know where they would go. Where did they hide in the hot daylight of noon, their danger time? Somehow I understood the need to hide, to seek camouflage. Denial was my camouflage. I want to be appalled at how for years I cherished the beauty of that deer as an image of Dad, while I buried images like Dad forcing fellatio on a young daughter in the shower, but I had no other way to cope. I wanted my Daddy to be a wonderful man. He was not, and many children are growing up in similar families. If I thought I could stop the pattern of abuse, I’d sue. Friends urge me, “ Sue ’em Liv. You’ ll have the courtroom filled with friends. We’ ll all te s t ify .” Other friends say, “ We understand that you’ re afraid.” In response I feel cowardly. I don’t want to shirk my responsibility to help others who are not as strong as I am, but I don’t want to spend months trying to prove my relatives are confused, sick, liars, while they try to prove the same about me. I don’t have proof to clinch the case; no pictures, no witnesses, just the pattern of my life, which is where the disagreement begins. No, my life is not a part of Beulah anymore. The case would surely have notoriety in Beulah and might help people understand the urgency of believing children. More likely, it would be convenient for the community to create a scapegoat of one family: believe that that family was aberrant; focus on the eccentricities of my grandparents, uncles, cousins, aunts. The community would remain intact with children in the same danger. The group of adults making pornographic movies using their children would continue. Some of the other girls who were displayed and raped in those movies still live in town and have young children who for all I know are in the newest films. The doctor who called Dad and not Mom when I went in with the flu that turned out to be I want to heal our culture and fill that lonely hole in me that was taught perversion in the name o f love. pregnancy, pregnancy in a girl who was not experimenting with boys, and the other doctor who performed the abortion on me as a favor to Dad— they no doubt continue to practice medicine. I wish I could stop them all. Now that I have dug up ugly memories and learned to let them reside with the beautiful, I am angry when people believe we should choose what to remember of life. Victims are shamed into silence: you just want everything to be perfect; look on the bright side, at least you had food and education; don’t live in the past; you are just remembering a dream. The summer before 1984, the summer Donald and I grew to know we didn’t have to be divorced, didn’t have to leave one another in the wake of chaos trailing my returning memories, we saw another deer beside the road. We were driving at night on a rural detour off the Wisconsin interstate. The sky was translucent, almost a black-blue saphire with stars. We saw a dead deer, a buck split in half, probably from the impact of a car or truck, we thought. The head and chest were on the road several miles past the lower body, like they had been stuck on a truck’s grill and the trucker had stopped to scrape them off. The head was upside down on the road shoulder, its neck pointing up, some miscellaneous skin and guts flopped over beside it, on top of it. Then I saw a doe standing in a reedy marsh. I think she was a doe; she was light brown, delicate, without antlers. Our headlight glare captured her agitated eyes. I thought she must know the other deer was dead; maybe she saw the accident. I wanted to explain the situation to her, tell her how to keep safe. She couldn’t understand me any more than people who speak my language do. I can explain fear, danger, the need for protection and strength, but what is safety? A life of defense or learning to attack first? I don’t know. I believe in knowledge, the knowledge of events, recognized emotions, choices, faith. This is history. I believe the present flows out of the past. Until we believe that history does have lessons to teach us, and that a violent culture creates violent history, we are stuck learning and relearning the same lessons. Olivia Lundeen is a poet and nonfiction writer living in the Twin Cities. Beulah is part of a work in progress. Lies is a recent painting by Twin Cities artist Jean Murakami. She is represented by MC Gallery. Beginning May 21st her work will be part of the Minnesota Artist Exhibition Program at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Connie Gilbert is a free-lance graphic designer in the Twin Cities, developing unique, creative answers to print needs of clients in growing businesses, the arts, and education. 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