The Beat of My Own Drum by Sheila E. Read Free Book Online Page A

for weeks.
    My parents were both busy working and Pops was out every night, but they kept asking me what was wrong. I merely repeated that I didn’t feel good. I wouldn’t explain why, and their growing frustration with me was evident.
    All my life they’d been supportive and protective, but they couldn’t help me, and I couldn’t ask them for the comfort I needed—comfort they’d have lovingly provided if only they’d known the truth.
    I had never felt so alone in my life.
    After weeks of being unable to use the toilet, I became so sick that my mother had no choice but to take me to the hospital. My stomach was badly distended. The doctors at the community Highland Hospital checked me over and took my temperature and drew off some blood.
    When they got the results, they told Moms it was a good thing she’d brought me in when she did. “Your daughter is so full of toxins that if you’d waited any longer, her life could have been in danger,” they told her gravely.
    To my enormous embarrassment, they put me in a diaper. I was humiliated and begged them to take it off. “I’m too old!” I cried. Then they said that they’d give me some suppositories. I didn’t know what they meant, but when I learned that a stranger planned to put something inside me I became hysterical, screaming, “I don’t want anyone to touch me! Moms, please don’t let them touch me!”
    The doctors tried to reassure me that suppositories would release my blockage, but I wouldn’t let them near me. My mother persuaded them to let her administer them at home, which she did while I cried. Then she took me to my grandmother’s house.
    All the while, she kept asking me over and over why I didn’t tell her something was wrong. “Why did you feel like that?” she asked. My grandmother quizzed me too.
    I couldn’t tell either of them; I was clammed up so tight. I wasn’t letting anyone else in.
    What seemed like hours later, Moms found me standing awkwardly in the hallway outside the bathroom. The suppositories were finally taking effect, and my stomach was cramping painfully.
    “I’m scared,” I told her as she knelt down beside me. I was still convinced I was going to die. Eventually, and despite my best efforts to contain myself, I began filling my diaper, and the shame of that forced me to the bathroom.
    I sat on my grandmother’s toilet and finally let go. I didn’t want to hold on anymore. I purged. Outside, I overheard my cousins asking Moms what was wrong. “Sheila’s just a little sick,” Moms told them.
    I was “just a little sick” for a very long time. I felt damaged. Violated. I didn’t know the word rape. I just knew that I felt different; that I was different. A part of me was gone forever.
    I became so terrified of the dark and of going to bed that I asked for a night-light. My parents also had to keep my bedroomdoor open so that the light from the hallway shone into the room.
    My innocence had been stolen, without warning or apology.
    The Bad Thing that happened that night in that house scarred me forever.
    •  •  •
    I suppose I must have recovered my senses eventually, because that same year my parents took me to Sweet’s for my first live performance with Pops. Nobody can recall now if it was designed to cheer me up, but—whatever the reason—it worked.
    It felt so wonderful to be up on that stage in the spotlight that night and to lose myself to the music. I was happy again. I didn’t so much play those congas—those congas played me.
    That night was the moment the dark direction my life had taken began to turn back toward a brighter path.
    Not long afterward, we moved away from that evil house and all its horrid memories, which was a huge relief for me. I tried to put what happened there behind me.
    It was never discussed again.
    Many years passed before I could finally begin to acknowledge the profound sense of loss that accompanied those events and to start to believe in myself again. I