Available balance £2.50. I blink and look again at the ATM screen. Available balance £2.50. This must be a mistake. I pull my card from the machine, and glance at the line of people behind me. They’re just going to have to wait. This is an emergency. Feeling cold, I insert my card and reenter my pin. Available balance £2.50. Has my account been hacked? What will I do if someone has stolen my money?

Snatching my card, I head to a quiet corner of the car park. Pulling out my phone, I call the number on the back of the card. I pace back and forth as I’m forced to listen to five minutes of background music. Finally, a human being comes on the line. After answering her security questions, I try to remain calm as I explain to her that my balance must be wrong, that my wages of £958 are always paid in on the first of the month, that it’s now the third and the money is not showing in my account. More waiting while she checks my recent transactions. The car park is filling up, it’s that time of the evening when people come home from work and stop off to get their groceries. Dark clouds block out the sun. It’s going to rain and I didn’t bring an umbrella. Her voice cuts through my thoughts. “I can see £958 is usually paid in on the first of every month. However, there was no payment this month.”

There’s a gust of wind and I feel a few drops of moisture against my skin. “Are you sure? Maybe there’s been a mistake.”

“Nothing has been paid in. All I can suggest is you contact the personnel department of the company you work for.”
I shove my phone into my bag. Great. Just great. I join the throng of customers who are shuffling through the doors of the store. As I pass by one of the checkouts someone calls out, “Are you back already? You doing an extra shift?” It’s one of my colleagues but I really don’t have the energy to explain, so I mouth, ‘Got a problem.’

Standing outside my boss’s office, I rap my knuckles against the door. At twenty-three, my boss is only three years older than me. He looks up at me as I stand in front of his desk. “Can I help you, Lily?”

He’s a good guy. Like me, he has a degree, and like me he’s putting it to good use by working at a grocery store. Too many graduates applying for too few jobs. At least my day ends at five. Eight hours on the checkout and I’m done. My boss works longer hours and has way more responsibility, for not much more pay. No surprise he’s young, they wouldn’t get an older more experienced person to do this job for the money they pay. I sigh. “My wages haven’t been paid.”

“Not you as well.” He rubs the back of his neck. “There’s been a mix up. Personnel are aware of it and your wages should be in your account by Monday.” My dismay must be obvious, because he frowns. “I can loan you a few quid if you’re short. You can pay me back when you get paid.”

I square my shoulders and shake my head. Owing money makes me anxious. For that reason, I’m one of those rare people who doesn’t own a credit card. I’ll manage. Somehow.

I hear the rain before I even step out into the car park. This day just keeps getting better. Before heading outside I pull my coat up over my head. Water splashes onto my tights as my feet slosh through puddles. Striding briskly, I consider my options. My food cupboards are empty but I have £70 in my purse to pay my electric bill. I could use that cash to buy food and pay the electric on Monday. But, I’ve already received the final notice. I’ll pay the bill. Four days without food won’t kill me. My feet are soaked and rain drips from my eyelashes by the time I reach the Post Office. I delve into my bag for my purse.

He rolls the filter paper between his fingers. I glance at my dog, Duke, who is sitting on the floor at my side. Duke is watching him more intently than I am. I stroke my dog’s head to let him know everything is okay. For now. His right ear twitches but he doesn’t take his eyes off the guy who has now lit the joint. The smell of grass hits my nostrils as he exhales and passes the joint to me. I take a deep draw and hold it in my lungs before exhaling through my nose. I don’t do drugs. Thing is, buyers want to know they are getting the real deal, so I’m expected to share a joint with them before they buy. I take another puff and hand it back to him. He’s new to me. I don’t like dealing with people I don’t know, makes me edgy, but one of my regulars put the word in for him, so here he sits in my living room. He leans forward. Duke stiffens. I slide my fingers into his collar. “Sit back. You’re making my dog nervous.”

He sits back. “You should get him trained.”

