Our winning essay this winter is an account of events the year the author was 15. Her use of simple short sentences is especially effective for writing about childhood trauma and for reminding us about children’s disenfranchisement. More of my comments on how the author’s writing succeeds follow the essay. Roberta Taman notes that she has changed all names in the essay to feel comfortable publishing her story.

Bad Dreams
By Roberta Taman
At night I lie awake and think about the past. Actually, the past is never far from my thoughts. I try to forget. Tom, my husband, always says, “You may be through with your past but your past may not be through with you.”

My story: It was September 15th. He showed up in a hot, red sports car. A family friend. He came for the weekend. I think his name was David Lee. I don’t know why I think that was his name. It was so long ago. It wasn’t someone I knew really. It was late at night. I was watching TV in the family room. I was wearing an orange housecoat. It was one that my parents had given me the Christmas before. I don’t know why I remember the orange housecoat. I just do. Except when they gave me the housecoat it came with a whole bunch of other gifts. Too many gifts I thought. They were trying to make up for all the other Christmases when they gave me what they thought would be good for me rather than what a kid wants. I was embarrassed that Christmas because they gave me everything I asked for and more. It was confusing. It was my last family Christmas for more than 10 years.

Everyone was sleeping. We lived in a large house with 20 rooms or more. A children’s wing so the parents wouldn’t be disturbed. I don’t remember him coming into the room. I don’t remember him saying anything except, “Don’t worry; it will be over a soon.” He had his hand across my mouth. My heart stopped. My body froze. (I really want to write this exactly as I remember it. I have never written it down before. My heart is pounding as I write; my hands are numb.) I don’t remember anything more except that I felt like I was drowning. Grasping for air. When it was over, all I wanted to do was stand in the shower and wash him away. Wash away the feeling of something ugly and painful inside me. I looked to see the blood on my orange housecoat. 1 was glad the blood was on my housecoat and not my mother’s couch. I always worried about my mother. I was paralyzed with loathing. Loathing for something I didn’t understand. SEX was not something we talked about in my house. I had never seen a naked boy let alone a man and a penis. I am not sure I had any idea at all about sexual intercourse or that I had given it much thought. It wasn’t part of the conversation. We lived in the country. I was a solitary child, without friends. Certainly no girlfriends who talked about sex. I have two older sisters but they didn’t live at home and we didn’t like each other anyway. They thought I was a latecomer and a nuisance.

For the next month my mother kept pulling me from the shower. I just wanted to feel clean again. She thought I had gone a little crazy but didn’t know why. I was terrified but I couldn’t tell her what had happened. It wasn’t real. We didn’t talk about such things in our family. They didn’t exist. And I couldn’t eat. And then I started getting sick. I threw up. Over and over and over again. My mother began to worry. I lost a lot of weight over the next few weeks. My mother consulted the family doctor. He couldn’t understand what was wrong. “Such a sweet child,” he said. “So quiet.” He put me in the hospital. Did tests. Then he sent me home. I went back to the family room to watch TV in my orange house coat. My mother came down to see me. She looked at me with loathing. She screamed out at me, “How could you let this happen? Your father will be so hurt.” Her words and loathing burned into my memory. I was pregnant.

No one talked to me! The next 10 years of my life are almost blank. A vacuum. Spiraling endlessly through that “black hole” in space. For more than 10 years I felt numb, empty, isolated, and afraid.

 My mother and the family doctor connived together as to what should be done with me. No one talked to me. No one asked me what happened. No one asked me how I was feeling. No one asked me if I was hurt. No one asked me if I was afraid. No one asked me what I wanted to happen next. No one asked me if I needed help. No one talked to me. Today my favorite movie is called “Talk to Her” by the Spanish director, Pedro Almodovar.

I heard the word abortion. I didn’t know what it meant. But I did know that somehow it would help take this nightmare away. I overheard my mother say “We can’t do that. This is an act of God. It can’t be done. ” No one asked me what I thought. No one asked me what I wanted to do. Maybe it was because I was a child. Maybe they didn’t think I had an opinion. No one talked to me.

