It was the summer of 1948, a strange but exciting time in my life, in more ways than one. I lived with my mother and brother in the house I was born in, along the tree lined streets of Mayfield, Connecticut. Mayfield was a typical New England town, old and rich in history, but also left behind in many ways. The War had taken most of its men; some had returned, ... others not.

One of those who would never come back was my father, killed in the Pacific, September 1st, 1945; one day before VJ Day. It would be nice to say that I had many fond memories of him, remembrances of my early childhood with him, but the truth was that I didn’t.

He had signed up the day after Pearl Harbor, leaving his wife, my mother, home alone with my brother and myself. I was only nine when he left, and although I knew something terrible was happening at the time, I had no concept of what his leaving meant, or understood the fact that he might never return.

He would only return home once during the war, a brief visit in the winter of 1943, just before he would be sent overseas to begin the business of war. I remember my mother crying for days when he left, but when I asked, she would only say that he would be back in a little while. But it was not to be.

Robbie, my older brother, and I, attended the Saint Mary’s Catholic School down at the end of our neighborhood, the very same church our mother would faithfully attend every Sunday morning, along with many other times during the week. She was very active among the parish, helping with all of the church’s functions and volunteering to do what she could, considering it to be her duty as a good Catholic.

And as you might guess, she tried to raise the two of us under the same guiding light; no drinking (other than wine at church), no swearing (especially taking if the Lord’s name in vain) and proper behavior at all times. But it would be this summer that it would change. This summer would bring to me events that would forever alter the way that I perceived life, or perhaps how it perceived me.

It was Sunday afternoon, home after having attended the morning Mass as we did every Sunday, and I had been sent straight to my room to remove my Church clothes as not to dirty them. I fiddled around a bit in my room, thinking of what I might do that day, and after returning down stairs I walked into the kitchen. Mom was starting her cooking as she did every Sunday afternoon, and I asked her if I could go over to my friend Betty’s house. I had seen Betty in church that morning and she had invited me to come over and spend time with her.

“Okay Dear...” My mother answered, “ ... but I want you home no later than four o’clock, I’m cooking a roast for dinner.”

“I promise.” I hollered to my mother as I raced out the back Kitchen door.

I had been late once, and only once, but remembered well how angry my mother had been. But the alternative was less pleasant, because being in the house on a Sunday afternoon meant that chores would be assigned, and I had no thirst for spending my afternoon cleaning around the house. And because of just that, when I arrived at Betty’s house to find out that her mother had decided that they would be driving over to Betty’s Grandmother’s for the day and that she could not spend time with me, that my heart sank.

Robbie was already gone for the day before I had left, having grabbed his baseball bat and glove and gone to play with the other boys at the park. I had stopped there for a while to watch, and sat quietly hoping they might ask for me to join in the fun. But even through all of the older boys kept looking at me with interest, they had no interest in asking a younger kid like me to play, let alone a girl.

So, again rejected, I walked around the neighborhood for a while, trying to find something to do to pass the time away, but eventually the day’s heat and my boredom led to the decision to just go on home. Walking down the street, kicking little stones along the cracked sidewalk along the way, I turned the corner of our street and saw Father Paul’s old car parked in our driveway.

It was nothing out of the ordinary, Father Paul, who was the priest at our church, would come by frequently to sit in our living room with my mother and talk about church business; who would do what for the upcoming bake sale, ideas for the school, and the occasional gossip of who hadn’t been attending Mass lately.

Father Paul seemed to me to be a strange man, something I couldn’t put my finger on exactly, but yet still there.

When in church, or standing behind the pulpit, he would talk softly of the words of God, but in school he was very stern.

No one, and I mean no one, wanted to be sent to his office.

For any reason.

