Darkness (Summer Solstice 2015) - a reading (on YouTube)
My original intent was to write this up for Samhain. I’d been planning to write it up since last year, mostly in light of the number of brave women who had shared their own stories, stories I’d read. Recent events caused me to revise the timetable.
That revision started with breaking news about the Duggars, then Dennis Hastert. It ended when my wife broke her long silence and publicly shared her own story. Karen was incredibly brave in telling it. I have no desire to detract from that, only build upon it.
She first told me nearly twenty-one years ago. We were newlyweds, married just over six months at the time. We were out walking in the neighborhood one night in the fall. I was bitching about my family, about something one of them had done that had left a wound when I was young. I’d probably been talking too long, too self-absorbed. That’s when Karen dropped the bomb on me about her brother.
First, a little context. When we first started going out in college, nine years earlier, I noticed something odd about her. She was skittish in a very particular way. She didn’t like to be seen as a woman. She tried to hide in plain sight. She tensed sometimes when I touched her. Something clicked in my mind. She’d been sexually assaulted. So I asked her.
I remember she looked startled, probably wondering how I knew. She said she’d been raped in high school. A friend of her brother. She hadn’t told her family. She didn’t offer details. I didn’t ask. She would tell me when she was ready, if ever. We were only going out. I just tried to be careful not to set off any landmines that I now knew remained below the surface.
As we got more serious and eventually moved in together, I began to worry. What if I met her brother’s friend? Since her brother didn’t know, I figured it was at least a possibility, though maybe not a likely one. But I didn’t know what I would do if that happened.
Eventually, I met her brother and his family, but never his friend. Or so I thought. Karen’s brother seemed nice enough. Mark Monroe was four years older than I was, married with two daughters and a son. He was an engineer like me, though he had attended a prestigious engineering school in Virginia and worked for a major tech company (he is a former director at Sun). He was a fair-haired child. A golden boy on the rise. I started looking up to him. I trusted him.
Fast forward back to where I started, fall of 1994. Walking in the neighborhood. My wife turned to me and said something like, “I’ve been betrayed by family, too.” I looked at her, skeptical no doubt. Her family appeared to be the pillar of Norman Rockwell’s New England. But every family has their secrets.
“Remember when you asked back in college if I’d been raped?”
I nodded, uncertainly. “Yeah, by your brother’s friend.” I figured from her tone it was about to get bad, I just didn’t know how bad it really was. My mind raced but I waited.
“No,” she said. “It wasn’t my brother’s friend. It was my brother.”
Darkness. Complete and utter. No sound. No light. Just that shock after you feel the impact, when you know you’ve been hit, hard, but your mind hasn’t caught up with the pain. Which you know is coming and will be crippling when it does.
At this point, my memory goes blank. The next thing I remember is us sitting in the back room of the house, mostly in the dark. I remember her describing to me exactly what happened, blow by blow.
She was fifteen. He was a freshman in college. An adult old enough to know better. Fuck, even fifteen year-olds are old enough to know better.
I knew I had to listen. I’m not sure I was looking at her. I was afraid if I did, all the hate behind my eyes would pour out. Hate not at her, at him, though I knew she might not be able to tell the difference. I thought my heart would burst.
As she recounted her story, I could only close my eyes, as if my eyelids could contain my rage and keep the darkness out. I heard every word she said. She didn’t spare me the details. I didn’t want to be spared. I needed to know.
He waited until their parents were gone. He started by exposing himself to her. She told him to put some clothes on. Later he went into her room. He tried to coax her onto their parents’ bed. She said no. He didn’t stop. He was six inches taller than she was, a hundred pounds heavier. He played football in high school. Any struggle would have been short-lived. No one would have heard her scream.
There was no one there to save her. That’s what big brothers are supposed to do, but he was broken and standing on the wrong side of her bed. Who the hell did this to anyone, never mind his own sister? What type of sociopath was he?
As the picture she painted formed in my mind, I felt an imaginary pistol pressed against the small of my back. Over the next few moments my imaginary hand came to rest on its imaginary grip. By the time she finished describing the way he violated her, that imaginary gun was out in my imaginary hand and pointed at his imaginary head.
The rage inside me was visceral and instinctive. Someone had hurt and betrayed my wife in one of the worst ways possible. The monkey inside me howled in anguish. Son of a bitch must pay.
Darkness. Another damaged sector on the memory spool. I think only seconds passed, but I can’t be sure.
“What are you thinking?” There was a pleading in her voice. I know there were tears, hers not mine. I seem to remember my face feeling dry and hot, like you get when you’re bordering on heat stroke. All I wanted was to go to sleep, like when I was a kid and my mother flew into a rage. Just fall asleep and wake up to find everything was a dream. Or never wake up at all.
Attention, Kmart shoppers. We have a man down in housewares. Cleanup on aisle fuck.
Again, I don’t remember my answer. I think I said she’d done nothing wrong, said how sorry I was. Said how angry I was. I don’t think I needed to add that last. I think she was afraid of me in that moment. Not of what I’d do to her. What I’d do to him. I’m sure it was written on my face.
