Thanks to the post put up yesterday by Tara at If Mom Says Okay, I put aside the thinky post I was working on for today, in order to work to write this instead. It's a painful story that leads to a horribly difficult but, I think, important topic. I write this in the hopes that awareness may prevent some other little girl from falling victim to silence.

I was eight. I was at a slumber party with my little sister. I'm not sure now why I had been invited, and I do recall being a little mystified even then, as it was a birthday party for my sister's friend, and I didn't really know any other kids there. Something like 6 or 7 little girls around age six were sleeping over, and I felt a little like the den mother as everyone put out sleeping bags, giggled, stretched, laughed, and slowly one by one, dropped off to sleep.

One little girl remained wide awake. Her sleeping bag was close to mine. When the grandfather clock in the hall started its musical chiming of the hour, once everything else had finally quieted down (I have no idea the time; it was very dark by then), she started to cry.

I don't recall her face. Somehow I have the idea that she had shiny dark straight hair, but I don't know why I think that. I remember that she was all shivery, like she was nervous. I remember that I felt so much bigger than she. Not older, necessarily. But I was very tall for my age, and she seemed extremely small and fragile.

I tried to talk to her, figure out why she was crying, but she couldn't, or wouldn't tell me. When the clock stopping its bong - bong - bong she slowly calmed down. Her sobs quieted. She scootched her sleeping bag a little closer to me. The minutes ticked slowly passed.

Out of the darkness came her whisper. Thin. High. A question I have never forgotten. "Have you ever been finger f*cked?"

I had no idea what she was talking about. But it sounded filthy and unpleasant the way she said it. I felt like someone had sucked my breath out of me. I didn't know how to respond. So I merely whispered back, "No."

"I have," she said. "My big brother...his friend..." I cannot recall the verb she used. Whether she said he "showed" her or "did it to" her or "explained it to" her or what. I cannot remember whether she said anything about her brother knowing, or offering her up to his friend, or being completely ignorant. I do not know how old the friend was. Or if "friend" was simply a euphemism for "my big brother." I do not know if whoever this nameless boy was did other things to her too. I will never know these things.

What I do know now, what haunts me to this day although this happened nearly thirty years ago, is that something awful, traumatic, sexually explicitly horrible happened to this little girl one night while a clock was striking somewhere in the background.

And every quarter-hour, all night long at that birthday slumber party, she would start to shiver and shake as that god-forsaken grandfather clock would wind itself up to chime. And by the time the chiming was over, she was a gibbering mess -- sometimes crying, sometimes just staring and shaking.

She was terrified of the clock. I had to do something to make it stop. So I did the only thing I could think to do. I taught her a prayer. And every fifteen minutes, until the grey light of dawn starting coming through the windows, I murmured that prayer with her over and over and over again as the clock started its ominous trek towards bong - bong - bong, so that our voices would cover up the sound as much as possible. I held her hand, and I put my head next to hers on the pillow, and I talked her through that whole night. Somewhere near daybreak, as the room was getting lighter and my eyelids were feeling like lead, she finally fell asleep.

I feel sick to my stomach as I write this. My hands are shaking. And the horrible guilt I have felt about this incident since I reached adulthood, since I have been old enough to know what her traumatized reactions certainly meant, eats at me again. I never told anyone. I should have told someone. I agonize still over that little girl, wondering what ever happened to her, whether she got real help, whether she became an even bigger victim. I don't know her name -- I'd never met her before that night, and I never saw her again after that. She has disappeared into time, and I will never know.

In retrospect, I see that she was telling me because I was "older" and seemed safe, and because I happened still to be awake. I also of course realize that if I had no clear idea what she was experiencing, then there was no way for me at that age to know how dire it was that I tell someone what she had told me. It is only in retrospect that I feel that it was my obligation, as the receiver of this information, not just to help her get through that night but to help her get to some much bigger help. But that retrospective guilt exists, I am sure, because although I could not articulate it at the age of eight, I KNEW. I knew there was something enormously wrong. I knew this was not a garden-variety nightmare. I knew this child was terrified. I could feel her trauma. I could sense her deep need for someone to listen to her and help her cope.

Yet because I did not know what name to give what was wrong, I said nothing at all. It would have seemed absurd to come home from a party on a sunny morning and explain that so-and-so had lain awake all night because she was afraid of the clock. Absurd not because one couldn't actually be afraid of a clock but because I somehow knew that her terror over the clock wasn't really about the clock. But it is only adult me who can so clearly see how her terror was tied to the question that made my mouth feel all dry and foreign and dirty. Child me set aside that brief conversation in the crisis of trying to help her stop panicking over the clock.

And so I feel complicit in her abuse through my silence. I failed her.

I do not write this so that you will reply in the comments that it was not my fault. I know I did what I was capable of at the time. I deeply regret, and will all my life, that I was not capable of more. That I did not know WHOM to tell. Or HOW. But I realize that an eight-year-old could not reasonably have been expected to resolve this situation.

I write this, instead, because I think it is so incredibly important to trust the instincts of children. To listen carefully to those short, broken sentences squeaked out in a moment of trust. To take seriously, so very seriously, any comments a child makes that might have deeper implications of abuse.

April is National Child Awareness Month, and in light of that, I think it is a good time to stop and think carefully about how we listen to our children. About what it would mean if one of them came home from a party one day with an offhand comment about how "Louis has lots of bruises all the time that he doesn't want people to see." I think I am sharply attuned, because of that night so long ago, to what might be telltale signs. I like to think that if I were to hear something suspicious, I would know how to follow up discretely and carefully, how not to jump to conclusions, but also how not to maintain a fatal silence.

But I wonder: how will I teach my children this? I want to be very careful about what I do and don't tell them, very deliberate about instilling appropriate caution without fostering unreasonable fear. But I also want them to know that if a friend tells them something about how someone is hurting them, it's not just okay to tell me. It's imperative. That doing so is not a breach of trust. That even if it's not completely clear what is happening, it is important to let a grown-up know that "so-and-so is very sad" or "gets sick every day after lunch" or "has bruises" because a grown-up will know how to intervene.

At what age do you start having conversations like this with your children? When do you begin to teach them about inappropriate touching or how to say "NO!" to an adult or how to speak up about a "secret"? How do you talk about this in ways that don't just scare the bejeepers out of them? Because my inclination, like that of most parents, I would bet, is to think, "of course, my child is too young for those conversations."

And then I think of the six-year-old who could not stand to listen to a grandfather clock chime. And I do not know what I will say when the time comes to try to help my children know that they should always tell me not just about what happens to them but about what their friends confide.

Do you know what to say? Have you already said it? Any wisdom you have about how to negotiate this minefield would be deeply appreciated. Because on this particular issue, silence can only lead to more pain.

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