now reading: The Hour I First Believed

gsl

a pumpkin Sunday

in her own hands

Beach: a portrait of power, after giving her statement to an SLC Police Detective. 

resutls from the deer hunt

the thing about the world

Dear Daughter,

The day after you turned 15 your friends took you out to brunch. There were three of you: 16, 16, and 15.  You went shopping. You went to the park. You rolled down the hill through the soft autumn grass. One of you landed in the mud. You were laughing and smiling.

It should have been the most perfect of days out in the world just being 15 for the first time.

But it wasn't perfect. Far from it.

Back in the dressing room of Pib's Exchange in Sugar House, while you were trying on shirts you noticed a phone slipped part way into your changing booth.  You stared at it at first not understanding.

That stare was your innocence breaking.

You gazed directly into the screen pausing in shock as the world you have been warned about came reaching for you.

Welcome to womanhood.

You noticed the phone was videoing and it was held by a hand. The hand of a man. Then as you found your ground you raised your foot to kick it away but the man was faster and he pulled it back.

You quickly put on your own shirt and went out to get help.

Dear Daughter, Help wasn't coming.

What I know is the staff did confront the man (who admitted he was using his phone) but I also know they did nothing to protect you. I am sorry. They didn't call the police and they let you and man (or men, there might have been another man with him) both leave the store within a very short period of time of each other.  Whether you know it or not that put you in danger again.

That wasn't just a failure in training on the Pib's staff that was a failure in being thoughtful humans.  Failure in sisterhood.  Failure in common sense.

Failure of a whole nation to stand up against a pack of rabid men who grab and rape and jeer under a false banner of male privilege and then pretend to be our leaders. Phony Kings and false prophets masquerading as we the people.

When you got home and told me what had happened I called the store. The store staff called the owner and she called me back. I requested the store call the police and report it because I wanted the clerks to give statements AND I wanted security camera footage turned over to the police.

I wanted you to be given back what had been taken from you- your power.

The owner did call the police but so did Sophie's dad just to make sure. And guess what, those cameras, well they might not have been working. The owner, she will let me know.

The owner has been very nice but here is the thing about the world- nice or sorry after the fact is not enough. Nice is what got us here.

Like the owner, nice enough to call me to let me know the steps they have taken but asking me to consider removing the comments I have posted publicly about the lack of security cameras because their concern is retail theft.

Yes, we would hate to have anything valuable stolen away in that store. 

Dear Daughter, She is not concerned about you.  She should be, the owner is a woman she should know better. In fact, she probably does. We all do, us women. We all know.

We might consider you one of the lucky ones, after all, you were never fully undressed, at least that you have admitted.  I add that because this is horribly embarrassing. Why not lie? What other defense do you have? What other defense has the world given to you?

This was Pib's response to my post on their facebook page:

"Pib's Exchange I just want to start off by saying we are so sorry that this happened. We always want our costumers to feel safe shopping here at Pibs. After the girls reported the incident, our staff immediately responded by questioning the perpetrator. He responded with aggression, noncompliance, and denied the allegation. Our staff then responded by demanding that he leave the store and to never come back. Following the confrontation the owner was contacted who intern contacted the police. We realize we could have handled the situation differently, but we have never experienced a situation like this before. Our staff was really shaken up about the incident and responded with fear. We have scheduled a mandatory meeting this week to discuss how to better handle situations like this. We do have security cameras and are currently working on accessing footage from 10/14 to turn into the police. In the meantime we have notified our staff of the incident and have given them not only a description of the perpetrator but instructions to contact the police immediately if he tries to come back into the store. If there is anything we can do to further support you and your family and the pending case please don’t hesitate to contact us."

That statement is misleading in a lot of ways. And forgive me if I can't muster one bit of sympathy for how scary it was for the adults of the store.

I am livid over how this was handled by the staff of Pib's.

I am livid about the state of the world ahead of you. This is only your first encounter with what is waiting.

