Gynophobia.

Do you know those little footie pajama's that kids wear when they are small? I used to wear them as well. Maybe everyone wore them at one point. My footie pajama's came in all colors. The ones I favored most were the blue ones my mother had bought me for my sixth birthday. My birthday is in the spring, even though it was hot in the summer I wore it all the time. I loved those pajamas.

I can't even look at them now. They are buried in my backyard. I buried them when I was ten. Deep away from my eye sight. I could still see them burning into my corneas. The worn bottom pads that kept my tiny feet warm. Now my feet were large and filled a mans shoe size. My thin limbs that were weak and easy to bruise are now stronger but bruise just as easily.

My face that was once like a little boy is now sculpted to a mans. Well, a teenagers. I am told I look like my dad. I don't say anything in response to that though.

My father is a business man. He works for a big office in the city. He has to take business trips every now and again. It used to happen for a little while. But as I got older he took them for longer periods of time and more often.

The first time he took a business vacation that lasted for a week was when I was seven. It was in the winter. The bitter cold stung my cheeks as we said goodbye to him. My mother and I. My mothers hair is silky and blonde. Wavy like the ocean. I have my fathers hair, dark brown but I have her eyes. They are a blue. My fathers eyes are dark green. He wears glasses and that day his glasses fell onto my face as I was leaning up to kiss his cheek.

We laughed and my mother waved him goodbye from the door. I ran back to her into the warmth of the house. We had baked sugar cookies that day and the whole house smelled like it. The whole week it smelled like them. That lingering smell...

On a Thursday my mother started to feel sad that he was gone. I tried to comfort my mother. She was looking out the window sadly. It was December Seventeenth. I patted her leg and she smiled at me. Later that night I heard noise coming from her room. I opened her door slowly and I was frightened of the noises. I called out for her and the noises stopped. She beckoned me closer into the darkness. I followed her voice to the bed and she pulled me close.

What she whispered into my ear haunts my sleep at night.

"Mommy loves you, help mommy..."

After that I don't want to think about it. The bruises that were on my hips and how much my pelvis bone hurt. That my mother had... done things to me.

That my mother still was.

I wonder, Since I was not bleeding like a woman might have her first time... does that make me at fault?