Ok, I am attempting to write snippets that I will connect together to put a book together. I no longer have the concentration necessary to sit and write linearly. Did I just make up that word? Shrugs This entry may be disturbing and I am having a hard time writing it…but it is something that needs to be covered…so be warned….
I often dream of the farm. The Farm has come to equal this vortex that sucks me back into a whole other dimension of bad memories. When I was sick, which was often, my mother would read me the story about the Tar Baby…wherein Br’er Rabbit punches the decoy made that Br’er Fox made out of tar to catch him. The more he panics and tries to fight, the more stuck he becomes. When all else fails, Br’er Rabbit is left to mindfuck his way victorious. When I think of all the time I have thrown punches, been held captive by the inevitability of a situation and still come out swinging, I hope I can say someday; I have had a tar baby life these past 21 years.
My shirt is rolled up, a window shade drawn to expose my little white tank top. I always have liked the little rosebud layered over a ribbon that is attached to the collar of the the tank top. Usually, I finger it lovingly. Today, someone else is. Just like Br’er Rabbit, my fists are caught fast and there is nothing to be done about it. So my head becomes a balloon, detaches from my body and floats. I think that if I don’t look Him, it isn’t true. That picture won’t be in my head to relive over again. I look at the 6 pack of Pepsi on top of his fridge. I look at the bowl on the Cream of Wheat box and wonder just what the fuck Cream of Wheat tastes like. I look out the window and I am rewarded with a sight that resembles a textbook version of what Happy is, a blue sky with sunshine and birds flying overhead. A funny thing happens, my fists aren’t being held off to one side in one of his farm-worn hands while the other makes my body the scene of a tragedy. My light blue pants aren’t unbuttoned, my t-shirt isn’t rolled up, my bangs (in the early stages of growing out) aren’t stuck to my forehead with sweat while my chest ISN”T heaving asthmatically. The details are still there, they’re just like a negative; inverted. In my dreams, I can’t see his face. At age 21, I am still too scared to face the man.
Socializing with people my own age was never something I would consider to be a strength. If you looked on the Roxanne Dixon resume, it just wouldn’t appear under my past work experience or even my hobbies. This was not a problem when my family, which at this point only consisted of my parents and my older sister, Patty and me, lived in Rome, NY. Three year olds don’t need that much mental stimulation, I was happy to sit and pick my nose at that point. However, when we moved to North Bay when I was 4 or a little older, my development stages had martured…whereas before French’s would do, now I was Grey Poupon all the way. I craved my parents attention more than anything. It is odd, my earliest memories from Rome never include my parents. I don’t tend to have many memories of my parents at all in the Childhood Archives. (I still crave their attention now but I get it thru little vignettes that I write in my head that are so far removed from the truth that even Mr. Rogers would be impressed by my Land of Make-Believe.) Back then, I was left to devise ways to make them notice me, as I didn’t have enough money yet to buy a neon sign that said “PAY ATTENTION!” It usually resulted in me doing something naughty like writing everyone’s names all over their belongings and then lying and saying it wasn’t me when I was questioned. (In fact, if my parents asked me today, if it was me that wrote Patty’s name on her ballerina jewelry box, I would still emphatically shake my head and say, “Not me!” I would just have more suspects to blame it on, with 2 more siblings, a brother in law and a 1 yr old niece being added to the family by now.) Bad attention, like bad sex only lasts a short time and leaves you just as empty. I just couldn’t get my fix fast enough. Then I realized I had a well of attention that I had left untapped. My great-uncle lived out back of our house in a trailer.
For some reason, I found it cool that he had no running water or electricity and pissed in a bucket in the trailer. It was like glorified camping. As a 5 year old tomboy, pissing in a bucket just seemed like the very epitome of freedom to me, like it could be the visions our pilgrim father’s had when first reaching these foreign lands…I was addicted. I helped with chores, and by helped, I mean observed. I hung out in the milkhouse. I remember playing in his trailer. I’d hold up a magnifying glass,
“My, what big ears you have!”
The wolf’s stock response, “The better to hear you with.”
“My, what big eyes you have!”
“The better to see you with!”
“My, what a big mouth you have.”
Yeah. Apparently, the better to makeout with you with. For some reason, Red Riding Hood excerpts are some subliminal clue, not understood by me, that he should corner me on the bed and stick his tongue in my mouth. Glorified camping has never been the same since. At first, my 5 year old response is a loud resounding, “Ick” as his tongue leaves my mouth. He pushes me down on the bed, arms pinned on either side of my head, like I’m the star of my own Harlequinn Romance Novel. I imagine the title to be something like, “Little Girl Lust” or some such nonsense. And it’s very much unwarranted, thank you very little. But this is the sarcasm-as-coping-mechanism insight that comes 16 years later, not the thought process of a 5 year old about to get felt up by her uncle, the person she idolizes most. I twist my head to the side, like moving my head is going to put up some anti-uncle-kissing-forcefield around my lips. It doesn’t work. Apparently we took a hit at some point earlier and it damaged the forcefield and now we’re all gonna die! AHHHH! (Is the mocking of Star Trek not appropriate here? Oh, ok…) To this day, all I can compare my uncle kissing me to is eating slugs. Live ones. I start to gag as his tongue decides to travel down south to my esophagus (practically) for the winter. Probably for retirement. It’s fucking old enough. The logical thing to do, when your 5 year old niece starts gagging on your 60 some odd year old tongue is apparently to slap her. I’m stunned. I’m angry. I’m stunned AND angry. Fuck you, you’re gonna slap me like that. I start flailing wildly like an epileptic going into seizure and he slaps me again. And this time harder than before, because both my fists are in one of his hands so he can get a better wind up. I may even have gone cross-eyed for a minute there. His hands are down my pants and all I can hear is my mother’s voice telling me just how unladylike that is. Only in her vocabulary, what I am letting my uncle do is “piggishness,” her all time favorite label of shame. I try to wriggle free, but worms can’t just get off the hook like that. He leans on my windpipe with his elbow and whispers oh-so-nicely that if I don’t sit still and shut up, that he will tell my mom what I’ve been doing and she will be mad at me. It’s at that moment that the story of Tar Baby reads itself to my subconscious, the more you fight, the “stucker” you get. So I just stop. I lay there. And I take it. I take him kissing me. I take him undressing me and all the wonderful little things he decides to do to me henceforth. For the next 2 years. And I will stay silent the whole time about what is happening to me…for the next 16 years. I’m already designated the class freak–I doubt telling a story about how my uncle tied me up with baling twine and sexually abused me will make them fight over sitting next to me at lunchtime. And telling my parents? Well….That’s a whole ‘nother Tar Baby situation…
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