The Sisterhood

Looking back on my childhood with the clarity of an adult woman I realize that, even at an early age I knew – or sensed – that something was different about my family. What you grow up with seems normal because that is what you experience as normal. It becomes your baseline even though it may be completely different from most everyone else’s reality.

None of the women in my family were married. But more than that, there was a pronounced absence of men. As a young girl I didn’t think much about it. I knew other girls had dads but it didn’t seem all that strange. People leave, couples divorce, life goes on. I remember asking my mother once about who my father was. She told me he was a nice man but had died before I was born. From time to time my mother would go out. I knew she dated. But none of the men stuck around for more than one or two dates.

The underlying strangeness was that none of the women in my family were married. Not my two aunts, not my grandmother, and as best as I could tell, neither was my great-grandmother. It wasn’t until I hit puberty that it began to make sense.

I will never forget when it first happened. I was 13 and had a huge crush on a boy my age. His name was Tom Clemmer. He was a bit shy but very sweet. It was after a football game and we were walking behind the stands. It was not well lit and I just had this overwhelming, almost uncontrollable urge to kiss him. It was a full on kiss and it caught him totally by surprise. I felt the rush of emotion and the stirrings of desire that I thought all adolescents have at such moments. The next thing I knew, Tom’s clothes were in a rumpled pile at my feet and he was gone. I spun around expecting to see him somewhere, but he had vanished.

I began to pick through the clothes and that’s when I noticed his tiny figure frantically gesturing for my attention. I say tiny, because he couldn’t have been more than about an inch tall. I was so scared. I scooped him up and dropped him into my purse for safe keeping and quickly walked home.

My mom was in the living room watching a television program when I came in. Although I tried not to show it, she always had a sense when something was wrong. I was never able to get away with anything. She asked me if everything was alright and I began to cry. In between sobs, I told her what had happened and then opened my purse.

To my surprise, she reached in, gently grasping Tom and placed him on her lap. He was naked and obviously frightened as he crouched on my mother’s thigh, trying to cover himself. She grasped my hand reassuringly as she explained what happened.

Many generations ago, a young woman was traded to a man for several farm animals. It was a difficult life for her family and they had little choice. He took the young girl as his wife but treated her as a slave. Every day for her became a living hell with no means of escape. At night she would cry herself to sleep cursing God for her plight. One night a large, black cat appeared out of the evening mist. She was frightened at first but then the cat called to her, not with words she could here, but inside her head. The cat told the girl that she could bestow powers on her to save her from her life of misery. However, the price would be that she could only bare female children and would never be able to keep a male mate. The girl was so excited she agreed immediately and the cat disappeared back into the mist from which she had come.

That night, the man came home drunk, took the girl into his room, and raped her. He then vanished seemingly right before her eyes. In actuality, he had shrunk, and as he shrank, slipped inside her and suffocated. The next morning she discovered what was left of him in a small damp spot on the bed. Nine months later she gave birth to a girl, your great, great, great grandmother.

The curse turned out to be more pervasive than the girl had realized. She discovered that she hungered for men. Not in an emotional or sexual sense but in a predatory sense. Every man she cared for or became physical with would shrink and she would devour them. She tried to avoid men but the hunger would eventually become so strong that she would be driven by madness to find a man and eat him.

And so now it is beginning with you as your stirrings of womanhood begin. For most of us the hunger is most intense when we are ovulating but it can occur at other times.

I was stunned. Yet it all made sense in a fantastic sort of way. The generations of single women, never able to live with men, our moving from town to town as my mother took different jobs. And I thought about that desire I had felt with Tom, the intense need I had to kiss him. But more than kiss him, as if I had wanted to suck his body into my mouth; to devour him.

I looked at the tiny figure staring up at me in disbelief.

“We are truly predatory females” my mother explained. “And now you are about to become part of a long sisterhood lineage.”

I asked her if there were others like us and she explained that after several generations, there were many of our kind spread across the country. Somehow that seemed comforting to me, knowing there were others out there.

“Does that mean that cousin Rachel is, or will be one of us as well?” I asked. My cousin Rachel was a couple of years younger than me.

My mother sighed “There has never been a girl child who wasn’t.”

I plucked Tom from my mother’s thigh and looked at him. I could feel him trembling in my hands. He had heard the story and knew what was about to happen. He pleaded with me not to. He looked so pitiful and I felt badly for him. I really did. But I also knew what I had to do. I pushed him into my mouth and held him on my tongue. He felt warm and I could hear his shrill cries, it was an odd sensation coming from inside my mouth. He was making a feeble attempt to struggle but I think he knew the hopelessness of the situation. I remember my mother smiling at me, holding my hand and urging me to go ahead.

It was over in an instant. I used my tongue to roll him into position and then swallowed. What a strange sensation that was. I can still remember it as though it just happened. I felt him squirming as he traveled down my throat the sensation disappearing as he passed below my collar bone. That was it until a few moments later when I literally jumped and let out a squeal as I felt an intense tickling just below my left breast but from inside me.

My mother knew immediately what had happened and laughed. “Sometimes they will struggle for awhile inside you before they succumb to your digestive process. It usually doesn’t last long; just a few hours. Although I had one last for a couple of days once. I always found it very pleasurable. Your aunt Sue does not care for it so much though. She usually eats afterward or drinks hot tea.”

I liked that Tom was still alive. I used it as an excuse; a way to not admit that I was taking a person’s life. After all if he was still alive after I swallowed him, I couldn’t help what happened later. Such was my flawed teenage logic. Eventually I realized that it was just my nature to be a predator.

Well that was a little over thirty years ago and soon I will be having a similar conversation with my daughter. She is eleven now and I can see the early signs of puberty in her.

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27.11.13