I'll Scream Later (No Series) (7 page)

“O
KAY
, M
ARLEE
,
TAKE
a deep breath. You can do this.”

I’ve been telling myself this for months, to get ready to write this chapter.

Sometimes you want to block out things in life, erase the memories so they can never again slip into your thoughts even for a fleeting second. Things that feel so bad, so wrong, that you don’t tell your family, you don’t tell your friends, you try to pretend they never happened.

I have two. And more. I choose to share two.

As much as I’ve tried to forget them, I can’t.

I’ve decided to try to talk about them here for the first time in the hope that if other girls have faced similar circumstances, they will know that silence is not the answer. If my life has taught me anything, it’s that silence is never the answer.

“M
ARLEE
,
GO LOCK
the doors, all the doors in the house, make sure you don’t forget any.”

It’s the babysitter, not my usual ones Christine or Lynne, but still a girl from the neighborhood that I know. She is closing all the blinds while I’ve been sent to check all the doors.

I briefly wonder if it’s a game, but she seems strange today, different somehow, and a knot starts building in my stomach. She lives down the street. I know her. Nothing bad is going to happen. Nothing bad.

In those days, both of my parents worked. Marc had a job after school, and Eric had moved out and was in law school. No one would be home for hours.

She told me to come into the TV room. The room with the ugly plaid couch, the one I hate, hate, hate.

She forced me to take off my pajamas. She pulled down her jeans.

Now I’m really scared, confused, something is wrong, my heart is pounding, and I don’t know why. In my eyes, she is a grown-up; I’m supposed to listen to her. “Do what she tells you to,” isn’t that what parents say over their shoulder on their way out the door?

I was barely eleven years old, a thin reed of a girl. She was sixteen and overpowering.

In those days, most people thought child molesters were perverts who lived in the worst parts of town. Not middle-class neighborhoods such as Morton Grove, with its tree-lined streets and carefully manicured lawns.

Not Morton Grove, where the children were “raised right,” where the worst thing teenagers did was smoke, drink, and drive too fast.

There were no health classes in elementary schools to warn about things adults should not do to children, ways they should not touch children, and how to handle it if they tried.

Parents didn’t have these discussions either. It wouldn’t happen to their children. This was America. This was the suburbs. It was safe.

What she did next is unspeakable. She slid down on the couch. She pulled me over to her. She took my hand. “It’s okay, Marlee, everything’s okay.” She opened my hand and grabbed my fingers. I flinched. “Marlee, it’s okay. Just do exactly what I tell you.” She is speaking slowly. Making sure I understand. I don’t understand.

She pushed my fingers up inside her, again and again. I’m trying to pull away, but she doesn’t let go. Won’t let go.

“Be quiet, Marlee.” I can feel her breath coming fast. Her eyes look wild. I’m terrified. What is happening? Why isn’t anyone coming home?

She lets my hand go. “Marlee, come here now, come closer.” She’s sitting up now; her legs spread, horrible black hair there. She has my shoulders. I’m twisting away. I’m shaking. She pushes down, I fall on my knees.

“Just one more thing, Marlee, please, just one more thing. I just need one more thing.”

She is pleading. I don’t understand. She wants something else from me.

She pulls my face into her. NO. NO. NO.

I can still remember the awful smell of her, the horrible feel of her. Can’t erase it. Have tried, keep trying. It never goes away. When will she go away?

“Come on, Marlee, put your tongue inside, just for a second, just a second, then you can go.” I try to pull away. She shows me what she means. “Just a little, Marlee, do this, Marlee. Do this.”

I am scared. I do this terrible thing she has demanded. Her grip loosens just a little. Just enough.

I am running into the bathroom, slamming the door. Make it go away, make it go away, God, please make it go away. My mind is racing. I grabbed a washcloth and started scrubbing my hands, my face, my body. I brushed my teeth until my gums started bleeding. I felt sick. I wanted to throw up. I couldn’t. I wondered what was wrong with me. What was wrong with her? WHAT WAS WRONG WITH HER? I was drowning in that crush of emotions—fear, shame, anger, betrayal—molestation victims everywhere feel.

I never said anything, just pushed it deep down inside. Tried to lock it away forever. Pretend, Marlee, just pretend it never happened.