“He is trained.” Trained to attack anyone who threatens us. Trained to tell me when anyone gets near to our door.

“Do you want the gear or not?”

“It’s alright but I’ve had better.”

“Bullshit. It’s the best you’ll get in this area.” I let go of Duke’s collar. “We’re done. You’ve wasted enough of my time.”

He holds up his palms. “No, no. You’re right, it’s good stuff it’s just that I’m a bit tight at the moment.”

“What?”

He shrugs. “I’m a bit short of cash this week.”

“Not my problem.” Someone is going to get a piece of my mind for recommending this a-hole to me.

“Can you knock a couple of quid off the price? It’ll be worth your while; I’ll be a regular customer.”

Just what I need, a regular customer who won’t pay my prices. “I don’t give discounts.” I get to my feet and Duke stands beside me. “We’re done.”

“Okay, it was worth a try.” He pulls some notes out of his wallet and holds them out to me. “I’ll just tell my girlfriend that we’ll need to spend less on food this week.”

“Put your money away, get up, and get out.”

“It’s okay, I’ll pay.”

He’s still holding out his cash. I step towards him. Duke follows. “We’re done here. Leave.”

Following him to the door, I close and bolt it behind him. I clench and unclench my fists as I stomp back to the living room. Asshole. Pretending he’s poor when he’s wearing designer clothes and buying grass. Trying to do me out of money that’s mine. I know what it’s like to be poor and he isn’t it. I doubt he’s ever come home from school hungry and found no food in the house. I bet he never had to hide from debt collectors like me and Mum did. Seventeen years later and I can still remember how scared I would get when she heard the knock on the door and would tell me to shush and we’d have to hide beneath the window in case they looked in and saw us. At the time, I didn’t know who I was hiding from. I thought it was someone who was trying to hurt us. Shaking my head, I attempt to clear my negative thoughts. I don’t have to let shit like that affect me anymore. We’ll never be poor again. I’ve seen to that. Still, I’ve lost out on a sale and it irks me that I’ve lost out on money, and the fucker got a free joint. I close my eyes and draw in a deep breath. Enough Kai, just let it go.

Mum’s sitting at the kitchen table, she looks up as I enter. “Is there a problem? I heard you telling that boy to leave.”

I turn on the tap and fill a glass with water. “He wasn’t a boy, he’s was a man.”

“You all look young to me.”

I stare out of the window at our back yard. The rain bounces off our iron garden table. “He didn’t want to pay my prices. It’s no problem; I’ve got plenty of other buyers.” I down my glass of water. “He’s not someone I want as a customer anyway.”

“Will he cause you any trouble?”

“He’s a chancer, not an idiot. If he messes with me, word will get around and there won’t be a dealer in the area who will sell to him.”

“Maybe it’s time you gave this up. You could get a regular job.”

Closing my eyes, I let out a breath and turn to face her. “And what, work more hours than I do now, for minimum wage so we just scrape by? If we’re lucky.”

“You have a good brain. You don’t need to settle for a minimum wage job.”

Not wanting to snap at her, I stare at the ceiling while I get my temper under control. I fix my gaze on her. “You’re right, I am smart. Smart enough to know there are people with degrees doing minimum wage jobs. Who do you think they’re going to hire? Someone who went to university and got a degree? Or someone like me, who left school at sixteen?”

She shrugs. “You could get a degree.”

“I don’t want one and I don’t need one. I’m happy doing what I’m doing, and it pays bloody well.”

I notice she’s turning her cigarette pack over and over in her hand. “Why don’t you have a smoke? It’ll calm you down.”

“I’ve run out.” She opens the pack to show me it’s empty.

“You should have told me before you ran out. I’ll go buy you a pack.”

Slipping my arms into my coat, I pull up my hood. Luckily, the shop isn’t far because the rain is chucking it down.