But I knew the imaginary gun wasn’t real and never would be. It was just a symbol of my rage. My primate brain wanted to kill him. Pick up the jawbone of my slaughtered prey and use it as a club. As I clawed my way back into something more civilized, I wanted to round up my friends and male cousins, ride out and burn his castle to the ground. But I knew I never would.
At some point my rational mind kicked back in. I said in very short order that she would need to talk to someone, a therapist. As much as I wanted to help her, this was well beyond my league. Besides, I knew I had my own shit do deal with on this issue. I had too many conflicting emotions. I was pulled in too many directions at once. I had to prioritize.
It quickly laid out like this in order of importance. Support my wife and get her help. Protect her nieces from this predator. Make sure no one else ever went through this. See some measure of justice served. Justice was the last and the least important. The imaginary pistol had gone away. Even through the worst of what came after, it only reappeared once, two decades later.
Karen tried to swear me to silence. I told her I couldn’t. Silence is toxic. Secrets get people killed. I knew that from growing up. I told her I had to tell at least two people so I could have someone to talk to as we sorted this thing out. She agreed. Only two. Not her family. Not mine. That last was never really an issue.
I insisted she share what happened with her family. Her brother had two daughters. Her sister had one. There was no way I could let silence claim one of them as another victim.
But I knew even then that the odds were not in her favor of getting their support. The psych stats are grimly clear. Families tend to blame the messenger as the one who overthrew their world, not the perpetrator. That’s if they believe the messenger at all. People are supremely willful in their ignorance when reality will dispel their illusion of the world.
My enforced silence lasted a year and a half. It was brutal. It tore me up inside. My attitude suffered. I grew short tempered. People at work noticed. All I could do was let my supervisors know I was going through something. I didn’t tell them what. I almost lost my job. I would have if I hadn’t straightened up. Somehow, I did.
After a lot of pushing, and hard work in counseling, Karen was finally ready to confront her brother and tell her rest of her family what had happened. Anyone who thinks counseling is easy has probably never sat through a session. I went to several with her, whenever she wanted. I left each one feeling raw, sore, exhausted and drained. Like I’d been beaten. And she did most of the talking. I can only imagine how she felt.
At first, things went ok when she told her family. They believed her. That was at least one major hurdle passed. Her parents were shocked but seemed supportive. Mainly, they seemed disappointed she hadn’t told them when it happened. They would have gotten her help. Her. Not him. Looking back, I shudder to think what that might have meant. The Duggars now spring to mind.
Her sister’s initial reaction was, “The Golden Boy has feet of shit.” A telling comment by my measure. But that quickly changed to “Nothing you’ve said changes my opinion of him.” She also insisted that the incident be hidden from her children even though her daughter was almost the same age Karen had been when her brother raped her. That fit the normal pattern. I’m sure her sister thought she was protecting them, but looking back I wonder if she was protecting him, and the way her children saw their uncle.
My wife talked to her brother in her therapist’s office. That, too, seemed to go surprisingly ok. He admitted what he’d done. She told him what she wanted him to do to make up for it. He agreed. I thought maybe her family had beaten the odds.
That fell apart pretty quickly. Once he was back home, her brother reneged on his promises. I called him on it. Words were exchanged. I told him if I ever found out that he’d raped anyone else, I would see justice served. That as he looked as his wife and kids and beautiful life, he needed to think about that. He took that as a threat. Which was fine by me if it kept his stupid ass in line.
Rape, that word alone became an issue. Karen’s brother and his wife took offense to our using it. They wanted something softer, something more lenient. Karen wasn’t raped, they said. Molested, maybe? Fondled? Could we just say that? No. We can’t. Rape is the legal definition of what he did, in the state where he did it and in the state in which we live. That was just the beginning of his equivocations and backfilled rationalizations.
In the last letter he wrote my wife, he blamed her for what happened, for not stopping it. He cut her off from his children, holding the cards and presents which we still sent as we tried to work it out. “If you don’t have a relationship with me, you don’t get to have one with them.” Ah, yes, extortion. Now we were back on script. I suspect he did the same with his parents. At one point, Karen’s mother said to us, “I won’t cut myself off from my grandchildren.” That caught my attention.
Soon after, her brother’s wife found God and forgiveness soon followed, as we were told it should for us, automatically and unconditionally. Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. Her parents began treating the incident like a sibling squabble in which they refused to take a side, as if there were no right and wrong.
Then things got weird. There was a visit where we were put up in her brother’s bedroom, the only bedroom that hadn’t been redecorated since the kids moved out. A will where all three kids had to all agree before anything could get done. A string of years where my wife tried to visit her parents at her birthday only to be told point blank not to come because it was too hard to schedule around her brother’s family events. There were others.
Rereading that, none of it probably makes sense to anyone else. It’s all contextual and emotional. Time after time, I called her family on it. Only then would something regarding the particular incident change. But the overall pattern did not. It pointed to a distinct lack of empathy. Or cleverly disguised passive-aggression.
Karen began hearing how much her brother and his family were suffering. How he was depressed, how he was in therapy, how his marriage was suffering. Fuck, we were depressed, Karen was in therapy. Our marriage suffered. Talking about having children was off the table. “Children are too cruel to each other,” Karen said.
