Screaming Silently

When I was nine or ten we went to visit my Grandmother in Arkansas. My mother is from Arkansas and is the youngest girl of 7 kids. Her brothers and sisters all have stayed there and raised families. We visited once every couple of years that I remember until my Grandmother died.

On this particular trip my cousin Richard was there. I'm not sure exactly how much older Richard was but I think he was at least 17 or 18 years at this time.

Richard was the son of my mothers oldest brother. He had a bit of a reputation among the cousins. Or at least that is what I found out years later. On this trip several of my female cousins came to visit too. They were children of my various aunts many of them older than I.

On one particular day I was out back with Richard and another female cousin and Richard started making comments about my other cousins body. They were crude comments I hadn't really heard before. He called her breasts weird names and tried to touch them. She slapped at him and told him to quit but he didn't. It seemed to escalate and he got more and more bold. The next thing I knew he had pushed her down and was on top of her. She was in a skirt and I saw him put his hand up her dress. While she screamed. I turned and ran toward the house and hid. The adults heard the commotion and came out but I don't remember them doing anything. I don't think she told them what Richard had done to her. I was afraid and I felt dirty for having seen it.

Later in our stay I was sleeping in my Grandmothers room at night on a big bed. One morning I woke up to people talking in the kitchen. I yelled out Mom not wanting to leave the warmth of the bed yet. My mother did not hear me but my cousin Richard did. He opened the door to my grandmothers room and looked around. He got a weird grin on his face and said good morning and closed the door behind him. I watched as he started to unbuckle his pants and walk around the bed. He ask if the bed was comfortable and if he could join me. I began to be very afraid but I couldn't make myself move. He dropped his pants and slid into bed next to me. I told him to get out and he just laughed and told me to be quiet and not scream like my other cousin had. He started touching me and I started to cry. I told him if he didn't get out of my bed I was going to scream. He didn't believe me but that is just what I did. Loud, hard and long. He responded by jumping out of bed and grabbing his pants. He managed to pull them on just in time for my parents and my grandmother to run in. All I could tell them is he touched me I was to ashamed of what he did to tell them how or where.

Nothing was ever done. His parents never told no one ever punished him. As I got older I found out that he had done something to each of the female cousins and there were a lot of them. The result of which was a lot of self loathing and self esteem issues. One cousin the one I witnessed has never mentally been the same.

I have always wondered who abused him to make him an abuser. He has a wife and daughters now and It makes me ill to think about what he might be doing to his own flesh and blood.

Will the silence go on that is the family legacy?

Probably for them. Not for me.