Without The Moon

                                                            Without The Moon
                                Excerpt From:  Innocence Has Been Changed To Protect The Names
                                                        By: Cassandra Barbier


    My grandmother, who we called Nannie, owned a beauty shop in our small town when I was young. I was at the shop more often than I was at home. I loved to sweep and fold towels for her. My dad had died when I was four and I spent more and more time with Nannie at her shop. I gathered great memories and some horrible secrets at that shop. One evening, I was there along with Mama, Aunt Janice, and a few cousins.

    These being my recollections alone, I can't know exactly how old I was. I do know that I was very young but it was not long after daddy's death. That meant I had to be about four, maybe five. It was summertime and I was wearing shorts. Well, what I was wearing was a sun-suit. These one-piece outfits were very popular with little girls in the fifties. Moreover, they were made of cool cotton. The spaghetti straps tied at the top of each shoulder, and it had an elastic waist and elastic legs at the tops of the thighs.

    I was old enough to know that what happened to me that night was very wrong, yet I was young enough to not know what to do about it. I was young enough to believe a man would hurt me, my sisters, and even my mama if I made trouble for him. I was old enough (or was it young enough) that I believed if I confided in my mother, she'd make things right. She wouldn't get hurt and she wouldn't let my sisters get hurt; I was old enough to be scared stiff and young enough to be scared stiff. I was in the midst of a paradox.

    Aunt Jan was married to Paul Thomas at the time. He was (in my memories) a drunk who played some guitar. He always stank of old cigarettes, beer and cheap hair grease. He didn't work. Later, I realized he seemed to think he was quite the ladies' man. He thought himself to be handsome and a great catch for Aunt Janice. He was, in fact, ugly, stupid and insecure. Aunt Jan allowed Paul to try to be a 'father' to her only child. My cousin Christie hated him because of his drunken demeanor, and the fights he always started with her mother when he'd been drinking. She hated seeing her mother attacked by him, but there was nothing she could do to stop him. When she had tried, he just beat both of them. He'd hit Christie with his belt and if you were close enough; he'd get you too. He didn't seem to be drinking the night he stopped by the beauty shop. Aunt Jan worked there and I thought he was there to take her home. I was wrong.

    He was driving a truck (maybe a rental) to some place far enough away that he'd be gone for a good while. I'd never been in a truck like that. I wanted to go with him. It sounded like it was going to be a real adventure. Mama said I could go, and I remember wondering why none of the other kids wanted to go. Anyway, we set out on what turned out to be a real adventure indeed. This adventure prepared me for other life events to come.

    When I walked to the truck, I looked for the moon. I always watched it when I rode in a car at night. The moon wasn't there that night and I thought briefly about going back to mama; I wanted to ask her where the moon was and what its absence meant. Its invisibility scared me.

    When daddy was alive and we drove somewhere at night, it seemed that the moon kept watch over our car. When I questioned daddy about the moon's omnipresence, he pulled me onto his lap and spoke poignantly while he looked in my eyes. I'll never forget his simple yet coveted words.

    Softly, to me alone, he said, "The moon follows you wherever you go, Cassie." I asked, "It follows just me? You mean it's always there just for me? Why does it do that, daddy?"  Daddy smiled just enough to raise his right, upper lip and answered, "It follows you because you're special, Cassie."

    At that moment, I knew we had just shared something rare and as I later looked back on this conversation, it proved to be almost prophetic. Daddy and the moon still kept watch over me. For a while after dad died I still felt special. That distinction, of course, would slowly fade away, but I expected to see the moon on this night. More than that, I felt like daddy was the moon. Sometimes you couldn't see the moon because it was raining. It wasn't raining on this night. Something was wrong. Even though taken aback by the moon's absence, I dismissed my eerie feeling. I didn't recognize it as a bad feeling until later.

    Paul picked me up and deposited me onto the high front seat. The only way I could see out the windshield was to sit on the very front of the seat and lean forward as far as I could. However, when we started to move, he said that that was too dangerous. He told me I’d have to sit at the back of the seat and sit close to him so I didn’t fall in the floor. When I sat like that, my legs were sticking straight out in front of me. So out of habit (one I have even today), I tucked my legs under me Indian-style. I couldn’t see anything except the dashboard and the radio light.

