Chapter 3

I say Mom told me some of what I said I imagined just above this point on the page. I did imagine most of that. All Mom told me was that she and he worked things out and that he was shook up enough that he didn’t kiss her goodbye. She said this to make me feel bad.

This part I don’t have to imagine. I was there.

When I got back from my run and got chewed out for not leaving a note and “worrying people” she told me we were going for a ride.

“Where? I’m all sweaty,” I pointed out.

“We’re not going anywhere. We’re just going,” she said. As you can tell she was a little rattled, too. She was about to confess something to her daughter that she had thought she’d never have to confess.

“Okay,” I said, “Stinky it is.”

I should remind you that I was a eighteen-year-old and we are all snarky at that age. I say this so you’ll know I was completely normal and vexed my mother in a completely normal manner.

She drove five or six blocks before she spoke.

“I want you to tell me everything that happened yesterday,” she said.

“What do you mean?” I asked. I wasn’t about to talk about most of what happened, especially not to my mother. I didn’t even think about the fact that Uncle Bob fucked her on a more or less regular basis. That was something that was so ingrained in both Chad and me that it just seemed normal. Well, I shouldn’t speak for Chad. He’s a boy and boys have damaged minds that make them think about stuff like this. When they go into puberty, some enzyme or chemical or something gets made that connects their balls to their brain and they can’t think straight. Sometimes that even lasts into their twenties.

“Bunny, I know sexual things happened. Bob told me. I just want to hear about it from your perspective.”

“He told you?” I felt betrayed.

“We’ll talk about why he told me later. Please. Just talk to me. Think of me as your older sister and not your mother, if that helps.”

“I don’t think that will help,” I said.

“Okay, how about if I start, first. When I was your age, even younger, actually, I became sexually active. It wasn’t with some random boy. I wasn’t allowed to date at that point. But I had a brother who I loved more than anybody else in the world. And when he wanted to take my virginity I let him. That is why he sleeps with me when your father is gone on one of his trips.”

I swallowed. I was getting confirmation about some things Chad and I had hypothesized about. We had known all along what was going on in our parents’ bedroom, and we had learned that what they were doing was taboo. We didn’t talk about it outside the family because I had seen people’s reaction to the mere idea of incest. That said, it was still shocking to hear her just admit it out loud.

“We peeked at you before,” I said, haltingly. “Chad and me, I mean.”

“I know. Bob told me about that, too.”

“Are you mad?”

“No. And I’m not angry about anything that happened in the past, or that happened yesterday. We can talk about why later, too. Right now, I just need to hear you talk about it. In fact, I’m going to park at the park so I can look at you while we talk. We say more with our body and face than we do with our words, sometimes.”

“I don’t understand why you want me to talk about it,” I said. “Did I do something wrong? Did Uncle Bob tell you why he got mad at me and made us cut the weekend short?”

“He did tell me why and it was not because you did anything wrong. You didn’t do anything wrong and he’s not angry with you. Hear me when I tell you it was all about how he felt and not because of anything you did. He still loves you very much. I’ll tell you what he said, but only after I hear your version of what happened.”

She was adamant and then we were parked under a tree in one corner of the parking lot. With the windows down we could hear children being children on the playground, but it was just background noise.

“Start at the beginning,” she said.

So I told her about the itty-bitty bikini he bought me. That led to me talking about previous bikinis and Uncle Bob ogling me.

“I know,” she said. “He ogles me, too. Sometimes it just melts me.”

So then I told her about his suggestion that we go nudist for the weekend. She probed about how that made me feel.

“I wanted to do it,” I said.

“Why?”

“I knew that he got ... um ... I mean I know guys get ... hard ... in their pants. Sometimes, when he looked at me, I was pretty sure he got that way and I wanted to see it. And he did ogle me a lot and I wondered how that would feel if I was naked, instead of in a bikini. I just wanted to find out what things were like.”

“You were curious? I know you weren’t curious in high school and I approved Now, you’re old enough to be curious. Was that it?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s the right word. I had a chance to do something a little wild and crazy and I sure couldn’t do that here, at home, so I told him to take his clothes off. And I took my bikini top off.”

“And?”

“He got all embarrassed because he did have a boner. It was like he wanted to do all this nudist stuff, but then was embarrassed to do it. And he wanted me to do it, too, but he was worried that I’d be afraid of him.”

“Were you afraid of him?”

“No. Of course not. He loves us. He’d never do anything to hurt me. I told him he couldn’t put it in me, but I wasn’t afraid of him.”

“Why did you tell him he couldn’t put it in you? Did he ask to?”

“No. It was the opposite. But I knew that you and him ... I knew he put it in you and when I saw it I thought no way, it would never fit, so that’s what I told him. I said no way was he going to put that thing in me, whether you loved it or not.”