But, whenever he was over at our house, he always seemed to be very pleasant and I liked him. He was what I had considered a handsome man for his age, always looking proper and sparkly clean in his suit. And as I neared the house, the thought occurred to me that as long as Father Paul and my mother were sitting in the living room, drinking their coffee, as they always did, the topic of how they all missed coffee so much during the War always coming up, that perhaps I wouldn’t be asked to work cleaning the house if could only manage to sneak in and make it up to my room.

So, quietly I cut across our next door neighbor’s lawn and made my way to the back of the house, ducking to avoid being seen through the front windows. Making my way to the back kitchen door, I peeked through the screen door and tried to see down the long hallway and into the living room at the front of the house. All seemed clear, they must have been sitting on the sofa I reasoned, and so slowly I began to open the screen door, careful not to open it too quickly as it might rattle or squeak, and stepping gingerly inside the kitchen I pulled the door gently closed, again as to make no noise. I tiptoed through the kitchen and made my way toward the stairs, stopping only to peek around the corner to see just exactly where my mother and Father Paul were, as I didn’t hear them talking.

But to my surprise, they were not sitting in the living room as I had expected. I stood for a moment, puzzled, as I began to wonder where they were. I knew for certain that was Father Paul’s car sitting in our driveway, I had seen it there plenty of times before to recognize it as his.

But as I stood there silently, slowly my ears began to hear faint but audible noises as they drifted down the stairs where I stood. They were not the sounds of voice, but strange and eerie noises, ghostly noises, and a chill ran down my spine.

And as I stood there, straining to make sense of the strangeness emanating from up the stairs, a sudden and loud moan echoed down the hallway and down to me, causing my body to clench in panic.

“What was that?” My mind raced.

It sounded like someone in pain. Was it my mother? Was she hurt? And I began to feel very afraid. But i couldn’t just stand there, I had to do something, so I slowly and very frightfully began to climb the stairs, one step, then another, then another, still listening intently to decipher the faint noises.

It was then that another loud moan appeared, but it was followed by the distinct sound of laughter, faint but recognizable, and my mind began to spin yet again. Who was that? WHAT was that? And so I continued to slowly climb the stairs, halting only when I reached the top. I stood for a moment and it became very clear to me that the noises I heard were coming from my mother’s bedroom.

Again I heard the eerie noises, growing louder as I continued to creep towards her door, afraid of what horror that might await. Mother’s door was closed, but not entirely, left slightly ajar as we had always been taught to do. “Just in case there is an emergency...” My mother had always insisted. Slowly I took my final step toward the door and leaned my head toward the small gap, safe from view but terrified of what I might see.

I was immediately struck by what I saw, not in the room itself, but in the Mother’s full length dressing mirror. Standing by Mother’s bed was Father Paul, still dressed in his suit, but to my total shock, he stood there with his penis sticking straight out from his opened zipper. And if that were not terrifying enough, there was my mother kneeling before him; her blouse opened wide and hanging off her shoulders, her brassiere pulled down but not off her chest, cradling her breasts and lifting them upward, her nipples exposed and looking large and hard, but shocking most of all was the fact that what I could see of Father Paul’s penis was only the remainder of what was not inside of my mother’s mouth.

Raised as I was, I will admit that I was very naïve when it came to the subject of boys, but I knew what a penis was, or at least thought I had. I had seen one from an infant, Betty’s little baby brother to be exact as he was having his diaper changed, but what I saw before me was so completely different as to scare me.

It looked absolutely huge, large enough that it strained my mothers lips to surround it as it sat in her mouth, her spit gathered at the corners of her lips and running down her cheeks.

I was petrified.

But as the initial panic began to subside, I began to to notice in growing detail what was happening. Father Paul and his hands on my mother’s head, his fingers gently woven into her hair, its loose bun hanging as it came unwound. As she knelt before Father Paul, I watched as mother’s one hand slid its way back and forth between her breasts, stopping at each one to pinch at her nipples, tugging and rolling them between her fingers, her other hand was buried down between her legs, tucked under her skirt and hidden from view.