Monday Blues

By Robertha White Morgan

“Almost always, abandoned clothes will provoke us to ask why.” Barbara Brownie, The Mystery of Abandoned Clothing; The Guardian   

First, it was a single, beat-down Converse One Star, tongue lolling, faded to a grayish black just sitting on the black-top somewhere between Race Street and Ashland in Lexington, Kentucky. The next week, at the stop light by the MET, a raggedy, long-sleeved T-shirt and, around the corner, on the hedge just in front of the glassworks, a pair of stretched-out, dusty sweatpants. I rode my bike along that route every weekday, escorting my son to school. I had morphed into a bike mom after moving to Kentucky from Jamaica. My eleven-year-old son wanted to ride his brand-new aqua bike to school every day, but he had to cross two big intersections on the journey, so I became his shadow, ensuring he got there and back safely. 

I did not know what to make of all the busted clothes everywhere. Then, we found the panties on a sunny Monday morning.  As we did every weekday, my son and I veered right off Winchester, over the defunct train tracks onto Walton Avenue. The street was empty, but we rode on the pavement. As we rolled by, my head was swiveling between the Blue Door Smoke House and The Learning Tree Kindergarten, trying to decide where the delicious, salty scent of bacon grease was coming from.  

“Hmm, do you smell that?” I called out to my son, who was just ahead of me on the path. “I wonder where it’s coming from?”  I looked over at him as we were pedaling along just below Ruth Hunt Candy store, and a flash of blue caught my eye. My son coasted right over the object with no comment. I’m not sure he even saw them. It took me a minute to figure out what I was looking at. A pair of lacy, light blue, polka-dotted panties was carelessly crumpled in the middle of the sidewalk.

 It seemed to me that I rolled by them in slow motion. Even after I got back home, I could not get the image of that lovely, delicate pair of panties strewn on the hard concrete path out of my head. I wondered what kind of circumstance could have led the woman or girl they belonged to, to leave such an intimate garment in such a place. My mind kept throwing up vivid images of what might have happened to that girl, and none of them were good. Where were the rest of her clothes? Why just panties? Had she been attacked?  If so, why? Did she get away? 

I am still not sure if I did. I was a fully clothed nine-year-old child. 

Free of school for the day, I was all kinds of happy because I had scored a coveted window seat on the crowded bus home. There were no school buses, so I had to take my chances with everyone else trying to squeeze into the few buses that ran the 45-minute route from my primary school in the main town to my house on the outskirts of the rural parish where I lived. The breeze caressing my face from the open window only added to my secret joy. Window seats were prime real estate for a kid. Often, if I was lucky enough to get into a bus at all, I had to be content with being either squashed between the adults or being tossed from one end of the bus to the other while standing in the aisle. We had been in transit for a while when a man sat down beside me. I did not acknowledge him except for gripping my huge backpack tighter, making sure I was not in the way, and turning my face directly into the stream of wind from outside. The air on the inside of the coaster bus was ripe with the musk of all the sweaty bodies packed into the seats and aisle. 

On a normal day, I wouldn’t even have noticed him because my face would have been buried in a book. I felt rather than saw him shift closer to me. So close, I was pressed against the pleather-coated side of the bus seat. Shifting away without turning my head, I tried to create some space between us, but when I moved, so did he. Strangers’ arms stretched over our heads like telephone lines. Those standing in the aisle alternately pressed close, almost into the seat, and then away as the bus weaved along the road.  

He smiled at me as he pressed up against me, motioning toward the people above us with one arm as if to say, “It can’t be helped.” His other arm was lodged in the gap between our thighs, the skinny fingers of his hand fumbling with the dark blue matte linen of my primary school uniform. The music blaring from the speakers, snatches of the passengers’ shouted conversations, and the wind whistling through the open window were all muted in my shock.  

He smiled again as I tried to shrink myself further into the corner of the seat. There was nowhere to go. Another greasy smile and a knowing look out of the corner of his eye made me complicit in what was happening. Without words, he was saying, “Look at all these people, they don’t know what we’re doing.” 

I unfroze long enough to shove my bag into the sliver between his bony thigh and mine, hoping I had trapped the questing hand. I had not. Long fingers scrabbled beneath the black canvas, all the way up to the crease of my hip and thigh, two fingers resting on the top of my vaginal mound. Panic set in, and with it, shame. I knew I should scream, shout, stand up, do something, but I could not. In my nine-year-old mind, crying out would only cause the other adults on the bus to think I was a ‘force-ripe pickney’, a sexually precocious child, who had somehow invited the advance.  

I looked at his face then, silently pleading, “Don’t do this!” I was screaming it so loudly in my head that I was sure he could hear me. The bus rounded a sharp turn, and he and his grasping fingers were tossed away from me, just before they could burrow under the band of my day-of-the-week panties. I was wearing Monday.  It had blue and yellow flowers all over it. He didn’t leave the bus until two stops later, but the fingers did not return. I remained curled into a ball around my backpack until my stop. Head down, I barreled through the oblivious passengers out the door and home.  

When I got to my house, instead of bouncing through the kitchen door, changing out of my uniform, and curling up in front of the TV with a mug of Milo to watch afternoon cartoons until dinner, I slid into my room and closed the door. I sat on my bed replaying what had happened over and over. A while later when I went to shower, I balled up the panties and stuffed them at the bottom of the bin. 

