Child sexual abuse: On seeing red

Read part one here.

Read part two here.

A few weeks ago, Jess sent me a song she wrote called "Six Years Old". The refrain is about what the mother would have done had she known her six-year-old daughter was being sexually abused.

Listening to it, I wondered why my mother reacted the way she did when she walked in on two out of the four incidents that I could remember.

The first time, I think I was in the bathroom at my grandfather's place. I was ten. I remember there being a red plastic cup on the floor, the type used in Hindu homes for washing oneself. Describing this to one of my friends later, it infuriated me somewhat that the details of almost everything else were hazy except for the colour of that cup.

Its redness.

Red.

My mother put her head around the door jamb, with a look of enquiry on her face.

"What are you doing, Padmé?" Turning to her father, she asked, "What is Padmé doing?"

I sat mutely, dumbfounded. My panties were off and I was squatting on the floor. I didn't feel that what was happening was right but I didn't know how to tell my mom.

"Nothing. Padmé peed. So now am cleaning her up," my grandfather said, with all the calmness in the world.

It made me so angry but I had no words. No words.

My mother held out her hand towards me: "Come, Padmé. Quickly." I pulled up my panties again and scrambled out of the bathroom, grateful to hold her welcoming hand.

In my nightmares, that bathroom, that accursed bedroom, was a yawning, gaping monster. I would be running, running to get out of that room and the floor would tip over, so that I would slide into the jaws of the bathroom. My grandfather was never in my dreams but I felt his presence all the same.

The second time, I was sitting on my grandparents' bed. He was on the floor, with one finger hooked into my panties. I sat there, like a dumb doll, trying not to squirm, trying to pretend to myself that this wasn't really happening. That this cannot be real because it's so messed up.

My mother walked in again then. My back was to her so she could not see what was happening. Again, she called out my name, wondering what I was doing. Oh, don't you see, Mama? I was thinking to myself.

She didn't. Again, her father spoke up, spoke for me. He had removed his finger, quick as lightning.

"Nothing. She's just sitting here."

"Oh? Just sitting? Go and play outside," my mother smiled.

Again, little puppet that I am, I scrambled to my feet and ran out of the room.

Free again.

I still have no idea how long the abuse went on but it stopped probably in my early teens. Maybe my grandfather was trying to apologise to me, even as early as then (he passed away when I was 17), but I never gave him that chance. He would try to hold onto my hand when we had to kiss his hand as a mark of respect. He was disabled but he was still a powerful figure to me. He would try to hold onto my hand after I've kissed it. I would lower myself as far as possible to gain leverage so I could snatch my hand away. He would let go then - dare I say it, with a look of despair.I've forgiven him.

But I know that I still cannot forgive my mom.

I don't know why but she remembers those two incidents too. It shocked her when I first told her, my version of what had happened. Her prism of truth then was her father. Should I blame her? He was her everything. Whenever she asks me, why didn't you tell me?

I feel like telling her, but you saw, Mama, you saw.