The start of an average Saturday morning turned to an empty, damaged Saturday. My mind was blurred that morning as I was getting ready for softball.  I went downstairs to eat breakfast, and I heard whimpering like someone was crying.  I turned the corner, and my mom was crying.  She said, “Don’t worry about it. Just get breakfast, and Dad will take you to softball,” as she ran upstairs.  It was really awkward because I have never seen my mom cry before.  My stomach knotted.  During softball practice, I was very jumpy, and my coach could tell there was something overwhelming me.  He approached me at the end of practice and asked, “Is something wrong?”  “Yea, but I just can’t figure out what it is,”  I answered.  I probably sounded crazy, but he never showed it. 

The phone rang once. Then I heard my dad’s nervous voice. He said he just left to pick me up.  The snow glistened brightly, so I decided to wait inside until he parked the car.  As I walked to the car, I could see my dad’s face. I saw two emotions on his face:  sadness and helplessness.  He said we going up town to get something for lunch, and we had to talk about something.  My nerves went up in flames, and my stomach dropped immediately.  My gut feeling told me something was very wrong.  He began, “We have been keeping a secret from you, and it’s time for you to know.”  It was as if I was living in a horror movie, when the person says he sees dead people or something.  All of the sudden I couldn’t swallow, a lump stuck in my throat just like right when I’m about to cry.  This secret was going to make me cry even before he told me!  “This has been going on for months now,” he continued.  The tears grew hot in my eyes; I blinked to try to push them back. 

This is what he had to tell me.  At a few of my mom’s side holiday gatherings, my brother and my cousin did some “stuff.”  She shoved herself at my brother; he was sixteen at the time.  No one had ever said anything to anyone about what had happened, so no one knew ‘til now.  Lying was one of my cousin’s sinful ways for her to get attention, and she did that on a daily basis.  A few months prior to this “talk,” she did what she does best: spread rumors that weren’t true.  She told people that my brother had raped her.  After awhile of the rumors going around, my cousin told the police.  They called my house and asked if one of my parents could drive my brother up to the police station because they had some questions to ask.  When they drove to the police station, my brother was put in one room and my dad in another.  It felt like a game of twenty questions, but instead of twenty, it was like one hundred questions.  “Do you know anything about you son raping your niece?” one of the officers asked my dad.  Thinking of my brother in the room across the hall, he said that my brother would never do anything like that.  Then the officer began to explain why he asked all those questions.  My cousin told the police that my brother had raped her.  Being a rape case, they sided with the female end of the situation.  They went to court a hand full of times.  Finally, my cousin admitted that the rape part of the story wasn’t true, but the police didn’t drop the charges on my brother touching her inappropriately. 

My brother was then put on probation and had some hours of community service.  The weekend my dad told me was the first weekend my brother went to the juvenile detention center.  My parents said that they would go visit him.  My sister and I weren’t old enough to go see him, but my brother reassured me: “Don’t worry about me.  I will be fine.”  The tears poured out of my eyes because I was scared for my brother.  After all he has gone through, he still stood tall.