the hand that plays

While waiting on two friends at the bank yesterday, the man who molested me as a child walked in. It had been over 15 years since I saw him. He didn't see me as he entered. He looked the same, I guess it was fair to say he was one of those people who aged nicely.

As I sat there in the chair, my mind took me back to when i was no more than about 5 years old. As is the norm with a huge percentage of these peadophiles, he was the family friend. He would constantly frequent my grandmother's home and it was the norm to see him regularly seated at the family table.

As a child I spent a lot of time with my siblings and 2 cousins. Our grandmother would babysit the 5 of us while our parents went off to work.  there were no wiis or nintendos then and we would always think of new games we could play with each other.i had a fascination with playing hide, and i would always hide under the table at times by myself.

i remember the one time he came over and he opted to play hide with me and he told me there was a new way to play the game. he said instead of hitting the table leg when i was playing tag, i would do 'this'. Curious to learn the improved way to play the game, he held out his hand, took mine, and he put my hand on his genital area. he made my hand circle his genital area a couple times and then I would put my hand back. he told me that to win the game you had to be quiet and not let anyone see what you were doing. he would always put his finger on his lip to show me how quiet I needed to be.

 there were times when I would be playing the game the new way and while i was circling his genital area he would make me circle really fast on some days, and really slow on others. i remember being annoyed with myself cause I couldn't do the circle just right and he would tell me if i kept trying i would get better. There was one day when I was doing the circling, and I had to have done it really well because his voice wasnt the same and he said in a lower tone 'yessss that's it.' I had finally gotten it and I was happy that I had.

 What would confuse me though, were times when  he would just suddenly pelt my hand back under the table before I finished. I never understood why he would do that when grandma or uncle was passing but I guess he didnt want them to know about our game, so i played along. one day wen uncle called out to him he quickly flung my hand back under the table and my hand slammed into the table leg. it was hurting a lot and was immediately swollen. I started crying and as i went to tell grandma, he told me i couldn't because the game was not for grown ups. he made me wipe my tears and for a few weeks well, my hand was in terrible pain but he said circling would help it heal.

We played this game for a long time. We played it until I was too old to sit under the table and i'm grateful that I cannot remember if at anytime the game changed again and involved him circling me.

As i looked at him yesterday I wondered how many other girls and boys he played this game with over the years. I wondered if he even remembered what he did to me and what he would do if I got the opportunity to let him know that it wasnt until I was about 13 years old, I realised  he violated me. I wanted to walk up to him and ask him if he slept at night for all those years he let a 5 year old innocent girl massage his penis and probably at times gave him an orgasm. Or if he had any idea what I felt like when I realised at aged 13 I was taken advantage of, and spent that entire day hiding my tears from my parents because I was too ashamed to tell them 8 years after the fact.

Though I played what I wanted to say in my mind yesterday a dozen times, I sat there unseen, and eventually he walked away. I know he will never see this, but just in case "You bastard, may god have mercy on you for what you did to me. but thanks to HIS grace, I am healed from that horrible encounter, and because HIS presence lives within me .... you are still living too.