Thirty Sunsets

by Christine Hurley Deriso

  “What happened?” she asks softly.

  “Nothing.” My chest is still pounding, but my voice is flat, lifeless.

  “You can tell me, Forrest.”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  Mom pulls me gently up by my arms, then coaxes me onto my feet despite my wobbly legs. She stands in front of me, steadying my shoulders. “Tell me what happened.”

  Okay, now the sob sequence has been activated. I fall into her arms and weep on her shoulder, my body shaking against hers. I cry for a long time as Mom strokes my hair, murmuring into my ear that everything will be okay. Dad pokes his head in the door at some point, nods at Mom, then shuts the door behind him.

  Mom lowers me to the bed again, sitting beside me as she squeezes my hand and peers into my eyes.

  “What happened? The boy who was supposed to come to dinner tonight … that’s who it was?”

  A fresh wave of tears rolls down my cheeks.

  “He tried to rape me, Mom. He got me alone in this gazebo-type thing on the beach, and he wouldn’t let me go.”

  I glance at her, expecting her to wince and look away, but she holds my gaze. “Did he hurt you?”

  I shake my head, then hold it still, then nod. “He shoved me, he bit me … ”

  Yes. He hurt me.

  “But … you got away?” Mom leans in closer, tightening her grip on my hand.

  I nod, sniffling. “The knee … I used my knee.”

  “Good girl. I’m so proud of you. This won’t go unanswered, Forrest.”

  “Mom, no,” I moan. “I don’t want to talk to anybody about it. I never want to see him again. I don’t even know his last name … I don’t know where he lives … oh god, it would be his word against mine … no!”

  I start crying again, and Mom gathers me in her arms the way she gathers laundry, all bundled and compact, ready to be taken care of.

  “I know you’re upset,” she says in an eerily calm voice, “but what he did is against the law. This is a criminal matter.”

  I squeeze more tears from my eyes and shake my head against her chest. “I’m so stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

  “You’re not stupid,” Mom says firmly. “I’m so sorry he hurt you.”

  “I’m sixteen,” I say. “Most girls have had experience with guys by my age. And I don’t even know a nice guy from a … ”

  “A rapist,” Mom says.

  I shake my head. “But there more to it than that. You don’t understand, Mom. I … we kissed on the beach a couple

  of times, and as stupid as it sounds, that was cool with me. I liked him. And I guess he thought I was becoming, like, I dunno, his girlfriend or something … ”

  “You’re entitled to kiss a guy without him forcing himself on you,” Mom says. “He tried to rape you, Forrest. And that doesn’t make you stupid. Sometimes people show you what they think you want to see. They fool you. They don’t show their true colors until it’s too late.”

  “No, Mom, you don’t understand … ”

  Mom tilts up my chin, forcing me to look at her. “I understand.”

  My eyes search hers in confusion.

  “I understand, Forrest,” she repeats.

  Suddenly, her words don’t sound like a platitude. There’s too much conviction in her voice. I search her eyes for some explanation.

  But I’m not ready for the one she gives me:

  “The man who got me pregnant with Brian … Forrest, he raped me.”

  twenty-five

  My jaw drops.

  “I didn’t want you to know, honey. I didn’t want either of you to know.”

  My head spins. “What … how … what happened?”

  Mom takes a deep breath, exhaling through an O-shaped mouth. “I was in college, walking home from the library one night, back to my dorm. I say night … it was really just evening … dusk. It was fall and the days had started getting shorter, so I miscalculated how much time I had to get back to the dorm. Not that walking in the dark should be a problem. Still, you hold every detail under a microscope after the fact, wonder what you did wrong, what you could have done differently … ”

  Her eyes skitter away, peering past me. I tilt my head to regain eye contact. “And then what happened?”

  She presses her lips together. “I was walking … and even though it was dark, there were people around. You know, people are always milling around on a college campus. I didn’t feel unsafe at all. Then he called my name … ”

  “He.”

