Patricia Maria Summers - I repeat those magical words like a litany when I am alone at night. Rarely does it happen that I am alone, and even rarer are those occasions when I am alone and conscious. But in those few moments of lucid solitude I remind myself of who I am, rather who I was.
Nobody calls me by my name anymore. "Come here girl" is what I hear more often. But I am more likely to be called Pet. Pet. Pet, that's not my name, but that's what I've been called ever since I was a toddler. Pet, that's who I am now. Pet, that's what my family has made me.
I grew up with the Perkins family on a lonely farmhouse. Grammy and Gramps were all my world. They raised me or rather Grammy raised me with a lot of love. I was home-schooled because the nearest school was some 20 miles away from the farmhouse. There were few distractions in our compact life. We had no television and no internet connection (one was taken later to help me with my schooling, but it was used only under the supervision of Gramps). We had no neighbors and the only visitors would be my Uncles.
When I was little it felt like there were scores of Uncles. Grammy and Gramps had 7 sons who were all married and lived in different cities. They never brought their families, but I'd been told that they all had sons too. Boys run in this family. I was the only girl in this family in around 3 generations, and not of their blood. Grammy and Gramps are not really my grandparents.
No-one knows who my father was. My mother was the daughter of someone who used to work on the farm. She had grown up with my Uncles. And was on the verge of getting married to one of them when she ran away from home. There was no news of her for over 2 years. In the meantime her parents had died and her siblings had moved away without leaving a contact address. After 2 years, Grammy got the news that my mother was in a bad way - she was deeply into drugs and heavily pregnant. Grammy went to bring her back home, but only returned with me still in my swaddling clothes. Grammy had always wanted a daughter and she decided to raise me as her own. Gramps always claimed that I came from bad seed and I would run away like my mother and leave them heart-broken once again. It didn't help that I looked exactly like my mother. Like her I am a brunette, petite girl, with small perky breasts, narrow waist and rounded hips. I don't recall hearing my mother's name ever. Gramps always referred to her as "that whore" or "that bitch" and Grammy used to refer to her as "the poor unfortunate child" (she only talked about her when Gramps was not around, and then not much).
I was mortally scared of Gramps. He had a thundering voice and a very loud personality. His 6'5" frame towered over my 5'1". He and all my Uncles were tall men, broad in shoulders and quite muscular. Gramps did not much care for me and I was terrified of making the slightest mistake in his presence. He was in his 60s when Grammy brought me home, but even now he looks like he is in his late 50s at the most.
I loved Grammy with all my heart and soul. I would follow her around like a puppy. She was the epitome of perfection for me. I modeled my behavior after hers. She was my hero, my anchor in life. She used to make these pretty little dolls for me. She taught me how to fashion clothes for them and make pretty little utensils for my play-kitchen out of mud. I played with my dolls till I was old enough to help her in the kitchen. Almost all my clothes were sewn by Grammy at home, till she taught me how to stitch my own dresses.
As she grew older, I began to take on more and more of her workload. By the time I was 18 I was doing all the cooking, cleaning, laundry and ironing in the house. I did not for a moment resent my life or ask for anything other than to live with Grammy and Gramps. Never having left the confines of the farmhouse, I did not know any other way of life. New York and China were one and the same to me - unreachable fairy lands. Things were just this way when my life changed. Like all changes this change came totally unexpectedly, knocking on the doors of my sex and made me who I am today.
Even though I was 18, at the time, I'd never done anything sexual. Not even touching myself. Or exploring my own body. You could put it down to the upbringing I had received and the lack of exposure. Grammy was too old-fashioned to talk about these things and Gramps believed that the less I knew about "temptations and sinful life" the better-off I was. When I had hit puberty, the only thing that Grammy told me was that now I would be visited by the "curse" every month and I had to make sure I was clean during those days.
Even though Grammy was much younger than Gramps, her failing health was apparent during my growing years. This was also why I had begun to take on more and more chores so that she could rest up. In her last days she was bedridden for almost 2 years. As she grew weaker and weaker Gramps grew more belligerent. He took to drinking and would be drunk soon after sunset. I tried to finish my work during the daylight hours and I would spend the evenings in Grammy's room, caring for her, reading to her or if she was sleeping trying to catch up with either my schoolwork or later on with some needle-work.
My room was changed and I left my own room and began sleeping on a truckle-bed set up in what used to be Grammy's dressing room. This was also the period when I began having nightmares and would wake up in the night crying. I would wake up sobbing, curled up in a fetal position, sucking my thumb. Sometimes I would wake up to find my bed wet. I had never wet my bed even as a child, and so these nights would be especially traumatic. Embarrassed, I would wash myself, change into a simple shift and then try to sneak back into my bed without waking up my grandparents.
