My sun is obscured by the summer haze.  Rather than walk or run I seem to float in a sweet sticky atmosphere scented with honeysuckle and cut grass.  Asphalt cul-de-sacs, called courts, dead-end into bands of black oak forest in these early notions of suburban subdivision.  Each court is its own neighborhood and our parents have gone out of their way to know each other.  It is a community. I know other barefoot children who cross the sun fired bubbling tar with more faith than Parsi fakirs in salvation laying just on the other side; in the cool grass of precisely mowed and trimmed lawns.  

The courts would be too long for present day planners, but then it provided a feeling of security.  My parents talk about somebody named Kennedy.  He is married to a princess, I think.  She is wonderful and beautiful.  I don’t know much about presidents to be, but I am sure I know a great deal about princesses. It is a time before we irrationally fear strangers or the real dangers that lurk closer to home or in our homes.  So, we have many short cuts through our neighbor’s properties and all the backyards join in a park like setting: fences are unknown.  You go through Mrs. So-N-So’s to get to the road to cross to get to the Junior High or along the path at the end of the court, straight across the street and down the path into the next court, then across the street at the end at the bottom of the hill to get to my elementary school.  It’s about a mile and represents the end of my physical world.  All other places and distances require dreaming or sometimes begging, like the 7-11, or the drug store with a soda fountain at the little shopping center, church, or Grandma’s house in a state called Ohio.

Despite my innocence and ignorance I live in a society of guilt.  I go to church regularly not by choice or my parents demand, though that weighs in, but by the fear of eternal hell: the priest seems to look directly at me when he speaks of guilt and evil.  I wish I knew what I did.   Guilt beats down on us like the unrelenting sun.

I went to parochial school until I was seven and the nuns spanked me and told me I was born in sin and it is my fault.  I haven’t fathomed contradiction yet.  Adam and Eve ate from the tree of Knowledge; knowing is evil.  I am evil and guilty. There is nothing I can do about it but pray I remain ignorant. I might just get by.  In my future I will read 1984 and understand fully.

At least, now I go to a public school.  The discourse on power is different.  It has shifted to The Law and the State as paternal control, as has the discourse on corporeal punishment.  I don’t know these things but I feel them or the results of the discussion.  I haven’t felt the heat of a spanking since I have been here, two long years, almost a quarter of my life.

School is off for the summer but I have music lessons there on Monday-Wednesday-Friday for all of July.  During the school year I take the school bus, but, I have to walk the long hot mile to class for the summer.  It only takes about half an hour but it seems forever, especially in the acorn and leaf littered bands of black oak forest.  It is an escape from the sultry streets, but with its cooler dank air comes a different oppressiveness, a green and nearly impenetrable closeness, as much learned from our fairy tales as might be genetic.  No wonder the ginger bread house was so enticing.

Its about 100 yards up hill from the end of our mowed lawns through the forest to the street and similarly on the other side, though, downhill: just six hundred lonely, dark feet.  The path delineates the bordering properties and the almost identical split-level homes set back a mere 75 feet from the asphalt that by mid-day shines obsidian.  I stare ahead at that shining black river.  It is my home, my safety and my innocence and my ignorance: nearly at the center of my known universe.

Each day melts into the other as the summer continues on.  Our joy and time steam in a way that is almost painful; almost stifling in its endlessness.  Some days the afternoons bring thunderstorms and we dance in our underwear in the puddles that lay in concrete driveways.  On other days we get in our swimsuits and flit amongst the cool droplets of the sprinklers.  We don’t know that this is the truth of absolution and the perfection of falling water.

The last week of July brought even higher temperatures.  My world was nearly clasped still except for an unheard low growl, like approaching an injured dog.  My way back from music class was terrifying.  Perspiration poured into my clothing which stuck to me like wet papier-mâché in the loneliness and fear of the silent woods.

My heart rose as I neared the edge of the woods and could see the asphalt that led to my home.  But it soared when I heard a human voice, “come here look at this”.  I looked around and saw the work shop or garage that had been built at the edge of the woods, about 100 feet from the home at the top of the court.  Two of the “big” boys were there, brothers, I didn’t know their names. They didn’t usually associate with little kids, but the call was to me.

I had seen them during the winter.  The neighborhood sled run started at this little block building and went down the hill through the all the backyards.  I had snuck up there once to try the sled run with my aluminum saucer.  A big boy had taken it from me and immediately wrecked and bent it.  I cried.  But now they called out to me! “OK”, I called.  I took off my shoes and skipped down the grassy slope.

“In here” I entered the dark little building and felt the coolness on my bare legs and coldness of the concrete on my bare feet.  Before my eyes could adjust to the light, the younger brother had grabbed my wrists and pulled me over a metal stool like an architect might use.  My feet could not reach the ground. The elder brother pulled my underwear to my ankles.

I screamed as my body was torn, pierced and crushed by what seemed a red fiery brand and a pummeling ram.  A hand covered my mouth and nose. I couldn’t breathe I couldn’t say “No!”.  In convulsions I puked, the younger brother raised his hand to hit me but the older brother laughed and said, “No bruises…this way is better” and they switched places.  I lost consciousness.  I awoke in racked pain slumped over the stool like a puppet with out wires: cum, shit and blood oozing from me like vile pus and dripping on the floor.  I didn’t know what had been done to me and wouldn’t really know for years.  They threw some dirty rags at me and told me to clean up, my mess, but I couldn’t move.  The younger brother then took a rag and began to wipe…but I screamed from the pain and sobbed in agony.

