Walking on Eggshells: Discovering Strength and Courage Amid Chaos (13 page)

I was to be hugely disappointed. Hopefully police officers today are more sensitive than the cop who asked me, “Why are you ruining those boys’ lives? You need to drop this.” I had told officials who the boys were and they’d had time to get their story straight before they were questioned. Their story was that “I wanted it,” that I begged and teased them so much that they finally gave in. I called the cop a really bad name before walking out the door. I don’t remember going back to Grandma’s house, but she must have driven me.

The things that were running through my mind were insane. Just a year before I had falsely implied that my own father had raped me, and there was a part of me that felt that because I had not told the full truth about that, I deserved this rape. In addition, until hours before I had thought that Steve was my best friend, but the boys who raped me were his friends, so how could that be? I definitely had not wanted to have sex with those boys, but I also didn’t want to ruin their lives, as I had my father’s. I decided that
the best thing to do was to get my butt home and try to forget about it all.

But I will never forget what happened that day. One of the big after-results of the rape was that I now had zero boundaries with men. Through the rape they took whatever little bit of self-esteem, whatever tiny ounce of self-respect I had. I felt that I was nothing, deserved nothing. My body was sore; my psyche was shattered. I was grieving for my baby and for the loss of whatever tiny bit of innocence I’d had left, and I was furious with the police. To top it off I was hugely disillusioned with Steve.

Grandma decided that I didn’t need to see any of my friends, so I moped around the house and tried to make sense of my life. But I couldn’t. What I really wanted was to go home, but it struck me that I didn’t know where home was, or if I even had one. My dad had sent me to my mother; my mother had sent me to my grandmother. Where was I to go from here?

★

T
he aftereffects of sexual
abuse affect my life every day. Even now, the abuse can still pop into the forefront of my mind without a moment’s notice. It gives me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I have to dig deep to remind myself that I am no longer that young girl. I am strong. I have value. I contribute positively to the world.

It took me awhile, but I now understand that I cannot change my past. I also had to realize that I did nothing wrong and sometimes that tempts me to play the victim. One day recently I woke up with the victim mind-set and I knew I had to put it aside. I cannot—do not—allow victimization to control my life. I also know that I could easily get lost in that kind of negative thinking.

Instead, when I woke up that morning, I thought,
So what? Now
what?
I know everything happens for a reason, and I trust that God will someday let me know why my early years were tough. Maybe the reason was so I could write this book and empower other parents to better watch over their children, or for young people to know that they have options even though they might have to search far and wide to find them.

That morning, when I began the negative self-talk that happens with the victim mind-set, I distracted myself by doing something fun. I love hiking but didn’t have time for a run up Koko Head, the crater near my home. Instead, I reveled in my kids and after Abbie went off to school and Mady was settled with my brother Nick, I paddle boarded my way to work. All the way I repeated to myself that I am not a victim. Instead, I am a survivor.

Being a survivor wasn’t how I felt after the rape, however. I felt that I had been destroyed mentally, physically, and emotionally. Any sense of a positive body image I might have had was completely lost, and I came to feel that all I was good for was as a tool for men. Several days after the incident I called my dad, who lived about half an hour away, to ask if I could visit. This was the first time I had seen Dad since I had let people believe that he raped me, and he treated me kind of like you would a pet snake. I understood why, but I really craved my dad just then. I just wanted him to wrap his arms around me and hug me tight like he used to when I was little. Unfortunately, my inability to make a good decision when I was a child will affect my family relationships for the rest of our lives.

Before I could set foot into Dad’s house, though, he took me to his lawyer’s office so I could say on tape that I lied. Other than that one incidence, Dad and I have never talked about why I didn’t correct the adults when they thought Dad molested me. I have wanted to bring up the subject over and over again to tell him how regretful I am, but have never been able to do that. It was all so complicated and I was so young. Somehow I could never find the words.

