Oh, Yes! I’m The Great Pretender…                             

 All I thought about when I was young was growing up, getting married and having a family just like the ones on TV.  I would lie on the dining room floor of my house with my hands resting on my chin, while looking at the album cover of the The Platter’s Greatest Hits.  I would listen to each song over and over while memorizing and singing every word, dreaming of being in love just like the girls on TV.      

            I didn’t grow up in a rural town or in poverty; although as I look back, I know there were times when we needed money.  The first memory I have of my life was standing in my crib, throwing a bottle across the room out of anger because my mother wouldn’t pick me up.  I was eighteen months old.  I am the third of four children; I have two older brothers and a younger sister.

  There was an elderly woman by the name of Miss Tib who lived around the corner from my house who would watch me after my sister was born.  I could walk to her apartment through my backyard or the “secret passageway,” as I imagined it to be.  I had a great sense of adventure at six years old. 

 She would come over and stay from time to time when my parents went out for the night or when they left town to go on a business trip.  She was a wonderful storyteller and at bedtime, she would tuck my sister and me in bed, position her chair in the middle of the room and proceed to tell us a story.  If we didn’t fall asleep after the first one, we would beg and beg her to tell us another one.  I loved to hear her voice, as she would recount the story of Cinderella or Jack and the Beanstalk.  I would drift off to sleep, having been lulled into a happy, dreamy state.  I didn’t mind my parents not being there so much when she was with us. 

  When Ms. Tib’s brother (he became known as my “Uncle Walter”) came to visit in the summer, I was given the responsibility of getting up each morning when the clock struck six to administer the medicine he had to take.  Miss Tib was like an extension of my family, being more of a grandmotherly type.  She treated me like a friend and related to me on my level, making me feel I was more adult than I really was.  That is the way everyone treated me.  When I would go to her house, she would give me her undivided attention.  We would do fun things like make cinnamon rolls, but she also turned our time into a learning experience by teaching me such things as basic Spanish phrases.  I felt worldly!  However, when four 0’clock would come, time would stand still.  It was time for The Edge of Night.  We never missed an episode.  For one half hour, I would have to be quiet.  Not knowing any better, I believed the people on TV were real people with real lives.  I did not particularly care for those times and I would get restless while sitting there, wanting to go home.  But for the most part, I loved being there. 

 Her house was the house I went to when I packed my little cardboard suitcase and ran away from home.  I had heard the little boys in the neighborhood talking about running away from home and that put a notion into my head.  I had threatened my mom about running away from home for days and the next time something didn’t go my way, I left.  I really didn’t want to but I had no choice!  I was a rebellious child early on.  I was head strong and strong-willed.    

 I would watch girls on TV washing their hair, twirling it up in a towel.  At three years old, I hounded my mother so much about letting me wash my own hair she finally gave in.  She said she figured that if I had any soap left in it, she could wash it out later.  From an early age, I recall wanting to be like “the girls on TV.”  I would see or hear something that someone would do and I would strive to imitate it. 

 I would eavesdrop on my mother and her friends as they would have adult conversations in the kitchen that were not intended for little ears (I had learned that from the neighborhood boys) and then later I would entertain my mother by imitating their gestures and mannerisms, making her laugh.  I loved to see my mother laugh.  

 The neighborhood I grew up in was full of boys.  I had been told time and again I needed a little girl to play with.  I didn’t like playing with dolls.  Give me rough and tumble boy games!  But the day did come when a new little girl moved into the neighborhood. 

 She moved right beside my aunt and uncle and her mother was a widow.  I didn’t know what a widow was but it made me feel funny inside.  I would listen to the adults around me and they seemed to feel sorry for them.  She had an older brother around the same age as my oldest brother.  Something inside of me felt funny when I would go over to my new friend’s house to play.  Something was just not good over there and it was not until later that I discovered what that “something” was.  I would always feel lighter in my heart when we would play outside, play at my house, or just hang out around the neighborhood.  I didn’t have a lot of dolls so most of the time we played at her house.  She seemed to have every make and model of Barbie doll, clothes and shoes you could buy.  She owned a Barbie house, car and pool.  She also had all of the 101 Dalmatian games, along with the ever-popular song, Cruella Devil, that we played over and over.  I will never forget the line in the song that said, “If she doesn’t get you, no evil thing will.”  So, if I had to play with dolls and girl things, at least it was interesting.

