Testimony

When Richard let her up she was dirty from head to toe and she felt dirty inside and out. She brushed herself off, shook the dirt out of her clothes and tried to fix the curl back into her hair. The mud and struggle had caused it to straighten and lay flat against her face. Step by step, she made it home. Although she doesn't remember the entire walk home, she remembers walking up to the house, knowing her father was there. Fearing someone would see her, preparing herself to skirt the room and fly up the stairs, she took a deep breath. She saw Joe sitting in the chair in the corner of the room, reading by the lamp, but she was too afraid, embarrassed and too wounded to consider telling him. His volatile response to the most mundane circumstances made this situation completely unapproachable. She washed and went to bed tightly clenching the covers and watching the door to make sure it didn't open. The next days she went about her daily routine, the regular turmoil in the house continued. She attempted to forget the incident. She found herself trying to shake it off over and over again. After a few weeks she realized that she was pregnant. Even though she lived in Massachusetts, where she could get an abortion, she said she couldn't even think of it. Being provincial New England, the two young people were married. She did not reveal that she had been raped at that time. She told me that they never lay down together, he raped her every time. In less than a year she found herself pregnant again. It had been a hellish time. They endured in tremendous poverty. They lived in a shed on his parents’ property and shared the bathroom and kitchen with his mother, Grammy De.