Family Secrets

All families have history, which is a euphemism for “skeletons in the closet.” They are alluded to, whispered about. Perhaps they become family folklore. Usually, there’s something about the story the family doesn’t want to talk about at all.

I don’t know if my siblings know that our Nana Kaye married to escape her sexually abusive father. Because of him, my paternal grandparents left Kansas to homestead in Montana. I know this because Nana Kaye told me.

I did not know about my Nana the day Stephanie had had enough. Stephanie was my high school chemistry lab partner the year we were in the United States for a furlough. She was a senior. I thought the stars had aligned when I, as a junior, was paired with this brilliant chemistry brain. Chemistry and me – in the same sentence? I don’t think so.

So, when I saw her looking like a ghost walking down the hall that Friday, I got worried. I quickly caught up with her and tugged on her arm to say “Hi.” Startled, she promptly dropped an armload of books. We knelt to pick them up, and I saw tears brim in her eyes. “What?” I asked. She dropped her head onto her bent knee, shoulders shaking.

I picked up her books and suggested we ditch study hall, go outside to talk. On the track bleachers, she tilted my world. Turns out, her dad has been molesting her for years. (déjà vu.) This month, when she missed her period, she was actually relieved, she’d said, because now he’d have to stop. When she told him, and the inference she had made, he’d laughed in her face.

“I can’t go back,” she said.

“You won’t have to,” I’d promised. I had no idea what to do, no plan, no foreseeable solution, except she was right. She couldn’t go back. That much I knew.

I had the “kids car” that day, so I told the school office Stephanie was sick, and I was going to take her home. Katie and Elsie (my sisters) would need to ride the bus.

The idea of me taking Stephanie home to mom was less than brilliant, given her history of blaming her own molested daughters for their victimization, but that’s what I did. Only, the universe smiled on me, because she wasn’t there. Stephanie’s family was out of their house for the day too, so I figured she could pack a few items, leave a note, and I could take her … someplace. By now I knew my home would be completely wrong.

In desperation, I called my Nana Kaye (“Grandmother” to everyone else.) I twisted the phone cord nervously. “Please be home,” I thought. When she picked up I said, “You have no idea how happy I am you’re there!” I outlined what Stephanie had told me, and how I promised she wouldn’t have to go back. Nana Kaye asked a few questions, then said to bring Stephanie to her. She’d take it from there. I had never loved my grandmother more. I felt immense gratitude for her unequivocal willingness to help a child of abuse.

I left a note for my parents, saying I was on my way to Portland to see Nana Kaye. Mom would have a conniption fit for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which was she didn’t like my dad’s mother. Since this was the age before cell phones, she’d simply have to wait until I got there to give me the devil.

Stephanie and I drove to her house. I served as lookout while she hurriedly put clothing, toiletries and keepsakes in a pillowslip. “Come on, come on!” I kept thinking. I do not want to get caught here. “Stephanie!” I called from my spot on the front porch.

“Almost done,” she’d said. “I’m writing the note.”

I walked to the car the moment she opened the screen door, and peeled rubber as I drove away. That was a moment of sheer drama, as no one was near to finding us, but I felt like the hounds of hell were upon me. It is also when I began to shake.

In the two hours it took to get to Portland I settled down emotionally, but Stephanie was wracked with anxiety. Nana Kaye opened the front door of her small home, and welcomed us in.

Later that evening, after Stephanie went to bed, I tried to express my heart to Nana Kaye. She’d shown no hesitation about taking a girl in trouble. She expressed no worry about what my parents would think. I was impressed with her courage in calling Stephanie’s father and setting the new standard for Stephanie, with consequences for him if he failed to uphold them. For guiding my spontaneous headlong dive into the unknown in protection of a friend. She’d said, “I’d have given anything for someone to take me out of my home when I was younger than she is.” That’s when she told me her story.

Nana Kaye took a stand on a child’s behalf. Her action changed the trajectory of that girl’s life. Stephanie, not pregnant after all, finished high school in my Nana Kaye’s home and went on to college. Last I heard, Stephanie (not her real name) is doing just fine.