Finding my Courage/I Hate Hankerchiefs.

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At 12, I finally twigged that every Grandfather was NOT doing this to his grand-daughter, as Harry had told me so often. He insisted my other Grandpa was doing it to my sister. I believed him – I was taught not to question adults – to blindly obey authority (that lesson hasn’t stuck.)

Grandpa D did spend a lot of time with my sister…so he must have been taking her down to the creek to do stuff, right? A child has no frame of reference to know what is truth or not…unless they are taught explicitly to question everything. I was a child born in the 60’s – my job was to be seen and not heard. I wasn’t usually very good at it.

(I found out years later that Grandpa D actually felt sorry for my little sister because Harry spent so much time with me, so he made sure she didn’t feel left out. God bless him – he was my good Grandpa. Harry lost the title of Grandpa a long, long time ago….a “grandpa’ is someone who loves you and nurtures you…not twists your little soul into a rag of it’s former self.)

It wasn’t happening to my friends at school – they weren’t screwed up like I was. We never talked about it….me, because of the mantra in my head “If I tell, I’ll get in trouble.” And my friends because I assumed they probably had nothing to tell. Ill never know.

Anyway, for my 13th birthday, Mum and Dad let me choose the new wallpaper for my room. Harry was a painter, so he was tasked with putting it up. He stayed with us while he did it…and that terrified me.

I would come home from school, (Mum and Dad were running their business, so weren’t usually home when we got off the school bus) and try to avoid being around him. I hung out with the other two kids, but he always found a way to corner me and take me into the shed. My ears were never so sharp as when I was listening for footsteps or cars. The anxiety of being caught doing something wrong has never left me.

After I had spat his poisonous slime into his hanky, life would return to normal. I would rejoin my brother and sister, and sit stewing in silence and self-loathing, and envy them their non-participation. I hated him being in our house and suffered such huge guilt and fear and shame, now that I had realised what we were doing (what he was doing) was wrong.

I had been groomed since being a toddler to know my life would fall apart…that I would “get in trouble if I told our little secret’ and Dad had a pretty bad temper, so I never doubted he would “go mad and shoot” Harry and it would all be my fault.

One afternoon I stumbled off the bus and walked with a lead weight in my chest down the track towards the house, garnering every skerrick of courage I could find within my 12 year old self. I told him I needed to talk to him and he came outside and stood on the gravel driveway with me. I have no idea where the other kids were – probably watching telly and eating biccies and milk for afternoon tea.

“I want you to stop touching me”.

There – it was out.

But he came back with, “Why?”

Head rushes and tailspins…I felt myself slipping into a vortex of terror….I couldn’t tell this adult I was afraid of that I KNEW NOW it was wrong. who knows what would happen? What could I say? I couldn’t tell the truth…what seemed like hours was seconds.

“Is it because you’ve got hair growing down there?” He said.

Yes, yes, that’s it…..that’s it. A Get out of Jail Free card for me.

And that was that.  I was no longer his ‘special girl’. It was over.
He went back inside, and I stood there, on my own, in my school uniform; and cried sweet tears of freedom.

I had no idea the perilous journey that lay ahead.