  Mom nods. “I’d seen him around a few times before—a couple of parties, I think we even had a class together—and he’d flirted with me a little, but I never really noticed. I didn’t even know his name.”

  Tears spring into her eyes, and now I’m the one squeezing her hand. “I didn’t even know his name … ” she repeats in a whisper.

  She takes another deep breath. “Anyway, he knew mine. He called me. He was walking on the other side of the street, and he called my name. He was standing under a streetlight. He looked so … I don’t know … so safe and wholesome, so normal. I waved, said hi, kept walking. Then he crossed the street and started walking with me.”

  My pulse quickens.

  “But even then, I didn’t think a thing about it, you know? Just a guy walking across campus with me … stupid, really … ”

  “It wasn’t stupid,” I tell her. “You weren’t doing anything wrong.”

  “I really wasn’t,” Mom says, almost like she’s trying to convince herself more than me. “I was just walking home from the library … ”

  “Then … ?”

  Mom swallows. “He was nice at first—friendly, casual. I thought he was about to ask me out. And you know what? I probably would have said yes. I was thinking, He’s nice, he’s cute … sure, why not? ”

  She laughs ruefully.

  “I was so naive, Forrest. I’d dated a bit, but nothing serious. I assumed if a guy acted nice, he was nice. I didn’t distrust a soul in the world … didn’t have any reason to.”

  I nod. I can relate.

  “I was much more naive than you are,” Mom continues, and now I’m the one laughing ruefully.

  “You have got to be kidding,” I say.

  “I mean it,” Mom says earnestly. “I know you haven’t really dated, but you’re so smart, so feisty and savvy … like your dad.”

  Like my dad. For some reason, I’m incredibly comforted to hear those words.

  “I’d been so sheltered all my life,” Mom continues. “The same thing you and Brian accuse me of doing to you … sheltering you, smothering you, trying to keep you safe. But as great as you two turned out, I must have done something right. Right?”

  We share wistful smiles.

  “Anyway,” Mom says, “before I knew it, the guy was pulling me behind some bushes.” She knits her fingers together and rubs them anxiously. “He … he took advantage of me right there in the middle of campus. I could actually hear people nearby, but somehow I couldn’t make myself scream. I guess I thought, Is this really happening? I just remember feeling so ashamed, so embarrassed … ”

  I touch her arm. “I’m so sorry, Mom.”

  The waves lap outside as the moment lingers. “You know what he told me afterward?” Mom says, a bitter edge in her voice. “He said, ‘Go clean yourself up.’ Clean yourself up.”

  She studies my face and asks, “Wasn’t that a cruel thing to say?”

  I try to answer but my throat catches, so I just nod.

  “What happened next?” I ask when my voice steadies.

  She shrugs. “I went back to my dorm, took a shower, and tried to forget it ever happened.”

  My eyebrows arch. “You didn’t tell anybody?”

  Her eyes fall. “Like I told you, sweetie, I was so ashamed. And I couldn’t talk to
my mother about … about sex. She drilled it into my head to be a good girl, and that was the extent of my sex education. I honestly didn’t know if what had just happened was normal or not … like, this is how some girls have their first experiences, maybe? Isn’t that insane?”

  I avert my eyes. “Before Scott got me alone,” I tell her softly, “I could’ve gotten help. But I was afraid to make a scene. I didn’t want to look foolish.”

  Mom nods. “I didn’t want to look foolish either. Or slutty. That was looming large in my head. And how could I have proven it wasn’t consensual? I was naive, but I wasn’t stupid. I had friends who had casual sex, and it was no big deal for people to make out in the bushes. If I told people I’d just been raped by somebody they saw in their classes, that they knew from fraternity parties … I just couldn’t risk feeling the sting of their judgment on top of everything else. It was all I could do to make it through the next day … then the day after that.”

  I bite my lower lip. “So you just … you just resumed your normal routine?”

