I sort of knew, when I published my novel, that things would change, but I was pretty passive about it, partly because I was a little resentful that when a woman writes, her personal story becomes part of the story, even though the novel is fiction.
My parents have always known I was a writer. As a young girl they encouraged my creativity, got me my first typewriter, read the little stories I wrote, and praised them as loving parents do. But my writing was also something vague to them, particularly when I was an unknown writer without a book in, say, Barnes & Noble. They weren’t familiar with the online magazines where most of my work was published, and I didn’t go out of my way to share my work with them. When my story “North Country” was included in The Best American Short Stories, I told my mother and she asked, “What’s that?”
I was pretty vague about the release of An Untamed State and Bad Feminist. I was particularly silent on the revelations to be found in Bad Feminist. And then Time magazine reviewed it and referenced my rape, which is not a secret to anyone who has read some of my essays but was, at the time, a secret to most of my family. What happened is not something I discussed with my family. I couldn’t talk about it with them—it was too much. The memories are too fresh even now. The consequences are still with me. Or it was a secret.
The day he read the article online, my dad called and said, “I read the Time review.” I was nonchalant, but I knew what he was getting at.
A few weeks earlier, my mom had poked at me, in her way, and we had a conversation about how sometimes children, even ones with great parents, are too scared to talk to their parents about the trauma they experience. I told her that most of my writing is about sexual violence and trauma. We talked about how we hoped the world would be better to my niece, and that if anything happened to her, she would talk to someone. I realized my mother knew and I was grateful that she and I are so similar and that it was enough to talk around the truth rather than stare it down.
When I went to visit my parents after the Time article, my dad asked, “Why didn’t you tell us about what happened?” and I said, “Dad, I was scared.” I said, “I thought I would get in trouble.”
When I was twelve, I was so ashamed of what had happened, of everything I had done with a boy I wanted to love me leading up to what happened with him and all his friends, of the aftermath. I felt like it was my fault.
My father told me I deserved justice. He told me he would have gotten justice for me, and I went inside myself as I all too often do. I went through the motions of the rest of the conversation, punctuated by a lot of staring at an electronic device. I could have handled it better, but I was hearing what I have needed to hear for so very long and I wanted to break down, though I don’t know how to do that anymore. My family knows my secret. I am freed, or part of me is freed and part of me is still the girl in the woods. I may always be that girl. My dad and brothers want names. I will not speak his name.
My family understands me more now, I think, and that’s good. I want them to understand me.
I want to be understood.