Why Cutting My Lawn Makes Me Nauseated-by: Michelle Beltano Curtis

The shed held the acrid smell of old motor oil and sweat, fresh cut grass and purged chewing tobacco.  Inside the shed; garden tools, a lawn mower, a straight backed bar stool where he asked me to sit.  The bar stool faced a workbench.  On the workbench were scattered bolts, tools, a tiny black and white TV playing cartoons. 

It happened exactly the way they warn kids about today.  Had I been warned, would I have seen the signs?  Would I have resisted the long slender bottle of green tinted glass filled with syrupy sweet liquid?  The sticky sweets? The alluring invitation to watch Bugs Bunny in the cool shade of the tin roofed shed on a hot summer afternoon? 

Elmer was an older man, ancient in my nine-year-old mind, though I realize now he was probably somewhere in his sixties.  He was a widower with two teenage boys.  I often wonder if he preyed on his own sons the way he did me.  How many children paid for my silence and that of those before me? How many came after?

The first time I sat in Elmer’s chair, he stood behind me, rubbing my shoulders and neck and I watched the cartoon characters fly across the TV.  He played with my hair, the way my mother used to do when I lived with her.  It was soothing.  Comforting.  Warmth when I so often felt rejected in my own home with my father, step-mother and her two children.

When I took my fill of sweets and fantasy, I hopped down from the stool.  I was embarrassed to see something pink and fleshy had escaped down one leg of his plaid golf shorts.  I walked home slowly, red faced and embarrassed as much for him as for myself. 

The second time I visited him, no invitation was required.  It was a hot and quiet afternoon and none of my playmates were around.  As I went kicking rocks down the street near his trailer, I heard the TV and peeked my head inside shyly, hoping for a boost onto the bar stool and another cold soda. 

Again, he stroked my hair and massaged my neck and shoulders.  I soon became engrossed in the cartoon images and the sweetness that filled my mouth.  When his hand trailed down my chest and stomach, I did not protest.  When he slid his hand into my shorts and began to manipulate the soft space between my legs, my body stiffened, but I remained utterly calm.  I sat quiet, unmoving, eyes fixed on the TV and waited for it to be over.  It never occurred to me to say no or try to stop him.

How delighted he must have been to have such a willing subject, a silent withdrawn girl, incapable of uttering a two letter monosyllabic word.  He didn’t threaten or warn or ask me to keep it to myself.  He knew it wasn’t necessary. He’d chosen well.

When he finished, I slid off the bar stool to land feet first on the floor of the shed.  This time the zipper of his plaid golf shorts was down, his penis exposed through its teeth.  I averted my eyes to the ground and walked softly but quickly back the way I came. I hid beneath the cool canopy of living green at the top of the levy behind the trailer park trying to sort out what had happened. Even though I never protested, I knew what he had done was not right. I vowed that day never to go back.

I became, if possible, even more withdrawn.  Food became my solace and I hungered constantly, one more reason for Connie to belittle and berate me.  I began neglecting my body, refusing to shower or bathe, even though I often smelled of urine and I developed a fear of the shower.  I was a bed wetter until the age of ten, and then only thanks to a convoluted machine my father bought that woke me whenever I started to go. It was the family curse, passed on to me and my oldest sister by my father.

Later that school year, as my plumpness and puberty worked in collusion to grow and change my body, so grew my shame.  I tried to hide my growing breasts and the hair that slowly spread beneath my arms and over the space where he touched me.  Not an easy task living with a woman who resented my very presence and abhorred spending a single penny to clothe me.  I was forced to wear things until their seams gave at a bend or twist.  And gave they did, usually at school for the entire fourth grade to see. 

The incident and my own changing body awoke in me a curiosity.  One night lying in the bottom bunk of bed below my step-sister, my fingers began to explore the private space Elmer had invaded.  I wasn’t sure what it was that I was feeling, but I stopped when some of the odd sensations reminded me of what he’d done.     

