From This Moment On by Shania Twain

jumped up and down, giggling, his bathrobe opened to reveal an ugly, dangling organ surrounded by a ghastly bush of hair. The man made no effort whatsoever to cover himself; he just lay there coolly, clearly aware that he was intentionally exposing himself to a couple of little girls, one of whom happened to be his own daughter.
    I had never seen anything like this sausage-like thing before, and it scared me. Picturing the scene still gives me shivers. I ran out of the house and kept running until I was standing in our kitchen, gasping for breath. No one asked me where I’d been, nor did I volunteer the information. It never would have occurred to me to tell my parents about the frightening experience; to be honest, I didn’t want to burden them, as things were stressful enough in our household. Mom and Dad have enough to worry about without having to worry about me, was my thinking.
    I was, however, concerned for Charlotte and felt guilty for leaving her there with her father, and his gross, disgusting thing, without telling anyone. I knew there was definitely something wrong with that scenario, but I didn’t have the courage or maturity to know whatto do except feel uncomfortable and confused. I believed there was nothing I could do for her, and I believe that she had her problems, I had mine. That sense of helplessness is how I would describe how I felt during many crises growing up, with me consciously detaching myself from the suffering, even though I felt every bit of it. I did my best to distance myself from it mentally, a mind-over-matter-type approach. All I felt I “could” do was to move forward, look ahead and not behind. As a parent, I know that if my child told me about a similar experience at a friend’s house, I’d march right over there and bonk the guy on the head, then report his ass to child protective services. I’d like to think that had my mother known, she would have been just as alarmed—although instead of bonking the child offender on the head, she probably would have bonked me, to try to scare the wits out of me so I never went back there again. That would have been her way of protecting me, and I suppose it would have worked, although I was sufficiently freaked out without her help. No way was I ever going back to Charlotte’s house.
    When my grandmother died in 1972, my mother was devastated and thrown into intense grief, crying all the time and at the drop of a hat. I can’t imagine how lost and alone she must have felt with three little girls and a new baby, trapped in a violent, roller-coaster marriage with barely enough money to get by. Now she had lost the one person who had always been there for her. Everyone loved my grandma Eileen, including my dad, who always spoke of her with immense respect, but no one more so than my mother. And certainly no one was as dependent on her as my mother was; just the mere mention of my grandmother would bring her to tears.
    Not long after my grandmother died and my new baby brother began to crawl, we moved to a basement with more living space. Although it was roomier—at least my sisters and I now had our own bedroom—I didn’t like it so much. Our bedroom carpet was so thick with skank that I didn’t want it touching my bare feet. I decided we needed to pull up the carpet and throw it out. I’m not sure what myparents thought of the idea, but they didn’t try to stop me, in any case. When I began peeling back the dirty thing, what I saw made me want to throw up on the spot: what seemed like zillions of disgusting, squirming white things, like moving rice, bending and squiggling on the bare floor where the carpet had been. I’d never heard of maggots before, but I knew that they were insects, and I knew that insects shouldn’t be living under the carpet. Rather than complain, I slapped the filthy carpet back down and simply pretended that our revolting little guests weren’t there. The way I figured it, better for them to be living under