The Three Miss Margarets

by Louise Shaffer

  They bounced over holes and tree roots, skidding off the road more than they were on it. They passed the shack in the depths of the woods where the Merrick family still lived. A rusted pickup was parked in front. Peggy prayed that someone might see the car whizzing by and call the police, but it didn’t look like anyone was home.

  They went deeper into the forest until the road petered out to nothing. The car jerked to a halt. Grady reached across her and opened the door.

  “Get out,” he said.

  “What are we doing here?”

  “Do what I tell you.”

  “I thought—”

  “You thought I was gonna take you to my mother’s house?” The northern boarding-school accent was blurring into pure Georgia. “You thought I was gonna bring home trash like you?”

  “I’m not trash—” she began, but he kept on going.

  “My mother is sick. She’s probably gonna die.” He turned to look at her with eyes that were wild.

  “I didn’t know—” she started, but he was in his own world of hurting and not hearing her.

  “They told me last night. Just like that. She’s gonna die.”

  She tried again. “I’m sorry—”

  “And you thought you were gonna flash those big titties at me, and I was gonna take you into her house.”

  It was close enough to the truth that she didn’t know what to say. He got out of the car and came around to her side.

  “I told you to get out!”

  “Grady, I don’t want to—”

  “Don’t you call me by my name! I didn’t give you permission to call me by my name!” He was screaming now. He grabbed her arm and started pulling her out of the car. Instinctively she seized the steering wheel. He reached across and pried her hands loose, bending back her fingers until she cried out and let go. She tried to slide across the seat to get out on the other side. Her head was jerked back viciously. He had her by her hair and was dragging her back. She heard herself begging him to stop, but he kept pulling until she was out of the car and on the ground. She tried to get up, but he pushed her back down into the dirt. She tried to scramble away from him, but he grabbed her legs and held her. She gave up and started to cry. He watched her weeping at his feet. He had stopped screaming at her now. He pulled her up until she was standing.

  “Shut up,” he said quietly.

  But she couldn’t stop crying. “I want to go home!”

  Casually, as if it were no big thing, he drew his hand back. She felt it coming at her face before she saw it; then it connected, and her cheek was alive with pain. Blood was in her mouth, her eyes blurred. The hand came back the other way, this time the stone on his ring cut open a gash above her eye. There was more blood now; it seemed to be pouring down her face and neck. Her new white bathing suit would be ruined.

  “I told you to shut up,” he said. She nodded as hard as she could. The pain was making her dizzy. She didn’t want to fight anymore, she wanted to do whatever she had to do to keep the hand from coming at her again.

  “Take off your clothes.”

  She wasn’t sure she’d heard him.

  “Don’t look like that. I’ve heard about you. You run around like a bitch in heat until some poor fool calls you on it; then you act like your pussy’s lined with gold. These hillbillies may let you get away with that shit, but not me.”

  The hand was moving back; it would come at her again. She wanted to be brave now, she wanted to fight, but her head was swimming with pain and the blood was still coming down from her eye and she was afraid the hand would break the bones in her face so it would be ugly forever. And then she would have nothing.

  She untied the blouse she had put on so carefully that morning. Impatient, he pulled it off and yanked her shorts down. But he couldn’t do the suit.

  “Get this fucking thing off!” he shouted. She hesitated, and the hand pulled back to hit. The hand was all now; avoiding it was the only thing that mattered. Obediently, she reached up and pulled down her shoulder straps. Then, as if she were in a terrible unstoppable dream, she peeled her beautiful new suit down her body until it was a fat white sausage at her feet.

  After that it was a blur. He pushed her down on the ground. Stones and twigs and dry grass ground into her back. Then he was on top of her. For a second she tried to keep her knees together but the hand pulled back, ready to come at her, and she opened her legs. Her mind went away. Then he pushed inside her, and the ripping and the hurting started. And then everything went black.

  WHEN SHE CAME TO someone was shaking her, and there were two voices.

  “Get up, you little bitch, I didn’t hurt you.” She recognized Grady screaming again.

