***Trigger Warning – contains potentially distressing material pertaining to sexual assault
Running Away
“You ran away and had your aunt worried. She up and left your cousin with my mother! She didn’t say she was looking for you. She said she had to get away from you!”
It did not quite register to me in that moment when I arrived back to the apartment from a double walk around the block to cool off. I was facing the words of the neighbor’s daughter from across the hall whose words sounded strange and hurtful all at once.
“I didn’t run away. I just took a walk,” I said. “Is that [my name]?” asked the neighbor from across the hall. The neighbor had stepped out into the hall. She was holding my cousin, and called me to come into her apartment. “Your aunt stepped out for a little while. She said she’d be right back,” the neighbor said. So I stepped inside her apartment but not before first checking to see if my aunt’s apartment was unlocked as an assurance that she was gone.
I had not been gone that long on the walk, and it was apparent that my aunt did not even go out to look for me. She just left. I was a little confused, but because my aunt had left her child with the neighbor, I trusted that my aunt would return. So I tried not to worry and sat down on the neighbor’s couch. I was silent but thinking, but I could not shake the things that the neighbor’s daughter had said to me. Her words were so matter of fact that I knew she was speaking someone’s truth. I could not help but wonder if I were really that much trouble for my aunt.
After busying herself with whatever, the neighbor finally came into the den area and sat down next to me. I turned to her and asked, “She’s coming back, right?” My neighbor looked at me longingly. I could tell she wanted to assure me, but there was exasperation behind the surface of her smile. I wanted her to tell me the truth, and she spoke it without ever first uttering any words. “Of course, honey. She’s coming back. Her child is here. She just needed to catch her breath. You know she’s not well.”
I stared at the neighbor’s mouth, listened to her vocal inflections, and looked at her eyes. I needed to be assured, but I already knew in my heart. “Your aunt is just dealing with a lot, and it’s not been the easiest summer for her. She just needed a break. So, like you, she took a walk.” My aunt had taken a walk, but in my heart, I knew the oddity of this because my aunt was usually too tired to take long walks. I wondered where she had gone, but I knew the neighbor would not give me the answer. So I sat staring blankly at the television in silence.
I tried desperately not to allow tears to fall. I held them inside and kept them at bay. “Don’t you worry dear. She will be back.” I heard the neighbor’s words, and even though I knew the neighbor was probably right, I knew somewhere deep within my psyche that my aunt was tired of me. I was sure that she would physically return to get her child, but I sensed deeply that she did not want me. For the first time, I was sitting somewhat out of the bubble I had been inside of for a while. My mind had a plan.
To take my mind off things, I assisted the neighbor with some things around her apartment. The neighbor should have known something was up when I began asking her questions about directions and places around the city. As a child, I had a photographic memory when it came to directions, and that is one of the ways I remembered my way around the city on my own. All the neighbor had to do was give me cardinal directions of north, south, east, and west, and I was good to go.
Later when it was closer to evening and my aunt still had not returned, I decided to make my move. The neighbor had wanted all of us to take a nap before her husband returned from work. She went into her bedroom with my cousin and her daughter, and I stayed out on the couch. I waited for silence. I waited until I did not hear any sounds or movement. When all seemed clear to me, I made my way to the door, opened it, and locked the bottom lock before exiting and leaving the neighbor’s apartment.
At first, I thought I would look for my aunt, but because the intensity within me was so strong from feeling she neither wanted me nor needed me, I decided to walk home. Even though I knew home was a long way, my child-like mind really did not comprehend the distance. I was thousands of miles away from home, but my heart was set. I was walking home. I was giving my aunt what she wanted the most. I was leaving. I planned not to be trouble for her anymore.
As soon as I made it away from the apartment building, I ran until I could no longer look back and see the building. Then I walked around a curb and continued walking. I ran into a girl that was once my friend who had chosen to walk with the group of girls who parted from me several moments before the sexual assault against me. The girl asked me where I was going alone, and I made up some story about going to the store. She seemed puzzled by my response. So she offered herself and her two friends to go with me as long as I waited for her to tell her mother. I agreed but then took off running once they disappeared into her apartment building.
I ran for a long time to get out of sight, and then I crossed a street to go to an area that I knew would lead me to a sidewalk along the freeway. I walked a long distance. I walked until evening became night. I walked until strangers looked at me with odd curiosity. I walked until the street lights flickered on. I walked until it seemed apparent that I was no longer in the vicinity of my aunt’s apartment, my friend’s apartment, or any apartment that looked familiar to me. I walked until I hoped I would no longer be a memory to my aunt. If I was no longer a memory, then I was no longer a problem.
I ran away. I ran away to return home.
Find out what happened in the next blog.
My Voice Unchained 