“What are you doing?” came sharply from above me.  “Stop that.”

“I’m not doing anything, Jenny.”

“Yes you are.  I can hear it, and I know what you’re doing.  That’s disgusting! I’m going to tell mom!”

I again insisted that I wasn’t doing anything and was glad she couldn’t see the flame of my cheeks.  I begged her not to tell, insisted there was nothing to tell.  I wanted to point out that if she knew what the noise was, then she must herself have done it, but that would have been admitting my guilt and would have only instigated the family watchdog further.

 The next summer, Elmer was caught in the act with another little girl.  The only reason I knew at all was because my step-mother came storming at me one afternoon with anger blazing eyes beneath a deep scowl and proclaimed that I was never to go around that man or even that end of the street ever again.  She demanded to know if that filthy man had ever touched me.  I answered with a curt shake of the head, eyes on tennis shoes.  I feared her anger and the accusation in her eyes. I knew more strongly than ever it was my fault.   

My step-sister saw the changes in my body even though I did my best to hide myself when changing into my night gown in the small bedroom we shared.  For once she took pity on me as I did my best to conceal the growing mounds on my chest, the hair that pointed all willy-nilly from beneath my underarms. 

Jenny tried to assure me the changes I was experiencing were normal, though I was much younger than she when it happened to her.  She told me I needed a bra and a razor and I needed to talk to her mother.  Her mother would understand.  There was no reason to be afraid.  I shook my head adamantly.  She pushed me toward the bedroom door, insisting that I talk to her mom, but that she would come with me.

Jenny asked her mother if we could go to her bedroom to talk.  She closed the door behind us and Jenny looked to me.  I made a couple of lame attempts to begin, but the words would not come and my face grew hot.  Finally Jenny explained to her mother that I was growing boobs and hair.

“Well, what am I supposed to do about that?”  Connie asked her daughter, her eyes hot on my down-tilted face.

Jenny began to stutter as she and her brother often did when nervous.  She asked in a small voice if maybe it was time I got a training bra and a razor. As if she was trying to put her own puzzle together about how to feel, she added, “You know, like you did for me.” 

“She’s too young for that stuff, for Christ’s sake, Jenny.  She’s only nine.”  She shook her head.  “It’s just not natural.”

My eyes stung with tears that felt cool on my flaming cheeks. Her pronouncement was simple; I was a freak.  There was something wrong with me, just as I had suspected. As I sat on the back steps of the trailer, their hot metal burning on my legs, I covered my sobs. Was I changing like this because that disgusting man touched me like that?  Because I touched myself? Why was I always making my life so difficult?

At school, they started calling me names like slut and whore in addition to the names they were already so fond of calling me.  Shelly belly.  Smelly Shelly.  I couldn’t refute their claims.  I felt like a slut.  I didn’t even try to stop him.

            I decided that spring, when I was about to turn ten, I wanted to go back home to my mother.  It had been months since I’d heard from her and I missed her terribly.  I dialed her number from the slip of paper my father gave me.  What I heard on the other end were three high-pitched tones and a message telling me that the number was no longer connected.  I called it 3 more times and again every day for a week.  My father told me it was useless to keep trying.  She was just busy and lost track of things.  She would contact me soon.  My step-mother snorted at these assurances. 

            My birthday came and went with no contact from my mother.  I worried all the time, making up fantasies about some fatalistic accident that took the whole family.  I dreamed that she left my step-father Steve and that she was simply making things perfect before she came to get me.  In my fantasies, all of the reasons I’d left were gone. In fact, the nearly three years I’d spent with her and my step-dad were gone and it wasn’t wishful thinking. There was simply nothing there, as if my life had been suspended for those years, or I’d slept through it. 

