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that she was
dirty.
    Then the bladder infections came. She’d had
three of them. She remembered the burning pain every time she had
to pee. The doctor never gave her a thorough examination. He just
gave her lots of water to make her go. Then she would tell him if
it hurt. Then he pressed on her lower stomach saying, “Is this
where it hurts? How about here?” She was grown when she learned
that bladder infections can sometimes be caused by sexual activity.
However, since that is not the only way cause, no one thought
anything of them. She could just as easily have gotten them from
bubble baths. No one figured it out.
    It was a long while before her secret was
discovered.
    One night when she was ten, her mother came
into the bathroom for some reason or other while she was taking a
bath. Mommy had gone stark white when she noticed the dark purple
bruises between her child’s legs. At first, Mommy had been
confused. Then her pretty face crumbled in a sick realization.
    “Mack!” She screamed for Daddy. There was a
panic in Mommy’s voice that Sarah didn’t understand. Her parents
questioned her for what seemed like all night. How did she get
those bruises?
    “This can’t be happening. This is not
happening.” Mommy kept saying.
    “We don’t know that anything happened,” Daddy
replied. He was calm and trying to comfort Mommy. “I’m sure there’s
an innocent explanation. Sarah, what happened to your legs? You can
tell us anything, honey.”
    Sarah didn’t believe him. She was scared. She
told them she slipped on the merry-go-round at school. She said she
fell and one leg went under the equipment. It was the truth. That’s
exactly what had happened. She did not tell Mommy when she got home
because when she had told a teacher on the playground and that
teacher had been impatient and told her to go play. She had ignored
her. Sarah knew that Mommy would have gone to the school angry.
Sarah did not want that to happen. That would have been
embarrassing.
    She told her parents the truth, but they were
not satisfied with her answer. She heard Mommy tell Daddy it was
better to be safe than to be sorry. She told him she had to know
for sure. She had to.
    The next day Sarah was in the doctor’s
office. The doctor confirmed her parent’s worst fear. Her hymen was
torn. She had been penetrated. Her parent’s reaction to the news of
her violation frightened her. Mommy broke into wailing sobs, and
Daddy held his stomach like it hurt and stumbled from the room. He
was making strange guttural sounds in his throat. She had never
seen Daddy cry before.
    They knew! They knew her terrible secret, and
now they knew what a nasty little girl she was.
    Then there were nice people all around her
asking who had touched her in a place she did not want to be
touched. Who had hurt her? She didn’t want to say. She didn’t want
to talk at all. She wanted to go somewhere far away where these
curious strangers would leave her alone. They wouldn’t leave her
be. They kept asking that hateful question.
    She broke down. Crying she finally told them.
She could remember snot running down to her lips and how she wished
someone would give her a tissue. She could remember hiccupping over
her words and fighting that catch in her breath that comes from
crying very very hard.
    Daddy got to Uncle Jeffrey first. He
shattered Jeffrey’s jaw, and the police had to drag him off of the
man. He told Mommy that he had wanted Jeffrey to die. He said that
Jeffrey was bawling like a baby over how sorry he was and that he
couldn’t help himself.
    It was all her fault. She knew it. He’d said
he couldn’t help it, so it had to be because of her. Mommy and
Daddy thought so, too. That’s why they keep looking at her like
that. Like she was a stranger instead of their child. Daddy could
barely look at her. Didn’t they love her anymore? After Jeffrey’s
trial, the subject was never spoken of again.
    As the years passed, she got used to Dad’s
distance and