rot in hell
Today I texted my brother to say happy birthday. And isn’t that just the sum of it. Is he really the same person who dragged me into his room? Closed the door to tease and tickle me. Who pulled down my pants and underwear and looked so intensely. Poked and pulled and touched, but mostly I remember the looking. Why did he look for so long? I was too young to know it was wrong, too young to even remember what age I was. When he brought me in his room he teased and tickled just like dad did, but his tickles were harder and I didn’t like them. Sometimes they even left bruises (was he tickling me at all or just holding me down, forcing me around, and that’s the only word I knew for it?). But when Dad teased he never took off my clothes. Nobody had told me that people might try and touch me in ways that weren’t ok. I trusted my brother, I didn’t question that it might be wrong. I don’t know how many times it happened. I still text him happy birthday.
My brother is the oldest, then there are us sisters. We’re actually all some type of genderqueer (I’m always saying “Gender something? Gender weird? Gender who? Gender huh?”). But we like being each other’s sisters. None of us are close with my brother.
When my younger sibling, my best friend, started college they had a really hard time. They said things were coming up from their past and it was making them suicidal. Me and my sisters, we kept them alive. But a pit in my stomach opened wide and deep. I think I knew right away that what my brother had done to me, he did to them. Eventually I asked and I don’t think they even answered before we both were crying. We sat on their bed and cried for so long.
When we were young our family referred to the two of us as “the little girls” (my older sisters were “the big girls”). I cried for the little girls who didn’t know they were being assaulted (am I allowed to say we were raped?). I cried for the grief it continued to cause us. I cried for the time we spent carrying burdens alone, when we could have had each other.
This is the part of the story where I get to be angry. Because when it was just me I could only be confused. When it was just me I wasn’t sure if the memories were real. Maybe I misunderstood or made too big of a deal about it. When it was just me then he was just a teenage boy and surely he’d moved past it. But when it was for my younger sibling, I felt fierce. I want to wring his neck for what he did to them. I want to confront him and make him pay. I want his wife, our parents, all our siblings to know what he did to us. I want him to be ashamed, I want him to be afraid of the little girls, I want him to be afraid of the people we’ve become despite him.
You want to know what else makes me angry? The church I was raised in puts young adults through a ceremony where all their sins are forgiven. When I went through that, when I heard “your sins are forgiven”, all I could feel was outrage that his sins had been forgiven years before. Did God not care about what he did to me? The bible says God is a God of vengeance; vengeance is His. That’s why we forgive—because God will have revenge. I don’t believe in that church or that God anymore. My god says go on and make him pay. My god says I can hurt him. My god says I am forgiven. Maybe my god is my anger.
I’m angry at the church too. Maybe if the church didn’t make such a big deal about not looking at porn, then my brother wouldn’t have resorted to his youngest sisters.
I’m angry at my mom. When she was in charge of a church camp for girls she made sure every age level had a lesson about sexual assault. The youngest girls, me and my 12 year old friends, were shown an outline of a woman and a councilor pointed out where it wasn’t ok for us to be touched. My mom was years too late to teach her daughters that what her son had done was wrong.
Recently I’ve been healing. I guess? The testosterone, the tattoos, the piercings, they make my body my own. I told my therapist in the vaguest of vague terms that something bad happened when I was young. I basically told her nothing, yet I felt the relief of not keeping a secret for him anymore.
It’s not really a happy ending though. I’ll still see him at Christmas and the mysterious stomach aches I get every end of year will come back. We won’t have to interact very much because everyone thinks that our political differences make us contentious. I want to scream that it’s so much more than that. I want to wait until we’re at my grandparents, extended family gathered around the Christmas tree, then I’ll stand up and look at him. Loudly but calmly I’ll say: “I remember what you did to me. I think it was rape. Your sins are not forgiven. I hate you.” Most of my family will probably not believe me, or say he was young, or probably just try to ignore it and move on. But my sisters will believe me. They’ll walk out with me. They’ll never text him happy birthday again.
I’d take out the pocket knife, an old kitschy thing with a spoon and fork attachment that I bought as a gift for him. I’d make sure he saw it was me before I stabbed him. My sisters would all take a turn. Maybe we wouldn’t kill him. Instead we cut off his hands so he can never touch anyone again. I don’t want to touch him, but one of them will castrate him so I never again feel like throwing up when my traitor brain asks if he was hard when he touched me. All those thoughts and avoidance patterns that have shaped my very person would be washed away in his blood. Fuck Jesus, Fuck the sacrificial lamb, and Fuck the vengeful God. I want my vengeance and I want my pain washed away in my brother’s blood.
I’m angry at myself because I’m not going to do that. I’m angry at myself for never saying anything. For keeping a secret for him. For not wanting to hurt my parents or my sister-in-law with the truth. For not protecting either little girl. For texting him happy birthday instead of spitting in his face. For letting my younger sibling ever have to see him or think of him or talk to him. I’m afraid of fracturing our family. But I guess he broke it first. So I’ll say it here: Your sins are not forgiven. Rot in hell.
