Look Who's Having Sex with Mommy

I was seven years old when my sister told me she'd give me five dollars to runupstairs into my parents' room while they were having sex and take a picture. Atthat age I had heard of sex but had no idea what it looked like. I knew for surethat my parents were sexually active. My father had impregnated my mother on sixdifferent occasions, all of which she decided to keep, so it was clear to mysiblings and me that there was a definite attraction. There were many times whenwe would hear loud bumping and raucous laughter coming from their bedroom. Mybrothers and sisters always reacted with disgust and, being the youngest, Iwould follow suit, but was never sure why. Without knowing exactly what the actof sex entailed, there wasn't any real reason to be revolted, but it had becomesecond nature to pretend I knew something I didn't.

I was always up for a chance to make easy money. I had been wearing hand-me-downs since I was born, and by the age of seven was already sick and tired of mysecond-string wardrobe. I may not have known what sex was, but I did know that Ineeded to step up my wardrobe in order to be taken seriously in the first grade."No problem," I said. "Where's the camera and how do I use it?"

I tiptoed up the stairs leading to my parents' bedroom with my sister Sloanefollowing close behind. Their door had a lock on it, but it was old and didn'tsecure inside the doorjamb anymore. If it was locked you weren't able to turnthe handle, but if you smashed your body into it, it would open.

I checked and saw it was locked. I would have to use physical force. Sloanecrept back toward the top of the staircase. I set up for a running start.

"Ready?" I asked her.

"Go!" she whispered.

Seeing your mother naked is not something you easily recover from. Seeing yourmother naked and jumping from one side of a king-size bed to the other with anurse's hat on while your father, who is also naked, is chasing her with abandanna around his neck is reason to put yourself up for adoption. Fortunately,I took the first picture before anything had a chance to register. The secondpicture was of my father heading toward me with a belt.

My sister was already down the stairs when I came running out of my parents'room. I jumped all the way from the top of the stairs to the bottom. Luckily, Ihad perfected this jump months earlier during three consecutive snow days. I didnot dare look behind me to see if my father and his penis were chasing me; Ijust kept running. We lived in a split-level house, so at the bottom of the bigstairs, there was a shorter set of stairs to the right and to the left. I wentleft and my sister went right. I saw her head for the basement and followed herin. Our basement doubled as the laundry room; the one room in our house myfather had never been in.

"Lock the door!" she barked, as she scrambled to hide under a pile of dirtyclothes.

"Oh, my God, Dad has a belt," I told her.

"What?"

"A belt! He has a belt! I think he wants to hit us with it!"

"The one he wears with his pants?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. "I think he wants to belt us!"

We were too scared to cry. This was it for me, I was sure of it. I was going tobe murdered in my basement by my naked father, with a belt. I had never been hitby a belt before but had heard stories about it happening in poorerneighborhoods. Suddenly, there was the sound of footsteps coming down the stairsand then banging on the door.

"Open the goddamn door! Now! You two are gonna get a smack and you're gonna getit now!"

I stared at Sloane with big eyes. I wanted her to think of a way out of thismess. She was twelve and she needed to take charge.

"Ask him if it's with the belt or his hand," Sloane said.

I looked at her to make sure she was serious, then yelled back, "With your handor a belt?"

"What?!"

I went closer to the stairs that led to the door. "Are you going to hit us withthe belt or your hand?"

He was shaking the handle now. "No one's getting hit with a belt!" he shouted."One ... two ..."

This was before there were time-outs, so my sister and I didn't know what tomake of his counting. I wondered if his ABCs were next. He stopped at "three,"and we braced ourselves when "four" didn't come.

Sloane was holding on to me for dear life. Her crying had turned into heaving,and now she started to shake uncontrollably. I tried to comfort her by rubbingher back like my mother did but was too preoccupied with my imminent beating tobe very reassuring.

Since my sister had turned into a real mess, it was up to me to devise a plan ofescape. At that moment, Sloane wouldn't have been able to lead a horse to ourswimming pool, never mind leading me to my bedroom without getting my asskicked.

"We have to go up and just let him hit us," my sister whispered.

"Ah, I don't think so. I don't make appointments to get hit. Plus, this was youridea and Dad should hit you both times."

"I want to get it over with!"

"No fucking way. I am not going upstairs to get hit."

This was the very first time I said "fucking" in front of anyone and I liked theway it sounded. I had heard my brothers and sisters use curse words but hadnever dared use one myself in front of anyone. But I had practiced alone in myroom lots of times, trying out different cadences and intonations: "Fuck, fuck,fuck you, fucknut. Shit, shitstain, fucker! Go fuck a duck, you asswipe!" Myfavorite was, "What a fucking cocksucker." The plan was to say this casually toone of my new friends while one of our teachers walked by. No one inkindergarten ever really got my sense of humor, so I was hell-bent on making mymark in the first grade.

Saying the word "fucking" in front of my sister catapulted me to an instantstate of authority. Sloane stared expectantly at me. I strained to hear what wasgoing on upstairs. Suddenly, everything was very quiet. I fantasized that myfather had forgotten why he had wanted to hit us in the first place. Maybe hewas watching the stock market and found out that his eight shares of Noah'sBagels had quadrupled. Maybe if we stayed down there long enough he would forgetall about what we did and actually be excited to see us when we came out. Icould lie and say I was just looking for Q-tips and used the camera to blockwhat I hadn't expected to see. Or I could say I just wanted help with myhomework. My father loved when I did my homework.

We hadn't even been in the basement for a whole half hour when my sister startedto complain that she was hungry.

"Where do you think Mom is?" she asked. My mother was the nice one, and shealways protected us when my father was in one of his moods. I knew my motherwouldn't be mad at us because she was always defending us to our father nomatter what we did. Especially since we had a lot to hold over her head.

All I would have to do is remind her of a week earlier when she forgot to pickme up from school and I had been accosted by a male predator on my way home. Ourhouse wasn't even a mile from school, but some man slowed his car along thesidewalk I was walking on and asked if I knew any tricks. Upon taking a goodlook at an overweight older man with gray stubble, wearing a pair of coveralls,I bolted home faster than I'd finished the fifty-yard dash earlier that day.After a good twenty minutes of me berating my mother for not picking me up andallowing me to possibly be abducted, she hit the roof.

"But you weren't, were you?"...