Ever since I was a little girl, my mother drilled into me the principle of independence.
You have to learn to do things yourself, she would say, because there will come a time when I won't be there to do them for you.
So I always did my own homework.
Always covered my own school books.
Always washed my own dishes.
Always cleaned my own room.
Always complained when I was reminded to do those things on my own.
As much as I complained back then, I constantly wish I was a child again.
Not because children have to worry about doing homework and covering schoolbooks and washing dishes and cleaning rooms.
But because children only have to worry about doing homework and covering schoolbooks and washing dishes and cleaning rooms.
Children only need to worry about the simple things.
About the innocent things.
I constantly wish I was a child again.
Because children still have their innocence.
I lost my innocence in the third grade.
After a day at the beach which magical.
In the backseat of a car.
I was not raped.
But I was still violated.
In the third grade, after a day at the beach that was magical and in the backseat of a car, I heard my aunt telling the driver that my mother was dying.
It was a proven medical fact and not just hearsay or dramatics.
It was more of a truth than an idea.
It was more imminent, more real.
I never knew the driver's name, had never seen him before and would never receive a pitying look from him.
But I knew it, because he'd said it, that he pitied me beyond words.
I heard my aunt tell the nameless driver that they wanted to give me a magical day at the beach so I wouldn't suspect what everyone else knew.
That my mother was dying.
That she wasn't on a vacation like they said.
That she was seeing a doctor at a big city hospital.
That she needed surgery for her shoulder because it was dislocated.
That her shoulder got dislocated when she had a stroke.
The both of those things happened because of the medicines she took since she was sick.
That she had been sick for a long time.
That she had a disease that came and stayed without reason.
That her disease had no cure.
I heard my aunt tell the driver that the likelihood I could get what my mother had was high.
As if I'd both won and lost at the genetic lottery.
That girls were more likely to develop it more than boys.
As if I'd gotten the short end in a binary draw between chromosomes.
That it was sad I didn't know any of it.
As if I wasn't just pretending to be asleep in the backseat.
My aunt told the driver a lot of things but my aunt never told me.
I waited for a year but nobody ever told me.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
My innocence was past the point of being shattered and long gone.
But, still, nobody told me.
Ever since I was a little girl, my mother drilled into me the principle of independence.
You have to learn to do things yourself, she would say, because there will come a time when I won't be there to do them for you.
You have to learn to do things yourself, she really meant, because there will come a time when I won't be there.