 They explained how this was my fault.  I was guilty of being cute.  I was guilty of coming on their property.  I was guilty of making them do this in the heat of the moment.  And should I tell anyone what I had done: they would come and take my sisters and brothers and kill them and it would be my fault and my parents would hate me, forever, for all eternity, like the hell I was taught to fear.  I was guilty.

I still don’t know how I got home or upstairs to the bathroom.  I sat forever on the toilet dripping.  I couldn’t touch myself or move without pain.  Livid bruises on my hips, thighs and groin began to turn purple.

My mother knocked on the door.  “Are you OK sweetie?” “I have diarrhea.” I murmured.  I washed my underwear in the sink and hid them in the hamper in the midst of other dirty clothes then crawled in the shower.  I so wanted to scrub, scrub the evil away, scrub my sin, but all I could do was stand in the water and watch the stain and tears trail to the drain.

I got to my room put on fresh pajamas and collapsed to my bed.  I felt my mother’s hand on my head.  “Oh my you have a little fever. I’ll get some aspirin”.  I lay in bed for three days of nightmare and hysterical, burning fever.

When Friday came I hadn’t considered that I would have to confront the smoldering woods again and the brothers.  But I would, what choice did I have?  I could admit my guilt and bring on my parents hatred and the death of my siblings, or sacrifice myself in my guilt.

I cried as I passed the brothers house on my way to school but there wasn’t any sign of them.  On the way back it was especially slow going in suffocating heat and it still hurt terribly to move.  I felt I could still out run them to the asphalt if they called me, again.  When I reached the point I could see the shed I froze in anticipation, but, no one was there.  I couldn’t stifle the tears of relief.  Then a one handed grasp of my neck nearly caused me to black out in terror.

I thought of screaming for help, but, who would hear me?  I knew I couldn’t break free. They were three times my size.  I submitted, and the younger brother pushed me to the shed.  It is surprising how quick we submit to the flame of terror and dominance.

I had never seen a man’s erect penis before, slathered in Vaseline, and outlined by youthful pubic hair didn’t diminish the impact.  I immediately realized that this was the implement used to tear me.  I was no longer ignorant.  Did that mean I was no longer innocent? 

The older brother knew no other force beyond fear would be required.  Stroking his greased penis he told me to pull down my underwear and bend over the stool.  It reminded me of parochial school, the chair and the nuns and the spankings.  I acquiesced and climbed the foot rung and lay over that grey stool.  I screamed once as he tore me open, but soon, just sobbed uncontrollably, not knowing if it would ever end.

When they were done with me I tried to stand but fell to the floor in a puddle of hot semen and blood and tears; raped and sodomized again.  As I lay there the litany of my guilt was repeated adding that I was a slut whore because I had sex before I was 10 and a faggot cause I had sex in my poop-hole, and, if anyone found out they would never marry me, I would be lonely, forever.  I didn’t know what these terms meant but I knew they were levels of Dante’s hell, my hell.  My mother had referred to one of my Dad’s friends as whore and a slut and my Dad, often, with disgust would talk about the faggots.  I didn’t even know what sex meant.

What I did know and understand, with each thrust, was that all I had been taught was false, all the beliefs, all the aspirations were lies.  The priest lied, the nuns lied, my teachers lied and my parents lied.  With each thrust the truth of life, the truth of pain, was reinforced.  I accepted my guilt again.  Miraculously, my broken body made it home and upstairs.

A couple of weeks went by and my Dad took us out in the station wagon, for some reason he went and turned around in the cul-de-sac.  A for-sale sign was in front of the empty house that had been the warren of the evil brothers.

Years later I realized the brothers were caught or exposed and forced to leave town.  I wasn’t their sole prey.   In those days this type of violent crime was covered up not particularly to protect the guilty but to protect property values and the illusion of tranquility in the muggy summer neighborhoods.  It simply wouldn’t do to prosecute white boy rapists in Baltimore County.

In an epiphany those later years when the heat of summer brought back the horror, I realized that not just my body had been broken but my heart and soul had been torn as well, those sweltering July days.  The healing process cauterizing and scarred but I learned from this.  It was a long process with many wrong turns and confusion and strange and strained relations, not just with individuals but with the whole species.  I suspect, but refuse to admit, that perhaps the healing never was complete and those relations are still corrupted.

But I learned that innocence does not require ignorance: that I was innocent.  I realized that the religion of fear is evil, as would be any institution that demanded subservience and taught unredeemable guilt to the guiltless, that lie, and, failed to teach we are born innocent free of blame and are not responsible or fettered by the sins or superstitions of others.  I discerned that the evil in people is the result of an evil society that worships conquest and domination and demands we lick the wolf’s chops for our nourishment.  I realized that any exercise of any power or domination over another human being is the definition of evil.

There is no good power.  Or ever, a use of power that is good.  It is always demeaning, and, is always rape, whether by the bank, the store, the landlord, the government, the church, schools or armies, husbands, wives, parents, or teenage brothers, even with submission, even, if we can’t whisper No!