As if gifts could erase what was happening behind closed doors.
As if a child could somehow owe an adult silence because that adult bought her something.
He had groomed me to believe that what was happening was somehow normal.
It wasn’t.
And deep down, I knew it.
There were nights when I was terrified to sleep.
There were nights when I pretended to be asleep because I didn’t know what else to do.
My mother was sometimes only a room away.
That memory stayed with me.
So did the silence.
Years later, my aunt asked me why I didn’t want to be around my “father.”
I didn’t answer.
Then she said something that stopped me.
She admitted that she didn’t understand why her brothers behaved that way around children.
I stayed silent.
Because what could I say?
Everybody seemed to know something was wrong.
Yet nobody came to take me away.
Nobody stepped in.
Nobody chose me.
I am now 36 years old.
And my mother still denies everything.
She says I’m lying.
Some members of my family defend her.
They say she was a great mother because that’s what they saw from outside the house.
But they weren’t the seven-year-old girl standing inside it.