I knew I could never face Nathan again under any circumstances and am deeply sorry and regretful that it all turned out the way it did. I never meant to hurt my dad or anyone else.

Now when I told my dad about the gang rape, I could see all the conflicted “Dad” emotions play across his face. Then he said he wanted to go out and take care of it himself, so we got into the car and went out to look for the boys. I guess it was a good thing we didn’t find them because I think Dad would have ripped them to shreds.

While my dad was sympathetic and helpful, Beth was skeptical that the rape had happened at all. I realize now that when I accused my dad of raping me that I hurt Beth, too. As a consequence, I believe Beth thought I lied about the boys and what they did to me.

While I was disappointed in Beth’s reaction, I understood it. I recall many instances where I clashed badly with Beth when she behaved toward me in a manner that I now understand she believed was in my best interests. Today we have an uneasy relationship, but are closer than we have been in the past. Our goals today are
often the same, and this includes putting family first. We just have very different ways of getting there.

Since all this happened I have gained a lot of perspective and maturity and realize how important it is not only to be fully truthful about important matters, but also to be very clear when you communicate with another person. Miscommunication is the source of many arguments and disagreements that could be avoided if each person was clear about what the other person said and felt. As you’ve seen through my experience, situations that lack truth and clarity can get out of hand and can damage friendships and family relationships forever.

★

I had originally been sent to Colorado to have my baby and give him or her up for adoption. As neither of those things was going to happen, I was bounced back to Alaska. Shortly after I moved back, my mother and I got into a huge fight about her new boyfriend, John Greene. John was ex-military and was from North Carolina. He was the kind of guy who, at night, often used our shared hallway bathroom while nude. That made me very uncomfortable, but when I mentioned my feelings to my mother she said, “You are
not
going to accuse another man of
any
thing.” I had no intention of accusing John. His nakedness, especially right after the rape, just made me nervous. Besides, my mother had known him for only a few weeks, and here he was living with us.

Our words escalated from there, and my mother felt we’d all be better off if I moved in with her ex-boyfriend, Jimmy Neeley. Fortunately he agreed. At the time, Jimmy lived with his father, brother, and several other guys. For obvious reasons he knew that arrangement would not work if I was brought into the mix, so he found a house for the two of us.

Jimmy offered me a more stable environment than I’d had with my mother and even set up some loose rules that I had to follow, such as a curfew.

Even though I still attended school regularly and maintained semi-good grades, I had become a girl who ditched class as often as she could. I also no longer participated in any extracurricular activities, such as sports. Instead, I smoked pot all the time and had become the free, crazy, bad girl every parent loves to hate. I was such a product of my environment that I felt (like my mother, sister, and girlfriends) that I needed to be in a sexual relationship if I was to have any value as a person. But I also desperately wanted to be a mom with a family of my own. I was so tired of all the dysfunction in my family that in my child mind I thought I could create a new family filled with love and peace. That’s why I think I was so attracted to a man from Fairbanks who hung in our circle named Brendan.

I met Brendan at a party and I remember the party specifically because it was the first time I had tried cocaine. I had always shied away from it before, because the drug had turned my dad into a stranger, but several people there convinced me to try it. Brendan
was ten years older than I, which put him at twenty-three. I was so ready to let an “older” man take care of me that I fell head over heels in love. I was strongly attracted to the fact that he was quiet. He was also kind and loving, and he treated me well. When he told me he loved me I was overwhelmed by the need to love him back, without judgment, without question. Another part of the attraction was Brendan’s daughter, Kira, who was about six at the time.

Kira was an adorable little girl who lived with her mother (who had given birth to Kira when she was just seventeen), but she spent a few weekends a month with Brendan when he wasn’t working at the gold mines. Kira was a beautiful blonde with brown eyes. She loved it when I did her hair, and I remember that we colored and played games. Brendan seemed to be such a good father; here it was, my ready-made family!

