HOLY DAYS: Gods and Goddesses

 

After seeing the documentary, "Allen Vs Farrow" on Prime, I was struck anew by an exceptionally weird phenomenon of sexual abuse - that is, that the abused child is pulled away from what I like to call "real activities," innocent activities, playing ball, swimming, running, reading, laughing, etc, to have sex with an adult. It's one of the creepier aspects of sexual abuse and it stays with the child forever. The victim doesn't have a strong feeling for real activities, the child thinks she should be having sex. In Holy Days, Gloria comments on her admiration of "real people doing real things." Here is an excerpt from Holy Days, the chapter called "Gods and Goddesses." 

GODS AND GODDESSES

When the boys and girls came down the street on summer evenings, after sunning all day at the Beach, the boys’ pastel shirts stood out against the buttery tan of their necks, the girls’ athletic knees strode surely and strong, their hair a shade lighter than when they’d awakened in the morning, tinted with sun and surf; they laughed cruelly and gaily at each other. My heart leapt to see them, luminous and gilded; my heart sank to be excluded from them. I watched them from afar, from the confines of my porch and my fatness, my ignorance of smart manners, my terrible shyness and fear of anything graceful, anything glowing as they were, a rank of young gods and goddesses straight from their mother’s dinner tables on their way to a Little League baseball game.

Preston and Ha were already at the ballpark. Calling him Ha out loud in front of people was forbidden to me, but I called him that secretly when I was alone. Ha and Preston were in prep school now. They strode past wearing real baseball uniforms that shone beautifully in the setting sun, grey and sparkling white, with blue and white socks that shaped their firm legs like colonial pantaloons and stockings. I snuck down after they’d passed my house: the crack of their bats, their shouts, the way the girls sucked on straws stuck in real Cokes. There at the baseball park I studied them: the murmurs of players and the scraping of their cleats in the dugout, and if I stood on top of the dugout, I could feel through the soles of my sneakers, the vibrations of real people doing real things.

I meant to write about Rick Likus and his friends, the group of boys and girls Rick went with, but my own classmates strolled down Hichborn Street instead. Rick’s group was very much like them, except for age, of course, and religion. The popular kids in my class were Jewish. Rick’s friends had no religion; they were wild.

If the boys and girls I knew were gods and goddesses, Rick and his gang were satyrs, centaurs and nymphs. They ran around the streets and islands, in and out of the houses and cars, their little goat hooves and bare nymph feet flying as fast as the pandemonium they left behind.

Frankie Carter, tall and blonde, quiet, always watching. Jerry Finley, skinny, with long, curly red hair that shined copper in the sun; he delivered our Revere Journal. On the days he collected, I answered the door if I didn’t have a pimple. “He’s here to collect,” Ma said, like a song, “He’s here to collect.” I was in love with Jerry Finley for years because he was so skinny and his red hair shone like golden metal when he slapped on our steps that rolled up Journal Ma devoured. She clicked her tongue over the stories and obituaries, repeating Revere names, “Leach, tsk, tsk,” “Roposo, tsk, tsk.” She made me sick every week. The sound of everyday Revere names made me sick, though the sound of magical Revere names, Frankie Carter, Jerry Finley, Rick Likus, Ha and Preston, resonated over Ma’s and Daddy’s, Jakey’s and my tongues, ringing bells of familiarity, inspiring adoration sometimes strangely mixed with contempt or fear.

Other boys whom I didn’t know were in Rick’s gang, their faces and bodies merged with the group as vague dirty brown jackets and dungarees, dirty brown hair and faces. The girls were tough as tree bark; they had harsh voices like crows cawing that cut across the street, laughter like sin. They wore ruffles on their bathing suits even though they didn’t need ruffles to flesh out their figures. Their long, bronzed legs shone out of cut off dungarees; they had stiff, sun-bleached hair that whipped their faces like dirty mops.

I didn’t dare look at the girls too closely. I didn’t know their names. I was afraid to look at them except sideways. If they’d caught me, they would’ve beaten me. I could hear them calling Annie Likus, “Hi, Rick’s mother!” Everything was Rick’s. They didn’t call Annette or Linda by name, the girls sang out across the street, “Hi, Rick’s sister!” from where they dangled their wondrous legs over the side of Rick’s little Triumph.

Rick’s gang played hockey for the High School. They were a fierce team, eager to fight, proudly limping, sneering with scarred eyes and broken teeth and lips torn up and pasted back together a little lop-sided.

Even amongst demi-gods, one god stood out. He didn’t need to be the strongest or the handsomest. He didn’t need to be the King.

