The next thing I knew his massive body was on top of mine. Oh, Leslie. What was he doing? What did he want? What did he expect of me?
I reassured myself that it must be OK. After all, he was my father. He was my pal. Then came the pain. Out of here. From the ceiling I look down at the bed, at the bodies of the two people beneath me, twisted on each other. The rapes and, eventually, consensual sex between father and pre-pubescent daughter would last for three years. My parents were absent.
I was isolated on the family compound hundreds of miles from the nearest settlement. The man had unlimited access to me, and I was too terrified to tell my friend, her older brother, or her mother, all of whom I now believe knew what was going on under their noses and, thus, conspired in my victimization.
Children make such docile, delicious victims. They are all but unconscious, unless brought up, hard, on the street. And the street was as unknown to me as abuse of any sort. I now believe both my childhood friend and her brother were also victims of The Monster, as I came to call him, a man now long dead.
I surmise this only from the rage that boiled up in me that summer; a rage mirrored in the eyes of the other children at the ranch. Perhaps, oddly, I had no idea why I was always angry there. The rage had a life of its own, and surged up and over for no apparent reason. I raged at the doctor, but had no idea why. But, before they begin casting stones at this candid and guileless woman, now 70, an accomplished writer who devoted her life to her children, and to writing about health, spirituality and beauty, they should read her memoir.
