When The Bough Breaks

"When Stuart found me I was feverish, infested with lice and venereal disease, covered with sores. It was at night. I was huddled under newspapers in an alley at the back of a cafe where the GIs went to eat and drink and find bar girls. I knew it was good to wait in such places because Americans threw away enough food to feed entire families. I was so sick I could barely move, but I waited for hours, forcing myself to stay awake so the cats wouldn't get my dinner first. The restaurant closed shortly after midnight. The soldiers came out, loud, drunk, staggering through the alley. Then Stuart, by himself, sober. Later I found out he never drank alcohol. I tried to keep quiet but my pain made me cry out. He heard, came over, so big, a giant in uniform, bending over me saying "Don't worry, little girl." He picked me up in his arms and took me to his apartment. He had lots of money, enough to rent his own place off base. The GIs were on R and R, celebrating, making lots of unwanted babies. Stuart had nothing to do with those kinds of things. He used his place to write poetry. To fiddle with his cameras. To be alone."

She seemed to lose track of time and space, and stared absently at the dark wooden walls.

"He took you to his place," I prompted.

"For five weeks he nursed me. He brought doctors, bought medicine. Fed me, bathed me, sat at my bedside reading comic books - I loved American comic books because my father had always brought them home to me from his travels. Little Orphan Annie. Terry and the Pirates. Dagwood. Blondie. He read them all to me, in a soft, gentle voice. He was different from any man I'd ever met. Thin, quiet, like a teacher, with those eyeglasses that made his eyes look so big, like a big bird.

"By the sixth week I was well. He came into bed and made love to me. I know now it was part of the sickness - he must have thought I was a child, that must have excited him. But I felt like a woman. Over the years as I became a woman, when I was clearly no longer a child, he lost interest in me. He used to like to dress me up in little girls' things - I'm small, I could fit into them. But when I grew up, saw the world outside, I would have nothing to do with that. I asserted myself and he withdrew. Maybe that was when he started to act out his sickness. Maybe," she said in a wounded voice, "it was my fault. For not satisfying him."

"No. He was a troubled man. You don't have to bear that responsibility," I said, not with total sincerity. I didn't want it all to deteriorate into a wet session of self - recrimination.

"I don't know. Even now it seems so unreal. The papers, the stories about him. About us. He was such a kind man, gentle, quiet."

I'd heard similar pictures painted of other child molesters. Often they were exceptionally mild mannered men, with a natural ability to gain rapport with their young victims. But of course it had to be that way: kids won't flock to an unshaven ogre in a soiled trenchcoat. They will be drawn to Uncle Wally who's so much nicer than mean old Mom and Dad and all the other grownups who don't understand. To Uncle Wally with his magic tricks and neat collection of baseball cards and really terrific toys at his house and mopeds and video recorders, and cameras and neat, weird books… "You must understand how much I loved him," she was saying. "He saved my life. He was American. He was rich. He said he loved me too. "My little geisha' he called me. I'd laugh and tell him "No, I'm Korean, you silly. The Japanese are pigs!" He'd smile and call me his little geisha again.

"We lived together in Seoul for four months. I waited for him to get off - base on leave, cooked for him, cleaned, brought him his slippers. Was his wife. When his discharge papers came, he told me he was taking me back to the States. I was in heaven. Of course his family - there was only a mother and some elderly aunts - would have nothing to do with me. Stuart didn't care. He had money of his own, trust funds from his father. We traveled together to Los Angeles. He said he'd gone to school there - he did go to medical school, but flunked out. He took a job as a medical technician. He didn't need to work, it was a job that didn't pay much, but he liked it, said it kept him busy. He liked the machines - the meters and the test tubes - he was always a tinkerer. Gave me his entire paycheck, as if it was petty cash, told me to spend it on myself.