I saw him on a summer morning when the pear tree shone green in the bright sun bearing heavily its load of tough, fat pears, while Daddy was mowing the lawn, sending the sweet smell of green into the air, while I sat on our porch steps reading a book, I looked up and he was walking down the street, as it turned out, to Rick’s house.

Our eyes met across the street. He didn’t know who I was, or wasn’t, so he reacted normally, kindly, as he would every time he saw me as long as we were alone with the street between us. A soft boy, gentle, he had light brown hair and brown eyes, a round face, a kind smile. He hung on the outer fringes of Rick’s little gang; he was the soft one, the sweet one, softer and sweeter than any of the girls. They called him Tweetie.

I looked up from my book, across the street into those gentle eyes.

“Hi,” he said, softly.

“Hi,” I returned, unsure that he could be so kind.

I was in love.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing when he opened Rick’s door and went in.

Who was he? I ran in and asked Jakey.

“What do you want to know for?”

“Who is he? How come he went into Rick’s house?”

And Jakey told me all he knew. The boy’s name was Richie Silva. I couldn’t believe his first name was the same as Rick’s. He lived - I’ll tell you where he lived, where I snuck down in the middle of the night to stand in front of his house. It was a dear little forgotten road, half-paved as though the city had run out of tar right there, so the wild roses and lilacs, the morning glories and lilies, the skunks and stray dogs and cats took over. The scrub trees and bushes, black green where I stood under the street light, smelling the fierce odor of skunk, praying I wouldn’t be sprayed; Ma would kill me. I sniffed, trying to filter out of the smell of skunk and diesel fuel, always present on the air, to find the perfume of roses and the salty scent of the sea flying straight up the hill to my nose. This little street would be so dear to me, just kitty corner from the park where Helen Krauss had squatted and shat on the way home because she couldn’t hold it any more.

One night Richie came home with his friends; he stood on the curb, he laughed, “Ya, right!” into the car. He laughed, “Ya, right!” into the car. I could repeat that forever, strong as it is with memory, love and terror. “Ya, right!” He laughed with his friends. He didn’t see me. I wish I’d run up to him. I wish I’d run up and kissed him. At least once.

I saw another movie late at night. The night is filled with things. If I went down and turned on the television, in the middle of the night, I would see a thing I knew I wasn’t supposed to see: a true thing, a secret thing, hidden under the black screen of TV Land. Just turn it on, that’s all, just turn it on. There. A girl. She was on a bed in the dark. I could see nothing but her face, her hair, her shoulders. I knew she was on a bed because under her head were the black and white stripes of an old bare mattress. But, something was going on. The door of the room kept opening, throwing a weird light over her; she’d squint into the light at the boy coming in. Sometimes, she laughed. Her dark hair was spread out on the black and white stripes, flung out about her laughing face. But, then, if she didn’t like the boy whose turn it was, she made a grimace at him and his head blocked out her face for a moment; she reappeared over his shoulder and she looked angry. Several boys went into the room for her, but it was the last one she loved. Her face lit up with joy when he entered and came toward her. She held out her arms to him and in her mind, she whispered, her silent face rapturous over his thrusting shoulder, “You’re the only one, my love. You’re the only one.”

When I thought of Richie Silva and I thought of him every day and night, I thought of him that way. I knew I was the girl on the bed and the boys were all coming to me, one by one, Rick, Jerry, Frankie, the Nazi, Daddy, but when Richie Silva entered the room, he was the only one.

It was strange, eerie. A few years later, when I met the beautiful Junie, out of the blue, she said, “I’m gonna call you Tweetie!”

©Patricia Goodwin, 2015

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her latest novel is Low Flying, about two women suffering psychologically abusive marriages who find and nurture each other. Her newest poetry books are Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author, and Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse.

Within this blog, Patricia writes often about non-fiction subjects that inspire or disturb her, hopefully informing and inspiring people to be happy, healthy and free.

HOLY DAYS - Sexual Memories

     Holy Days used to be titled Sexual Memories. Sometimes I wish it still were. It wouldn’t have a child on the cover, though I often talk about Gloria Wisher’s early sexuality in the novel, in such chapters as “Feeling the World,” for instance, because that’s how I remember life. “What a riot, what an orgy of living my little life was for me! I wondered at the peculiar mixture I was of Mama and Daddy, Nona, Grandma and Grandpa and all the things I saw and felt and ate and breathed. A part of me was perverted as though the good in Mama and all her generations had met the bad in Daddy and all his generations, had somehow twisted like a curious string of DNA creating this perversion, putting me beyond them both and everything.”