Jimmy trusted me with Brendan, but because Brendan was so much older, we kept our relationship secret from everyone else. Even I knew about statutory rape laws. I knew Brendan did, too, because after the first time we slept together he put his hand on my face and said, “Shhhhh. Don’t tell anyone.”

Brendan even encouraged me to get a “boyfriend,” for appearances sake. I found a great guy who lived in town and we became good friends. We didn’t have much of a physical relationship because I was so in love with Brendan, but we had a lot of fun spending time together. I was so hooked on Brendan it was almost like Stockholm syndrome. It really was sick.

Brendan and I often did cocaine together and he played the
song “Shaggy Angel” over and over. “That’s our song,” he’d say. Why he targeted me, I don’t know. Maybe it was because I looked so much older than I was; I had neither the body nor the mind of someone my age. At eighteen, Barbara was always asked for her identification when she tried to buy cigarettes. At thirteen, I never was asked. Now I look at my daughter Abbie, and my little sister, Bonnie Jo, and think no way. No way would I ever condone anything close to this kind of relationship for them.

The summer of my fourteenth year Brendan and I became very close. My mother was wrapped up in John, so my younger brother, Nick, hung with us at least four nights a week. I didn’t see Barbara as much because I now preferred to spend time with Brendan rather than go to all the parties she attended. Plus Barbara and our friend Danika had moved to Fairbanks and didn’t come to Anderson very often. My brother Tucker was still bouncing back and forth between our dad and mother, but this would be his last summer in Alaska. After that he never returned. Brendan eventually started staying with Jimmy and me. Jimmy didn’t allow us to mess around at his house, so we either went to a friend’s house or down to the river in Brendan’s truck when we wanted to be intimate.

One evening, late, Barbara stopped by to pick up her dogs. She had come through Anderson earlier in the evening on her way to a party and dropped her dogs off with me. When Barbara picked up the dogs it was obvious that she had been drinking, but someone else was driving, so I was not worried about her getting home. I should have been. Since then I have realized that where there is
smoke there is fire. I should have figured out that if Barbara was drunk, probably the people she was with were drunk, too.

The next morning there was a knock on our door. A neighbor who was also an EMT had heard on her emergency scanner that Barbara had been in a car accident and that the vehicle was upside down in four feet of swamp water. I was frantic with worry as Brendan drove me the ninety miles to the hospital in Fairbanks. When we arrived, I was horrified to find Barbara with a deep gash over one eye. I was so mad at the man who had been driving that I stormed into his hospital room but settled down when I saw that he had dozens of staples in his head.

This was my first experience with the reality of drinking and driving, and the tragedy it can cause. The result was that I realized how much I cared for my sister. I remembered how diligently she had looked out for me when I was small, and how young she was when she did that. The memory made me want to cry. In recent years we had both become so involved in our own dysfunction that we had been too busy to see how much the other was hurting. That, I decided, was going to change.

★

In September 2001 I once again found myself pregnant. I remembered how my mother had reacted the last time I was expecting so I wanted to avoid another scene like that at all costs. I was confused. On the one hand, I really wanted to be a mom.
On the other, I had grown up enough in the past year or so that I realized I was way too young. I am not proud of the fact that I pounded on my stomach for a month every morning before school when I was in the shower. I had also heard of a girl who lost her baby after doing cocaine, so I did massive amounts of the drug—so much, in fact, that I regularly threw up at school.

I was so scared that I didn’t tell anyone. I told Brendan when I was twelve weeks along, and I still remember how shocked I was when he suggested I give up the baby for adoption. I had not intentionally gotten pregnant, but like most girls, once I was, I had hoped that the father would embrace the pregnancy. I wanted us to be a family.

I hid my news from everyone else until I was six months along. During the fall and winter in Alaska that isn’t hard to do, as everyone bundles up in lots of sweaters. But one cold February day after I had thrown up at school my counselor came in and asked if I was expecting. I nodded that I was, and she convinced me that I had to tell my mother.