  One day, I went over to play.  She called me from upstairs and said her brother wanted to see me.  She led me into the bathroom where he was sitting on the toilet taking a dump!  I turned on my heels and left the house.

 As I would continue to go over there to play, her older brother tried to become more familiar with me by trying to touch my breasts.  I would have to hit him to try to make him stop.  It was extremely annoying.  I knew in my heart it wasn’t a game but I had been around so many boys I think I just chalked it up to “boys being boys,” never thinking it would go beyond that.  I got so I would just try to ignore him.  He had also tried to fondle my younger sister, but he did not try it as often with her. 

 I got up one morning to go over to her house to play with her.  I knocked on the door and asked her brother if she was home to come out to play.  He invited me in and told me he would go and get her.  He told me to go into this little side room and wait for her.  There was an icky feeling about it all.  This caught me off guard because the door was always kept shut to this room.  At any rate, I went in and he followed several minutes later, making some lame excuse about her not being home, stating she would be back later.  I felt this heat flood over my entire body and I sensed this dreadful, bad thing was about to happen.  All of a sudden, he started pushing me into a corner.  I was trapped.  He started saying vile, nasty things and started to pull down his pants.  He wanted me to fondle him.  He wanted me to pull down my pants as well.  I was scared to death.  I felt sick inside.  I wanted to scream out for help but didn’t.  This situation had been coming to a head for a while and something inside of me knew this was not typical behavior.  I had never been around people who behaved this way and I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening.  I had no idea of what to do.  I thought I was all grown-up.  I thought I was just like the girls on TV.  But this was not pretend and something inside of me felt ill.  I thought about trying to pretend to throw up; I thought about trying to run.  I just had no clue as to what to do.  I told him to give me just a second and I would do what he asked.  I think I was trying to buy some time for myself.  I just wanted to be out of there and go home.  I started thinking about my family and I wondered what they were doing at that exact moment, wanting to be there with them.  I hated this.  I hated him.  He told me to stop stalling.  I pretended to look at some seashells that were lined up on the floor against the wall.  They would always bring back tons of them each year from their trips to Daytona Beach.  He kept persisting and he cornered me, preventing me from getting out the door.  He was not going to let me go.  I knew I was in serious trouble.  This was not pretend and it wasn’t TV.  Then for some reason, I told him I would touch him, and made other promises I did not fully intend to keep, if he would move away from the door.  I talked to him like an adult.  After much effort on my part, I bolted out the door.  I still vividly remember him yelling after me as I made my getaway.  I ran home as fast as I could.  I was sick inside.  I was scared to death but I had escaped!  I couldn’t believe it.  I did it.  I got free.  I ran up to my room to hide.  I dared not tell anyone.  What would Mom and Dad do to me if they knew what had happened?  Would they be mad?  Would they punish me?  Would they even talk to me again?  Fear gripped me.  I felt nasty and dirty on the inside.  I felt as if something had gotten into me.  From that moment on, things in my life changed and I was never the same again.  I didn’t go over to my girlfriend’s house after that time.  I would make up some excuse as to why I couldn’t come over.  When we played, we played around the neighborhood.   

  My little sister and I slept in the same bed when we were young and one night, for some unknown reason, I told her what happened.  The morning after, I made her swear not to tell anyone about it.  I made her promise, threatening her with her very life if she told anyone.  From that moment, when I thought she was going to start to tell Mom or Dad about it, I would change the subject really quick or give her the “hairy eyeball” with darts of “you better not tell” in my gaze.  I kicked myself for telling her.  My brothers and I knew that if you wanted to keep a secret, not to tell our sister.  Why had I told her?  Dumb me.    

Vacation time arrived!  It had been several weeks since fear had become the ruler of my life.  My sister seemed to have forgotten the secret she had been entrusted with so I was somewhat relieved.  We packed up our belongings, the dog and my grandmother, who always went with us, and headed off for our family vacation.  As we drove out of town that day, I felt as if a cloud had lifted from my heart.  It was a welcomed relief.

