Brenda was our favorite. When I listen to Dar Williams's song, The Babysitter, I think of Brenda with her long blond hair and how she made everything fun. She was such a great babysitter, the neighborhood parents competed with one another to be the first to call and book her for their nights out.
When my parents were not quite quick enough to be the first to call Brenda, when the Elenzs or the Strackes, or the Keltzs beat them to the punch, we ended up with either Cathy or Myrna.
An evening with Cathy or Myrna meant boring. It meant we would be ignored while our babysitter talked on the phone to her boyfriend, or watched television. It meant going to bed on time—no playing hide and seek or draping the dining room chairs with blankets to make forts, or listening for our parents’ car to pull into the driveway so we could run to bed before they came through the door. Cathy or Myrna as a babysitter meant a blah, boo, hiss night. It meant that the neighborhood kids who had Brenda as their babysitter would be bragging about it for days afterward.
Myrna wore heavy eyeliner and thick mascara. She had dyed black hair and wore a leather choker around her neck. I don’t think she smoked, but she had a funny smell about her. Maybe it was the hairspray she used to puff up her pageboy hairstyle, or maybe it was a mustiness in her clothes. As an eight-year-old, I couldn't identify the scent, but I didn’t like it.
Myrna’s family lived just two doors down from us. Their property hardly had any yard at all. What green space they did have was more woods than yard. Tucked into the wooded area was a little playhouse. The one-room playhouse was the exact same style as the family home—white clapboard with green shutters. I envied that little playhouse. Myrna’s mother told us neighborhood kids that we could play there anytime we wanted. We rarely did because even though we were invited, it still felt like we were trespassing if ever we went into the little house.
One day, I ventured into the wooded area and wandered into the playhouse. There was a tea table and two child size chairs—not much to spark the imagination of a third grader. Nevertheless, after getting over the notion that I shouldn’t be there, I swept the floor with a broom that had been left in the corner, and talked to my make-believe husband and children. A noise interrupted my play and I looked out one of the windows to see Myrna approaching the door of the little house. My heart began to race with the fear that this definitively Goth teenager might scold me for being there.
She entered the little house and I froze. But she was very nice to me. She asked me what I was doing as she took a seat on one of the small chairs. I told her I was pretending to clean up the house while my husband mowed the lawn and my children played in the yard.
“Oh,” she said, “you have a husband?” I was delighted that she seemed to easily join my make-believe world. It was something Brenda would have done. The notion that Myrna was doing it, too, was exciting. Maybe Myrna wasn’t such a bad babysitter afterall, I thought.
Myrna then said she’d pretend to be my husband and said things like, “I’ll do that, dear, you’ve had a hard day,” and “I think the children are ready for bed, don’t you?” We went about tucking in our children for the night and then sat down at the tea table with our pretend dinner. She said, “This is delicious, how ever did you manage it with all the other chores you’ve done today?” We then laughed and giggled knowing we were just being silly.
After our dinner, we washed the dishes and put them away in imaginary cupboards. Myrna then said, “Well, darling, I think it’s about time for bed, don’t you?” I agreed that it probably was. “Here,” she said as she pulled one of the chairs to the middle of the one-room house, “I think you need to be just a little bit taller.” She instructed me to stand on the chair. Doing so made me just tall enough to be face-to-face with her. “Husbands and wives kiss before they go to bed, don’t they?” I agreed that they did.
Myrna then pressed in close to me. She put her hands on either side of my head so I couldn’t move around much. She then pressed her lips hard against mine. My eyes widened not knowing what was going on. Her eyes were closed and she breathed heavily against my cheek. She kept pressing and pressing and breathing heavily. I could smell that smell I didn’t like, and I got scared, but didn’t know what to do.
When she released me, I could see beads of sweat on her upper lip. “Let’s do it again,” she said. Without giving me a moment to think, she grabbed my head again, almost tumbling me back off the chair, and pressed her lips hard against mine again. I held my breath the second time because I didn’t want to smell her. The smell of her was making me sick.
Just at the moment when I thought Myrna was going to kiss me a third time, I heard my mother calling and ringing the bell she used to indicate it was time to come home. “I gotta go,” I said hurriedly as I stepped down off the chair and scurried out the door. I ran through the woods and down the street to my house.
I never told my parents about what had happened, and miraculously Myrna never babysat us again. If Brenda was busy, Mom and Dad called Cathy. But I don’t think it was because they knew anything. I think they, too, didn’t really like Myrna. Maybe she smelled funny to them, too. In any case, I was only eight years old, and she was sixteen.
It would be decades before I realized I had actually been assaulted and violated. And decades more before I got the courage to write this story down.
Copyright DJ Anderson, 2021