    Early chapters are structured around strong male and female images, sensual eating, beautiful gardens, wine, powerful paternal and maternal figures, brothers, sisters, men in uniform, women in soft sweaters, cigarette smoking, laughing, lipsticked lips, and the barren city street alive only with people. From the chapter “Love Parties,” “The house banged and stomped and ran with people; it called out and answered in happy shouts. They didn’t talk to each other in normal voices, they bellowed from deep in their bellies, with joy, with rage, with a deep relish of their joy and rage; from room to room, up the stairs or down, from the refrigerator to the stove, from adjoining beds, they loved the sound of themselves.”

     I describe the streets of East Boston in a chapter called “Sexual Law.” Gloria’s mother, Rosie, was forbidden by her father to ride a bike or skate in the street. Gloria’s response was this, “Grandpa knew how provocative these motions could be: her limbs rising and falling, her behind, a smooth, stiff outline, her red curls beckoning in the breeze. Mama on a bike! Mama on roller skates! I can feel Grandpa’s shudder going through me!

     But, Grandpa’s law couldn’t stop sexual law and restraint made Mama even more innocent and desirable. Especially to the bad boys. Boys like Jake and Daddy. Mama was really good. She prayed and went to mass and confession. She received Holy Communion every Sunday. She obeyed her father and her mother. She had that good look: round and soft and unaware of her power, a labyrinth of red curls, chubby legs in ankle socks and thick high heels stepping up into the corner store. The bad ones, without jobs, without homes, dropped out of school, squinting through the haze of cigarettes, were pulled right to her, without knowing what on earth had happened to them.”

     I remember life in the poor neighborhood as being shot through with sex: “When a young woman stepped out of the house, her sex went up like a shot and young men, standing around all day in the company of other men - like soldiers or sailors who’d been deprived of softness and a sweet smell - stood alert suddenly, even though they seemed not to have altered their slouches against the tenement wall or the store window. They squinted over their cigarettes and a hush, as though decided communally, instinctively, fell over them and inwardly, their feelings swelled as she walked by. Maybe one or two didn’t look at her: they watched her without looking. The others gave her the eye, up and down, through the haze of smoke. In the hush, the tension gathered, to be let out as soon as she passed, when they could still smell her, when she could still hear them, they’d let it all out, swoosh, as remarks she could just barely - or not - hear, but could feel, in a rush of heat through her veins.”

     The poor neighborhood is especially vulnerable to sexual power: “The tenements were close, less than two feet of alley separated them. Sometimes one wall held two houses together. Clotheslines crisscrossed, colored flags flapped from them; women’s voluptuous arms tugged the ropes and pulleys. Windows slid open and women’s arms tossed buckets of water out the windows. The women sang out to each other all day, their voices calling Italian like a song. We lived window to window, door to door, radio to radio, telephone to telephone - how many times did Daddy answer another man’s phone, picking up our receiver, saying “Hello?” into the dial tone? How many times did he look across to see another man’s wife naked in the dark?”

     Gloria is a victim of incest. For years, therapists have been telling victims of incest, “Incest is not about sex, it’s about power.” Rape – and incest is rape – may be about power for the rapist, but it is about sex for the victim. Incest is about sex.

     Sex is about power. At it’s best, sex is about the mutual power of the beloved: being loved is empowering, being made love to by the one you love who also loves you is empowering. If either partner is unwilling or uncomfortable, then the power structure becomes unbalanced. Sex becomes seduction at the least, rape at the most extreme. My definition of rape – would it have happened if you were in charge?

     Therapists mean well when they tell victims that incest is not about sex; it’s about power. But, victims know better. Therapists admit that sexual pleasure experienced during incest confuses victims. Victims ask themselves or their therapists, “Then how come I had an orgasm?” “How come I sexually fantasize about incest?” “How come incest has become the source of my desires?” “How come I cannot have a happy sex life?” “Why do I always feel guilty or dirty when I have sex?”

       The answer to all of those questions is for the victim, incest is about sex. For most victims of incest, incest is their first sexual experience, one that can both mar and make their sexual identity.  Their rapist is usually someone familiar, someone in authority, someone they trust: the very person who is teaching the child about the world, about reality. Incest becomes the child's view of reality. In Holy Days, Gloria envies what she calls "real people doing real things." She watches other kids, rich kids, going to a local baseball game dressed in real baseball uniforms and feels excluded from such wholesome activities.

