Do Tampons Take Your Virginity?: A Catholic Girl's Memoir (9 page)

My father stared at me. “What’s your
problem
?”

“Aunt Beatrice’s husband tried to have sex with me! H-he grabbed my boobs and—he grabbed me
down there
.” I sobbed.

My father looked down for a minute. He frowned.

“All right,” he said. He took my brother over to Beatrice’s house. I stayed home. That was the end of the conversation.

My father never stood up to Mario and he never told his Aunt Beatrice that her husband tried to sexually assault me in their own house.

I never understood it. Father was such a conservative hard-ass. He always said that all child molesters should go to the electric chair. I guess that rule only applied to pedophiles that weren’t related to us.

A few months later, I finally had the strength to ask my father about it.

“Why didn’t you say anything to Mario? Why did you keep taking me over there?” I cried.

My father replied, “It would break up the family. It’s too embarrassing. You understand.”

That was it. That was his answer.

I told my Grandmother Amalia about it. She was
incensed
. That summer, Amalia went to a Portuguese festival and had the good luck to run into Mario. My grandmother let him have it.

“You perverted old man! If you come near my granddaughter again, I’ll cut your God-
damn
nuts off!” Her voice went up higher and higher.

“You filthy bastard! You disgusting piece of trash!” She yelled in front of everyone. Mario glanced around, frantic. How many people heard this crazy old woman? He tried to run away, but my grandmother chased him down the street, yelling obscenities in Portuguese.

I was so proud of her.

Years later, I discovered that Mario had been caught with juveniles a number of times, perhaps prostitutes. These rumors were whispered quietly within family circles. It was just gossip; I never heard the whole story. I guess that’s the reason why Father never doubted that Mario tried to assault me.

I never forgot how my father refused to confront that piece of shit. We just never talked about it. It was another secret that got buried.

I was diagnosed with hyperactivity disorder in 1981, which was pretty rare back then. These days, doctors prescribe Ritalin like Tic Tacs, but back in the seventies, it took a really crazy kid before pediatricians started talking about prescription drugs. My parents refused to give me psychostimulant drugs. So the pediatricians told my father to restrict my sugar intake. No sweets, no caffeine, no chocolate.

No sugar... and I was an addict.

Where do kids go when they can’t get candy at home? They go to Grandma’s house! My grandmother’s house was like a carnival. I got Jordan almonds, little anise candies that looked like jumping jacks, starlight mints, and butterscotch candies. Sometimes I would get black licorice. I never liked the butterscotch candies. They were “old people” candy.

I guess when I’m sixty, I’ll be wearing an old housecoat with butterscotch candies stuffed into both pockets. A butterscotch candy wrapped in a handkerchief stuffed into a housecoat pocket is the true mark of a Catholic grandmother.

1. How many tissues can you stuff into your pocket? Twenty? Thirty? The legal minimum is ten. Tissues are good for wiping noses, asses, and faces. You never know when the bathroom at the mall is going to be out of toilet paper. It’s better to come prepared.

2. Have at least one pair of clean underwear in your purse. Your period could come anytime, anywhere. Also, you could get scared and piss or shit yourself. It would be a real shame to go to the emergency room with shitty underpants.

3. If your waitress puts little jams and jellies in foil packets on your table, it is perfectly all right to stuff them all in your purse and take them home. The same is true for ketchup and mayonnaise packets and any “free” bread that is put on the table. If you are lucky enough to be eating at a buffet, bring along the biggest purse you own.

4. Layer, layer, layer. Put on a bra, then a tank top, then an undershirt, then a shirt, then a housecoat, then a sweater. You won’t be hot, trust me. Okay, in the summer, you can skip the sweater. But the housecoat is not negotiable! Housecoats protect your “good clothes.”

5. As soon as you get home from church, change completely out of your Sunday clothes and put on a housecoat. In fact, your church clothes should only be worn for an hour every week. This means you only have to wash your church clothes once or twice a year. You really shouldn’t wash them more often than that, because they’ll get ruined. You can’t wash wool or silk, so—just put it outside and the wind will “wash” it. Dry cleaning doesn’t work, plus it costs money. Just put the clothes outside on a hanger and they’ll smell better.

6. Speaking of laundry, American washing machines suck. They’re only good for washing cumbersome things, like sheets or cloth diapers. You should really wash all of your clothes by hand, and then hang them up. The dryer destroys everything and eats socks. Plus, it costs too much to run. The sun is free. But make sure you turn the jeans inside out, because the sun will bleach the blue from the blue jeans.

7. Hang underwear in the garage so nobody will see it on the clothesline. The same for bras and slips, too.

8. Respectable women wear slips under their dresses; it’s okay if a few inches peeks out at the bottom of your dress, as long as you’re wearing one. Knee-high nylons are okay to wear with knee-length skirts. No one will notice if you pull the knee-highs up high enough. The best nylons are the ones that come in the plastic egg at the supermarket. Then save the plastic egg for Easter.

9. Miniskirts are for whores. The only girls who should wear short skirts are still wearing Pampers.

10. The best cure for stomach problems is 7-Up.

1990,
WINTER. AGE
17

Mother never really got any better. In the end, she got her wish. When we returned to the United States, she deteriorated slowly. After two years, she could no longer walk and her memory failed. The last year she was alive, she couldn’t speak or eat on her own.

The insurance paid for a hospital bed and a nurse. The nurse only lasted a week. She was appalled by the way my mother was being treated. I think the big point of contention was that my father wasn’t giving my mother any painkillers. The nurse said she would go to the police. Father threatened her, and a nurse never came to the house again.

