Found by Jennifer Lauck Read Free Book Online Page B

good chunk of change that came in my name. My Social Security and Veteran’s Administration benefits added up to a third of Richard’s earnings.
    Before being sent to San Francisco, I questioned Peggy about the trip—the why and the what—but Richard yelled, “It’s none of your damn business why you are going. Just do what you are told.”
     
     
    I WENT TO San Francisco, stayed a few days, and in the night my cousin’s boyfriend crawled into my bed.
    It wasn’t intercourse but he did things a grown man had no business doing to a little girl. When I tried to get away, he pinned me down and told me to enjoy it. “You know you want it,” he said. “Come on baby, relax.”
    Enjoy what?
    I told my cousin what her boyfriend had done and she sent me back to Stead. My cousin told me not to tell but I wasn’t loyal to her. I told Peggy and Richard right away.
    Richard said I was lying and Peggy just rolled her eyes. They both said I was quite a little storyteller.
    I was blunt. I was full of questions. I had a way of talking about things no one else wanted to talk about—but frankly I remember a lesson from when I lived with Janet. She told me, “Just don’t lie, Jenny. Lying is like a trap and you always get caught.” Her words stuck with me, that and the fact that she told me that if I ever did lie, she’d wash my mouth with soap.

    Fear and some good common sense were enough to sway me off the liar’s path.
    But Richard and Peggy—perhaps because they were accustomed to being dishonest—were suspect of me as well, in the same way Peggy did not believe my story about missing school and learning to read. Richard did not believe this story. They had no idea that I had also been raped before—at a summer camp while living with Deb and that there had been another molestation when I was six.
    If I wanted to lie, I would have conjured a really good one about rescuing kittens from drowning or helping an old lady across the road. My foundational identity was to be a divine hero. I would not, under any circumstances, lie about something as nasty as a man messing between my legs. “Why?” I wanted to scream at them. “Why would I lie about this? ”
     
     
    THE PINECONE BOBBED down the fast-moving creek and I kneeled on the soft edge of the bank. I plunged my hands into the icy clear water and dug my fingers into the soft creek bed just to feel the sand and mud and rocks. I pulled up a few stones and they were smooth and round, worn that way by being in the creek. I built a little stack of the rocks, the way you do to mark your way on a hiking path. The stacks of stones said, “I was here,” in case anyone wanted to know.
    A wedge of driftwood floated past and it was wide at one side and narrow at the other.
    I forgot the rocks and snagged the driftwood. I turned the wood this way and that and it was shaped almost like a boat with a rudder.

    At my back, Richard was still crouched over his foot and Peggy dealt herself a new hand.
    I got an idea.
    I went up the dirt path that ran along the creek and climbed a small rise. At the top was a still pool and I released the driftwood. I jogged downstream again.
    In a few minutes, the driftwood floated down and the top was still dry, even after its journey. I decided it was a boat. I went back up the trail with the little boat in my hand and on the way, picked a few wild flowers. I laid the flowers on the flat surface of the boat and released it once more.
    The boat bobbed on the current, safe and sound. “Such a good boat,” I said to the wood, not realizing I was talking out loud.
    I added some pine needles, a rock, and a leaf and did the same trek up the side of the creek.
    Up and down I went. I don’t even know how many times. It was that little hunk of wood, water, and sun. It was good. I felt happy in a way that was unfamiliar to me.
    Eventually, inevitably, I named my boat.
    I called it Catherine and felt so proud of myself for coming up with such a good name,