Looking back, I understand what happened was not unique to me. Child sex abuse (CSA) is a problem faced by about 150 million girls worldwide. Jamaica has had a spotty record in combating child sex abuse, as it is quite widespread across society. I think it’s because there’s a culture of silence around all forms of abuse. In my culture, shameful things are not talked about, and often, rather than reporting it and seeking punishment for perpetrators, the victims and their families will cover it up out of fear of the stigma. 

I remember being aware, even at age nine, that bad things could happen to children. My best friend in primary school once told me that her mother’s boyfriend had touched her. When my friend told her mother, she got angry at my friend for ‘leaving herself careless’. Her mom broke up with the guy eventually, but he was never reported to the police for what he did to my friend. 

  I have never told my mother what happened even though, unlike most young girls, I had a mother who was a police officer who regularly dealt with child sex abuse cases. I remember she came home late that day. I was still up and, in the kitchen, watching the kettle because the first thing my mother wanted when she got home every day was a cup brimming with hot black tea. 

“Thank you mi pickney.” She took the cup from my hand and took a big gulp. “How come yuh nah sleep, why yuh look suh?”   

She peered into my face. Instead of just giving her tea, a hug, and heading off to bed, I’d been standing around in the kitchen, twisting my fingers in my sleep shirt. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. Strangely, the shame I felt from what happened to me sealed my lips. I mumbled “Nothing” and told her I was going to bed.   

I adjusted on my own. Every time I took the bus, I willingly stood in the aisle, and I wore my backpack over my shoulders facing outward, hugging it like a baby to create space between me and other passengers. I still unconsciously carry my laptop bag in this way sometimes. Now, as an adult and a mother, I am cautious about my physical space. I am also vigilant about my children’s safety. I have always encouraged them to preserve their personal bubbles and, if anyone made them feel uncomfortable, even a family member, to let me know right away.  

When my kids were little, I bought books like The Right Touch and Your Body Belongs to You and read to them all the time. When my daughter was twelve and wanted to spend a night with her little friend from seventh grade, my answer was always no. I never told her outright that I was afraid that what happened to me would happen to her.  Neither my son nor my daughter has ever slept over at a friend’s house because I would have no control over someone else’s home, and there was no way for me to be certain that they would not be exposed to abuse. 

I’ve also always been their chauffeur, picking them up or dropping them off wherever they needed to be. It is only since moving to Kentucky and not having a car that I haven’t been able to do that. For the first time, they both have to take the bus. It’s a big yellow bus, just like the ones I saw on American TV shows like The Magic School Bus, where everyone had a seat and Ms. Gristle, their teacher, was there to make sure everyone was safe.  Here in Kentucky, no adults other than the driver and the bus monitor are allowed on the bus with the children. It’s much more orderly. Despite knowing that, I still walked with my 17-year-old to the bus stop the first couple of mornings when she started riding it. I told her it was because it was so dark, and I wanted to keep her company. The third morning, she said, “I’m ok, Mom, you don’t have to come.” Instead, she keeps her location on and texts me once she is safely on the bus each morning and when she gets home. They are both smart and aware, but I still worry.  

Unable to get my mind off the panties, I went searching online to see whether any cases of sexual assault had been reported in Walton, Lexington, or surrounding areas. I couldn’t find any reports of recent cases, but I stumbled across the city-data.com site, which listed all the registered sex offenders in the Lexington area. I found out that there were 493 registered sex offenders, a ratio of one sex offender to every 646 residents. The information on the site included the names and addresses of those people. The more I read, the more anxious I became. A few of them had addresses listed on streets near me, too close for any comfort. Some were listed as violent offenders. More than a few had been charged for the use of a minor in a sexual performance, distribution of matter portraying a sexual performance by a minor, and sexual abuse 2nd degree. I later found out that assault was ‘the touching of the private, intimate, or sexual areas of another person for one's own sexual gratification without the victim's permission or consent.’ 

When I did a similar search online for Jamaica, the results were vastly different. The Department of Correctional Services website said a registry had been created in 2014, which it maintained. The list of offenses for which a person could be registered was long: Incest; Rape; Marital Rape; Sexual Touching or Interference; Sexual Grooming of a Child; Sexual Intercourse with a Person Under Sixteen… It went on and on. 

The site read like instructions for offenders about reporting requirements. Unlike the US site, it gave only the physical location of the Registry office, no names, and certainly no addresses of the offenders. I suppose I should not have been as shocked as I was to read that information on the register was “secret and confidential.” To access any information about sex offenders in Jamaica, I had to have a legitimate interest or be “a member of the Jamaica Constabulary Force; a person engaged in the professional counseling of sex offenders; a prospective employer or employee of the sex offender; or person having an association with the sex offender.” Even the registry upheld the culture of silence. 

I still haven’t decided if it’s worse or better to know who and where the offenders are. In America, I can plan out routes to avoid the neighborhoods where registered offenders live, but what about the unregistered who haven’t been caught and prosecuted? At home in Jamaica, offenders have a level of protection from the law that gives them anonymity. My next-door neighbor could be a predator, and I would not know or be able to find out. There doesn’t seem to be much I can do either way. The only thing I can do is try to protect my children. 

The blue polka-dot lace panties were still on the path on that Monday afternoon when I rode back to pick up my son after school. They had shifted slightly, no longer in the middle of the path, crotch to the sky, but just off to the side. They were still there on Tuesday.  They were still there on Wednesday but someone, or maybe the wind, had slid them off the path, a light blue butterfly against the green grass.  

By Robertha White Morgan