My parents never found out. The babysitter never came to my house again.

In the years since, I’ve wondered if she targeted me because I was Deaf. Did she think she could talk her way out of it or around it if I said something? She’s Deaf, she doesn’t know what she’s saying….

Mostly I try not to think about it at all.

But once, when I was working with the acting coach on
Children of a Lesser God,
he wanted me to dig deeper to get the kind of visceral emotion, vulnerability, and rage needed for a scene. He said, “Marlee, think of the worst thing that’s ever happened to you. Go back to that moment. Use it.” And I did.

The couch I would come to hate

The next time I let it creep into my conscious brain was during my stay at Betty Ford. One of the exercises near the end of my time there was to write down the worst things that had happened to me. Eleven things were on my list. This was number one.

T
HIS WAS NUMBER
four.

When I was in high school, there was a popular teacher on staff. He was charismatic, confident, and both students and teachers were drawn to him.

I was over the moon when I was assigned to one of his classes my sophomore year. I wasn’t too interested in academics, but still I became the teacher’s pet.

Suddenly I had this attractive older man—he was thirty-nine—paying attention to me. He cared what I was thinking about. He wanted to talk to me. He told me about his life. I told him about mine. I had just turned fourteen.

He found out I hated onions, and one day he said, “I’ll make you an omelet with onions that you’ll love.”

“Okay.”

“Come on then, let’s go.”

“Now?”

“Sure, we have time.”

It’s the lunch break and we duck out into the parking lot, get into his car, and head over to his town house. He starts fondling me in the car. I let him, I’m afraid to lose his friendship, the attention. He says he really cares about me. I believe him.

We walk into the house and he leads me down to the basement. Once again my heart is pounding and my insides are twisting. I’ve been kissed, even French-kissed, by a boy who was a couple of years older than me, but that’s it.

He asks me to lie down on a couch. He starts kissing me.

“What are you doing?”

“Don’t worry, Marlee, I’ll take care of you.”

He is taking off my clothes. He is touching me.

He pushes inside me. I gasp with pain and stifle a scream. I am hurting. Blinking back tears. I hate him. Hate him. Love him.

He suddenly stops, quickly pulls himself away from me.

“Please stay, I’ll be right back.”

He heads to the bathroom. I don’t know what’s happening. What’s wrong? What’s wrong with me? Everything’s wrong.

“No, no, it felt good, I just needed to finish myself off,” he murmurs.

I don’t know what he’s talking about. I don’t understand.

“Now let me make you that omelet.”

He does, while I go clean myself up. There is bleeding, I hurt. I want to leave.

“Here.” He smiles. He sets the plate down in front of me.

I eat an omelet, made with eggs, and powdered onions.

He takes me back to school.

We slip away again on other days to have sex. When his wife isn’t there. When his wife is there.

“No, no, no, no, don’t!”

“It’s fine, it’s okay. I’ll take care of you.”

One time his kids, still babies, are in another room. Several
times after class is dismissed, he has me stay late. He grabs my hand and puts it on him. Other students and teachers are still in the halls outside. He feeds off the danger. It’s part of the thrill. He gets bolder. I think he’s crazy.

This goes on for most of the school year. In the spring, he tells me he’ll give me a passing grade though by now I’m failing every test I take in his class.

I don’t care. I tell him I don’t want to see him again. I have a boyfriend now. He says okay. There is no hesitation, no attempt to convince me to continue seeing him.

I finish the class. I get a passing grade. I don’t tell anyone for years.

About ten years after high school, my best friend, Liz, was driving us around. Suddenly she says, “I have a confession to make. I kept this a secret even from you…[the teacher] molested me.”

I was stunned. “Me, too,” I said quietly.

It turns out there were even more of us.

Some years later, when Liz heard that he was still around, still doing this to his students, she got in touch with the school and told them everything.

The school administrators gave him the choice of resigning immediately or they’d turn things over to the cops, she was told.

He left that day. Disappeared. Silently.

Y
OU NEVER KNOW
in life what sustains you, helps you ride out the bad times, until you have bad times to ride out.