  “Christ Almighty, what’ve you done to her?” That was the new voice.

  “She asked for it.”

  “You beat the crap outa her.”

  “Served her right.” Grady was grabbing her, trying to make her sit up. “Stop playing games, damn you.” Then his hands were on her throat.

  “Grady, don’t!” She heard a scuffle and the hands were gone.

  “Leave me alone!” Grady was shouting at his companion now. “I know what I’m doing!”

  “You’re drunk as a skunk. You gotta get outa here.”

  “You saying I got to worry about that tramp? Me?”

  “This ain’t just catting around. She’s a white girl!”

  “She’s trash!” But his voice sounded less sure.

  “Her mama belongs to your mama’s church, for Christ’s sake. Let’s go.”

  Something fell on top of her, her blouse and shorts but no bathing suit. There were sounds like they were moving away. Then a rustle of leaves and a protest from the voice she didn’t know. “Grady, don’t be stupid.” There was a sound she had just recently learned to recognize, of a hand hitting soft flesh. She opened her eyes. Grady’s back was to her. Over his shoulder she could see John Merrick rubbing his jaw.

  “Don’t ever call me stupid, you fucking redneck son of a bitch,” Grady said, in a steely quiet voice. Through her pain she saw the fury in John Merrick.

  “Dammit, one day I’m gonna—”

  “You’re gonna do nothing.” He’d stopped screaming now, and the Georgia lilt was gone from his speech. He was back to his harsh northern sound. “Go on, go home to that hell hole I wouldn’t make my dog live in.” There was a moment when she thought John Merrick might strike out. She could feel how much he wanted to, but instead he turned on his heel and walked away. She watched Grady as he walked to his horrid red car, got in, backed around, and drove off.

  IN THE KITCHEN, Peggy lifted her head, which had exchanged swimming for throbbing. She had a game she played with herself on mornings like this. The rule was: As long as she didn’t vomit she hadn’t been that drunk. Today she was going to lose the game. She lurched to her feet, vaguely aiming for the hall bathroom, but changed course just in time to make it to the kitchen sink.

  She sat again and waited for her insides to settle. Her control was slipping, which was probably cause for alarm. On the upside, she was feeling a hell of a lot better now that she’d been sick. She got to her feet carefully and continued her mission to the bathroom. Li’l Bit would be calling any minute, and somehow it seemed necessary to brush her teeth before talking to Li’l Bit. Even on the phone. Especially on this morning.

  She seemed to be destined not to reach the bathroom. The phone rang, sending sharp spikes into her already bleeding brain cells. If she planned to keep up her present lifestyle, she really should look into something a little more mellow for her telephone. Maybe some kind of soft buzzer. She picked up the receiver.

  “Hey there, Li’l Bit,” she said quickly, hoping to forestall a lecture. “I’ll be over in about an hour. I got a late start.”

  “Are you all right?” Li’l Bit asked. Obviously there had been an early morning conference and Li’l Bit and Maggie had agreed to be gentle with her. Peggy hated it when they did that.

  “I overdid it a
little,” she offered. Li’l Bit didn’t take the bait. Her girlfriends really had decided to make soft paws. It was actually kind of sweet.

  “Maggie isn’t here yet,” Li’l Bit went on. “She called from the nursing home to say she’s on her way.” Peggy groaned inside. The nursing home meant Maggie had told Lottie, an exercise in sorrow that would leave her looking so old and fragile she’d break Peggy’s heart and scare the hell out of her. The thought of losing Maggie or Li’l Bit put her into a cold panicky sweat these days. “I wish she’d called me,” she said. “I could have taken her.”

  “She probably didn’t want to wait that long,” said Li’l Bit, with just enough of her usual acid to be reassuring. “You better hurry. Ed is coming over in a little while. Someone saw us at the cabin last night.”

  The spikes in Peggy’s head dug deeper. “Oh, God,” she said.

  “It’ll be all right,” Li’l Bit said. “We’ll get through it.” But there was something wrong with her voice.

