It was Halloween night, 1970. I was 10 years old. My sister Debbie, two cousins, and I had been trick-or-treating for a couple of hours and we had finally arrived at my grandparent’s house. We were spent, our feet tired from walking the long country roads around my grandparent’s farm.
Just before finishing our annual candy-begging, my cousins decided to go straight to the farm instead of detouring up the little path to visit the neighbor boy (whose parents would surely have goodies for us). There was no moon and the path was dark and wooded. My sister and I giggled as we anticipated seeing the cute neighbor boy. We were safe, carefree.
Suddenly, there was a rustling in the woods near the path and before we could react, someone jumped out from the cover of the low brush, screaming like a wild animal. We answered with our own screams, just knowing we were about to be killed by some escaped convict/man/monster. Within seconds, the realization that this man/monster was actually our cousin, Billy, set in and we began laughing and crying and yelling at Billy for being so cruel.
We decided to skip the neighbor boy’s house and headed back to Mam and Pop’s house. It was Mam’s birthday, and the house was full of people. We laughed as we told the story of Billy’s Halloween trick and we prepared to sing and have cake. Mam sat at the big kitchen table, Pop sat next to the woodstove in his wooden rocking chair. Around the table was Debbie, Billy, my other cousin, Mike, my mother with my baby sister on her lap, my Aunt Jean and her two little boys standing nearby (they had lived with Mam and Pop since my Aunt Jean became sick), as well as Mam’s nephew, Bud. There may have been more people there, I can’t remember.
In hindsight, it seemed a little out of place to me that Bud was there. Bud lived in another town several miles away and didn’t visit often. He had a family of his own. His wife, “Sis” was talked about in whispers among the adult family members and known as the family bitch. Bud and Sis had four little girls (who surely were out trick-or-treating tonight…why wasn’t he home with them?) and in hushed voices, I often heard my mother and grandmother talk about Bud and Sis’s unsuccessful attempts to have a boy, as if it were a shame. I never really understood this coming from my mother of all people because she herself had three girls and no boys and seemed quite content with leaving it that way. (No one whispered about my mother being a bitch, did they?)
As the night wound down, it was time to go home. As I said earlier, we were quite tired…between all the walking, Billy’s trick and the birthday party, it was about all a 10-year old girl could take in one night!
We headed out to our cars. I walked slowly, with my bag of candy dragging on the ground, toward my mother’s car. Debbie helped get my baby sister into the car. Mom had promised to take Billy and Mike back home (My Aunt Dee had stayed home to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters…I’m not sure where my Uncle Bill was that night). Mom’s car was full before I got to it. There was some discussion of how this was going to work getting everyone home.
That’s when Bud stepped in and offered to take me home. I’d like to think that my mother asked him to take Billy and Mike, but he insisted on taking me. I really don’t know why my mother agreed except that I’m sure she trusted him. I also don’t know why my sister didn’t come with me in Bud’s car. Maybe I volunteered to go with him since I was the last one to the car. I don’t know.
My mother and the carload of people pulled out of the driveway and had already driven away before I had even closed the door to Bud’s car. I sat in the front passenger seat, which was pretty cool because usually Debbie got that privilege in our car. I sat my heavy bag of candy on the floor between my legs when Bud climbed into the driver’s seat. He turned the key and started the engine, asking me which was the best way to go. As I was about to answer, he interrupted me and told me I had to wear a seatbelt. I was unaccustomed to belting. It was 1970…we just never thought about it back then, and I wasn’t even sure I knew how to wear it. Bud seemed a little flustered and reached across me for the belt. He buckled it. Then a funny thing happened. He didn’t immediately go back to his spot behind the wheel. Instead, he began smoothing the shirt on my costume and slid his hand under the waistband of my trousers. He was murmuring about helping me, but I couldn’t understand him. He wasn’t satisfied with how he’d straightened out my shirt, and so he began smoothing it again, slipping his hand under the waistband of my trousers once again, but this time going all the way down and stroking my private parts. I was alarmed. No one had ever touched me there, and I know my mother had told me many times that no one ever should until I was married. I jumped and pushed his hand away. He reached for me again, and I pushed him away, pressing my back so hard against the door that the handle for the window dug into my shoulder blade. I tried to turn to open the door, but he kept reaching for me, and I was belted in and unable to turn. I kept pushing and even swatting at him and he eventually stopped, settling back behind the wheel of the car, breathing heavily. I told him I didn’t want to go with him anymore. He pointed to my grandparent’s house and showed me that the windows were dark. He said they were already asleep and I wouldn’t’ want to wake them.
I guess I felt like I just wanted to get home, because I didn’t try to get out of the seatbelt, nor out of the car at that point. As he shifted the car into DRIVE, I lifted my candy bag and sat it between us. He stopped the car, put it back into PARK and told me to move the bag or he wouldn’t drive me home. I argued for a minute, but I put the bag back between my feet on the floor. I pressed myself as close to the door as possible and imagined I had a foam cushion totally surrounding my body, protecting me from him. I just wanted to get home. He didn’t try to touch me again.
I’m sure he advised me never to tell what happened, but I can’t remember really anything beyond getting home that night, my mother thanking him profusely for his kindness and for going out of his way. And my relief that I was finally safe.
When I think about that night now, nearly 40-years later, I realize that Halloween night, along with my parent’s divorce a few years later, shaped so much insecurity and led to my having a weight problem. I’d been trying to find that protective foam cushion all this time. What’s really cool is that this was a revelation for me and started me on a new course. No longer am I afraid of what people think. I am me and that’s all I have to offer [/Jason Castro, sort of]. I am no longer obsessed with what I eat or how much. I am no longer worried about how I look. I just am. And in just being, I actually feel less insecure. It’s a comfortable place to be. I think maybe I’ve finally put away the foam cushion.
