The Redheaded Boy.

In sports as in every arena of my life I root for the underdog. That is of course unless I am the underdog.

My step-grandfathers orange tweed recliner sat facing the TV. His back was to the kitchen and adjoining dinning room where I sat finishing a snack. Snacks were never allowed out of the dinning room.

I crossed the distance between the dinning room and the recliner. I could feel the heat from the large rock fireplace that warmed the house. I saw my older sister, Jeri in my grandpa's lap. I wanted to sit in grandpa's lap.

"Go away! You're not old enough for this, " was Jeri's response to my plea. But, I wasn't asking her. I glanced at the TV, cartoons. "Not old enough for what," was my thought?Before I had a chance to ask the question though grandpa shifted Jeri from the center of his lap onto his right knee and welcomed me onto his left knee. "Oh, I think she's old enough," grandpa said. I scrambled onto grandpa's knee while making a face at Jeri.

In one swoop grandpa rocked the orange tweed recliner back, lifted our dresses and slipped his right hand down Jeri's panties and his left down mine as we rocked forward.

I don't remember what grandpa said to make this OK. As I look back on what would become years of competition I have one thought. How happy that bastard must have been to have two little girls on his lap to molest simultaneously. What perverse pleasure and gratification that must have provided him. Then my thinking stops and I am eight years old again.

I used to say that I was just seven years old when grandpa started teaching my sister and I how to, "One day be good wives." It seemed like I should have known better at eight. I was ashamed of myself for being so stupid.

Competition? Jeri and I became rival competitors - who could most please grandpa, who would win grandpa's favor for the day, who would stop at nothing?

The attention was nice. I'd never felt so special and so grown-up. Dad was active duty military so he was gone from home a lot. That's why we were currently living with my grandparents. During that time mom spent a lot of time with grandma at the local establishment, The Pines. I supposed the bar was named for all the pine trees on that mountain.

The competition between Jeri and I continued for another 23 years after we left that mountain. Jeri with her small frame and perfect hour glass figure took the lead early. I was a few inches taller than Jeri but I had the figure of a pear. We both had blue eyes but Jeri's were set against her porcelain skin and platinum blond hair. I was a stringy brunette. My most noticeable feature was also my most unattractive feature. A mass of dark hair that resembled shag carpeting on my forearms.

The summer of my 14th year rolled around and mom took us shopping for swim suits. Jeri got a bikini. There was no hiding her figure anyway. I could find nothing that fit and mom was becoming inpatient and irate. Mom pulled a swim suit from the rack and shoved it in my hands. "But, mom," I began to protest. It was obvious though she had made up my mind. The swim suit had built in cups for about a 36D. Mom did not care, that was my swim suit.

I was quite the joke around the swimming hole. Showering after a swim meant walking into the shower room full busted and reappearing in my street clothes as flat as Kansas. Just to drive the point home my brother bought me a T-shirt. It was light blue with a large green pear on it and it read, "What a pair." I felt humiliated and demeaned. I shoved the T-shirt in a bottom dresser drawer.

That same summer Jeri and I spent almost every night camping out. Along with two friends we pitched a tent in a large field behind our houses. We had no parental supervision. We did however have adult supervision. Adult male supervision.

I could describe the summer as one big, "Wham-bam thank you mam, " but Jeri and I or our friends were hardly mams. I did not even have pubic hair. Some thing men found amusing since my forearms were covered in hair.

May be I was angry. One afternoon I was by myself in a park. A red headed boy about my own age riding a green bicycle appeared from nowhere. I began the walk up a steep embankment to make my way out of the park. A chill passed through me and a since of urgency to get out of the park. Before I could make my way up the embankment the boy was on my back. He pulled me to the ground and began tearing at my clothes. Again and again I attempted to call for help - only air would escape from my mouth. I pounded him unmercifully until I was able to free myself. I ran in one direction, the bloodied red headed boy in another.

A normalcy developed to the insanity of our lives. One undisturbed by several more moves. Jeri and I had a stream of men, alcohol and marijuana in our lives. None of it sustained our hunger. A hunger to be daddy's little girls. Hunger for a sober mom. Hunger for boundaries. Hunger for self-respect that never was a possibility. We were hungry to be loved.

In our eyes every man we met was an opportunity to have our hunger filled. Just as our step grandfather had taught us we equated being in bed with a man being loved. We had no idea we were destroying ourselves.

The score card will show Jeri "won" - she dropped out of high school her senior year and married an abusive man. Her marriage lasted two years and Jeri was back in the game. I dropped out my junior year, pregnant. The insanity ensued.

Roe V. Wade had just been signed into law the same year. Had anyone asked me I would have protested abortion. No one asked me. Just as no one asked me how old I was when I had my first abortion, 16. I was terrified. Not so much about the abortion itself that was just some thing that had to be done. I was terrified of the news coverage showing women entering and leaving the clinic. I could not be caught on TV entering or leaving an abortion clinic. I never intended for abortion to be my means of birth control. Three more pregnancies spoke differently.

Is it true that your entire life passes before you before you die? That would certainly explain why it took Jeri a full 15 months to die after she received the diagnosis of inoperable lung cancer. Her mind sorting through all the men in and out of her life while she was still a baby.

Game, set, match. Jeri had pulled off another win in my book.

If you are without sin throw throw first rock. Please, throw the first rock.

K.A. Shaw