I remember parts of that night with surprising clarity.
I saw the men inside my mom’s room when I got up to go to the bathroom. I was 7 years old, and we lived in Philadelphia at the time. Half asleep, I remember thinking in a vague sort of way that something about the scene was off. Some internal alarm was set in my head, and I remember telling myself not to flush the toilet because of the sound it would make.
Sometime later I woke up, seized in truly indescribable panic. I was pinned under one of the men, in screaming pain so bad I went in and out of consciousness. I saw my blood everywhere: on me, on him, on my prized pink Strawberry Shortcake sleeping bag, on a knife taken from my own kitchen. With a child’s simple understanding of such things, I thought I was dead. I’d never really seen my blood before, at least not in such quantities and in the midst of violence. I thought the men had killed me and I was now a ghost, watching the gory scene from outside this world. I had no idea what was happening to me.
[For more of this story, written by Mary Emily O'Hara, go to http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...ake-women-crazy.html]
Comments (0)