The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow, Part One

For this one, we’re going all the way back to the early Nineties, to the summer after the Big Trauma happened https://kittencalendar.blogspot.com/2012/04/triggers-and-my-voice-story-of-hard.html?zx=e0bd5bdf8967148e. He was fourteen and I was sixteen.

Unable to stop taking their unease with the Big Trauma out on me and on each other, my parents, near divorce and overflowing with violence, sent me to stay with my Favorite Aunt at her beautiful Colonial-era home, about six hours away from my immediate family’s cramped and feral suburban home. Favorite Aunt had always been the person who most vocally liked me when my parents, clearly and emphatically, did not. She was an oasis of hugs, praise, and affection, in a childhood full of coldness, contempt, and turning to teachers as my only daily source of grownup approval.

She was also, though, Catholic. That part of the story makes it hard to not become incoherent with rage. Favorite Aunt’s spirtuality felt like a bright white escape hatch, a way to clean and simplify myself of such a dirty and complicated life, a way to escape the pain, trauma, abandonment and fear of the previous months. Of course now I understand that in being pulled (temporarily, I’m relieved to say) back into the religion of my upbringing I was both victim of and complicit in a more effective and insidious factory of rape than any teen party, no matter how out of control, could ever be.

At the time though, it seemed that the best way to regain control after a brutal rape and subsequent assault by my dad (https://kittencalendar.blogspot.com/2018/10/metoo-letter-dear-dad-stfu-about.html) was to blame myself, my sluttiness, my sense of adventure. That seems heartbreaking now, but at the time it felt self-explanatory. Such is the power of an adult willing to dole out affection. I don’t think my Favorite Aunt was rape-culture-gaslighting me on purpose, because at the time, blaming myself seemed as natural and as life-giving as air.

Favorite Aunt’s charisma and generosity of affection means she often has children as friends. (I share this quality, for which I am very grateful.) She thought one of these friends, the artsy, quiet son of one of her church families, would be a perfect match for me, and he was. (All these years later, she still ships us, in spite of a lifetime mostly apart and a mountain of evidence. This doesn’t bother me as much as maybe it should.)

I don’t remember how he and I got together, whether we were pushed or drawn, probably both. I can’t clearly remember my first kiss with The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow (also, the first truly kind or loving kiss I’d known) but I know it was postcard perfect. Favorite Aunt and I went to visit him and his family where they were camping for a week, on a vacation island not too far ways from Favorite Aunt’s home. We walked (maybe I was holding his hand, seems like something I would do…) down the beach a little ways away from the families. We stood beside the water, the tall waves making for the closest approximation of privacy we were likely to get.

I remember the sea as rough but kind that day, the dizzy feeling in my throat, the sense of finality, of accomplishment. Having a sexy feeling that was also loving, with anyone besides myself, was a new and blissful sensation, as big and reliable and all-encompassing as the ocean itself.

The day went by fast. Favorite Aunt and I had made homemade poptarts for him and his family (how Emily Gilmore of us!) and we gave the container to him out the car window as Favorite Aunt prepared to drive us away. He kissed me on the forehead and said, not unkindly, “You have really big dandruff.”

All of the beach days and other excursions with Favorite Aunt meant that my scalp was sunburned and peeling. I was only a little bit embarrassed. I was a jumble of salt and skin and hot-pink feeling, riding away from the beach and towards a sunset as pink as my cheeks.