From the writer’s personal experiences of being improperly touched by an unknown adult, which she’d, kept to herself for all these years, translated…
The very first time I was sexually harassed, it’d happened when I was in the third grade. That time, the whole family took the bus, it was, crowded, the people who were standing, became like packed-in sardines, couldn’t move, I’d, sat alone, on the window seats, with this man who’s a stranger, with the features I couldn’t even recall now.
Back then, I’d developed early, my breasts were already, protruding, and, my height increased by two to three inches a year, and, my clothes no longer fitted me, and, if I’d not paid enough attention, I would, head out, with clothes that were a bit too tight: the top too short, couldn’t block my stomach, and I’d be showing, my waistline. My mother, who cared a lot about how “a girl presented herself” would get bad, started nagging me, and pulled my shirt downward all she could, attempted to, block that part of flesh that showed from my waist.
I’d felt annoyed, and gotten angered at my mother for it, but at the same time, I’d felt, ashamed, like I was doing something awfully wrong, that, I’d, exposed my body too much. “Aren’t you ashamed, to expose this much flesh on you as a girl?” my mother blamed me on that day.
And, I couldn’t imagine it, but I actually, was sexually harassed on that very day. The man sitting next to me folded his arms across his chest, with his left hand, hidden under his right arm, moved up and down, and attacked me. Recalling that day, the bus was so packed up, I’m sure, that someone probably noticed what was happening, but, nobody offered any assistance. I was just eight years old, I didn’t know how to handle the situations, didn’t dare leaving my seat, or holler out for help, I can only, curl up my body, toward the edge of the seats, until there was, NO place for me to go, I’d put up with it, until I’d reached my two stops from where I was getting off, I’d stood up, got close to my mother. She’d asked, “It’s not our stop yet, why did you get up so soon?”, I’d told her, “I want to be closer to you.”
I’d never told my parents about this. For an eight-year-old, what my mother nagged me on actually became a fact and it’d proved, “because I dressed too provocatively, that, was why it’d happened”; and, before it’d happened, my mother had, grilled me so hard on it, if I’d let her know what had happened to me, I really couldn’t imagine, how much yelling and screaming I would have to endure from her.
Thisis BAD! Not my photograph…
The adults may think of this as odd, and tell, “Child, your mother nagged for your own good, but, if someone hurts you, your mother surely would, protect you!”, but to a young child, it’s not so at all. Every single child will do the best s/he can, to not get yelled at, and there are more than one way, beside doing what we’re being told by the adults; as we’d done something the adults believed to be “wrong” or “improper” or “bad”, the child would try to cover up. The adults and children also define “what constitutes as hurting” quite differently too; but for the child, being scolded by someone s/he loved, or having the adults feel disappointed of her/him, that, would be, more heartbreaking.
As that eight-year-old grew up, with my own seven-year-old daughter. Every time this seven-year-old child start being stubborn, or do things she was told not to, or done things that fell from the expectations of adults or the world, when I’d wanted to, make my own pitch higher, there would be, a force, pulling me back—don’t forget, what I’d, kept to myself when I was younger, because I feared getting scolded.
And, can you imagine, how much stress this woman must’ve endured through, when the awful adult had, sexually molested her? And, she didn’t DARE tell her mother, because her mother warned her not to dress so provocatively, and this actually feeds to “blaming the victim”, because she’d not take heed of her mother’s word, and now, she was inappropriately touched by a BAD adult, she couldn’t tell her mother, because she feared that her mother would blame her for what happened, but, I’m sure, that her mother wouldn’t, but, it’s just, that as young as she once was, she thought that her mother would blame her for what had happened to her, because that, is how children’s minds worked…