of four children and the only introvert in the group. While her family was loud and opinionated, she was quiet and timid. And because she was so different from the rest of them, she often watched the chaos that ensued during family gatherings from the periphery, like an outsider who didn’t belong. She wondered why God had placed her with them. She couldn’t relate to her parents nor did she share the qualities that characterized her siblings. In the constant arguing and heated debates they had with each other, the seven-year-old found herself lost and forgotten.
Alessa lacked the right characteristics for becoming anything important in life. Shy and unexceptional, with rarely a smile to light up her solemn expression, her manner led people to believe she was a miserable little child. Her lank hair and large, serious brown eyes made her look homely. Her small frame was draped in threadbare hand-me-downs that were always too big for her and never seemed to sit on her the way they did on her two older sisters. The youngest in the family, she stood in stark contrast to her siblings—Anna, the firstborn, and Rosabella—and Anthony, the brother who came between the two. All three flaunted thick black hair, beautiful brown eyes, and radiant olive complexions. From the time she was young, Alessa had known she was not like the rest. The sheer force of their outgoing personalities appealed to all and overshadowed her meek demeanor. Simply put, Alessa was forgettable.
Her maternal grandmother, who she called Grammy, lived with the family, and since her mother, Caterina, was the youngest of fourteen children, people visited often. Being an insignificant part of such a large family was unbearable for the solitary seven-year-old. She would listen to them argue with each other over the most trivial matters, as they spent hours sitting around the kitchen table, drinking coffee, and passing judgment on people they knew, bitterly criticizing the way they lived their lives or raised their children. As each evening drew to a close, someone would invariably stomp out of the house either in a fit of silent rage or screaming at another family member. The constant friction was traumatic for the little girl, a fact no one else in her family sensed or understood. Turmoil was what her family thrived on, whereas all she wanted was to be with people who would make her feel she belonged.
Alessa found an ally in Grammy, who, given the limited number of bedrooms in their house, shared one with her. The child loved sleeping with Grammy, whose very presence instilled in her a sense of security amid the ominous darkness teeming with imaginary monsters that settled around her bed at night. Every evening, when it was time for sleep, Alessa would snuggle up close, her small arm linked as tightly as a vice through her grandmother’s. As Alessa lay beside her, Grammy would go through her rosary beads and murmur her evening prayers, assuring her granddaughter that monsters didn’t exist.
Alessa’s grandmother was a happy woman. Her cheerful face was framed by short, curly gray hair, and her skin felt as soft and smooth as silk. The matriarch of the family, she was a gentle soul, loved and respected because of her kindness to others. She often invited neighbors and relatives to their home so she could provide them with a hot meal. Even though she wasn’t a wealthy woman, she believed in sharing what God had provided her. She would knit for hours on end so she could gift blankets in the winter to people she knew. Alessa would squeeze in beside her grandmother as she sat knitting on her rocking chair and would often doze off, lulled by the sound of her infinitely soothing voice. In her company, Alessa always felt tranquil and completely at peace.
The family was poor and enjoyed few luxuries. One of Alessa’s most cherished memories was when she was five years old and took a weeklong vacation with her grandmother to Atlantic City, New Jersey. At the Chalfonte-Haddon Hall Hotel where they stayed, the child was happy, as though she were in heaven. Wearing the new bathing suit her grandmother had bought her, she had played on the beach, building sand castles and jumping the waves. She loved eating in the elegant dining room where she could choose whatever delicacies she wanted from the dessert table. The waiters were nice to her and attentive to their every need. Grammy had let her order Shirley Temples served in tall glasses with crushed ice and topped with a cherry. The vacation in Atlantic City was Alessa’s only good childhood memory. She would relive that week a million times in her mind as she grew older and found less and less to look forward to.
When Alessa was six years old, her grandmother died. Unable to imagine life without her, the child was devastated by her loss and felt there was no longer a place in her home she could call safe. She was bereft and seemed abandoned without her ally, but soon found solace in a new one. Her Uncle Danny held and comforted her through her bereavement. She felt special and deeply loved because of the kindness he showered upon her during those dark days following Grammy’s death.
Everyone loved her Uncle Danny. He was popular, a family icon, the man with all the money, and everyone sought his company. He often told stories about the mafia, and most people believed he worked for them. But eventually, Alessa realized, they were only stories concocted to make everyone live in awe of him. Uncle Danny’s tales were so persuasive that most people who knew him gave him far more respect than he deserved. He wielded a lot of clout, and everyone around him automatically bowed to his demands.
Six long months after her grandmother had passed away and shortly after her Uncle Danny’s live-in girlfriend died tragically in a car accident, he moved in with Alessa’s family.
“After all,” Caterina told her husband, “we need the money. We can’t keep this house and raise the kids here if we don’t get help.”
It was Caterina who had invited her brother to move in with them. Danny promptly accepted the offer and before they knew it, he had taken over one of the four bedrooms in their house and with it, Alessa’s life.
