The
girl has flaxen hair, straight, pale blonde, and pulled half-back. Her jeans lag
down and disappear into wide-mouthed rain boots. Her arms are trembling with the
effort, the strain of holding herself, pulling herself forward.
Who
taught her to do that?
To
straddle her chair, tilt her hips forward, and rock? To grip the desk for
balance, to be unobtrusive and yet the most horrifically obvious sight in the
room?
The
first grade classroom, walls covered with bright posters, alphabet, spelling
words, numbers, gallons/pints/cups, penguin art, and Bible verses. The desks
are arranged in a horseshoe, one for each student, a nametag pressed neatly at
the front, personal belongings and folders inside.
She is
at the curve of the horseshoe and, like the elephant in the room, she’s all I
can focus on.
Her
peers sit down on their wee chairs, scoot forward, tucking into the desk, and
set legs and feet together in a respectable, expected parallel. They might
wiggle a bit, some even stand up at their place, but their movements are,
again, expected. Six year olds wiggle. They sometimes quiver with energy.
The class
comes to the rug for a movement break, stretching under the direction of “Captain.”
“Captain
says….stand on one leg.”
The
girl doesn’t stretch enthusiastically. She does address one of the few boys in
the girl-heavy class at least twice, calling at him as though he is bothering
her when he is not near enough to touch, just another first grader getting on with
his stretching, shaking out his wiggles.
Normal.
What is
normal?
A hard
word to define.
Many would
say masturbation is normal. A fulfillment of sexual need, a harmless,
self-sufficient satisfaction of the libido, one of the Id instincts most “normal”
humans possess.
Libido.
Sex drive. Sex. Nouns, again, many would classify as normal. The average person
desires sexual interaction. Normal people like sex.
But how
old is that average, normal person?
Is it
the twenty-something? Frisky, liberated, and youthfully attractive? Is it the
thirty-something? A little older, handsome, and now more serious? The
forty-something? Passionate, still-in-love with her partner? The
fifty-something, experienced and comfortable? The sixty-something? What of the
seventy-something?
Here
many of us become squeamish.
Should “old”
people still have that drive? Do our grandparents?
So let’s
back up. Head the other direction.
Surely sexual
desire is never more normal, more natural, than for teenagers. For these young
people fresh out of puberty and on the cusp of looming responsibility. Their
drive, according the popular media, is probably the strongest. We readily
accept high school sweethearts and backseat affairs as normal.
But
what about younger youth? What about those starting puberty? The girls in
training bras, the boys with squeaky voices? Perhaps still normal, we’ll
concede. Certainly these young ones are curious about sex.
And
younger still?
Now you’re
turning away. Your toes curl and your stomach twists. You don’t want to know.
Quickly
we answer “No!” No. The tender years before puberty are not for sex. These
babes have no drive, no lust. They can’t.
It’s
not normal.
Oh, my
friends, you who follow Game of Thrones,
50 Shades of Gray, all those high school and period dramas—this is reality.
Perhaps
it’s a twisted reality. Unfortunately it is ours.
In this
reality children under the age of ten, ones who ought to play with Legos and
Barbies, who ask for bedtime stories, who run about outside commanding games of
make-believe, these babies know about sex.
Some of
them are active.
Someone
showed them.
What a
terrible reality.
I
recently read an essay “Torch Song” by Charles Bowden. The author once wrote
reports of rape. He interviewed victims or their families and published
horrific cases of the brutalization of women (and occasionally men.) And of
children.
“No one
can handle the children,” he says. No one. “Sex crimes generally cycle people
out in two years. And it is the kids who do it. No one can handle the kids”
(Bowden 69).
I can’t.
Yesterday
I watched a six year old girl with long flaxen hair, strands errant from winter
static, legs mere twigs engulfed in wide-mouthed boots made for clomping
through puddles and wading through snow banks, I watched this little girl rock
herself roughly on her tiny first-grade plastic chair, masturbating.
She
would stop, squeeze the squishy cupcake toy kept on her desk for relief, sit up
and attend, lay her head on her arms across the desk labeled with her name that
means “beauty;” but, inevitably, she’d begin again. Stiffening up, clenching
her legs in a firm straddle, gripping the desk with white knuckles, she’d rock.
Hard.
There
was no pleasure visible in her little pale face. She didn’t look like she
enjoyed what she did.
She
looked like she performed a weary, painful duty, one she must continue or face
punishment.
Someone
taught her that.
Right?
