Walter James

Content advisory: This story deals with sensitive memories of childhood abuse. Recommended for mature readers.

In another universe—the one children should be born into—men like Walter James exist for a simple reason: to lift the future. In that place, old men see children as seeds they’re meant to water. They hand out kindness the way others hand out peppermints. They look at small faces and see whole galaxies waiting to become something. And in that universe, if a little girl walks by, they reach into their pockets just to see her smile, not for anything else. In that universe, Walter James would’ve been the kind of man who fixed toys, saved bottle caps for collections, and believed every child deserved one more reason to trust the world.

That’s the version of him I once carried without knowing it was fiction. The world I gave him before the truth arrived.

Memories do that. They split like two branches—what a child sees, and what the truth eventually shows.

The real universe wasn’t as perfect.

In my world, Walter James stood at the church doors every Sunday like he had an assignment from God Himself. He wasn’t paid for it. He wasn’t appointed. He just stayed in the foyer, watching the entrance, keeping an eye on who walked in and who walked out. The sanctuary was upstairs—big wooden red carpeted steps leading up into singing, clapping, the heat of the Spirit—and downstairs was the eating area, the long tables, the hallway with the two bathrooms. He parked himself right in the middle of all of it.

I didn’t understand any of that as a kid. I just knew that whenever I went to the bathroom, I came back with a quarter. A shiny one if he had it. A dull one if he didn’t. He always had something to slip into my hand. I didn’t question it. Why would I? He was the doorkeeper. The safe one. The grown-up watching the grown-ups.

My parents were both busy serving the church. My father was an assistant ordained minister, and my mother a missionary and choir director who always led the entire congregation in song. Her beautiful voice seemed to fill the church and spill into the neighborhood on it's way to heaven. When both choirs sang as one, she was the heartbeat they followed. Their presence was strong and respected. So I understand now, looking back, why nothing ever happened in the church. He wasn’t reckless. He wasn’t sloppy. He was patient. Strategic. People like him always are.

The day everything shattered wasn’t even a church day. It was simple. I wanted to win a camera.

In school we were selling candy, and the prize for selling enough was this camera I couldn’t stop dreaming about. I wanted it the way kids want treasure. I lived in my imagination and that camera felt like a doorway I needed. A hundred little snapshots waiting to happen.

Ms. Johnson was a faithful church member.  She was a member of the Senior Choir that my mom directed. She was a widow, kind, quiet, and she always had a warm smile. She was perfect, a grandmother with no grandkids of her own. She was our babysitter. Her brother was Walter James.

He had cancer then. He’d had some kind of surgery. He was recovering at her house because she didn’t want him to be alone during that time. Most days he stayed in the bedroom, too sick to move around. But every so often, when he was feeling stronger, he’d sit in the chair in the living room and watch TV while we played outside.

That day, I ran inside to grab something from my bookbag—juice first, then my candy brochure. He was in the chair, shoulders slumped, eyes on the screen. He turned his head when I came in. I felt his attention like a warm lamp turning toward me.

I walked to my bag and asked, “Mr. James, do you want to look and see if you want to buy some candy? I’m trying to win a camera.”

He took the brochure from my hand.

And then he put his other hand somewhere no child should ever feel a hand.

Quick, quiet, practiced.

He lifted the loose fabric of my shorts and reached underneath. His breath changed. His eyes changed. 

He leaned toward me, his lips puckered.

The room changed. In shock, I backed away too late. My stomach began to fill with shame. 

I ran.

I tore out the door, across the alley, straight to my friend Joy. I told her everything in words that tumbled out the way panic does—out of order, too fast, full of heat. Joy begged me to tell Ms. Johnson. She said it like she was scared for me, like she knew things I didn’t know yet.

I went to the door and knocked. Ms. Johnson came to it, gentle, quiet, the way she always was. I sat down at her kitchen table. Walter James in the next room. I told her kind of what happened. Ashamed I told her my less dirty version.  Nine years old and too ashamed to say what he actually touched, I reluctantly said, "He touched my butt." I watched her hands start to tremble. Her whole body shook like her spirit had just been struck. She was just… breaking open under the weight of truth.  She knew this would be her last day keeping us after telling my mother.

Walter James died, it seemed, a few weeks later.  I would see Ms Johnson at church, lonely and filled with regret and shame.  She got sick after that and died about a year later, if I remember correctly.  I think she died of a broken heart, not being able to keep us anymore.

As an adult, I learned he had harmed others. He wasn’t new to it. He didn’t slip. He didn’t make a single mistake.

People like him don’t make mistakes. They have patterns.

And that is the moment when the parallel universe I made for him collapsed. The version where he was the gentle old man handing out quarters for joy—gone. The version where children were safe around him—gone. When he died, it was a relief.

But I still return to that alternate universe sometimes… not for him, but for the child I used to be. The one who believed the world was kinder than it was. The one who trusted the shine of a quarter, the warmth of a smile, the idea that grown-ups were built to protect.

In that other universe, Walter James never reaches into the dark.
In that universe, he only hands out kindness.
In that universe, little girls never learn the truth too early.

And maybe that’s why I keep that universe alive—not to rewrite what happened, but to remind myself of the world I’m trying to build. The world children deserve. The world where every adult understands their power and uses it to water the future, not wound it.

A shared narrative by Jade and Janel