  “Li’l Bit, what else?”

  Silence. Then, finally, “I had another phone call after I spoke to Ed. It was from a writer. He’s from New York. And he says he’s writing a book about Vashti.”

  Bile washed its bitter way up Peggy’s throat, but she swallowed it back down. “Did he say what he wanted to talk about?” she asked.

  “General impressions we might have about Vashti.”

  “We can do that.”

  “And any light we might be able to shed on the night John Merrick died.”

  “I see.” Her voice stunned her, it was so calm. But her poor battered mind was sorting fast through a jumble of fears. I always knew someone would start wondering, she thought.

  “Peggy, after all these years, even if anyone did want to go back, they’d never find anything”—Li’l Bit paused to search for the right word—”untoward.”

  “I wasn’t worried.”

  “We have no reason to be.”

  And of course Li’l Bit was right.

  Chapter Thirteen

  YEARS AFTER GRADY ENDED HER CHILDHOOD FOREVER, Peggy was listening to a woman’s TV talk show when the subject of rape came up. She learned that rape was something you never got over. You learned to live with it, said the authoritative lady expert, who obviously had never been through it. “No shit,” Peggy had replied to the TV screen. The expert went on to say that decisions made right after the incident were crucial to future recovery. Peggy had thrown a small porcelain figure of a Rottweiler at the TV screen.

  AFTER GRADY LEFT HER, she dressed in her torn blouse and shorts. The cut over her eye had stopped bleeding, but her cheek had started to swell and her whole head throbbed with a pain that made her want to pass out or throw up. The other, far more intense pain she was feeling, she refused to think about. She started shaking as if she were cold but she knew she wasn’t. She had to get home before she passed out again. But the thought of Mama’s face and the way Mama would cry was overwhelming. She felt herself start to sag toward the ground and got down on her knees. The ruined bathing suit was in a little heap where she’d taken it off. She picked it up and got to her feet, ignoring the sickening waves in her stomach. She stumbled into the woods where the kudzu was thick and tossed the suit as far as she could. The effort was almost too much for her queasy stomach, but she wouldn’t let Grady have the satisfaction of making her throw up in the grass. She leaned against the trunk of a tree and waited until the nausea passed. One thing was clear to her, through the mists of pain and shock. She understood it without question: Mama must never know about this. Which meant she needed help. Slowly and painfully she made her way back to the dirt road and started back to the highway.

  When she passed by the shack, she got off the dirt road and went behind the trees just in case John Merrick might be home and see her. But the old pickup was gone.

  Finally she reached the highway. Miss Li’l Bit’s house was on the other side of the road. Cars were parked in the driveway; the other kids were still there. She ducked into the woods and waited.

  She didn’t know how long she hid there. Pain made hours and minutes melt together. Finally the kids came out. She could hear them laughing, teasing, and flirting as they got into their cars. Miss Li’l Bit got into her station wagon and drove off with the rest. Peggy kept on waiting.

  After what seemed like hours, Miss Li’l Bit came back from driving everyone to the parking lot. Peggy watched until she was in the house and then crossed the highway and rang the doorbell. It was Millie who answered. The look on her face told Peggy everything she needed to know about how her own face must look.

  “Could you get Miss Li’l Bit?” She did her best to get the words out cleanly, but her swollen lips made them mushy. Millie understood anyway. She brought Peggy into the main parlor and disappeared. A couple of minutes later, Miss Li’l Bit rushed in. Peggy turned to face her and Miss Li’l Bit stopped cold.

  “That little bastard!” she trilled, in her high funny voice. Peggy wanted to laugh, but she couldn’t make a sound.

  After that things moved quickly. Millie brought her some bourbon, her first taste of alcohol. Even as a woman in her sixties she would still remember how it found its way into the cold place inside her, a place she thought would stay cold for the rest of her life, and warmed it.

