looking at. I know I peed my pants, though. Then Aunt Mandy and the man on the bed with her—he was actually closer to a boy than a man, not that much older than I am now, but back then, he seemed like a grown-up—disentangled themselves and pulled their clothes back on. Aunt Mandy stalked up to me, standing so tall and lifting her chin so high it was clear I was the one who was in trouble.
It’s only because I’ve replayed this moment in my head so many times that I remember how disheveled she looked. Her pantyhose were on the floor by the bed, her hair was matted and sticking up in the back, and her blouse was half-unbuttoned.
And me? I was standing there in wet green corduroys, shaking so hard I couldn’t move or speak. I could only wait for her to tell me what to do, the way I always did.
“No one will believe you if you tell,” she said, without the slightest hint of a waver in her voice. “And if you do, I’ll make sure your parents find out exactly what kind of child you really are.”
I couldn’t move. It had never occurred to me to tell anyone else about what I’d seen. I didn’t even understand what I had seen.
“I know you’re not a good girl, Tammy.” Aunt Mandy’s eyes were locked on my face. It hurt to look back, so I flicked my eyes to the man behind her. He was getting dressed, and I realized then that I’d seen his naked butt before. Ew.
Aunt Mandy grabbed my chin and jerked it upward until I had no choice but to meet her gaze. I froze.
“I know your heart,” she said, “and God knows it, too. We know all your little secrets.”
I unfroze and sucked in a breath. She knew? How?
See, now I know Aunt Mandy isn’t superhuman, for all that she’d used the word “we.” As if she was God and the queen and some two-timing preacher’s wife from Ohio all at the same time.
Then, though, I was nine, and I was scared, and I’d just seen a guy’s naked butt in the middle of the afternoon. I believed her when she said she knew all my secrets.
It wasn’t just some guy, either. I know that now, too. It took me until the next Sunday at church before I placed him—he was George Tinley. His father was a board member, one of the church’s cofounders who’d worked with Aunt Mandy on the school-board elections years before. George went to UCLA, but he came back to town during his school breaks. After I caught them, though, he stopped coming around, and before long, his parents moved to Nevada.
I have no idea when George and my aunt first started sleeping together—whether it went on for months or years, or whether it was only that one afternoon. But knowing wouldn’t erase the memory of pissing myself, or the sight of my aunt’s legs around his waist.
Sorry if that was too graphic, Harvey. My heart’s pounding writing all this down. I haven’t thought about it, not this clearly, for years. I’ve been trying not to think about it.
I should’ve realized then what a fucking hypocrite she was. All I could think about was what she’d said, about knowing all my secrets.
I believed her, Harvey. For years. Part of me still does.
She can’t know the whole truth—I’ve kept this secret so well, for so long, it’s all I think about most of the time—but I can’t shake the feeling that in some bizarre, impossible way, she does. Sometimes I’ll talk myself out of it, but then I’ll catch her giving me a cold, dark look across the sanctuary, and a shiver will run through me as it all comes back.
She was right, too. No one would’ve believed me if I’d told.
Besides, who would I tell? My mother? Aunt Mandy’s big sister, the one who took care of her after their parents died? The one who brought her out to California, then watched without bothering to get involved as her 18-year-old sister married the 33-year-old Reverend Russell Dale and slowly took over the entire