I Was Eight Years Old

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Content Warning: Sexual Violence/Abuse

I was eight years old when he took my body on the cold bathroom tiles where he had placed me. My body face down while he muzzled my mouth with his hands. I was shaken, naked, and unripe.

Under the bathroom door, I saw feet moving, casting long shadows, and I heard the sounds of opening and closing kitchen cupboards. Did they not know that I was in here, confined against my will? There was lots of movement outside, but inside I was perfectly still, my body stiffened,for an incestuous pleasure. He, my cousin, my favorite cousin, the cousin I trusted and looked up to, pushed his fourteen-year-old’s penis inside me, hard, and I felt my innocence slipping out. It slipped out like the tears from my eyes and the substance draining from my bruised ass. "What is that ?" I ask him. He says, "It’s cum," as if he were passing on knowledge. It looked like coconut water poured into a glass. I wanted to scream. I wanted to shout, but I couldn't. Just silence. And then more silence.

I think you always remember the place where the pain and trauma enters and exits your skull, fusing into your social and emotional DNA . I remember the smell of fresh Pine-sol. My aunt Karen kept the bottle under the kitchen sink. She used it like it was the only cleaning product sold to man. It made the house spotless, and dirt-free. There was something about that smell that made me believe that no matter how many showers or cosmetics I used to make myself appear perfect and intact, I would never be clean or whole again .

Before the rape, I knew I liked boys but also knew I liked girls too. I had not decided what that meant. How could I decide when his hand that pushed me onto the floor was constructing my life, my future relationships, my fucked up insecurity, and my erections? I was robbed of exploring my sexuality, robbed of my first kiss and sending pubescent love notes. While my peers around me were getting hot in bed with sex partners, I was still trying to figure who and what I was now that I carried this memory trapped inside me. Growing up queer in the Caribbean, you find no reclining chair to sit in and dissect your shit. Say you have been violated and the ministers will wrestle you down and dose you with holy water in order to exorcise the demon, the plague, the unforgivable sin. They strip you of your humanity, resulting in unresolved shame. They tell you everything except the truth- that your pain matters . And that hurts even more. That day, the child in me was deformed, stunted, subdued, hidden. He died. I lost my laughter and ability to smile freely. When my mom asked if I wanted to go over to my favorite aunt for another weekend, I said no, which was odd to her. Usually my bag was already packed, ready to go, and now I struggled to get out of bed. She never questioned, never saw that something had happened, something that took away her little boy. Often black mothers in the Caribbean think that offering shelter, food and schoolbooks is all child needs, 'cause that’s love. There is no introspection into the matters of the heart and for young queers, our emotional lives slip hopelessly under the radar.

I couldn’t tell her what I had suffered. It was a guarded secret for me. Opening the wounds meant exposing him and by exposing him I left myself bare. Somehow in my eight year old’s mind, I felt the need to protect him and save both of us from the embarrassment.

When pain is not addressed it will make you invisible. So invisible important things become elusive and fragile like eating, touching a friend's hand, using the bathroom, and breathing because the air is so thick with your darkness. I did everything to ignore the trauma and place it far back into my psyche. I retreated to my books, where I found safety and escape. The characters that I read amplified and became more real to me. In the world of books, people’s actions are predictable and secrets are made known. And when I wasn’t reading books, I turned to sex, thinking that if I had sex again maybe I could erase the fear and hatred but really I was starving for intimacy and love . The knowledge of this was out of my periphery , I was too busy collecting bodies whose names I don't remember. Man or woman, I consumed them and they consumed me, leaving my emotions unchecked.

How many young Caribbean queers are walking around with love shaped holes- searching for love , familial ties, recompense to absolve the pain and the absence? Trauma invaded my thoughts, and disrupted my childhood. It lingers in the core and seeps into everything. Does this mean I'm damaged goods? Am I less loveable? Is there still room at the cross for me? These are the questions I am not so sure about.