            For my birthday, someone gave me a couple of Mad-Lib books.  I took them over to my friend’s house.  Missy was the only friend I had.  She was much like me, quiet, withdrawn, more often dirty than not.  She lived a couple of streets over.  Her trailer was often filthy, with days of dishes sitting around the kitchen and her rotund mother at her usual place on the couch.  But that didn’t matter to me.  Her mother was always nice and didn’t bother us when we played. 

            Missy and I filled my Mad-Lib books with dirty words and dirtier scenarios, mostly at my direction.  We filled the books with bondage and forced sex and other things we only guessed about.  I filled in the blanks with words for which we had no meaning. We just knew they were wrong.  We tittered at the nasty things we could make the Mad-Lib’s say and promised not to tell anyone.  I assured her I would hide the books well.  

            As summer’s end came near, I got a call from my mom.  I was too grateful to hear her voice to be angry with her.  I asked her if she could pick me up.  We made arrangements for the weekend.

            When she picked me up, I immediately asked her where my step-father was.  She told me they split up and that’s why she hadn’t been in touch.  She and Sherry were living in a small apartment in Fairfield.  It didn’t take me long to ask her if I could come back to live with her.  She readily agreed through a torrent of tears. 

            When I went back to my dad and Connie’s house, I was confronted with the Mad-Lib book on the kitchen table.  They’d used the opportunity the weekend presented to go through my things and found it tucked between my mattress and box springs. 

            “Why would you write such horrible things?”  Connie demanded.

            I met the question with silence.  I didn’t know what to say, how to defend what I’d written or why I’d even done it. 

            “Shelly, this isn’t normal.  This isn’t right,” My dad added.  “What would make you write something like this?”

            I shrugged.  “We were just messing around.  It was funny.”

            “Who is we?”  Asked Connie, but I remained silent.  “This isn’t funny.  This is sick.  What kind of a girl are you?”

I shook my head, not knowing how to answer that question to myself let alone to her.  “It doesn’t matter.  You don’t need to worry about it anymore.  I’ve asked my mom if I can move back in with her.”

I watched the blood drain away from my father’s face in stages.  “You aren’t happy here?”

I wasn’t, but I didn’t have the heart to answer him honestly.  “It’s not that.  I just, well, I just miss my mom so much and she left Steve.  I want to go home and be with her again.”

“I see. When?”

“Well, Mom told me to talk to you, but she thought it would be best to do it soon, before school starts again.”

“You’re sure you want to do this?”  Asked my father, his eyes welling with tears.  

“Yes.  I love you Daddy, but I miss Mom and I want to be with her.  You don’t want me here anyway.”

“But I do,” he said, voice breaking.  “I do want you here.”

“We both do,” Connie added in a syrupy sweet tone that I knew wasn’t genuine.

Tears began streaming down my cheeks at my father’s insistence.  Why did I have to be so bad? Why did I have to hurt the ones I loved? He truly did want me to be there.  In spite of the way I was treated by his wife and her children, in spite of his weakness and inability to do anything about it, he still wanted me there by his side.  It was the first time I ever saw my father cry.

   

I never told anyone about that day in Elmer’s shed or admitted some of the odd behaviors that resulted, though I have long known they are normal for victims of child sexual abuse. I have long suspected that Elmer was not the first man to molest me, nor was he the last. I carried all of this into my adulthood unspoken despite the trail of psychologists that started in my early teens. Like many victims, I took a lot of the blame onto my own shoulders and that load was so heavy and shameful that I couldn’t even confess it to a professional, for fear that they’d only confirm my worst fears. I suffered from chronic low self esteem, depression, eating disorders, and a pseudo suicide attempt after I was raped by a family member when I was fourteen. That time I did say no, but in the end, he took it by force. After that, any boy who pressured me, got what they wanted. What I relearned at fourteen was what I’d already known at eight; it was easier, safer, less traumatic, to go along than try to resist. These problems have followed me long into adulthood. Even today, I have to remind myself that I was a victim, programmed early and often to obey, no matter the consequence.