I hope
we can agree that is not normal.
Charles
Bowden’s essay is not uplifting. He offers no hope. No solutions. “Nothing
really helps,” he says. There is no escape from what’s he seen and heard.
Nowhere to go where he can forget the horrific reality. And there are few to
even talk to, to share the burden of the cases he’s researched. “Nobody wants
to hear these things” (75).
I feel
for Bowden. I wonder if he is still living in darkness.
I feel
more for the little girl rocking on her tiny plastic chair. I know she is
dealing with darkness. I am sure she did not choose to wander there. Not with
her flaxen hair, her bubbling giggle, and her wide-mouthed, puddle-clomping
rain boots.
I see
her at the bottom of a pit. A pit filled with slime, refuse, and clutching
hands. A pit of darkness. Deep, dank, and terrifying. A pit I don’t want to
approach. A pit I’m not sure any normal hands can reach, any normal courage can
plumb.
What
can we do?
No one
wants to hear about these things. No one wants to talk about them.
We just
want to return to our well-lit houses and carpeted living rooms where we can
turn off the screen when the news gets ugly, when the reality we’re in is too
unpleasant. Too real. Too close.
I
certainly want to hide.
I don’t want to face the darkness. I don’t
want to dive into that slimy, creeping pit. I don’t want to see elementary children
masturbating or hear what happens on the weekends behind closed doors.
But
more than I fear the darkness of that hole, more than I fear the horrific
reality of perversion and the truth from the mouths of babes, do I fear
inaction.
What could
be more horrifying than being a bystander?
Many of
us have heard these two famous quotes, one by Irish political and philosopher
Edmund Burke, and one by Holocaust author and anti-activist Yehuda Bauer, that
condemn inaction above all:
“All
that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
~Burke
“Thou
shalt not be a victim, thou shalt not be a perpetrator, but, above all, thou
shalt not be a bystander.” ~Bauer
You
might say that one abused little girl cannot compare to the Holocaust. We are
great at comparing the needs of the many to the needs of the few, or the
individual. (Unless, of course, that individual is myself.)
But the
many are made of individuals. How many of those Holocaust victims were abused
little girls? How many lives could have been saved if one less person were a
bystander?
People
frequently wonder why I choose to live in Haiti, a country our U.S. President
so eloquently describes as a “shithole.”
Isn’t
it dirty? Isn’t it scary? Isn’t it messy? Depressing? Ugly? Impossible?
Sometimes,
yes.
There is
darkness in Haiti that I can never penetrate. (Not on my own.)
Just as
there is darkness in our well-lit, fully-funded, carpeted, brightly decorated elementary
classrooms here in the good ole’ U.S. of A.
The
world is dark.
If we
choose to properly look at the world around us, the one with manicured lawns
and nails, with pressed, tucked-in shirts, with decent, hardworking, self-built
people, with order and police and regulations—if we look with determination to
the see the truth, we will see some twisted, ugly realities.
It’s
hard to look.
You may
not want to.
As I
said, I don’t. I’d rather not see all the wretchedness.
But once
seen, we can’t forget. I can’t forget that little girl with flaxen hair and
white knuckles. I can’t forget the soiled way I felt when I saw her rocking,
the dirtiness that spread from this abnormality, infecting outward. I can’t
unsee the evil.
And I
know I don’t want that evil to triumph.
Do you?
“Be prepared. You’re up against far more than you
can handle on your own. Take all the help you can get, every weapon God has
issued, so that when it’s all over but the shouting you’ll still be on your
feet. Truth, righteousness, peace, faith, and salvation are more than words.
Learn how to apply them. You’ll need them throughout your life. God’s Word is
an indispensable weapon. In the same way, prayer is essential in this
ongoing warfare. Pray hard and long. Pray for your brothers and sisters. Keep
your eyes open. Keep each other’s spirits up so that no one falls behind or
drops out.” ~Ephesians 6:13-18 MSG
“Strength! Courage! Don’t be timid; don’t get
discouraged. God, your God, is with
you every step you take.” ~Joshua 1:9 MSG
Jesus said, “In this godless world you will
continue to experience difficulties. But take heart! I’ve conquered the world.”
~John 16:33 MSG
“The horror of the Holocaust is not that it
deviated from human norms; the horror is that it didn't. What happened may
happen again, to others not necessarily Jews, perpetrated by others, not
necessarily Germans. We are all possible victims, possible perpetrators,
possible bystanders.” ~Edmund Bauer