I got sicker by the day. I lost 30 pounds over the next eight weeks. But the child in my belly kept growing. I pounded on my belly but he wouldn’t go away. I stood in the shower but I couldn’t wash him away.

I stayed home. In silence. I didn’t go to school. It was a secret. My older cousins, Jack and Bill lived with us but mother didn’t tell them why I was sick. They didn’t ask. She didn’t tell my older sisters. It was e secret. She didn’t talk to me either. Mother and father pretended I had some strange illness. I don’t know how they explained me. They didn’t talk to me. I don’t remember anyone talking to me. I remember them drinking sherry and going out to dinner.

I don’t remember Christmas. In January they drove me to Montreal. They left me with Jenny and Myron. I didn’t know Jenny or Myron. Total strangers. My mother packed my bag. I don’t remember if both my mother and father drove me there or just my mother. I don’t remember. They left me to look after Jenny and Myron’s four children. I was to be a nanny, sort of. Jenny is a nurse. She worked for a doctor in Montreal. A friend of our own small-town, family doctor. An “arrangement” was made. I was to stay with the Lenin family until the baby was born. They didn’t tell me that was what was going to happen, it just happened. Years later, when Myron met Tom, Myron told Tom that my parent‘s‘ behavior was appalling. He said it shocked him. I think this helped Tom believe my story. Until then, I think he thought I was exaggerating or making it up. He needed to check it out with Myron.

Jenny and her family are my friends still today. Jenny sends an email almost every week to stay in touch. Myron is over 80 now. He was a Polish resistance fighter. Jenny was born in England and is now well into her 70’s. They saved my life. At the time we lived together they didn’t have much money. Myron worked in the travel industry. They lived in Montreal over top a comer grocery store in an old, dilapidated apartment. They gave me a room of my own overlooking the street. Myron and Jenny slept on the couch. Everything in the apartment was painted white. They were the kindest, most interesting, generous people I’d ever met. They had hundreds of books. Myron read a book a day. He got a prize from the local library as the person who took out the most books in a month. They had African art, things I’d never imagined. And a tatty old kitchen alive with the smell of stewing sauerkraut and pigs’ feet. And four very small children. Emma was less than two, Jeff four, John six and Melissa seven or eight (I can’t remember exactly but they were young). Four little children for me to care for while I waited for this baby to be born. I didn’t know anything about looking after children. I was 15. I’d never baby sat. We lived too far out of the city and there were no other children or families about. I had no experience of children. No one asked me if I wanted to look after four little children. I had never changed a diaper.

I remember my room. I remember looking out the window onto the snowy streets of downtown Montreal. I remember being numb. I remember beating my belly. I remember crying alone in my room at night. I don’t remember talking. I remember Jenny and Myron being kind. I remember the face of the doctor but I don’t remember his name. I remember that Myron was a big scary man who turned out to be a gentle giant and the only one who asked me what happened. I remember he gave me a drink of vodka, some raw herring and cooking lessons. I don’t remember what I told him. I was so afraid. I remember walking the streets of Montreal when I wasn’t caring for the children. I remember going into fancy stores like Holt’s and stealing things. Expensive things. Things I would never use. Clothes that wouldn’t fit. Hand bags. I would stuff things in my pockets hoping someone would stop me and ask me, “What happened. What’s the matter?” But no one ever asked. I don’t remember visits to the doctor. I just remember that every day was longer than a lifetime.

I remember my mother coming to visit once or twice. I don’t remember my father coming. Maybe he did. I don’t remember. I remember my mother deciding to have my portrait painted. She arranged to have it done by an artist at a big hotel in Montreal. I don’t know why she did this. I do know that I had to go half a dozen times to sit for him. I know that he painted me from the bust up so you couldn’t see my growing belly. I was wearing a purple coat. A Sunday coat. A fancy coat. A coat my mother made. The painting is now in my daughter’s basement. She doesn’t know the story. A frightened child in a purple coat. I suppose my mother wanted a picture of her pretty daughter having fun in Montreal. She needed a story.