One horrible night, my father raped her in the hospital bed. She screamed for help. My brother and I, awakened from our sleep, pounded on the door, which was locked. My father came out and yelled at us. The screaming stopped.

After that night, my mother begged her mother Amalia to stay with her at night and protect her from my father. Grandmother announced that she would now be sleeping over to help take care of us. My father didn’t protest. Considering my grandmother’s upbringing, I’m sure she felt it the best protection she could offer my mother.

Grandmother took over my parent’s bedroom and my father slept in the spare bedroom on a pullout sofa. The sexual assault was never discussed.

The rapes stopped, but there still weren’t any painkillers. My father had health insurance, which would have paid the full cost for the prescriptions. I never understood why he decided to withhold them.

Mother wore diapers and I helped my grandmother change her a few times. It was awful. She weighed less than ninety pounds—a withered skeleton.

Mother finally died at home when I was seventeen. My brother ran to get me from the living room. Grandmother was standing over my mother, and she put a candle in my mother’s hand.

“Marie, Marie... hold your mother’s hand. Say your goodbyes. It’s happening, it’s happening.” My grandmother said.

I didn’t speak. I was numb.

The funeral director was our former neighbor, Mr. Grant. He came over in the middle of the night and wrapped my mother in a white sheet, rolling her up like a mummy. My little brother Johnny stood in the doorway. His face was white. He was thirteen. I don’t think I saw my brother smile again for ten years.

That night, we didn’t speak. My brother and I sat mutely at the dinner table, staring into space. The house was completely silent.

My father came into the kitchen and sat down facing us. A single bulb hung over the table, casting shadows on my father’s contorted face. Father sat very still for a minute, then pounded his fist on the table. BAM! Then again, BAM!

“If you ever... EVER disrespect your mother in front of me, I’ll KILL YOU!” Father screamed.

My brother and I jumped, startled. What was he going to do to us? Was he going crazy? Would he beat us? He was on the edge of madness.

Then he put his head down on the table for a second, sobbing quietly. It was the first time I ever saw my father cry. Then he got up and left the house. I heard the garage door open and he left us there, alone. Those words were the only consolation he had for us. That was it.

My brother’s eyes brimmed with tears. He said, “I don’t even remember what it was like when Mom wasn’t sick.”

“I know. I’m sorry, Johnny. I don’t know what else to say.”

We sat there in silence for a little while longer and then I went to bed. There was a wake and a rosary the next day. The funeral was planned for the following day.

On the day of my mother’s funeral, my father caught me applying my makeup and became enraged.

‘What are you doing? I don’t want any
whores
at my wife’s funeral! Take that shit off!”

I left the makeup on. What more could he do to me? All of his threats were empty.

At the funeral, my father took pictures of the body. My mother’s family was greatly distressed by this. Mother had requested a closed casket and they felt my father was deliberately disobeying her final wishes, which of course he was. But nobody ever said anything to him. He just kept snapping away. The “casket pictures” occupy the last few pages of our family photo album.

Father never hugged us, even at the funeral.

A few days later, we visited my mother’s grave. It was the middle of the day, but a thick fog hung in the air. It was early November. All the trees were stripped of their leaves, off on the horizon like gray skeletons.

There was another Portuguese woman at the cemetery, a widow who had lost her husband a few years earlier. She was there with her two children, who were also teenagers, but a few years younger than us. She walked over to us to offer her condolences. My father hit on her in front of me. I could tell that the woman was shocked at this appalling breach of cemetery etiquette and she looked at me. I stared at her like she was stupid. What did she expect me to do?

That Christmas was our last Christmas together. We spent it alone at our house. My father didn’t buy us any presents and we didn’t have a tree. There was a poinsettia on the TV, which my father had stolen from the teachers’ lounge at school.

SPRING. AGE
17

In high school, I was a good artist. I won three art scholarships, in addition to being named “Best Female Artist” by our graduating class.

The yearbook club gave me a full spread just for my art. I was obsessed with comic book art at the time, so my picture was a very nice rip-off of one of my favorite Marvel characters, the Scarlet Witch, I think. I really can’t remember. The boy who won “Best Male Artist” was a Mexican kid named Luis. He had some real talent for murals, Diego Rivera style. Luis was especially fond of drawing Aztec figures with exaggerated genitals.

Instead of spending my mother’s final hours with her, I spent my time drawing. Sometimes I would stay at my drawing table for eight hours straight, working into the early morning. I would go right into my room after school and would only come out to eat and pee.

I had to have the lights out by 10:30, so I often pretended to be asleep. I would wait until I thought my father had fallen asleep, then close my door quietly and start drawing again. I drew thousands and thousands of line drawings and completed comic books. I even drew nudes. I had an old art reference book,
The Human Figure
by Erik Ruby. The book is an artist’s photographic reference and it’s full of nude models. My father thought it was okay because it was scholarly. The female model has armpit hair and a giant bush.

I took four years of art in high school. The last two were independent study. I loved my art teacher, Ms. Minkle. But I didn’t know she was a lesbian. I was totally clueless. She invited me to her house for a dinner party with real adults. Everyone made a toast at the dinner table. Her partner was there. And they certainly looked like lesbians—short crew-cuts, lots of cats, cactus collection on the front porch (why do lesbians like cactus so much?) But like I said, I was socially retarded.

After the toast, I said loudly, “So, hey, when are you going to get a boyfriend, Ms. Minkle?”

Everyone froze. I kept going. “You can only stay single for so long, right?”

Nobody said anything. They were all just staring at me. Ms. Minkle took me outside and told me.