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Several lifetimes ago, when I was still young and hopeful, I worked in a children’s home as their weekend activities director. It was a swell job. I was paid to be a Fun Planner.
I got to take the girls camping, put on talent shows and, one Valentine’s holiday, throw a red party where everything we wore and ate had to be red for the whole weekend. We loaded up on ketchup and barbecue. We made red velvet cake and dyed our rice with red food coloring.
I rented Firestarter with Drew Barrymore, using it as an excuse to practice fire drills and safety. Whoever won the game of the hour got to play the role of the Firestarter. I would place the winner in a different spot throughout the rambling house and when the girls came upon her, they had to shout “Fire” and find an exit strategy based on the firestarter’s location.
It was big fun but, had we not been housed on a Methodist campus, neighbors may have called the police at seeing girls rolling out of windows shouting, “Fire!” and laughing madly.
Debbie, one of my favorite residents, surprised me when she ran straight toward the firestarter. The other girls all ran away, screaming for doors or windows, but Debbie put her head down in attack mode. She grabbed a blanket and attempted to stop, drop and roll the poor girl. “No!” she kept shouting. “You will not burn down my house!”
I never really considered why the girls lived in the home to begin with. My job was simply to manufacture frivolity to make them feel like children for a couple of hours on the weekends.
But once I started paying attention in the staff meetings, I learned that many of them lived there because they had some minor interaction with the law. Usually, there were abuse allegations inside their family homes, which likely caused the girls to act out in the first place.
Arguably, one of the safest places a child should have is her own bedroom. But these girls were scared in the dark, even with their predators far away. They would often ask me at bedtime to leave the light on.
“Will you keep watch just in case?” I’d sometimes sit in the hallway outside their doors, reading from Chronicles of Narnia until they fell asleep, wishing I could gather them up into a magic wardrobe to restore their sense of safety and allow them to claim their rightful place as royalty.
Debbie once told me her father had sexually abused her for more than three years before she said something. “What made you find the courage to finally tell?” I asked her. “He started eyeing my little sister,” she said, “and I had to stop him.”
We were sitting on the back patio, sharing a swinging bench.
“I wish I’d never said anything,” she confessed, her voice seasoned with cynicism too sharp for a child. “They took me from my home and put me in here. And he got to stay there with my little sister with no one to stop him.”
Neither of us spoke after that. We swayed back and forth, watching the groundskeeper, Billy, mow the hilly lawn. It was summertime and the back of our legs grew sweaty against the scratchy polyester bench pillows. As powerful and healing as the language can be, there were no words that day and so I remained silent. Billy had mowed several rows when I reached over and held her hand. She squeezed mine and we sat there, silently holding hands, watching Billy approach and retreat.
Later, Debbie told me she wanted to be an attorney. “I want to stop this from happening to anyone else,” she proclaimed. I sure hope she did. In a world where a child is assaulted every nine minutes, we need fierce warriors to say “no” to the predators. “No! You will not burn down my house.”
Steady on Debbie. Go attack the destroyers. You have no idea how many little sisters you will save.
Abigail Blythe Batton is a staff correspondent for the Cherokee Scout. Her column runs every other week. Email her at ablythebatton@gmail.com.