Afraid

THE MEMORIES came unbidden, released by a line I read for class.

The first took place when I was a teenager. For an X-ray requirement, I was removing my shirt and bra inside a government facility when the male technician suddenly returned to the room.

It was my first time. I was not given a lab gown. My father explained that during the procedure, no one would be allowed in the room except for the technician and I. X-rays were painless.

My father was right. It was over very quickly: the technician stood in front of me, snatched the shirt I was covering myself with, and took the X-ray.

I don’t remember if the technician was old or young, fat or thin. Some details remain sharp, though. I could not steady my fingers to refasten my bra even though the man stepped out as soon as the X-ray was taken. The room was chilly yet I burned, burned inside when the man looked down my chest.

We went home after the hospital. My father talked about something. We did not talk about what happened. After all, what can happen while one’s X-rays are taken?

Decades later, my son and I were going home after his grade school classes. When the van for hire stopped in front of our home, it was just my son, an elderly couple who lived in our village, and I who were left.

My son and I had to pass the husband, who was seated nearest the door. The avuncular fellow tilted his legs and helped my son down the van’s steps.

The man kept chatting with his wife, seated in front of us, when I followed with my bags and my son’s schoolbag. I felt his hands hold the seat of my pants and squeeze.

I dropped one of the bags in my hurry to get out of the van. Our neighbor did not look at me when he pulled the door shut and the van drove away.

Did it happen? I asked myself many times after the second incident. Today, more than a decade later, I can answer definitely. There are impressions that create a memory with the solidity beyond denial. The spread-out fingers covering and squeezing my buttocks are as real as the eyes that scoured my adolescent breasts, never even seen by my parents.

Why did I not call out the abuse? I never asked this question until a few days ago, when I read, stopped, and picked up reading again Sara Ahmed’s “Living a Feminist Life”. Ahmed summoned the memories with the line used by women in self-flagellation: “if something happens, you have failed to prevent it”.

In a roundabout way, I found my answers: I was afraid my father would blame me. I was afraid I imagined the abuse. I was afraid of being vulnerable. I was afraid.

I am no longer afraid. This is my answer to the girl left in the X-ray room and the woman holding the bags. I am not afraid.



(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 09173226131)

* First published in SunStar Cebu’s October 21, 2018 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”