Terra Orndorff

Guilt Settles In

Many weekends found me at Grandma Charlotte and Grandpa Buck’s, Mom’s mom and step-dad. Her biological dad passed when she was a tot. That is a story on its own that is not mine to tell. Grandpa Buck was my grandpa, and I never knew anyone else as my grandpa. Polio took from him. One leg shorter than the other, he walked with a cane. A cane someone handmade. A cane now kept safe by my husband in our home.                       

Grandma and Grandpa lived honestly and with love. Grandma, a true red-head, never held her tongue. We loved her for it. You always knew where you stood with both of them. Grandpa married Grandma – a widowed woman with seven children – and raised those children as a father would. I wasn’t around then so I can’t speak to it, but Mom loved him like a father. I need no other information than that.

Besides fostering youth, Grandma and Grandpa created a living space in their garage, complete with functional bathroom, for their friend, Gene. Another story I can’t speak on. He just appeared one day. Gene gave me the ick for no discernible reason. Maybe the way he walked with his cane, not upright and not hunched. Somewhere in between. His grey hair and odd diabolic look in his eyes. At eight and nine years old, it was impossible for me to describe. As an adult, I possess so many more words.

Grandpa suffered stomach problems. He ate what he wasn’t supposed to, took a trip to the hospital where they pumped his stomach. A quick cycle of a liquid diet and soft foods, and he came home again good as new. The first time it happened for me, fear gripped me. Mom soothed me, took me to see him. It became routine.

My cousin’s high school choir performed one weekend I stayed at Grandma and Grandpa’s. I remember them singing Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration.” We returned home and went to bed, me tucked in on the davenport, as Grandma called it, in the nightgown Mom made for me, with my Teddy and Blankie. At some point that night, Grandma woke me.

“Terra, I’ve got to take Buck to the hospital. I’ll be back. Linda will check on you.”

Groggily, I muttered a response as they left.

No recollection exists of how much time passed before Gene came in. I just remember waking to him sitting on the couch. Instinctively I kept my eyes closed, holding the blanket tight around me. What did he say to make me open my eyes?

I felt his hand on my leg and was literally saved by the bell. The phone was ringing! I jumped off the couch and into the kitchen, grabbing the receiver.

Gene stood right behind me, breathing down my neck. How did he get there so fast?

“Terra, it’s Aunt Linda. Are you ok? Do you need me to come over?”

Gene rasped at me, “Tell her you’re fine. I’m here.”

In a hushed voice, willing her to hear me lie, I said, “I’m ok. Gene is here.” My soul cracked in the moment, lying to the woman who was a second mother to me.

“OK. You let me know if you need me.”

“I will.”

I hung up that phone and bolted back to the couch. Wrapping myself like a mummy in the blanket. Gene came in, sat down, and tried to pull the blanket. My death grip gave nothing to him. Hindsight is a lot of things, but a bitch is the biggest. Why didn’t I go to one of the rooms with doors and lock it?

“Give me a kiss, and I’ll leave.”

I weighed that in my mind. As a nine-year-old, it seemed simple enough, so I nodded. Expecting a peck. I did not expect his tongue and was repulsed. Shame filled me. Mercifully, he didn’t push. It was quick. All these decades later, my heart still pounds in fear thinking about it. He went back to the garage, and I never spent another weekend at Grandma and Grandpa’s. I used to wonder why no one asked about it, but as an adult, I think they attributed it to being afraid when they left for the hospital. Because I never said a word.

Two months later Mom took me to the emergency room – a nine-year-old with an ulcer.

No one knew until two years later. Mom came to my bedroom and asked.

“Has Gene ever touched you or done anything to you, Terra?”

Looking at her in fear, not saying anything, I saw the truth fill her own eyes. She knew.

“Tell me. Tell me what he did.”

But I couldn’t. I was ashamed, embarrassed, didn’t know how to put it in words.

“Draw it.”

My artistic skills exist several levels below my verbal skills, but I did what I could.

Gene, as it turns out, molested my cousin who told her parents. She was always much more vocal than I, less of a people pleaser. She may have thrown my doll on the floor and jumped up and down on it at Christmas, but the guilt I felt was overwhelming. Even then I knew. If I spoke up two years earlier, I could have saved her from going through it, too. I never got the details of what happened. They never mattered. What mattered is it was my fault.

Maybe.

To the best of my fallible memory, nothing happened to Gene. He remained in that makeshift apartment at Grandma and Grandpa’s. I don’t remember him leaving, just remember him being gone, but not until a while later. So maybe something would have been done if I had said something or maybe not.

Mom brought it up occasionally after I became an adult. Sometimes we sat on her bed just chatting randomly – silly stuff, serious stuff, stuff in between. She felt guilty as well. Guilty she didn’t do more. Guilty that she didn’t tell Dad. Guilty she didn’t protect me. The truth of it remains, though. I occasionally felt anger that nothing more was done, but I never blamed her. She only controlled what she could. Control of the world remained outside her grasp. I buried that trauma next to the trauma of first grade silence. It was the lesson that really lingered. The lesson that made me sad. Only I could protect myself.            

Some lessons turn out wrong.