Her Favorite Store

 “Her Favorite Store”

“She shrieked and shrieked for her mother, but her mother was already there. Her mother was the monster.” – Holly Black

I was sitting in group therapy the other day listening to someone else share when I had a memory resurface out of nowhere. It hit me like a wave and knocked me over as if I were standing, wading by the shore and was taken down by the undertow.  The previous day I had gone with Wren and her good friend shoe shopping.  

Wren wanted to get a pair of thigh-high boots.  She asked me if I would help her pick them out, so off we went to shop for shoes.  We strutted into the store and stalked through the aisles of DSW looking for what she wanted.  We found some options in the sale section in the back and she plopped down to try on options while I pulled more boots out for her to try. She rejected some until she found the pair she liked.  She put them on and knew they were the right ones.  She knew because they made her feel herself and they changed the way she walked.  I knew what she meant.  I have a pair of cowboy boots that do that for me.  When I wear them I walk differently, like I own the room.  I had her walk the length of the room and she looked like a runway model, sashaying her way around, all boss-like and confident.  It was a great shopping experience capped off by lunch.

Fast-forward to group the next day and the tidal wave of repressed memory resurfacing… I am having a very different shopping experience with my own mother.  I am maybe eleven years old and we are in Al-Khobar in Saudi Arabia.  There were no stores in my own town of Dhahran apart from the commissary so we had to shop in Al-Khobar for everything else like clothes etc..

We had gone to buy shoes.  Because we were out of the main camp we had to cover up.  I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and a skirt that went to my ankles.  I needed new shoes and as my mother browsed for shoes for herself among the aisles she had me get my feet measured by the Lebanese salesman.  He began measuring my feet, but as he was doing so his hand reached up under my skirt and it began moving up my leg.  He kept his eye on my mother and began to fondle me under my skirt.  I froze.  I did not know what was happening and I did not know what to do so I did nothing.  I was terrified, disgusted and confused.  My mother did not notice.  Eventually we bought shoes and left.

Once outside, I began to cry and my mother asked what was wrong.  I told her what had happened.  Her immediate response was to tell me to not tell my father.  She told me that he would “do something stupid and end up in jail” and it would “ruin all our lives”.  She made me promise over and over all the way home.  She didn’t comfort me or ask me if I was alright or hug me.  

The next time we went shopping in Al-Khobar, she steered me toward the shoe store and tried to go inside.  I refused and she became angry.  She insisted we go inside but I again refused.  She told me it was her favorite store and I was ruining her shopping trip.  I continued to refuse and she didn’t speak to me for the rest of the day.  She would continue to try and force me to go back to that store every time we went shopping in Al-Khobar and I refused every time.  Every time she would get angry and stop talking to me.

I never told my father.