“I can’t stand the feeling of being out of control, so I’ve never had any interest in trying drugs or alcohol,” I mused.
“You sure seemed to have an interest when you were younger,” Dad informed me. He responded to my perplexed look before I had a chance to deny his claim. “What? You don’t remember trying pot? Let’s see. It was about 1975. That would have made you five, right? I remember it like it was yesterday. It was a summer afternoon. I walked into the living room and found you with a bong in one hand and a beer in the other. You just looked up at me, glassy-eyed, with a smile on your face and said, ‘Hi, Dad.’ You don’t remember that?”

“Uh…no!”

“Ha! Do you remember the massive headache you had the next day? You hated life that day! I told you not ever to do it again...and you never did,” he reminisced in a tone laced with humor and pride.

It was after that conversation when I really began to question my apparent lack of childhood memories. I have next to no memory of life before the divorce of my parents (when I was eight) and precious few afterward.

My parental split also marks the onset of memories of the “secret playtime” I shared with Dad. I remember realizing that what was happening to me was wrong (to a certain extent, anyway), but Dad really missed Mom. I felt proud to be there for him in his time of grief and loneliness. I had many roles as the oldest daughter. I got my toddler sister to bed on time, scolded her when I found her drinking a beer (that one I do have a vague memory of), and I cleaned the house. Those “more intimate interactions” with Dad were just another in my list of responsibilities as I saw it.
But if Dad remembered the timeline correctly, Mom and Dad were still together when I was five. Where was Mom when her Kindergartener daughter was experimenting with drugs? Could this mean I should add neglect as a descriptor of my “chaotic” upbringing? Could it mean the molestation began earlier than I have any memory of? Does it even matter at this point?

For a time, I was skeptical if someone told me s/he didn’t have sexual abuse in their background. It seemed it was everywhere. I ran a support group in a junior high school when getting my psychology degree. It was for eighth-grade girls, and the only qualifier for an invitation to the group was poor school attendance. After a few weeks of meetings, I opened a session with - innocently enough - “So, how was everyone’s weekend?” One girl immediately began to cry. She explained she had confronted her parents over the weekend with the news that her brother had sexually abused her for years. She had come forward out of fear for the niece her brother’s girlfriend had just given birth to. That student’s admission led to the revelation that six of the seven of us in our circle that day had a history of sexual abuse.

My best friend in college was gang-raped in high school. My college boyfriend was [brutally] raped by a neighbor as a child. Maybe the most disturbing situation I heard about was when I was a senior in high school. I had befriended a freshman. She came to me one day, inconsolable. She was petrified, as she was positive she was pregnant. I tried to calm her with reassuring words, then asked, “Have you told [your boyfriend] yet?” She burst into a fresh bout of tears. When she was finally able to speak again, she confessed in an agonized whisper, “I can’t! It’s not his. It’s…it’s my uncle’s, or my father’s.”

I don’t know how I thought sexual abuse was rampant all around me but had somehow left the rest of my family untouched. Soon after my first daughter was born, I learned that Dad had attempted to molest my younger sister when I was about 12 (my sister would have been 7 or 8 then). As it turns out, I disrupted the attempt when I went to inform them I had just finished making breakfast. I learned of that incident because our [even younger] step sister had just pressed charges against Dad for her sexual abuse from years earlier. He served four years.

Incidentally, that family drama enlightened me to the fact that my grandmother had been abused by a neighbor. My aunt had been abused by her uncle. I wonder if Dad had been sexually abused, too (in addition to the daily, brutal physical abuse I know he suffered at the hands of my grandfather).