  Miss Li’l Bit called Dr. Maggie, who closed down her clinic and came over to clean Peggy’s wounds and stitch the cut above her eye. Then Miss Li’l Bit drew a bath for her, but she was shaking too hard to undress. Dr. Maggie made her swallow a pill and lie down again, until it took effect and made everything seem far away. Then she couldn’t keep herself from talking. Miss Li’l Bit seated herself in a wingback chair, and Dr. Maggie perched on an ottoman, and feeling as if she was in a dream Peggy told them all of it. She told them about the white bathing suit and what the boys said about her. She told them about Mama crying every night and Peggy being the one who had to fix it. And she told them about seeing Grady and realizing she had to make her move and the way she had dumped her new mascara on the ground. Miss Li’l Bit and Dr. Maggie sat still as stones and listened. Peggy didn’t cry once, not even when she told them everything Grady had done. They started saying over and over that none of it was her fault, but their voices were too far away and they must have seen her attention was wandering, so they stopped. After that, Millie and Miss Li’l Bit took off her clothes and sponged her clean. They wrapped her in one of Miss Li’l Bit’s robes that was old and soft, and she lay down on Miss Li’l Bit’s old-fashioned couch and floated on the power of the pill, or it could have been the bourbon.

  “Let her sleep now,” she heard Dr. Maggie say through the fog around her. But Peggy couldn’t. Not yet. She forced herself to sit up. Dr. Maggie and Miss Li’l Bit were at her side.

  “Mama,” she said. “Don’t tell her.”

  The two older women exchanged looks.

  “She has to know, dear,” Dr. Maggie began, in her gentle low voice, but Peggy cut her off. “No!” she said. Tears pushed up against her eyes, and the crying finally started. “Mama can’t—” she tried to say, through the sobs. But there was no way to explain that for her frightened little mother this would be too much.

  The two women soothed her. They said she should go to sleep now and they would talk again later. So she let herself drift off, and while she did Miss Li’l Bit called her mother and said there had been an accident. A car and Grady Garrison were mentioned. And as Peggy could have predicted if they’d asked her, Mama had hysterics and wanted to know if Grady was hurt because she was afraid the Garrisons might blame Peggy. They told her that both Peggy and Grady were all right, although Peggy was bruised and shaken and had taken something to make her sleep. Miss Li’l Bit suggested it would probably be better if Mama didn’t come to get her until later. Her mother agreed eagerly. If Miss Li’l Bit and Dr. Maggie were stunned by how easily Mama turned her daughter over to virtual strangers, they never said it.

  When Peggy woke up, before her mama came to g
et her, Dr. Maggie tried to talk to her again. Miss Li’l Bit sat by silently.

  “You’ve been through a terrible ordeal,” Dr. Maggie said. “Your mother should know.”

  “No.”

  “She can help you.” Out of the corner of her eye, Peggy saw Miss Li’l Bit shift impatiently.

  “No, she can’t. All she’ll do is cry.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be upset, but—”

  “She won’t want to hear. She’d rather I lied to her. If I tell her what happened she’ll say I’m lying.”

  “Peggy, she wouldn’t!”

  “She will! Because that would be better. I’m damaged goods now.”

  “Child, what a terrible thing to say.”

  “You think everyone else won’t say it?”

  “Your mother—”

  “Mama wanted me to marry him! Don’t you understand? I was supposed to get married! Now who’s going to want me?”

  “You’re still the same person you always were.”

  “No, I’m not! And you know it! You know what people will say. If anyone finds out, that’ll be the end for me.”

  “But the police—” Dr. Maggie started to say.

  “I don’t want to talk about it! I just want to leave it alone.”

  Miss Li’l Bit stepped in. “Maggie, you know what will happen to her if she tries to tell the police that Grady Garrison raped her. Dalton will have a dozen witnesses who’ll say she went willingly.”

  “And the bruises on her face?”

  “An accident with the car. Or she tripped and fell. I don’t know how the lawyers will argue it.”

  “Don’t you think this is a conversation she should be having with her mother?”

  “She just told you her mother will be useless. I agree with her.”

  “That is not for you to say.”