Kitchen Mess
Memory Recalled: July 6, 2019 | Age When Memory Happened: 8
My brother was mixing 2% milk and strawberry Nestlé Quick. I sat at our kitchen table in Valley Station, Kentucky. The chair’s large wooden legs holding a butt-shaped platform that stuck to my legs below my yellow terry cloth shorts. My Bavarian mother darted in and out of the kitchen, ever cleaning. Ever controlling every dust bunny in the house.
“Make me one.” His strawberry milk looked good. I was 8 years old, and my brother was three years older than me.
He sighed heavily and then proceeded to mix me a drink, too. I got up off the chair, thighs peeling off the wood. I opened the fridge looking for Government cheese.
“Where’s that Government cheese we got?” Cheese slices were plentiful in our fridge. My father would purchase large blocks of American cheese at Fort Knox’s commissary. Growing up a military brat 20 minutes from Fort Knox, we had a full pantry of food downstairs, a large freezer, and two fridges packed with veggies and fruit. At our house, there were always plenty of options to eat. My parents grew up in the Depression, and as my dad said, “I’ll be damned if my family goes hungry.” The neighbors across the street were on welfare and had given us free Government cheese; I preferred its taste to the American blocks we purchased at the Army base.
“I don’t know pig; you probably ate it.” Everyone in our family had a weight problem, and my brother and I dealt with it by constantly calling each other ‘pigs.’ He said it just as a brother would say it. It didn’t carry the same weight as it would if a fellow classmate or a person outside the family said it.
To which I responded, “I didn’t eat it. Shut-up.” Unable to find the Government cheese, I settled for the Fort Knox American cheese. Peeling it off the block as my thighs had unpeeled off the wooden chair in the summer heat, I quickly rolled the slice in my hands.
The heat from my hands melted the cheese slightly. It felt like Silly Putty. Mashing it, smooshing it, squeezing it, the slice quickly became a blob and then transformed into a cheese ball. I bit into it. Heaven.
My brother put the strawberry milk in front of me. “Ooo cheese looks good.” He peeled his own slice, rolled it into a ball, and sat down next to me at the kitchen table. Together, we ate our cheese balls and drank our strawberry milk.
My brother and I got along quite well most of the time. When I was born, he was quite proud to have a baby sister and bragged to everyone that I was his sister. As we grew, I was the jokester, loud and dramatic, always vying to either piss him off or make him laugh. He was painfully shy and often quite quiet. I knew deep down he’d do anything for me. And I often stood up for him in the neighborhood when kids would make fun of him. He excelled at schoolwork and struggled at sports.
We were kids, 8 and 11, enjoying our cheese and milk snack. Unable to really talk about the pink elephant in the room: our neighbor was a pedophile.
The night before, our neighbor, Larry, had requested I play with his eight-year-old stepson. My mother obliged and let me go to their house. But we didn’t play like normal children. Instead, Larry orchestrated an orgy. Young grade school children, naked and performing sex acts for his sexual viewing pleasure. Larry forced us to do things with each other beyond our comprehension and comfort levels.
I sat at our kitchen table, drinking my milk. Thinking about what my body had experienced the night before. Confused, I wanted to ask my big brother and my mother about what had happened.
Mom entered the room.
I summoned the courage to speak. “Mom?”
“Vat?” she answered while washing dishes. Ever cleaning. Washing. Tidying. Controlling the dust bunnies inside the house.
“Larry last night.”
“Vat?” Mom didn’t turn around but kept cleaning. The faucet ran.
“What about Larry, Michelle?” My brother’s piercing words made me hesitate.
“Well.” I wanted to tell her how Larry had made me undress. I wanted to tell her how he had made his stepson do things to me. I wanted to tell her how he had guns in every room and how he took me in the back room and touched me while I was forced to make bullets for the guns around the house. I knew my mom didn’t like guns, and I knew she’d want to know what we were doing in that house when she sent me over there. But if I told her, I’d have to practice the piano my full 30 minutes. She had told my dad I practiced my full 30 minutes, but really, I had only practiced 10 minutes. Mom had bribed me to go over to Larry and his stepson’s house, telling me she’d lie to my father about the piano practice if I went over to that house. Her service of needy neighbors often eclipsing her own family.