  We were at the dinner table one evening and all of a sudden, my sister blurted out that this boy had pulled down his pants and tried to make me pull mine down.  She recounted the details that I had so carefully described to her, in front of everyone.  Then she proceeded to tell my mom and dad that he had also tried to touch her breasts as well.  There was dead silence in the room.  My mom and dad were standing at the kitchen sink and they both turned around and said, “What did you say?”   

 Due to there being another family with us on vacation, the conversation was tabled for the time being, but I knew there was going to be a big pow wow about this before it was all over.  It was just a matter of time and it would be when my dad said it was going to be and because of this I dreaded the rest of my vacation.

The time came to pack up go home and I felt like something was going to happen on the ride back and I was scared.  I begged dad to let me ride with the other family but oh, no, my two older brothers were sent with them while my dad insisted my sister and I were going in the car with him and my mother alone.  My heart raced wildly because I knew I was trouble.  There was no laughing or joking in the car.  Then the bomb hit.  My dad said, “Molly, I want you to tell me what happened between you and this boy and tell me what he did to your sister.”  I started to cry I was so scared.  When my dad talked, you listened and when you answered him, it was “Yes, sir.”  I thought it would never end and I had no clue as to what my punishment would be.  My dad was clearly upset and my mother was quiet.  It was a nightmare.  As soon as my dad pulled up beside our house and parked the car he marched right over to the boy’s house.  He told this boy’s Mother that her son needed to be locked up.  Of course, my aunt and uncle, who lived right beside them, ended up taking their side.  Poor children, they had no Father!   

  Everyone but my dad swept the situation under the rug.  The thought process was “ignore the behavior and it would go away.”  The attitude was, poor, poor fellow, he doesn’t have a father to look after him.  The heads were turned and nothing was ever done.  My punishment?  I was never allowed to go over to her house again.

 I discovered years later that he had tried to molest another little boy in the neighborhood.  He spent years and lots of money trying to overcome whatever got on him from that incident.  He never told anyone and wasn’t set free from it until he was in his forties.      

  That was the beginning of my deep, dark sexual thoughts and the beginning of crippling fear.  It was the beginning of my always wanting to stay home where I felt safe.  Whatever was on him or in him, jumped on me.  My stomach ached all the time and I did not sleep well at all.  I would get up and go downstairs to the refrigerator two or three times a night.  Sometimes Dad would hear me and tell me to get back upstairs and get in bed.  My life at six years old was never the same again.  I hated him for what he did to me.

  Time went on and I started thinking things I shouldn’t be thinking at that age.  We, as children, were consumed in the neighborhood with playing Moms and Dads.  We took it a step further and would go into the woods and pull our pants down.  I think we thought we were having sex.  It felt good.  We all were exposed to too much and were obsessed with our bodies.  My feelings were young, yet tainted and sexual in nature.  I felt dirty when we would go play in the woods.  Then we would go back to just playing silly childhood games.  When we did, my heart would lighten and I would actually feel better.  We never talked about what we would do in those woods.      

 My stomach started to ache all the time.  I complained so much that Mom finally took me to the doctor.  It was decided that I would have to have X-rays to determine the source of the problem.  The results came back and nothing showed up.  There were moments of rest from time to time from the black cloud of darkness that hovered over me.  But, it would come back every time something good or a big change was coming in my life.  I couldn’t describe how I felt, but it was icky.  If I mentioned anything negative about how I was feeling, everyone around me would dismiss it.  After all, my mother had taken me to get X-rays and nothing wrong was discovered.  Nothing was wrong that you could touch or see-nothing.  Yet, everything in me was crying and I was scared to death.  I was inside this body, no one else was, and something wasn’t right.  I just didn’t know what it was.  From that moment on, I withdrew inside to protect myself.  This wasn’t pretend any longer. 

 Mom and Dad would go away and I would hate it.  I would make a fuss over it even if it were for just an evening.  They went out to dinner at a friend’s house and I wouldn’t stop calling there for Mom.  My older brother had been left in charge and naturally, they left the number for him.  I found it and just kept calling.  They phoned my older brother and told him to get rid of the number.  Well, I already knew he was going to take the number from me, so I took a key and scratched it on the headboard of their bed.  I was never at peace until they were home.