I listened quietly through #metoo. Many of us did. I listened through the supreme court hearings.  Men laughed that She didn't remember how she got home. For the record, I don't remember how I got home either though logically I know He must have driven me. The last thing I do remember was him telling me that he would keep it secret for me, so it didn't ruin my reputation.

Dear Daughter, No one cares. Everyone knows. And nothing has YET changed.

Beneath the rage, is a mom, a woman, who is done being polite. I look at the leaders of our nation in disbelief.  We have all been betrayed. As far as I see it the rules of polite society no longer apply to me, or to you. Or to any women standing on the right side of history.

That man does not know what he has done. He thinks he as done one thing when really he has done quite another.

Dear Daughter, You now have a case number and a detective assigned to your case. Perhaps you are a little young for that but the thing about the world is girls have to grow up fast in a world of boys will be boys.

Addendum: 
The security footage has been recovered by the store owner and turned over to SLC police.

the house of no ghost

I dream of houses.  Every night it is a new one.  Every night we move.  We pick bedrooms, we sweep old floors, we stack dishes in cupboards.  And I look for ghosts.

The house of last night has to be my favorite so far.  It was big, not too big.  I remember rich wood and crisp blue windows, fireplaces, and bookshelves.  I liked the deep driveway and the side entrance into a large mudroom with the green-tinted brass coat hooks, warm straight benches, and a raw wood chair rail girdle.

But what I liked best was this house had no ghosts.

They say when you dream of moving it is dreaming of change; change that needs to happen or change coming. I would believe that but I would also note I am the child of Realtor.  Each weekend our dad would take us with him to tour the houses he was listing.  My sisters and I would pick out our rooms.  We would rebuild our lives in a new house, on a new street, often in a new part of the city.

We were always about to move.  We never did.  My parents lived in the house on Herbert Ave for over 30 years.  My whole childhood and the entire length of my first marriage.

I dream of the white house I grew up in as it was.
I dream of a yellow house that sits alone on a concrete lot.
I dream of a blue house down in a glen on the edge of a wilderness.
I dream of a wooden house we are literally digging out of a mountain of dirt.
I dream of a pair of tall gray houses out in a golden field.

I dream of houses so haunted I wake shaking.

All summer I struggled to sleep.  When the heat was finally replaced by rain I slept deep and late for a week.

Within that sleep, I wandered the hallways of lost houses.  Rummaging through boxes looking for my coffee maker.  Wondering how I would be able to sleep in strange rooms wrapped in a cloud of lingering souls.

The dream house of last night had a tiny kitchen right in the center of the house- exactly how I like them.  It was surrounded by the big trees of my childhood; trunks with peeling paperbark and tops too high to see. The front room was flanked with bay windows with the idea that a dark turning sea was just out of sight.

The back of the house had the perfect nook of a room for a family den- a place to tuck away a tv.  A place to hide deep in the bowels of the house and pretend not to be home.  There were French doors hooded in dark wood that led to a shaded yard full of something wild almost dangerous.

I loved that house even I as turned to look for the stairs and realized there were none.  The house had no bedrooms.

I stood in the center feeling the solidness of the beams, the weight of the plaster on the walls hugging me tight.  I was aware of the lightness of the unreachable floors above me.  All around me, out of sight my family moving around boxes.  Moving the same boxes in and out.  The house never filling.

Always moving in never getting to the living there moment.

Three nights ago I carried the ghost of a little boy from a dim yellow room off a matted mattress in an attempt to save him from the other ghosts lurking in the halls.  His spirit was waxy in my arms.  His body the yellow color of fading bruises.  I set him down in the dark of midnight in the wet grass beside the long eggshell house that looked more like a desert worn motel than a home.  In the windows, the ghosts walked by looking out at us.

Gray and torn faces, unwashed windows, long narrow halls, and pipes for handrails.

I dream of houses that fill with green water.
I dream of houses that light with black flame.
I dream of houses that never end.
I dream of houses of changelings, houses of brick, houses that shape-shift under layers of dust.

I dream of change every night.
I carry boxes.
I make plans.
We never quite move in.

But I think I have finally found a house I could live in.
The house of no bedrooms, no dreams, no sleep... the house of no ghosts.