      In Holy Days, incest is but a symptom of the over-riding sexual power of the neighborhoods and the families. Gloria is incested by her father. She is also raped by the boy next door. Her brother, who “sells” her to her rapist, becomes a thief at 10 years old. All these crimes are symptoms of the larger, overwhelming Stockholm Syndrome going on in Gloria’s life. The way of the poor neighborhood is to overpower those who live there. Gloria’s father, though good at his job and able to solve monumental problems in the factory, is overlooked by the bosses for advancements that go to, according to Billy Wisher, “college men with their heads up their ass.” In the Chapter “A Child’s Christmas in Revere,” Billy tells a black man that he knows what it means to be black. Why? Because he perfected the shrink-wrap machine and didn’t get any credit or reward while his boss walked off with the patent and the profits. Class becomes another form of slavery.

    In a very real sense, the neighborhood is raping the people every day through violence, poor conditions, neglect and disrespect, and the people, in turn, abuse each other and are proud of being abused as red badges of courage. “I come from Revere, I come from Southie, I come from East Boston,” become wounds worn with pride, a daily war that has been survived with an injury to show for it like a Purple Heart, a shining medal of honor.

     Gloria’s father acted his power upon the one thing in his life that he could control – his daughter. But, for his daughter, incest became a sexual battle she had to fight in order to regain her self-respect. Gloria begins to sink down into sexual promiscuity. Only the love of another troubled girl can help bring her out, into the light of her own promise and recovery. 

   As Gloria says in the chapter, “An Ounce of Pride”: “Romantic and idiotic as I was, what gave me that ounce of pride to keep myself safe? So many kids before and after me went under, looking for love in an alley, oblivion in a bottle or bliss in a joint or a needle or a pill, hit by a Mack truck, rolled and left under an overpass, buried under layers of pigeon shit. So many kids ran away from home. I knew I was supposed to run away, but I was afraid.

            I thought street kids must be very brave. I admired them that they were filthy and slept in doorways and drain pipes, that they ate out of trash barrels like refugees of war, a trash can lid for their plate, maybe scraping it with a spoon. I admired them that they coughed and bled and washed in the gutter, that they went crazy with disease and malnutrition and the street. They were brave! Brave!

            I, on the other hand, ate and drank at my father’s table. I sat right next to him and sincerely laughed at his jokes. I snuggled under the cool, crisp sheets my mother washed for me and, on them I had sex of varying sneaky, cowardly sorts with her husband, her boyfriend, my own father. Under the illusion of a contract of innocence and obedience, I let my parents keep me safe - yes, safe - from murder and robbery, beatings and what I came to think of as violent rape.

            But, there are so many subtle violences. And I was tormented by guilt. For having done bad things, for having enjoyed them much of the time, for having become these things out of doing, memory and time, and for not having the guts to run away. I was guilty. I didn’t want to leave my mother’s lap, soft and flowery in her cotton housedress. I used to sit at her feet and kiss them in their old slippers. I loved their smell, like warm, roasted nuts just out of the oven. I couldn’t leave her refrigerator that I could open anytime for fresh bread and butter, a half wheel of Romano cheese, pounds of sweet ham and hot salami, cakes, pies, ice cream, puddings, apples, peaches, grapes, strawberries, milk and cream. The warm, steaming windows dripping with cooking and tables warmly full of people as the winter howled or sizzling barbeques outside in summer. I was weak and as I tasted these things and wrapped myself in warmth, I nearly vomited with shame. And, among these things, I wouldn’t leave my books and my drawings. And, on Sunday nights, as though I deserved it, I wanted to watch “The Wonderful World of Color,” in black and white and imagined the colors. I reminded myself of the Jews who stayed in Berlin because they couldn’t bear to leave the piano and of the Jew who admired a weed blowing in the icy wind because he knew it was as alive as he was, while the bodies he buried were not alive.

            Why didn’t I go under? What gave me the pride that swelled in me like the dirty grey storm waves at Revere Beach, the pride it took to not get pregnant and the gall instead to tease Boy Scouts and sailors? What gave me the madness to bat Rick Likus about with my paw? It was Mr. Lanza giving me a large gold star for my stories. It was Mrs. French and her long-taloned hand on my shoulder telling me I could write. It was Ma and Daddy - yes, Daddy - bragging that I might be a teacher, that I was going to college and that I would be the first in the family, telling their friends and neighbors with pride about the books I read, about my grades, asking me for information like I was an expert or an encyclopedia. Grown men and women, neighbors, calling on the phone to ask me how to spell a word. They let me know I was worth something: but, they didn’t know how to help me. The very people who confused me, hurt me and neglected me also exalted me. They gave me life, but it was a long struggle out the birth canal.

            And, my angel was out there, looking for me. I had one more very important step to take before I could meet her.”

©Patricia Goodwin, 2015

 More to come about Patricia Goodwin's latest novel, Holy Days, now available on Amazon.


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