Chapter 14

It was a beautiful early summer’s day. I was 11 years old. The rutted road I was traveling arced through dense woods between Brook Grove and the black shanty town to its west. I was returning from a visit to my friend Alfred, otherwise known as Bullfrog. He was the son of the black farm manager at the old Maryland plantation that had been converted into a rest home.

As usual I was paying little attention to my surroundings. I hardly noticed the approach of a black youth walking down the road toward me. As he got close, he slowed and finally stopped. I was gripped with an unknown dread. My heart began to race as I passed him.

He waited until I had passed, then grabbed me from behind. I screamed and he put his hand over my mouth. I was kicking and squirming as he carried me into the dark woods. I had no idea what he had in mind. I found out soon enough.

He first began to beat me. He hit me so hard in the stomach I couldn’t breath. He hit me again and again. I was quietly sobbing as he pulled my clothes off. In just a few seconds I felt him inside me. When he had satisfied himself, he stood me up to a tree and used my belt to tie me up like a hog. He told me to pray. I prayed fervently, but it did me no good. It got him all excited, though.

I had just about figured out I was going to be killed. My sobbing became muted as the realization sat in. My resignation surprised me. I was ready to die. The only reason I didn’t was that my screams had caught the attention of a passing black man. As he came running through the woods, my attacker saw him and hightailed it out of there.

The man untied me, then gently cradled me in his arms. He carried me the mile to Brook Grove and took me inside the old antebellum mansion. My mother, upon seeing me, was in hysterics. Mrs. Howe called a doctor and put me to bed. I spent the next four weeks recovering from the savage beating. I had a hernia from that time on until it was repaired in 1984.

My Dad wasn’t living with us at the time, so it was two days before he learned what had happened. When I had recovered enough, my father put me in his car and we went out to Niggertown to locate my assailant. Bullfrog had told him who had assaulted me, so we went straightaway to his house.

My Dad’s knock on the door was answered by a wizened old woman. The house reflected the dire poverty of the neighborhood.. A rickety old table and few chairs were the only furniture in the room we were led into. As my Dad related what had happened to me, the old woman turned almost white. She was shaking with fear as she collapsed into a chair. Her grandson sat in front of the old wood kitchen stove in the middle of the room, pretending to read a comic book He never looked up as my Dad approached.

“Are you the one who beat up my son?” (he hadn’t been told I was raped)

“No Mister, I ain’t never beat up no one”.

“Is this the one who beat you up?” He turned to me, hoping I would identify him.

I have wondered all these years why I said nothing in answer to that question. Was I too afraid to tell on him? I don’t really think that was it; after all, my dad would have crushed him with his bare hands if I told him he was the one.

Looking back on it, it seems to me like maybe I was afraid for the kid. My dad had a violent temper and was fiercely protective of us kids. I’m sure he would have near killed him.

Neither my Dad nor no one else in my family except my mother ever knew I had been raped. I never told anyone until a few years ago. I never told my Dad that he had been in the same room as my attacker.