#METOOSWEET16
It was a crisp late Autumn afternoon, the week before Thanksgiving in Carnegie PA a small borough of Pittsburgh. I was returning from an afternoon of holiday shopping downtown.
I was walking up our 300’ driveway and just arrived at the front of the 3-story ornate Victorian when the ground floor tenant, Hank, a 30-something stockbroker, stepped from behind a huge old oak.
“Look at my *cock*, Barbara. I got it hard just for you.”
I’d seen Hank’s penis once and made sure never to look again. I just kept my gaze straight and ignored him, my strategy for the past 4 years. I went up to my Aunt Louise’s attic apartment where I had been living with her for the past year, since August 1967.
Louise was reading, her main activity every day. Her slope-ceilinged garret contained 12 bookcases each containing dozens of hard-bound tomes which comprised the most eclectic library I’ve ever encountered.
“Hank just did it again, Louise,” I announced, as I set my four medium shopping bags on the sofa to unpack.
No response. “Are you going to do anything, Louise? Talk to Connie?” No response.
“Alright, Louise. I’m on my own then?” I thought to myself. Why wouldn’t she say anything to his wife? She knew I wasn’t lying. Her own sister had told her last Summer of Hank’s exposing himself to her for the past 3 years. Yet Louise remained silent.
Then a moment’s AHA! But WHAT could she do? Perhaps my aunt’s lack of action was rooted less in a lack of will to protect me than in sheer lack of information as to how to get a man to stop engaging in that behavior. Suddenly I fully comprehended what a ridiculous idea it was to think his wife would in any way be able to do anything. Why would she even care?
All day Sunday I found myself distracted by a growing anger I was experiencing for the first time. Why, I began to question, does this man feel so entitled to do this, to force himself on me? Maybe entitled wasn’t the right word. Safe. He knew nothing unpleasant was going to occur to him. He had touched me once — molested was the technical term — the Summer I was 12, my first visit with my aunt. But it had happened only that once because I made sure never to be alone with him and within his arm’s reach again.
But it was my powerlessness to avoid him that was at the crux of my despair. The layout of the house was such that there was only one entrance to the second floor apartment occupied by aged Mrs. Daly and our attic. Hank’s first-floor bathroom window was directly beside it and he stood naked behind the huge double-hung window and tapped on the glass every morning when I left for school. He simply listened for my footsteps as I descended the stairs. Then, as I passed the front door on my walk down the driveway, I’d hear more insistent rapping and his calling, “Barbara? Barbara?” Every morning since September 6, 1967. If I went by the back door he just showed up there.
My elder brother by three years was severely mentally ill with paranoid schizophrenia. After he violently trashed our small suburban tract house in Springfield VA, a growing city 15 miles south of D. C., I went to my school guidance counselor and asked what I could do to be safe. My parents were struggling to run their fledging small hardware contracting business and deal with the complexities of a son whose illness was a source of deep confusion, pain and shame. I was simply overlooked.
Years later my father would explain to my utter astonishment that both he and my mother thought I was unaware on the whole that anything was seriously wrong with my brother. Dad died never knowing that beginning at the age of 7 my brother periodically subjected me to scenes of torture, maiming and killing of small domestic and wild animals. I wanted out of that home in Virginia. Thankfully, the guidance counselor suggested I ask my maiden aunt, the 7th and 8th grade history teacher for the past 18 years in the Carnegie school system, if I might live with her.
I presented my case to my parents and Louise. None of them could deny the reality of Dick’s house trashings and my obvious knowledge of them. Finding the living room TV set kicked in and seeing my art supplies smeared angrily on my bedroom walls, my parents finally admitted perhaps I shouldn’t be there in Virginia, a latch-key kid with a brother prone to escaping from whatever mental health facility he was in.
I knew I’d have to deal with Hank but then what choice did I have? After a weekend’s considerations my father gave his consent and by the next Sunday I was a Pennsylvania resident. The next Wednesday, my first day at school, I became a registered sophomore at Carnegie High School.
As I sat on my bed and wound the key on the back of my clock I saw myself walking up the steps of the Carnegie Police Department. Then I lay my head down and went to sleep.
The next morning I sat in front of Police Chief Bernier describing the above situation. I looked him straight in the eye and I used the word penis. He sat returning into my eyes my intent stare. He asked me a few questions—He was always home when I left for school at 7:45am? His full name, age, any other incidents of a sexual nature? I gave him 5 quick thumbnail sketches of exhibitionistic encounters. The Chief said “I’ll pick you up tomorrow and take you to school in my cruiser. I’ll meet you at the entrance to your aunt’s apartment.” It took a moment for his words to register. He was coming to the house! Tears came unbidden but I turned away quickly. What was wrong with me?
As we walked around the house, the Chief took notes and pointed broadly to each entrance. We were staring into the huge glass cube that formed the walls of the kitchen when Hank strolled in wearing only his boxer shorts. He almost laughingly did a double take then bolted from the room. Hank never bothered me again.
Fifty years later I do now what I didn’t do then: I report the news of a resourceful resilient young girl who figured out how she could procure a bit of peace for herself.
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