I Lost Something On That Bus

I’m having the strangest morning. Somewhere in the back corner in the shadows of my mind dwells a memory from my childhood that I ignore. Every now and then it peeps it’s head out as if to ask me to reconsider examining it but I never do because I’ve long dismissed it as much ado about nothing, just too much attention over too little, just a lot of embarrassment for a sixth grader.

For some reason, this morning in traffic, I couldn’t ignore it. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the therapy. I’ve been questioning and exploring my childhood quite a bit the last few days, trying to revisit the events that might have pushed me over the edge into this ball of anxiety and paranoia I am today.

And there it was.

I was nine years old and in the sixth grade. I’d started a year early. I’d also done a pretty good job of nearly getting expelled from an expensive private fundie Christian school so I was attending a public elementary school while my parents looked for another non-Catholic private school in New Orleans that would have me. The teachers either loved me or hated me and whereas one would ask me to keep an eye on her 2nd grade class, another would keep me from taking the tests for the gifted classes “just because” — and don’t give me that crap about how teachers aren’t like that, my mother discovered later that I was always right about my teachers ‘tudes.

Anyway back to the memory, I had become a crossing guard or bus monitor or somesuch. Whatever it was, I got to leave class early in the afternoon and wear a nifty orange vest and make people walk not run in straight lines to their buses. It was important work and it was a great honor and I took it quite seriously and I was proud of the honor. I wore that vest like a badge of courage and privilige. I was special, and since I wasn’t exactly the prettiest or the smartest or an athlete and since I was younger than everyone and didn’t live in the same neighborhood, I kind of needed that feeling of special beyond being the absolute smallest.

That day was different. I don’t mean that the weather was bad or anything or that it felt different. The day it self was sunny and clear. I can still picture it when I close my eyes. I can see the clean white of the side walk and the yellow buses lined up and empty and I ran down to dump my backpack on my bus almost at the end. For some reason, I was the first one of the crossing guards to arrive. It was quiet.

Except that two boys from my class had convinced our teacher that they were also crossing guards and had gotten out early. They were trouble makers. One was this curly haired pale white kid with really blue eyes and the other was this really dark-skinned boy with really white teeth who I kind of liked.

They followed me on the bus and we were joking around and…

Well, it’s always been a little foggy what happened next though I think I was made to repeat what was said and done many times over the next couple of days.

There was touching. But it was not quite inappropriate. It was almost innapropriate. It would have been innapropriate had I not gotten scared and stopped them.

And I did get scared. Really scared.

I guess I’d forgotten about that part. The being scared part. All these years.

All of these years, I just remembered that the touching wasn’t really innappropriate, that the reaction seemed to be an overreaction. That everyone made such a big fuss and it really wasn’t anything. I mean, I know women who’ve been brutally raped and that seems so much more important than what happened to me on that bus when I was nine.

But as this memory was emerging into my consciousness this morning, I began to recall that there was more than just the fear, the fear that these boys would follow me home, would find me in my neighborhood while I was riding my bike, would hide in my closet when my parents weren’t home, would somehow “get me”.

There was the punishment that I was the victim.

I was no longer a crossing guard with an orange vest who got to leave early from class to weild the power of directing and straight lines. I had to wait until all the buses had left for my mother or a friend of hers from work could come get me. Code words were used if she sent an unknown friend to pick me up to take me to an empty home where I had to stay and wait for my parents to come home. I lost my privilige, my honor, and my safety in that one moment on that bus in one touch of those boys.

That moment was obviously so much more than I ever realized it was. It was more than just an embarrassing moment I wanted to sweep away and ignore. Maybe I wasn’t brutally raped or viciously attacked, but I was victimized and I have a right to feel it and acknowledge it and cry about it.

tags: rape, Women's Rights, therapy, wellness, Me

One comment

1. on March 30, 2006 at 9:11 am

   Tamara said:

   Oh sweetie, I’m so sorry. But I’m glad you’re getting it out now and addressing it. Blaming the victim is such a common practice in this society, and it sucks that you had something you valued taken away from you.

   Isn’t it amazing how we remember the awful things so clearly? It’s nothing near what you experienced, but there was a troublemaking older boy in my sophomore year Spanish class in high school, and I overheard (because he intended me too, I’m sure) him discussing something about me that he found attractive, then indicating another girl in the class and telling his friends it was too bad “one has the face and the other has the body.”

   To this day I think of him and have discussed that story with my husband more than once. What bugs me most about it is that while I think I know which he meant I had, I’m not sure, and for some reason I can’t stop wondering. Obviously it’s irrelevant now, and it was then, but it was an awful feeling and I know I won’t ever forget it. I think of it far more often than any positive encounters I may have had with boys in h.s.

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