My childhood was as perfect as could be, but for one thing, and that one thing was monstrous. It would divide my life neatly into before and after, assuring the life I knew would never be the same again.

I cannot bear to say his name, and think of him to this day as (expletive). AH was nine years older than me. He lived not far from Texarkana, and my parents would visit his parents for a week once or twice every year. It was a five-hour drive, east across the top of the boot of Louisiana. The high point of the trip was always a stop at KFC. My parents, who forbade fast food at home, swooned upon opening those little red-and- white-striped boxes holding the hot, crispy chicken, warm container of mashed potatoes, buttered corn on the cob, and fluffy biscuit. I tried to appreciate the feast along with the rest of my family, but dreaded what might be coming once we reached our destination. I dabbed at the mashed potatoes with the end of my spoon, licked the butter off the corn on the cob, but couldn’t bring myself to bite into it. I was too busy trying to hold back tears. I couldn’t eat, hadn’t slept the night before, and was terrified about what I knew was to come.

It began when AH was 15 and I was 6. It might not happen on the first day of our visit, nor the second. He would watch and wait, and when I went to the bathroom, or back into one of the bedrooms to change into my swimsuit, he would follow me and close the door behind us. I was small for my age; he was practically a grown man. He was in ROTC at school and liked people to think he was smart.

He would make me sit on his lap, groping and fondling me, touching me where I did not want to be touched, forcing me to touch him. All the rest of it is too horrible to put into words, even now, all these years later.

After AH finished, he would threaten me. “If you tell your parents, they’re going to hate you. They’re going to stop loving you and think you’re cheap trash.” I believed him. I didn’t have anyone to talk to or anyone to help me stop it.
One afternoon, when I was perhaps 10 or 11 and he was already out of high school, he cornered me in the bathroom and pushed me into the shower, one of those stall types, slightly bigger than an old-fashioned phone booth. He undid his pants and then unzipped mine. I felt the cold tile against my back through my OshKosh B’Gosh outfit, closed my eyes, willing myself to be in another place, when suddenly I heard the bathroom door open. There stood my father.

My father was a gentle man who rarely raised his voice. Still, he was six feet tall, and he was my father. I expected him to march in, pull AH out of that shower by his collar, drag him out into the living room, and beat the living (expletive) out of him. Instead, he stood there with his hand on the knob, looking stunned, and to my horror ... disgusted. It was just a moment, but it dragged on for an eternity. I’ll never forget it. And then he turned and left me alone in the room with AH. I’d always been Daddy’s girl. The pain of being abused was nothing compared to seeing the look in my father’s eyes that day. It would haunt me for years.

I knew instantly and intuitively that even though my father had broken my heart by failing to protect me, it was over; AH had been found out. His dad was a tough and sometimes mean man, and when my dad told his dad what he’d seen, AH would get the beating of his life.

I blasted out of that shower, out of that bathroom, and ran down the hall to the back bedroom. My little suitcase was lying on the floor, and my first thought was that I should put on my swimsuit and run down the street to the home of a friend I’d made in the neighborhood, Scott. His family had a swimming pool. It was ruinously hot in the summer in east Texas, and I hadn’t stopped to put on my shoes. My feet burned on the pavement. I could hear the cries and splashing of kids in the pool before I let myself in through the back gate. After a while AH had the audacity to show up and join the swim party, acting as if nothing had happened. I didn’t speak to him, I didn’t look at him, I didn’t talk to him.

Eventually the sun slid behind the trees and all the kids were called in to dinner. Scott let me borrow a towel. I wrapped it around myself and scampered back to AH’s house. My mom waited for me on the front porch. She had probably been standing there for a good hour. As I ran up, she knelt down and opened her arms, which pitched me into immediate and full-blown hysteria. I sobbed until I thought I would throw up. My father obviously had told my mother what he’d witnessed and asked her to deal with it, and as a nurse practitioner specializing in psychiatric disorders, she was not unfamiliar with this kind of thing. She was calm and nurturing. She rubbed my back and kept asking what happened. To save myself, to protect myself and my sanity, I said, “It only happened once, Mommy. This was the only time.”

Which was a lie. It had happened many times.

The truth would come out, but not for 35 years, six months before my dad passed away. As betrayed as I felt that day, I could never be truly angry at him. He was and would always be my hero. Decades later I would find out what a part of me had always suspected, that he simply couldn’t handle what he had seen. He wasn’t disgusted by me, as I had always thought, but rather shocked, confused and embarrassed. Perhaps AH and I were playing doctor or experimenting. It was the ’70s. Who knew what kids were up to then? Parents weren’t involved in their kids’ lives the way we are now. They lacked information. They lacked the tools of communication. But finally I would hear the words that gave me the strength to begin to heal: “Cathy, I wish I had protected you. I’m so sorry, baby.”

But that day, I felt utterly alone. After my mom tried to soothe it away, I walked through the screen door, through the living room, in my bathing suit, clutching the towel around me, the soles of my feet burned. As I passed, the adults just said, “Hey,” as if it were any lazy summer afternoon.

When I examine what drives me, this childhood trauma floats to the surface. I’ve learned that while I’m blessed with people in my life whom I love and who love me, I walk through this world alone, that I’m the only one responsible for taking care of myself. On that day so long ago, this thought began to take form: My parents can’t protect me, my brothers can’t protect me and my friends can’t, either. I put on my own armor. I refuse to give AH any credit for the good things in my life. But one of the reasons I am able to be fearless, to work hard and stay determined over weeks, months and years, is my refusal to be done in by shame and guilt. After it was behind me, in the weeks and months that followed the day my dad stumbled into that room and stopped it, an attitude rose up in me: “Just watch what I’m going to do now.”

Copyright © 2015 by Catherine Cora. From the forthcoming book “Cooking as Fast as I Can: A Chef’s Story of Family, Food and Forgiveness” by Cat Cora to be published by Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc. Printed by permission.