Background

My babysitter left me alone with her kids all the time when I was seven. She left the apartment and went God knows where. She was usually gone for several hours.

Philip was a nasty six-year-old. I didn’t exactly know what I was looking at when I found Patty, the four-year-old tied up with a skipping rope, her face red and tears running down her eyes.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it. One day I fished some old shoelaces out of the garbage. I stripped one of my Barbies. Even at the time, I knew it was a weird thing to do, somehow shameful. I did this in my bedroom, with the door closed.  I tied the laces around the plastic tits. I could barely even tie my shoes, but I experimented with various knots.

My father sometimes took me out for drives in the summer. I wore a one piece short set with pink and blue polka dots or my gypsy dress, which was fun to twirl in. He helped me with my seat belt. Sometimes he would place his hand on my leg, letting it travel up my inner thigh until I said no. But I always said no. Told him to stop. He did. But sometimes when I was lying in my room, I found myself wondering what it would be like if he didn’t.

At around the same time, I was having yeast infections. A fucked up thing for an eight-year-old. I scratched and it gave me a feeling I didn’t understand, tingly. My mother told me not to, said it was dirty there. The doctor said tiny bugs were crawling around inside me. I tried not to touch myself.

In Grade 5, I lived in an apartment block in a crappy part of the city. One day after school, I came upon a crowd of kids, circling a dirty mattress. Anna, one of the Eastern European girls from my class was lying on it and crying. Everybody in my class called her Anna Banana. She spoke English with an accent, wore out-of-date clothes, didn’t fit in. Everybody made fun of her all the time.

Cassie Pearce, a short girl with long blonde hair stood over her beside the mattress and ordered Anna to hump it. The other kids were laughing, chanting A. Na. Ba. Na. Na. A. Na. Ba. Na. Na  I still remember the look in Cassie’s eyes. It reminded me of Philip’s: cold, staring, fucking creepy as  hell. I walked away, my cheeks burning.

My parents bought me a dog, an aggressive Chihuahua that I couldn’t stand. The thing used to rub its little cock over every surface he could find until the cock grew red and big. This was the first time I’d ever seen such a thing. I’d watch him, disgusted as he rubbed himself over a cushion., but fascinated and confused by my reaction.

I started to spend a lot of time in my room. Lying face down on the bed, rubbing up against a pillow was the way I learned how to fuck myself.

All these memories and especially Cassie forcing Anna to hump a dirty mattress haven’t left me, even after all these years. Except I change the story. I become Anna. I get down on that mattress in front of a crowd of laughing on-lookers. My face pushed up against the stench of old sweat and urine. My body writhing against the mattress. Cassie’s voice commanding me to hump.