Their Lives Are Free

At Gal Pal, we provide a place and a space for women to “go there”. To share hard things, to tell the truth even when your voice shakes, to be bold, blunt and seen. As one of the two women running this place, I won’t ask of others what I’m not willing to do myself. So here goes… 

(SA Trigger Warning)

When I was six years old, my family and I moved into a house across the street from a known pedophile. Known to everyone but us. Mr. Cosker was an elderly widower, with a record number of thirteen adult children who never, ever visited him. The red flag before we called out red flags. I say “known pedophile” because we were only warned about him after.  After he babysat me before my mom could get home from work. After he parked at my bus stop to say disgusting things to me. After he sexually assaulted me. At six years old, I did not understand what was happening to me. There was no language for it, emotional or mental capacity for it. It just was.      

When we moved to a new house a half mile away and he had far less access to me, he would drive by when I was playing in the front yard and throw a bag of candy over the hedge at my feet. Literally a pedo-drive by, wouldn’t even stop his truck. And not to complain, but it was the cheapest possible candy there is. Those red and white peppermints you get at restaurants with the check. Another reason to dread the check.

When my mother witnessed this one Saturday afternoon through the Livingroom window, she called the police immediately. The community liaison cop I knew from school, Officer Stone, who was always lecturing us to “Just Say No” to drugs, always warning us of stranger danger, showed up at our house that night with a stack of Polaroid mugshots to talk about neighbor danger. Information I could have used yesterday.

The mugshots were all middle-aged white men, all with the same startled look on their faces. Shocked to have been exposed, not sorry for what they had done but so sorry to have been caught. Mr. Cosker was right in the middle of the stack, portly and red faced, wearing his favorite fishing cap, his large bloodshot eyes watering at the edges. I identified him to Officer Stone, who then walked my mom out to our front porch, where they whisper talked for a few minutes before he left. I don’t remember being asked any questions, I don’t remember being told what would happen next. I just went back to watching The Muppet Show, which made me laugh and sing and feel six years old.

Mr. Cosker never came to my bus stop again and ceased from driving past my house with those bargain basement bags of candy. In my mind, he didn’t live in our town anymore or might have even died. Until a few years later, when I was at the beach in the summer, on a swing set high in the air. His pea green GMC truck drove up and parked across the way. He hopped out with a bucket and a fishing pole, bouncing down the jetty towards the water, whistling against the wind. I don’t know that he saw me, but I sure saw him. His short-sleeved shirt fully unbuttoned and billowing in the ocean breeze, exposing his hairy chest and enormous belly. His balding head, covered by that favorite fishing cap, the one he wore in the mugshot.

Still swinging back and forth, pumping my legs to go higher and higher in the air, I understood the world more clearly now. This would be my weight to carry, no matter if he’d been shamed, arrested, reformed or just warned to leave me be. Here I was trying to swing my way into outer space, to somehow escape this terrible feeling and there he was, joyously pulling fish from the water like he could turn water into wine. 

I have resisted remembering this. I have resisted talking about this. And until now, I have resisted writing about this. Current events swirl around me now and with every new heavily redacted Epstein File reveal, comes another outraged Democrat and a nonplused Republican to bicker it out in the halls of Washington, where President Clinton put his dick in an intern’s mouth, where JFK fucked Marilyn and where the Catholic church lobbies for unborn babies on Monday after assaulting altar boys on Sunday. Just like long ago, back when I was six, there is no language for this, nor emotional or mental capacity for this. It just is. Our weight to carry; their lives are free.

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Mary Matthews is an award-winning filmmaker, illustrator, Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder of Gal Pal. Follow her work @galpalmedia.

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