The Trip

When I was 16, dad took me and my younger brother on a trip from our home in Illinois to Texas to visit relatives. He had just bought a fully-loaded Ford Econoline luxury van and asked me to go to help him drive. By that time, I had completely withdrawn from as much contact with him as I could and had managed to avoid his groping hands for months. I was confident that he wouldn't touch me again. The temptation of going to Texas to visit relatives I had never met before was exciting and I decided to go. Hell, I reasoned, my little brother was going, too. It wasn't like I was going to be alone with him. I can not tell you how much I lived to regret my decision.

For that entire week, there was no bedroom for me to run and hide. There were no locks on doors. During the road trip, he made me pull into rest areas for the night. My pleas for him to allow me to continue to drive while he and my brother slept fell on deaf ears. By the time we had stopped, he'd emptied the sterling silver flask of Wild Turkey he kept close by--his bottled courage. He made my brother sleep on a reclined captain's chair in the front of the van and forced me to lay next to him on the makeshift bed in the back. I can still hear him whispering that no one would love me like he did, his rancid breath making me gag. I can still remember trying to scream, his hand over my mouth suffocating me. My sobs were met by his harsh whispers to be quiet. He taught me to weep silently. He taught me shame. He refreshed the fear used to control me.

To date, my younger brother, Robert, struggles to understand why I refused to let my father have contact with my daughters. When we were reconciled just before my father's death in 2004, I tried to explain. He had just become the proud daddy of his own baby girl, so I truly believed that he would understand. Before I could say even a few words, his eyes turned cold and he boomed, "We're not even going there." It scared me enough to make me jump and bring tears to my eyes. In his defense, Robert was facing the imminent death of his father. To agree with me would have been impossible for him to do with his dad laying in a coma near-death.

Since my father's death a little over a year ago, Robert has emailed me to tell me that by becoming the loving father of a precious daughter, he was beginning to understand that I had done what I needed to do. That by ignoring the past, we were doomed to repeat it. Finally. The shame has begun to lift as the blame begins to shift.