  She nods with a faraway look in her eye. “That’s what I did. I even studied that night, after I showered. I had a test the next day. It sounds ridiculous now, but in retrospect, I’m almost glad I had a test. It was something I had some control over, something I could focus on that made sense. And I got up the next morning, took my test, and went about my life.”

  I feel a thud in my stomach. “Until you found out … ”

  “Mmmmmm,” Mom says. “Until I found out I was pregnant.”

  “How long until you knew?”

  Mom shrugs. “Way longer than it should have been. Like I said, I was hopelessly naive. I knew my period was late, but I didn’t know about any other symptoms, and my menstrual cycle was always kind of erratic anyway, so … ”

  My heart feels like it will burst, imagining how Mom’s world must have imploded as she finally realized what was going on.

  “It was my roommate who told me I should take a pregnancy test,” Mom says, absently biting the fingernail of her pinkie. “I’m still not sure how she suspected. God knows I never said anything to her.”

  “So you took a test … ?”

  Mom nods wearily. “I took a test in the hall bathroom of the dorm. I can still remember the smell of the disinfectant, the voices of girls chatting in other stalls, the swish of the housekeeper’s mop on the floor … anyway, I saw the stick turn blue, then hurried off to my class.”

  I shake my head. “Mom … ”

  “I know. I just couldn’t absorb it, you know? Of course, I couldn’t wish it away for long. At this point, I had to deal with reality. I went home that weekend and told my mother. I hardly remember any details at all; the whole thing is just a blur. I don’t remember crying much … just begging my mother not to hate me.”

  “Mom,” I repeat sadly.

  “Don’t judge Grandma,” Mom says. “I don’t want you to think she was some ogre I couldn’t talk to. It was my hang-up, not hers, that it was so hard to confide in her.”

  Right. I love Grandma, but I know her too well to buy that.

  “And she reacted … well, she reacted as well as could be expected,” Mom says in the prim demeanor she always adopts when talking about her parents. “She said she’d handle telling my father, and she’d arrange a doctor’s appointment, and we could look into adoption … ”

  Her chin quivers and a tear trickles down her cheek. “Adoption,” she says. “I guess that brings us full circle.”

  The waves are crashing onto the beach now, the tide inexorably moving in. “But you didn’t put him up for adoption,” I say in barely a whisper.

  Mom smiles through her tears. “I barely knew a single thing at that point in my life,” she says. “But I knew I loved my baby. I loved him with all my heart. The only thing that outweighed my need for my parents’ approval was my need to protect my baby. I’d have done anything for him. Anything.”

  “Even … even knowing how he was conceived?”

  Mom gives a sharp nod. “Especially knowing how he was conceived. How dare that monster make my precious baby’s life begin in violence? I vowed my baby would never know another day of violence in his life, would never know anything but love and tenderness. I can’t explain it, the depth of love I felt for him. I didn’t know it was possible to feel that strongly about another human being, to feel that connected.”

  She smiles at me. “It’s the same way I felt with you.”

  “So when … when did Dad come into the picture?”

  Mom strokes my hair. “I don’t ever want you to think I used your father,” she says. “It’s just … we’d been friends for a while, and we’d actually gone out a couple of times after the … after the attack, before I found out I was pregnant. I tried to break things off with him when I realized I was having a baby, but he insisted on seeing me, on talking to me and finding out what was going on. I’d cancelled a date with him, but he came over anyway, came to my dorm room with a handful of wildflowers and said he didn’t mind being stood up, but he couldn’t stand knowing I was sad without knowing why.

  “I told him the whole thing,” Mom continues. “I told him about the attack, about how I’d spent the next three months pretending nothing had happened, about how I’d found out I was pregnant in the hall bathroom, how I’d just told my parents and was trying to figure out my next steps, but knowing with every fiber in my being that I would never, ever, ever be parted from my baby.”

  “And he … proposed?” I say.