Eventually, Karen had to tell her parents she didn’t want to hear about her brother and his family any more. It hurt too much to listen to their sympathy when he had done nothing, nothing he’d said he would. She felt more and more outcast, alienated and alone. More than once, she told them.
It didn’t matter. Over the years, things went back to normal for the rest of the family. They seemed to have forgotten about what he’d done, as if it never happened. Visits and joint vacations were once again scheduled, family milestones were reached and celebrated. Everyone attended. Everyone but us.
My wife gave up on saying anything, just began to accept the hurt, as though it were her lot in life, as though she had done something wrong. It isn’t and she didn’t. He did.
I did not accept it. I grew up in an abusive family. There was no way I was signing up for a second, not matter how casual or thoughtless their cruelty. It seemed we had become the problem, the inconvenience, the reminder that everything had changed. Because we were the ones who wouldn’t let it go.
Like Karen could. That was her first real sexual encounter. Who the hell thinks that didn’t leave a mark? What would have happened if she’d gotten pregnant (which she could have if he’d done everything he wanted)? What if that had been you? Your wife? Your sister? Your brother? Rape and incest never go away.
I think her family believes Karen or I are stuck on justice. By the time Karen told me what had happened, the laws and statutes of limitations had already begun to change. States recognized these types of cases take time to surface, take time for the survivor to confront what happened. Karen could have sued him and very likely won. She might still be able to. She probably could have had him arrested and dragged into open court. If he’d been convicted, he’d be a registered sex offender now. She could have made a call to DCF stating anonymous concern for his children. She could have ruined his life. With very little creativity, she could have turned his life farther upside down just like he did hers. She didn’t. I deferred to her wishes.
As far as I’m concerned, he walks around free on sufferance. Karen hoped, one day, he would see the light and atone for what he’d done. But he only sought forgiveness from his wife, his god and his family, not his victim.
It very much seems like we are the only problem left. The ones who just won’t let it go. As if my wife’s brother were an unrepentant stranger, anyone would ask.
No one in her family seems to recognize that. And she got beaten down.
Her family chose a side and it most distinctly was not hers. So he got away with rape and incest. They shielded him with silence. They never insisted he keep his word. It was easier to let Karen drift away.
Which brings me back to Chekhov’s gun, the one I mentioned earlier. That imaginary pistol only came out one other time, a few days ago. After another message where we were told how much fun the rest of the family would have when they gathered for another week together, how much fun they always had. Without us was left unsaid.
That spawned yet another email, another tearful phone call, another emotional discussion. And finally, seven words emerged from Karen, born of frustration, rejecting everything I’d done.
Those words hurt me so deeply that I was ready to give up and walk away. I couldn’t do this any more. I’d supported her. At points, I’d carried her. I’d tried my best to look out for others in her family, the ones who couldn’t look out for themselves. Those seven words erased it all. There was truth in them. They resonated. It didn’t matter whether she meant them or not.
I knew exactly how bad it was when I was sitting at my desk before dawn Sunday morning and that imaginary gun reappeared in my hand after all those years in hiding. Only this time, it wasn’t pointed at Karen’s brother. It was pointed at me. Its barrel in my mouth.
That wasn’t a suicidal thought. It was a symbol of futility. In that moment, it seemed nothing I’d done had mattered. My help had been unwanted. The darkness had returned.
Separately, Karen and I looked down into the abyss and saw the abyss looked back. We saw this thing could still consume us if we let it. Instead, we clasped each other’s hands and took a careful step away.
I wish I could say it happened that easily or romantically. But like any birth, there was pain and screaming and irrational accusations and more than a little (metaphorical) blood.
Karen wrote what she wrote and named her brother’s name because she finally could. Because it was the only thing left for her to do. She didn’t tell me she was going to do it. She didn’t tell me that she had. She left it for me to find if and when I did. She didn’t do it for me. She did it for her. Because she saw how much the silence had eaten away from her. From us.
As I said earlier, I've been pulled in two directions all along. I felt compelled to do what was best for Karen to help her heal, and to make sure no one else became a victim. Those were conflicting goals, often impossible to juggle on the tightrope and keep my balance. I'm not sure I’ve succeeded in either. I should have been able to pass off the second responsibility to Karen’s family. But they seemed unconcerned from the beginning that her brother might rape another minor.
They were more than interested in giving him the benefit of the doubt. I was not.
Every instinct in me screams that I should have buried him by shining daylight on this from the onset. In that, I failed. Whether he left another victim in his wake haunts me every day.
So why am I writing this now? Partly because I can share my part in this story now that Karen has made it public. Partly to honor her bravery and the bravery of too many others who have come forward just like her. And partly to tell anyone else who has been through the same, as a survivor and as their supporter, you are not alone. We’ve been through the wars and understand your pain. We may not have suffered the worst wounds, but the scars run deep enough.
Mostly, I hope it serves as a reminder that even on the brightest day, darkness still remains. All we can do is shine a light upon it and hope the shadows scurry away. Even knowing that one day all too soon, the darkness will return. Yet, even then, we preserve a little light to fight it back.
© 2015 Edward P. Morgan III