By the time I was twelve, I was on the road a lot with the Center on Deafness’s Traveling Hands troupe. We signed and danced to music and performed all over. There were trips to Texas, Nebraska, and throughout Illinois. So much fun!

In each city we’d stay with host families, many of them with Deaf children of their own. It was carefree and fun, and Liz and I loved it—the bus rides as a troupe to the cities, on our own, where we could talk for hours and no one cared.

That year I also began working with the rabbi on my bat mitzvah. As with everything else, my parents were determined that I would have this experience just like any other Jewish girl.

I had fuzzy memories of Marc’s bar mitzvah when I was four. I do remember that I got a beautiful blue-and-red dress and white stockings, and my hair was pulled up into a ponytail. After the service there was food and dancing, and I got to dance with Marc, then my dad, then the three of us together. It was such a happy time. Way past my bedtime, someone took me home for the night. I couldn’t wait to have my own ceremony and party when I could stay until the very end.

For two or three years, I worked with Rabbi Douglas Gold-hammer, studying the Torah and working on my speech. I’ll never forget learning about my religious history, but more than that, really connecting to my faith. Understanding that it was a very real part of who I am, beyond the Friday-night Shabbat dinners and Hanukkah candles and presents.

My bat mitzvah day

On the day of my bat mitzvah I looked out and felt surrounded by love. My brothers, parents, sister-in-law Gloria, my uncle and aunt from California, it made my heart feel full. Here’s a piece of the speech I wrote for that day:

My cousin Lynne wasn’t able to come, but her parents did, my beloved uncle Jason and aunt Norma. Lynne still remembers their telling her about the service: “My mother said it was the most amazing experience to watch this child recite these ancient words. Everyone there was crying as they watched.”

When I looked up and saw everyone crying, tears started streaming down my face. I looked down and saw my tears had fallen on the Torah.

“I’m so sorry, Rabbi,” I said over and over.

“Don’t worry, my child, our history is stained by tears. Your tears are a wonderful mitzvah.”

I’ll never forget that moment, that day, his kindness. I began to feel whole again.

I
HAVE
,
IN
my own way, tried to stay connected to my faith over the years. Many of the speeches I give and the fund-raisers I work on are tied to Jewish organizations that reach their hands out to help. Whether it’s to the aging or the sick, I am always moved by their commitment and their sacrifice.

I was reminded of all of this last summer when my aunt lost a hard-fought battle against cancer.

In her final days, the family gathered in her room, all of us taking turns visiting with her. As I was leaving the house for the hospital, my six-year-old son, Tyler, said he wanted to give her a rose, so I found a perfect red one at the hospital’s shop on my way in.

When I first came into the room, Lynne was resting on the bed next to her mother. I started to back out, to not disturb them, but Lynne looked up and saw me and waved me in.

“Mother, it’s Marlee.”

My aunt, so weak by now, opened her eyes and acknowledged me. As I was leaving for the night, my cousin Lynne asked her mother if she could smile for me, and to everyone’s surprise, Aunt Norma gave me the biggest smile. It just broke my heart, but in good ways.

I went back to see her two days later and stayed with the family until her final moments. The room was quiet. I was there with just Lynne, her husband, Elliott, and their daughter, Elisa, around the bed. Lynne’s son, Brian, who had been with his grandmother every day since she had gone into the hospital, left the room with his wife, Allison, who was distraught. Aunt Norma died two minutes later.

It was the first time I’ve been with someone when the person passed. It was profound and touched me and connected me to my family, my history, in ways I could not have imagined. I’m grateful to have been there. Brian and Allison walked back in just minutes later and we all held each other for comfort.

It truly was as if the spirit left the body with her last breath. I knew my aunt wasn’t there any longer.

Over the next two days more of the family flew in. We cried, we laughed, we remembered the beautiful woman she was, the amazing legacy she has left in her children and her grandchildren.

My twelve-year-old daughter, Sarah, wanted to go to the funeral. At the end, by the graveside, the rabbi asked Sarah to throw a rose on her great-aunt’s grave. I told the rabbi that Sarah’s middle name is Rose, which made the gesture even more meaningful for my family.

I remember the gentleness and the care the rabbi took with my daughter, whose tears that day reminded me of my own bat mitzvah and how my tears stained the Torah. Our history is indeed written in tears.