  Mom laughs lightly. “Actually, yes. It sounds crazy in retrospect, but he really did propose right there on the spot. I didn’t say yes right away, but I loved him for asking. It wasn’t long before I just loved him.”

  Her eyes are sparkling.

  “I wouldn’t say it’s the most auspicious way to begin a marriage,” she continues, “but eighteen years and counting … that’s something, right? I mean, we must be doing something right.”

  We both jump as we hear pounding on the front door, followed by a low mumble of voices.

  Mom and I lock eyes, seeming to mourn the fact that the bubble we’ve created is about to burst.

  We start to walk toward my door, but Mom pulls me back. “I know this is hard,” she says, “but we’ve got to stop him.”

  I open my mouth to protest again, but she’s already moving past me, opening the bedroom door to join the others in the foyer.

  Before I join them, I take one last look around my room. Is this really the same room I woke up in twelve hours ago? I feel like I’ve lived five lifetimes since then.

  I take a deep breath and walk into the foyer.

  twenty-six

  “Ma’am.”

  Two officers, a man and a woman, nod toward me but avert their eyes. Why can’t they look at me? I haven’t done anything wrong.

  “Forrest, this is Officer Thompson and Officer Hull,” Dad says, waving in their direction. The man’s eyes are still averted, but the woman is sneaking sympathetic glances at me. Have I contracted leprosy in the past half hour?

  The man’s walkie-talkie beeps and he exchanges a few words with a colleague.

  “Ma’am,” the female officer asks, “do you mind if I dab a cotton swab on your lip? The part that’s bleeding?”

  Bleeding. I’m bleeding?

  “Sure,” I say numbly, but then unexpectedly flinch as she approaches me. Why am I flinching? I’ve never flinched before when someone walked toward me. Will I be flinching the rest of my life?

  The officer halts abruptly, apologetically, then eases slowly closer, her eyes soft and kind. She hesitates a second, then touches the swab to my mouth and drops it into a baggie.

  The male officer clears his throat. “Do you have any injuries other than the ones we can see? The cut on your lip and the bruises on your arm?”

  My arms are bruised? Oh.
/>   My head swims as I try to process the question, then I shake my head.

  The female officer asks, “Mind if I get some pictures?”

  “Um … ”

  Mom and Dad physically steady me as she retrieves a camera from her pocket, taking close-ups of my arms. I glance at them and notice the angry purple welts forming where Scott’s fingers dug into my flesh. I shiver.

  Next, the officer photographs my bottom lip, the outside first, then shots of the inside as I pull it down for the lens. Only now do I realize that I taste blood. My mouth suddenly feels foreign to me—puffy and alien and ugly and shocking. How dare that asshole make my own body feel repulsive to me.

  The officers exchange glances and the man says, “May I ask you to step into the other room and change your clothes? As carefully as possible, please. Then put them into this bag.”

  He hands the bag to Mom and says to her, “If you note any injuries on your daughter other than the ones we can see, please let us know immediately. We’ll take her to an emergency room, where she can be checked thoroughly in total privacy.”

  “I’m fine,” I snap, wondering how it’s possible to be “checked thoroughly” by a stranger, any stranger, in “total privacy.” I know these police officers are just doing their job, but I feel like a lab specimen. Will my body ever feel like my own again?

  “And why do you need my clothes?” I ask.

  “Evidence,” the officer explains softly.

  “What evidence?” I ask, then start looking at my clothes more closely. “He didn’t rip them or anything, did he?”

  “No, ma’am,” he says. “But DNA, hair … you’d be surprised how much evidence a perp leaves behind.”

  A perp? DNA? What parallel universe have I stumbled into?

  Mom guides me back into my bedroom and closes the door behind us, then gently lifts my shirt over my head. I hand her my shorts and panties, too dazed to feel modest. She drops them all into the bag, then helps me into fresh underwear and a robe.

  We walk back out. Dad and the officers have settled into seats in the family room, Dad on the couch. He jumps up when he sees me, then guides Mom and me to sit beside him.