The Game

I’m the first to understand the irony that what comforts me during this grieving time is the family full of abettors and enablers, perpetrators and narcissists, but also heroes and nurturers. Often all within the same individual.

“Here we go. Up the road. To a birthday par-ty.”

One of us, either my friend Lisa or I, depending on whose turn it was, would plunck out the song on my sister’s upright piano that divided the rec room from my brother Murray’s bedroom, which was really just an annex of the laundry room. The other one of us would take Murray’s hand and follow him into his bedroom. He’d bounce us on the bed – one, two, three – wee! We’d listen to the piano, “Here we go. Up the road. To a birthday par-ty!” We’d get dizzy and slightly nauseas from the bouncing. The room was hot from the dryer, which was always going with our big family. Murray’s shirt was off. His chest was skinny and sun scorched. He was smiling and laughing. Sometimes he’d reach under his pants and touch his thingy. Sometimes he’d reach under mine and touch me. It kinda made me feel like I had to pee, but I held it. I didn’t want to get spanked for having an accident on someone’s bed.

These were our secret games, only the three of us knew. I’d be inside Murray’s bedroom with him. Each time we’d finish our game he’d remind me, “Don’t tell Mommy about our game, remember? We don’t want to upset her and have them take her back to the hospital.”

But then Lisa couldn’t come over to play at my house anymore. It was ok for me to come play at her house, but her mommy didn’t want her to come over to our house. When I was spending the night at Lisa’s house one night, Lisa took me into her bedroom and shut the door. She opened her closet, and then a chest within her closet. She pulled out a pair of her pants. She stuck her fingers inside the pants and wriggled her thumb through a hole in the crotch of the pants.

“Mom found this and now she won’t let me play at your house anymore.”

So then Murray and I were the only players of the game for awhile. It kind of scared me, but it kind of made me feel special too. I liked the special attention. I liked knowing it was something he shared with only me.

But that feeling changed one afternoon when I was led into his bedroom. The basement curtains were pulled shut so it was pretty dark in the room and it took my eyes a few blinks to adjust. Lying on Murray’s bed was Greasy Gary. I think his name was Gary Adams, but everyone called him Greasy Gary. I think he was the same age as Murray, but he looked almost as big as a grown man. Gary was reclining on Murray’s bed. His jeans were unzipped and he held his thingy in his hand. Only this thingy was big and meaty…and hairy at the top. It was the most disgusting thing I had ever seen. I turned to run out the door. Murray put his arm on my shoulder and said, “Come on, it’s ok.”

When I was 16 or so my Mom and I watched a Phil Donohue episode that dealt with childhood sexual abuse and it got us to talking about my early sexual experiences with Murray. Mom claimed I didn’t tell her all the details of what happened when I was five. I thought I had told her everything, but it had been eleven years of actively not trying to remember it so I was a little fuzzy about the details. Mom says I told her Murray and his friend showed me their penises so she told me to stay away from them, and she told Murray to stay away from me and keep his friends away from me. So she didn't know the whole story. I always wondered why she didn’t get Murray or me, or preferably both Murray and me counseling. I assumed it had to do with Mom’s skepticism of mental health practices since she received electroshock treatments in the mid-Sixties for what she saw as her emotional response to the news that her husband was cheating on her with his secretary and that she’d soon be a single parent with four children between the ages of 8 and 3. So she's a follower of the “less-is-more” idea of mental health treatment. But maybe she really thought it was nothing but innocent experimentation. I don't know.

What I remember about telling: In my memory (of something that happened 35 years ago, mind you) as soon as the Greasy Gary game was over I ran upstairs into the kitchen and told my mother what had happened. She calmed me down and dried my tears and I told her. I don’t remember what happened after that. And for all I know, it could have been days or months or weeks or months later that I told her. And I’m sure at the age of five I didn’t have the vocabulary to describe to her everything I experienced. At age forty I’m still deficient at such an extensive emotional lexicon.

Then the worst thing I could imagine happened. What seemed like the next day after I told Mom about the Greasy Gary game, I woke up to an empty house. Most likely it wasn’t the next day, as measuring time is questionable in the realm of memory summoning. But what I remember is waking up and knowing it was morning, but not knowing where everyone was. I got out of bed and looked from room to room. First the kitchen, where Mommy usually was when I woke up. Then the bathroom, the bedrooms –Mommy and Daddy’s, Marty’s, and mine and Hazel’s again. I checked the living room. I even went downstairs to the basement, which I HATED to do alone. No one. Anywhere.

They had taken Mommy back to the hospital just like Murray said they would if I told her about our game!

I ran back upstairs, tripping a few times, snot and tears streaming down my face. I looked for a place to hide. I ended up in Hazel’s and my bedroom closet, with the door shut. I could feel the walls on each side of me. I sat on shoes and toys. Hanging clothes tickled my head. I cried until I feel asleep.

The closet door opened and there was Mommy’s face. I had never seen her look that way: confused, worried, relieved, concerned. She picked me up and kissed my wet cheeks. “Sydney, there you are!”

I instantly burst back into tears. “I thought they took you to the hospital!” I gulped out between bellows.

“What? No, no. Oh, noooo, I had to take Murray to school. He missed the bus. You were still asleep and I thought I’d only be a minute and you wouldn’t even wake up while I was gone. It’s ok, honey, shh, shh…”