*memoir under construction

The five of us were in the small white tent next door. I don't remember any of their names. Only hands. The big girl's hand pressed against my red barrettes pushing and pulling my head on his dick. Long and not smooth like a Bomb Pop. It was like Play Do left open. Ashy and uncared for. To suck. I was four and he was about nineteen. He was a black boy. Wore faded blue jeans and a half smile on his dark brown and rough looking face. The girls were sixteen and seventeen. I think. There was another boy. Little like me. He didn't have to suck dick because the big boy wasn't no fag. So there was just me and my tiny lips and throat and a dick. A dick. I always knew that boys had pee pees but this was my first dick. Perhaps pee pees grew into dicks. I must have done a real good job. Way she inhales hissed and ahhhed. Then there was wet that was not spit from my choke.

"He peed in my mouth! He peed in my mouth!" I screamed and bolted out of the tent. I tried to race to my house just next door to my father who would beat that dick up if he knew. But the youngest and meanest of the big girls caught me. Tied a thick brown rope around my neck and lifted me to the clothes line cemented in the ground. Held my body as it swung. Threatened if I told. Said I was a nasty girl anyway. Said she would run tell my mother first because I was out here being fass. Being all nasty.

I was dirty. I have lived with being nasty and dirty my whole life. I was never clean enough for any man. No matter any of my accomplishments or deeds, no matter how great my actions to prove otherwise. No matter how fast I forgave, no matter the down ass bitch I proved myself to be. I never got clean.

When I got home I don't remember what I did. I remember feeling afraid. Feeling like I had something to hide. Not just like I had done something bad but that I WAS bad. I knew bad was unacceptable. I knew God didn't like bad. I knew my parents could never find out what I had done. The nasty thing I did. I put my mouth on a big boy's penis and sucked. It didn't matter that the girl's made me. I still did it. I still sucked. Except I was sucking at all. I was choking on a dick too big for my four year old lips and throat. No good girl would ever do that. 

That night my mother gave me a bath. She asked me about the rope burn and I lied. I think I said I was playing a game. What game could I have been playing that would cause a rope burn? I know she didn't believe me. I don't remember what happened to the dick or the little boy or the two girls next door. I don't remember them babysitting me anymore after that. 

I didn't talk about that much. I tried to shut it out as best as I could. Tried to wash it off. I wasn't bad. Or dirty. I was worthy of love. I was. I was. I was. I am. If I repeated this to myself enough it would have to be true. I didn't tell my parents about this until I was almost forty years old. I told my mother first. 

1. What happened after? 
My mother gave me a bath that night. She asked me about the rope burn on my neck. I lied about how I got it. 

2. What was I feeling?
I was afraid. I felt like I had something to hide. I felt like I was being bad. 

3. What social issue(s) is this connected to?
Childhood sexual abuse. 

4. What do I want to say about sexually abused children?
Secret keepers. 

5. What happens to children who are sexually abused who do get help when they grow up?
Issues with boundaries.

6. What did I tell myself then?
I was bad. 
I was dirty. 
I was a sinner. 

7. What am I telling myself now?