As with most survivors of abuse from a family member, I am full of ambiguity and conflict. I am glad Dad was educated to the error of his ways. I’m satisfied he paid for his crimes. I’m relieved the truth came out. I hate that the truth came out. I mourn for the shell of a man who returned from prison. I weep for a family that was blown apart by the scandal. I am heartbroken for my grandmother, who was devastated by the whole ordeal. I am thankful I live 3000 miles away from my family, so I don’t have to face the daily small-town shame they all do, now that Dad is a registered sex offender. I am proud of my step sister for speaking up. I am woefully ashamed for not having the courage to do it myself, which possibly would have prevented the abuse of others after me. I love my father. I am thankful for the [many] great things he has done for me over the years. I hate the effect his molestation had on me, including the role it likely played in my high school rape by another student, and my first [abusive, dysfunctional] marriage.

As I’ve clearly demonstrated, my story is far from unique. Heck, it’s not even remotely severe or traumatic when compared to what others have survived. Still, here I am - 40 years after my first memories of molestation – and I’m still suffering the consequences. Along with my disgrace for allowing others to be abused after me, I carry incredible shame for my involvement in the acts (regardless of the decades of therapy that advise me I had no real power or choice in the matter). I carry unbelievable guilt for the strain my history places on my relationship with my husband. He’s an amazing, wonderful, loving man, who deserves nothing less than a robust, vigorous, fulfilling sex life, but gets – to the best of my ability – a [hopefully] somewhat satisfying one. I carry secret embarrassment over the only real sexual fantasy I have – that of reliving my rape and [this time] taking great pleasure in castrating the bastard in the slowest, most brutally savage way imaginable.

Heaviest of all, I carry fear. There’s nothing I can do to change my past. All I can do is work toward preventing the continued cycle of abuse. I may have a warped view of personal boundaries, I may struggle with my sexuality, and I may be somewhat unfamiliar with healthy family dynamics, but I can do all in my power to ensure my kids fare far better than me. I fear failure.

My eldest daughter has mild to moderate developmental delay. While statistics for sexual abuse in the general population is scary enough, the likelihood of abuse when a cognitive disability is involved is all but a certainty. My second daughter is non-verbal, non-ambulatory, and severely mentally delayed. She’s a prime candidate for abuse. What if my efforts to protect them fall short?
 
My [teenaged] son and my youngest [“tween”] daughter both have ADHD. Impulse control is a constant struggle for them both. What if the education, counseling, advice, and coaching I offer them about healthy relationships, sexuality, safety and personal responsibility aren’t enough?

I try to counteract these lingering after effects of abuse by remaining ever thankful for the love, good fortune, and beautiful life I share with my husband and children today, but my guilt, shame, and fear cling to me with tenacious persistence.

I am just finishing "It Begins And Ends With Family" by Jo Ann Wentzel. I highly recommend the read. The subject is foster care, but no conversation about foster children is complete without a discussion of child abuse and neglect. While we can debate the best course of action in helping abused children, the top priority must be to work toward a goal of prevention; to break the cycle of abuse. I am hopeful that – as a society – we can work together to empathize, educate, support, counsel, and care enough to stop the cycle of all abuse. If sharing my truth will help toward that goal, well…Here I am. This is my truth.

Thank you for supporting this member along the WATCH "RWISA" WRITE Showcase Tour today!  We ask that if you have enjoyed this member's writing, to please visit their Author Page on the RWISA site, where you can find more of their writing, along with their contact and social media links, if they've turned you into a fan.  WE ask that you also check out their books in the RWISA or RRBC catalogs.  Thanks, again for your support and we hope that you will follow each member along this amazing tour of talent!  Don't forget to click the link below to learn more about this author:

With Angel's Wings is the true story of Laura, a young wife and mother of a three-year-old daughter. Her husband, Kevin, a marine, is deployed overseas, leaving Laura to give birth to their second daughter and handle the two young children on her own.

Thirteen days after the birth of her youngest, the pediatrician detects a heart murmur. That leads to just the first of multiple diagnoses for both of her daughters, sending Laura on an unexpected and emotional journey into the world of parenting medically-fragile, special needs children.

Right when Laura fears she will break under the incredible pressure, she encounters the beauty of true love, in a most unexpected and unconventional way.