No Escape

[Reminder: Some of my posts, including this one, are memoirs of my abusive childhood. Today I'm relating events that happened the day of my fourth birthday, July 9, 1953. The links to the right can be used to follow backward through the memoirs, or to restrict viewing to other kinds of posts.]

I regained consciousness on the porch. My Mother was talking to herself loudly and excitedly. She cursed my Father for driving off with the only car and ditching her with me. She cursed me for bleeding. She cursed me most for waking up. "Why doesn't he ever die?"

She said, "What am I going to do? If I take him inside he'll bleed all over everything! I don't want him bleeding all over everything!" This was the argument that prompted her to get rags from the kitchen and wrap my head with them. It would be nice to think that some mothering instinct was at work but it's very hard to say.

Once I was wrapped up she dragged me in to the kitchen. She complained that my rags were already soaked with blood. I was fading in and out. Sometimes she seemed distant. My vision occasionally blurred and doubled. My head was pounding. She took off the first set of rags, lifted me up and rinsed my head under the faucet, and then wrapped me in fresh rags.

By now, her running monologue was veering into a new subject: what sort of permanent damage might have been done. She started to say things like, "What if he can't speak anymore? What if he can't speak Hawaiian anymore? That was the only chance he had of being useful! What good would he be then?" She interrupted her conversation with herself to demand me to speak.

"Talk to me! Say something! Damn it, say something right now, or I'll take you and bury you in the woods out back right now!"

I managed to say something like, "I can talk, Mommy, I'm OK, don't worry about me."

She laughed and said, "You're the one who'd better be doing the worrying if you can't still speak Hawaiian!"

Then she took me by one arm and half dragged me and half made me walk up the stairs and around to the bathroom next to the master bedroom. She stripped me and made me stand in the tub, and began raping me anally with her fingers. She said, "I want to hear Hawaiian! Now!"

It always worked before. Whenever she raped me, Alaka'i would come to Kona's rescue. Kona never had to bear being raped. Alaka'i was the "older" personality. He was the one there for the first birthday. He was experienced with horror, so he would bear it and shield Kona from it. Then, he would curse my Mother out in Hawaiian, which she would think was beautiful because she didn't know one word he was saying. Maybe I get my xenomania from Mother. Everything is connected to everything else.

It didn't work this time. I was there as Kona. Alaka'i didn't arrive. That rape was my first as Kona. As Kona, I didn't speak Hawaiian.

It went on for a long time. I don't know how long. Maybe an hour. Maybe only half an hour. She raped me until after I lost control of my bladder and bowels. She washed me with water, then raped me some more. I would have spoken Hawaiian to make it stop if I could.

During the raping I became light-headed and felt my consciousness fading, only to be screamed at, "You're not going to faint on me!" and have cold water splashed in my face and up my nose. There was no escape.

Finally she gave up and took me in and laid me out on her bed. I was glad that the raping was over for the moment, but I was in a panic about Alaka'i. It suddenly occurred to me that when I was in the driveway and thought I was dying, it could be that just one of us was dying, and that the other one would have to go on without any help.

But my Mother's monologue was now all about killing me. Her speech was racing. She paced back and forth in front of me at the foot of the bed. She was saying that my Father was probably gone for good, and there was no way she was going to take care of me by herself. She discussed with herself, as if I wasn't in the room, how she could finish me without being charged with murder. The discussion was frantic and chopped, with different refrains mixed together, repeated over and over again.

"John was the one who punched him. He's the one they'll convict," was one refrain. Another was, "I can smash his head with a shovel, and bury him so far in the woods they'd never find where I did it." Another was, "I don't have to smash his head, if I bury him he'll die soon enough anyway. Just so long as the police can't hear him making noise when they come looking for him."

Finally she decided she wanted to "get it [my dying] over with." She said I'd be easier to bury that way. She took the pillow out from under my head and put it over my face. As Kona, I felt relief again that I might be able to join Alaka'i in the ultimate escape. But I struggled anyway, because you can't help it. When someone's smothering you, the panic and fear and struggling just happens.