ABSTRACT
My mother took me aside from my eighth birthday pool party to scold me.It was 1990, the summer after third grade, and we’d set up a big tent in our backyard. My sister wasn’t allowed to sleep in it at night. My mom gave her the same reason she gave for Kate not being able to play in the woods, only this time the evening news agreed. All the mothers were talking about the “Silver Spring rapist.” Pat McCall didn’t know what rape was. So he and I snuck around to the soda machines and I explained in a whisper in his ear, “Rape is when a man forces a woman to have sex with him,” and we ran out screaming toward the shallow end of the pool until I heard my mom call my name in mid-stride. She said that my friends and I were very young, and that I shouldn’t share such things because their parents might not want them to know about it yet.