When her uncle first moved in, the little girl was excited at the prospect of having him there. Uncle Danny loved her more than anyone else in the family and was almost a substitute for her grandmother. He had an air of confidence about him that made Alessa feel safe when she was by his side. He was generous, loving, and treated her special. Like she was the only person on earth.
Grief-stricken, vulnerable, and still fearful of the monsters that lurked in her imagination, she turned to Uncle Danny, who found the perfect reason to console her. Shortly after he moved into her house, Alessa’s uncle invited her to sleep in his bed. As she had done with her grandmother, the child would link her arm through his as she lay waiting to fall asleep. For the next several months, Alessa slept peacefully next to her protector, unafraid that the monsters of the night would attack her.
Until the first night when Uncle Danny introduced their secret.
Alessa’s parents knew that their youngest child had been sleeping in Danny’s bed, but any concern they might have had over the situation was silenced when the income from their new tenant promptly alleviated their anxieties about how they would pay their bills. Caterina believed her brother was in the mafia, a fact she took great pride in. She had a twisted view of reality and the world in general. As for her, the world revolved around this overgrown beast, her older brother. After all, he was paying her seven hundred and fifty dollars a month to live in their house, a sum Alessa’s whole family lived on. Her parents didn’t go to work. Her father couldn’t because he had been disabled in combat during the war, and her mother wouldn’t, claiming she “needed” to stay home with the kids. Alessa’s father was emotionally absent from family matters and never questioned Caterina’s Neanderthal-like child-rearing methods.
Until Uncle Danny moved in, the family had survived solely on welfare. In middle-class circles, they were known as poor white trash. Alessa was the golden goose Caterina needed to indulge her unwillingness to work and keep her finances afloat. In a short while, the child became the ultimate sacrificial lamb, the bargaining chip her family could use to retain their home, buy the things they needed, and maintain the lifestyle they could ill afford otherwise.
The first time Alessa’s uncle went after her, she felt isolated and helpless. The abuse became more frequent thereafter. It occurred to the child she should tell her mother about her uncle’s behavior, but Danny enjoyed a certain standing both in her family and in the neighborhood where they lived, and she was not confident about being taken seriously. By abusing her, he had stripped her of all confidence and she felt entirely defenseless, unable to resist his assaults, and she felt like it was her who had caused the abuse.
What confused Alessa even more was her uncle’s assertion that whatever took place between them was a natural thing shared between two people who loved each other. After that first night, she didn’t sleep in his bed again. Instead, he went to her bedroom to quench his sick desires.
Sometimes when the family was out, leaving the two alone at home, Uncle Danny would find her on the sofa watching television. Breathing heavily into her ear, he would tell her how much he loved her and that she was the love of his life. Then he’d take his abusive form of gratification. By the time Alessa was nine years old, the abuse had become a nightly ritual.
Year after year, the child lived cocooned in her misery, feeling like a freak in every way imaginable. She had gradually come to understand that what her uncle was doing to her was far from normal or natural, but few options lay before her. With each passing year, she despised him more and withdrew further into herself. That monstrous being consumed her thoughts and her life, terrorizing her like the imaginary monsters of the night had once done.
After she turned twelve, Uncle Danny wanted more from her. One night, she woke up to his groping. It was the middle of summer and the house had no air conditioning, except for the window units in her parents’ and uncle’s bedrooms. The heat was stifling and a thin film of sweat covered her thin body, clad in old, worn baby-doll pajamas frayed around the neck and along the hem of the shirt. The pajamas, which she had worn for the last four summers, were too small for her now and barely covered her body. At twelve, Alessa knew she was too old to be wearing baby-doll pajamas. But she also knew there were many other things she shouldn’t be doing, including tolerating her uncle’s sick demands.
When he left her bedroom that night, Alessa cried until the tears wouldn’t come anymore. And even when she was sleeping, there was no shelter from her pain. She dreamed of faceless men touching her, pawing her all over with their filthy hands. She couldn’t escape the horrendous nightmare she was living, not even in her sleep.
When she woke the next morning, it had finally dawned on her that the monsters she had always feared living under her bed had never existed. The only real monster had a name—Uncle Danny, the ogre who had stripped her of her innocence and left nothing but an empty shell. Her childhood, her very life, had been stolen from her. She no longer knew who she was nor did she dare to contemplate her future. She had learned that life was flawed and that making it through each day would take all her strength and challenge her powers of endurance. Her rough childhood, robbed of its innocence, would arm her with the resilience to hold on to her sanity later in life.
Despite her moments of dark despair, Alessa had faith she’d rise above the sordidness of her circumstances and come through. Her belief in herself had been instilled early in life by her beloved grandmother, who had chosen her name for her, imagining that she had seen something unique and exciting in the newborn. Alessa meant “defender of mankind.” That was how her grandmother had visualized her when she looked into the baby’s eyes and probed her soul. Despite Caterina’s attempts to undermine her youngest child at every opportunity, Alessa’s grandmother had been firm in her belief that one day, her favorite grandchild would be a strong resilient inspiration for many. But, most importantly, she would be a force to reckon with.
