72 Years Ago, My Mother Was Assaulted
And she suddenly needs to talk about it
Readers: This article mentions sexual assault to a minor.
My mother cried in my arms today. She’s 87. She’s normally cheerful and pleasant, but today she has pain. She lived alone through a 15-month pandemic living and has endured loneliness.
The woman who nurtured me and dried thousands of my tears is becoming more childlike each day. She has mild dementia, which is sometimes difficult to differentiate from her lifelong, charming “ditziness” — as my family called it.
She leads with her heart, not her head. She reacts with emotions and not logic. It’s been both her strength and her weakness.
She has always gotten words mixed up. Once, when I was a teen, we heard her talking to a church friend on the phone, who had called to ask her to head up a committee. She rarely said no. She was always generous with her time and talents. Leading missions education, playing piano for kids and adults, making posters, writing hand-designed postcards to everyone she heard of having a hard time or something to celebrate. But this time, she was determined.
“I’m sorry, Nancy. I’m going to have to recline,” she insisted, as my siblings and I burst into snickers. (We whispered to each other our imagined version of the other side of the conversation: “Go ahead and get comfortable. Now, will you head the committee?”)
Mrs. Malaprop, I called her. She laughed with good humor. She was always a good sport; in our family, teasing was a second language.
With that history, it’s never easy to discern what is Mom being Mom and what is neurological dysfunction.
Deep pain
For the past week, Mom has had abdominal pain. Over the years, she’s been in the hospital many times with the same malady. Unexplained abdominal pain. One doctor told her, “Not all pain is significant. That doesn’t mean that it’s not real or intense. It just means that it’s not going to kill you.”
Since my dad’s death 10 years ago, my siblings and I have correlated her episodes of pain with distress or loneliness — although we are sometimes unkind enough to refer to it as “needing attention.” Shame on us.
Two years ago, an episode turned out to be kidney stones. The doctor blasted one and said a small one was still rattling around. Last week, she became convinced that the kidney stone had moved.
Today, I took her to the urologist. It’s not a kidney stone.
As the doctor left the exam room, my mother dissolved into sobs. She was so hopeful he would be able to diagnose and resolve her pain today. Once she settled down, I helped her out and into the car. As I lifted the back hatch and placed her walker in the car, I decided to address her pain head-on.
“Mom, your stomach pain is almost always caused by stress. What’s distressing you?”
Peeling the onion
I’ve learned in my years in marketing that you often have to ask a question three times to get to the real answer. What’s the objective of this campaign? [vague answer] What would that help us achieve? [vague answer] Why do we want that outcome? [finally…a real answer]
The technique often works in real life, too.
By the time we got to the third round, she mentioned that she’d had a falling out with her cousin…and glossed over it. I backed up, “What happened with Carol?” I asked.
With persuasion, Mom finally divulged that she’d told Carol about the time that her uncle (Carol’s father) had tried to kiss her. And, through tears, that Carol had been cold to her ever since.
I’d heard a version of this kissing episode before, but not the details. When you grow up with a family story — even those that are dramatic — you just accept it with no real analysis. I just knew that Great Uncle E was odd and that my mom got a creepy vibe from him. Now, it was clear that she needed to talk about it, so I asked her to tell me what happened.
When she was 15, her uncle picked her up from a piano lesson. On the way home, he pulled the car over and asked her to kiss him. She declined (or possibly reclined? No. Definitely declined.). Multiple times. Finally, he grabbed her, pulled her over to him, and kissed her. Hard.
He released her and took her home. When she walked into the house, shaken, her aunt (the wife) asked what took so long. Thankfully, my mom, even in her youth and inexperience, was determined not to shield him or to have any secrets. She blurted out, “Uncle E made me kiss him.” And walked out of the room.
The family never spoke of it again. And she made sure she was never alone with him ever again…even up until his death at age 92.
Hearing this story again as an adult woman, I was horrified. Certainly, there are degrees of sexual assault, and compared to, say, rape, my mother’s experience was less traumatic. But it was decidedly traumatic.
The fallout
I asked her about how she felt then and how she feels now. Discussed with her that it was her truth, and that it was never wrong to tell her the truth if she wanted to — that keeping things bottled up is torture. We talked about our shared experiences of knowing the millisecond a friendly or familial hug crossed a line, and the importance of trusting our instincts.
I told her that Uncle E was absolutely, positively, 100% inappropriate. I told her he had sexually assaulted her.
She looked surprised. Then, she thought for a moment, and said, “He did!” She had never allowed herself to think of it as assault. It was just “one of those things,” she’d told herself. She had always made excuses for him. Uncle E was an orphan. He’d grown up in an orphanage. He had “funny ways.”
After getting Mom home and safely tucked into her recliner, I regrouped with my sibs. My sister said, “She’s mentioned that incident a few times lately.”
So, within the last month, she has talked about the event with my sister, her cousin, and me. It’s on her mind. 72 years after the fact.
I’ve been sitting and absorbing today’s conversation. Hearing your mother’s trauma — even that many years later — is disturbing. I’ve muttered a few choice words in the direction of Uncle E. And I’ve shed some tears of my own. My mom has carried this burden for years.
As I consider this episode in the context of 1940s culture, I’m so enormously proud of her for telling her family (and his wife) what happened. I shudder to think what else may have happened if he had not been called out…if he’d made her complicit in a big secret. I have no doubt the abuse would have escalated.
I’d like to think that, unknown to her, the family made sure she was never alone with Uncle E. That steps were taken, even though they lacked the words or ability to discuss the assault with her.
I also suspect that her cousin is aware of her father’s behavior. It doesn’t make sense for her to be angry at an 87-year-old woman if this were the first time she’d heard something in this vein about him. Heck, maybe she’d experienced the same behavior and is not able to process it. In any case, her reaction is not my mom’s responsibility.
I don’t know why this incident is bubbling up for Mom now. Maybe it has something to do with her neurology. Maybe it’s because she’s been spent so much time alone and ruminating. There’s no way to know.
Whatever the cause, I’m sad that it is on her mind so much. I wish I could take all that pain away. I mourn for all women who have been assaulted; my mom’s ongoing reaction speaks to the deep and lasting trauma victims carry. And to our need to continue to de-stigmatize truth-telling.
I checked in with Mom a bit ago. Her stomach isn’t hurting anymore. She has some relief…for now.
Copyright 2021, Naomi
You’re invited to read another story about the author and her mother:
