meaner the closer we got to the door and how he was scaring me by the time he got it open because he was squeezing my arm so tight and yanking me after him. Before, I made it so some of that happened at the edge of the driveway and much of it never happened at all. And I did that because I didn’t want to get in trouble for not listening to my parents. No one ever said things like “You can tell me anything and no matter what, I won’t be mad.” back then. We know better now, so we try to do better now.
It never fails to amaze me how our minds are truly the most powerful thing we possess.
Who’s to say that Alzheimer’s patients don’t relive these kinds of memories during their various stages of decline? I’d lay odds that it has happened. I’ll say again, our minds are the most powerful thing we possess. I know it’s unpleasant (to say the least), but we MUST talk about these things with our children. If something horrid happens to them, talking is vital. If you can’t do it, get them a counselor who specializes in the type of trauma they experienced. Access Victim Witness Services through the District Attorney’s office if charges were filed. Contact national agencies that offer assistance and see if they know of any programs, free or low cost in your area if money is an issue. Don’t, what ever you do, tell them ‘No one needs to know the details of that.’ because they do and a trained therapist can help them deal with it, bit by bit. They need to understand that what happened to them is not their fault or their choice even if they made the decision to trust an adult who hurts them. No one gets to tell six year old me that I was a tease and that I asked for it. Especially not adult me.