Something You Wish You Never Knew

Abuse is never easy to talk about, and when it happens in your family it is frightening to learn about and hard to process. It is something I wish I had never known about my mother. She talked openly and often about the physical abuse she experienced at the hands of her alcoholic father. Sexual abuse she only alluded to in comments shrouded with sarcasm and warnings about watching my own back around men. At one point, she told me her husband, my father, had raped her. I was too young to cope with that news and didn’t. As deep as I tried to bury it in the back of my mind, the thoughts of the abuse she had suffered kept haunting me, particularly after her death. One day while talking to my mother’s older sisters, I decided it was time for me to at least ask questions. I started with Mom’s remark about my dad. 

“Transference! Gracie was good at that,” announced my Aunt Cora, the day I was telling her about my mother’s statement about Dad.  The three of us-Cora, Flippie, and I-were having a lobster roll lunch in Cape Elizabeth. We were fueling up to go visit Gracie’s and their parents’ graves in Central Maine.

“Our old man Kent raped Gracie,” Cora continued. Aunt Flippie simply looked distressed but nodded in agreement. The town fathers of Windsor, Maine had taken Cora, Flippie, and their brother Kenneth away from their parents when Gracie was a baby in 1924. They talked about going back for Gracie when she was weaned, but they never did. I was surprised both sisters sounded so sure about their knowledge of their little sister’s abuse.

Gracie had been gone about three years by that particular summer day of our graveyard excursion, but I would spend years trying to come to an understanding of her life with illnesses. I would never know what part the abuse she suffered played in her struggles with mental health.

Gracie did leave her family home at the age of twelve. The uncle who first rescued her, a younger brother of her mother, molested her after taking her in to his home until she was taken in by her maternal grandfather. The sexual abuse stopped there even though this new, three generation home used her as a housekeeper and nanny. Gracie could have easily continued the cycle of abuse she had experienced, but she didn’t for the most part.

Knowing what I do now about human nature, I am impressed with the behavior Gracie displayed when she was stressed or angry. I think she consciously tried to stop the cycle of abuse that had gone on in her family for who knows how long. Gracie would immediately put her hands behind her back when my brothers and I did something that upset her. If she was really angry she’d leave the room. Wayne, Steve, and I knew we had to sit quietly until we heard her singing. Only then could we get up and check in on her. 

Corporal punishment was acceptable discipline in the 1950s and 1960s, and Grace did sometimes use her hands on my brothers. As an adult, I have found out that my brothers resented me for not receiving physical punishment. I was a timid child, and Grace never raised her hands to me. Her tongue was sharp, and she verbally abused all of us, including my father. 

Professionally, I have run across situations where women, who have been sexually abused as children, abuse their own offspring as adults. Society does not like to accept the fact that women can be sexual abusers as well as men. We know it is unfortunately a learned behavior. I applaud my mother Gracie for stopping that cycle for my sake and for my children and my grandchild. Thank you, Mom.