I thought this through and quickly second guessed my intentions. Maybe my mom knew what Larry was doing to his stepson and me. Maybe she was in on it.
“Vat.” Mom continued to clean. My brother stared at me, slurping his milk.
“He’s nice.”
“Oh, he is? Gut.”
My brother didn’t buy it. “Larry? Dad says he’s a fat slob.”
Mom scolded. “Do not say this about your neighbors. This is not nice.”
My brother retorted, “It’s what Dad said.”
The room fell silent. The faucet whirred.
My brother took a break from his milk and spat his words at me, “He’s a ... fat ... slob.”
Mom turned around and grabbed my brother’s arm. “Stop!”
My brother obeyed and went back to slurping through his straw. Looking at me, my mother asked, “Vat, Michelle. Vat are you vanting to say?” Her German accent is sharp and curt.
“Nothing. Just that Larry’s ... well ...” I feel the courage drain from my body. It floats to the ceiling in the corner of the kitchen. That angelic corner that has become my safe space. If my spirit escapes my body in scary times, it can survive in that corner. Way up high. I imagine my Guardian angels holding me there. I momentarily go blind. I can’t feel my body, taste the milk, hear the cheese ball squishing in my brother’s hands, the faucet drip, drip, dripping.
“Michelle, finish vat you’re trying to say.”
I’m far away in that corner of the ceiling. I can’t hear anything anyone is saying. My body is sitting on the chair, legs stuck to the wooden butt-shaped pad.
Mom walks back to the sink. My brother stands up, finishing his cheese ball.
My soul is safe in the corner of the ceiling, my body moves slightly to give enough air to my mouth.
“Nothing,” I say. “I was just going to say Larry’s like a second father.” Larry had suggested I call him a second father. My perpetrator’s words “like a second father” cross my eight-year-old lips.
“Oooo, that fat slob?!” my brother shouts and then rushes out of the room.
“Don’t say that about him. That’s a sin,” scolds my Bavarian, and very Catholic, mother.
“Vell, Michelle, I zink zat is very nice that you say zat about Larry.”
She goes back to the sink to finish the dishes.
My soul goes back to its corner in the ceiling, and I watch my body drink its milk and eat its cheese ball. Mom cleans up the kitchen mess.
W.R.I.T.E. THE TRAUMA™ – Reader Reflection for “Kitchen Mess”
Self-Care Note
This story includes childhood sexual abuse, coercion, dissociation, and the experience of being silenced by authority figures. Please read gently. If your body signals overwhelm, pause. You are allowed to stop, breathe, or come back later.
Why This Matters
Trauma often doesn’t announce itself with violence or noise. Sometimes it shows up at the kitchen table. In ordinary moments. In food, routines, accents, rules, and silence. This reflection invites you to notice the places where your younger self tried to speak, and what happened when the world did not make space to listen.
W — Write
• Recall a moment from childhood when something felt wrong, but you didn’t yet have words for it.
• Where were you sitting? What were you eating, holding, or touching?
R — Relate
• Who did you want to tell?
• What made it feel unsafe, confusing, or impossible to speak?
• Were there rules, bargains, or expectations that kept you quiet?
I — Interrupt
• What did your body do to protect you when words failed? (Freezing, floating away, going quiet, complying.)
• How do you still see that protective response show up in your adult life?
• What would it mean to thank that response instead of judging it?
T — Tell
• If you could speak now — not to your caregiver, but to a safe listener — what truth would you say out loud?
• One sentence is enough. You don’t need details.
E — Embody
• Notice where you feel safest right now.
• Place a hand on something solid — the table, your chest, a stone in your pocket, or the chair beneath you.
• Name one small, grounding action that reminds you: I am here. I am safe. I am no longer eight.
✧༺♕༻✧