    I felt a little giddy because I was getting to go on this adventure with no other kids. I can’t remember if the incident happened on the way to where we were going or on the way back to Dunn. When I try to recall, I find that I can’t even recall ever arriving anywhere but back to the beauty shop. I know there was music playing on the radio, but I could barely hear anything above the roar of the truck’s motor. I know that the stick shift bar came out of the floor right in front of my legs. There was a white ball on the top of it. Paul was changing gears over and over again. I was watching him and wondering at the complexity of it all. It was, after all, all I could see. When he stopped manipulating the stick this time, he took his hand off the white ball, instead of letting it linger there as he had before. This time he laid his big hand on my knee. I didn’t mind, it seemed the natural place for it, since he had me tucked so closely to him for my safety.

    He started to tickle my knee and I laughed aloud. Suddenly, he started to tickle the inside of my thigh. Then his hand was just stroking me, probing. I stopped laughing and began to feel peculiar; I began to feel a tickling inside my stomach.

    I had only felt like that once or twice before. One of my great uncles was very tall. When we went to see him, he would scoop me up and lift me high until my head touched the ceiling. He did this in one sudden move. I’d feel that same rushing tickle in the pit of my stomach. It was like swinging as high as I could in a rubber seat that surrounded me. It felt chilling and breathtaking, but treacherous at the same time. Suddenly, Paul’s big, rough fingers were pulling at the elastic leg of my outfit. His hand was
inside my clothes. Now, my face grew hot. He was feeling around as if he were exploring, as if he was trying to figure out what was under my clothes and between my legs. I remember briefly thinking he must be stupid. This was a grown man. He was Christie’s step-dad and lived with her. She was my age. Surely, he knew what was down there. Then, at last, he must have found what he was searching for. His fingers slowed their movement.

    The tickling in my stomach had changed to stirring or fluttering. No, it was stronger than that. I couldn't find a word for the sensation surging through my body; I was confused, and I could hardly breathe. I felt a bristle from head to toe. The feeling of buzzing. This was such an extraordinary feeling. Good or bad,
it was extraordinary. Why had I not felt it before? I thought he surely knew magic. That had to be it. He knew tricks that no one else knew. It was like an amazing carnival ride. You don’t ever want it to stop.
   
    When we were kids and had nothing better to do, we'd catch June bugs. We had an abundance of these shiny, green bugs in the summer. (Later, I read that they are a type of dung beetle-how appropriate.) We'd tie a string on its front leg, and then hold the end of the string while it flew around and around. It didn't kill the bug; we'd let it go after a few minutes. I remember thinking of what it felt like to hold a June bug. When you cupped your hands around one, its legs were probing and sticky and it buzzed. As it fluttered its wings, it buzzed in your hands.

    As I was puzzling all this over in my mind, Paul spoke to me. We had not said anything in a long time. His words now mystified me fully. He said if I ever told what I’d done, I’d be in real trouble. Why would he say such a thing? I'd be in trouble? The only time I’d been in trouble was when I’d done something wrong. What had I done wrong? I tried and tried to stop buzzing. That had to be what he was talking about. That's all I had been doing. I had buzzed. I was still buzzing, even though I wanted to stop. He told me if I ever told anyone what I had done, I’d be sorry. He told me he would hurt my sisters and my mama if I ever told. He punctuated that statement by thrusting his jagged old finger at me. I yelped. It hurt and scared me, so I began to cry. He said if I ever told, he’d hurt me very bad when he saw me again. He
asked, "You don't want anyone else to get hurt, do you"? No, of course not. Unexpectedly, I knew. I knew he had not been searching for anything. He knew what was down there. I had been tricked.          
   
    I told mama all about it as soon as Paul let me out at the beauty shop. When I began to talk to her, she looked at me. I knew she was listening to me. As I continued to whisper to her, she stopped looking at me, and I knew she was getting mad at me. She knew I had done something wrong. Even though I didn't tell her that part, she somehow knew about the buzzing. (From then on, everyone seemed to know I buzzed.) I told mama he had hurt me. When I had finished, she (still not looking at me) walked over to Aunt Janice and began to whisper to her. Janice looked at me and then, as mama continued to speak to her, she glared at me with narrowed eyes. Now both of them knew about the buzzing and both of them were mad at me.

    I expected to be punished for buzzing, but I didn't get a spanking. In fact, mama never spoke to me about that night; there were no admonitions, no assurances. That was not to be the last time I buzzed like that as a child. It was just an introduction. It was, however, the last time I thought of it as magical. From then on, there was simply something wrong about me. Besides the buzzing that stayed with me, I no longer believed I was special and I no longer believed in the protection of the moon.
   
    I learned to use the "buzzing" to my advantage.  It served me well for a long time. As I look back on that night all those years ago, I realize that buzzing breeds bitterness and bitterness eventually destroyed me.