And then it was time for the baby to be born. I think I must have been scheduled to have the baby induced. It was June 21st. I think? I don’t remember why or how I knew it was time to go to the hospital. I don’t know who stayed behind with the children. I went alone to the hospital. I took a yellow taxi and checked in. Alone. Terrified. I remember a nurse being furious with me because I was afraid. Trembling. I remember her telling me it was my own fault. I shouldn’t have gotten myself into trouble. I should just settle down. Get it over with. I was in a room, alone, waiting. I had no idea what was going to happen because no one talked to me. No one explained how it all happens. Then there were a half dozen faces peering down at me. Bright lights. And then there was a baby. A boy. A very little boy. I was in a room. A private room. My mother must have seen to that. I don’t remember when Jenny came to see me. I am sure she did because she is so kind. I remember being alone in that hospital room. I remember they brought the baby to me. They made a mistake. They didn’t know he wasn’t mine. They brought him to me over the next three days. They let me hold him. I wiped his tears with a Kleenex. I kept that Kleenex in my pocket for a very long time …. the story of the Kleenex is for later. For three days I held my baby. On the third day my mother arrived at the hospital. She arrived with a woman and a paper for me to sign. I was asked to give the baby a name. I called him James Patrick. I signed the paper and then asked my mother to see my baby. But the baby was gone. Given away. There was no baby for my mother to see. They took my baby away and didn’t tell me. My mother would never see this baby. For her, it 1 would never be real. I went mad. I smashed a radio against the wall. I screamed through the hospital corridor. They gave me drugs. Then my mother took me home. She packed my bags. I didn’t get to say goodbye to Jenny and Myron and the children. I didn’t get to say goodbye to my baby. No one asked tile if I wanted to say goodbye. It was never real.

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There is so much I admire in this essay: the very fact that the writer wrote it after all these years, the way the short sentences help the writer face the traumatic experience she is finally able to write about, the way the repetition of the phrases “I remember” and “I don’t remember” propel the piece forward till it evokes and fully reveals the whole heartbreaking story of being so extremely isolated, un-listened to and alone during an experience that should have called forth support and sympathy.

The voice in this piece is one of someone speaking bravely on her own behalf, standing up for herself, with whatever shards of information and memory and loss of memory she has at her disposal, as well as the shards of what she hopes was true (for example, that Jenny came to visit her in the hospital). The short sentences reinforce the bravery, making the story powerful in its lack of embellishment and imitating the way events come to us when we are traumatized. The assertion that she wants to write this exactly as she remembers it, that her heart is pounding, speaks to the writer’s act of courage in writing the story and motivates the reader to have the courage to continue reading and to never let someone down who desperately needs encouragement to speak.

I admire the way the speaker uses her first paragraph to set up the facts–she is older now, married to Tom, and Tom is understanding about the trauma. I admire the way we learn midway in the story that Tom has met Jenny and Myron. When the speaker threads the present in with the past, she allows us to know that she is surrounded by honesty today. We read of the abuse adults cause by not asking what happened, but are simultaneously pleased that the speaker has not become one of them.

We read about the speaker at 15 using her time off from being a nanny to shoplift, hoping she’ll get caught and recognize the character destruction caused by having no parental acknowledgement of what really happened. Sadly, when the speaker goes mad in the hospital, it seems the only correct emotional response. The tender feelings after giving birth, the wanting to show off the new life she bore, the idea that this mattered to no one, and having only a portrait that fakes the story of her time in Montreal all contribute to psychological despair and isolation.

When the speaker ends the essay with “It was never real,” we know the pain with which she re-entered a life that didn’t support her, the pain of knowing she would have to live as if all that happened had not happened, as if her sadness, anger, fear, confusion and hurt didn’t exist.

“No one asked me if I wanted to say goodbye.” Not only to the baby and to Jenny and Myron, but to what was very real in her life–a personal experience that required facilitation for healing and legally confronting the rapist.

When I finished reading Roberta Taman’s essay, I understood the effects of physical and emotional trauma on a young girl. I was angry at the adults in her life, including the punitive and judgmental nurse, and very touched that she kept the Kleenex with which she wiped her new baby son’s eyes “for a very long time,” holding on to what was real.

I am in awe of a writer who put trauma on the page and moved me to being sure I will listen and sure I will ask, “What happened?” when I see someone troubled, when I don’t understand but can help by finding out.