Henry's Sisters

by Cathy Lamb

  ‘We had to put him in…’ Thelma cleared her throat. Trent poked his wife in the shoulder. I didn’t miss that, nor did anyone else.

  I wanted to shoot them. Kind, loving Henry, in leather restraints, held down to a bed, alone. It about blew my mind.

  ‘Answer my question!’ Momma barked out. ‘Did you have my boy in restraints?’

  She nodded. ‘I had to!’

  Trent roughly shook his wife’s shoulder. ‘Close your mouth. Keep it closed. We’re gonna need a lawyer.’

  Momma can move fast when she wants to, and she had that woman on the floor, her fist pounding that woman’s nose before you could say, ‘That woman’s gonna get beat to a pulp.’

  Cecilia and Janie and I let her do her thing. When the police officers jumped in to pull Momma off, we girls waited only a flash before Cecilia took on Thelma and Janie and I took on Trent.

  Within minutes the entry was filled with cops who were pulling livid, pounding, kicking Bommarito women off those two scummy, worthless, abusive losers.

  I knew those two boys had something to do with this, and I told the policemen, who then questioned those rats.

  ‘He was hollerin’ ’cause he was in the leathers,’ one of them said, that weird gleam in his eye. ‘He was noisy, but we didn’t do nothin’ ’cept our homework, that’s it. Then we played Ping-Pong downstairs.’

  I did not miss their snickers, or the smirks they exchanged.

  ‘He’s retarded, OK? He’s a stupid shit. All he did was cry while he was here and say weird stuff.’

  Two policemen grabbed me in mid-leap when I tried to get at that psycho-jerk.

  ‘Did you take the restraints off?’ the police asked.

  The boys were cagey, giggly.

  ‘No,’ the younger one said. ‘The retard got out. Maybe he retarded himself out, you know? He’s like an animal. I had a dog smarter than him.’ They wriggled their fingers again.

  ‘Stop talking about Henry like that,’ a tall policeman with a grizzled face ordered.

  ‘Why? He ain’t got any brains. He ain’t normal. Shouldn’t have ever been born. Should have been killed, you know, when it was still in the mommy’s stomach. Like, with a knife.’

  That produced another chaotic scene. Even Momma tried to get at him, her rage an unstoppable force, the boy’s comments hitting too close to home in more ways than one.

  Cecilia succeeded in wrapping her fingers around one of their necks, and Janie, skilful Janie, got on the ground and crawled through the mayhem, then kicked at his crotch. He doubled over.

  I did not mean to hit the police officer in the chin; I was aiming for one of the psycho-jerks who seemed to find my rage funny as he laughed and laughed. When he choked on the tooth I knocked out of his jaw he stopped laughing.

  As I was manhandled out of the room none too gently, the other creep made a slashing movement across his neck towards me.

  I flipped up my middle fingers. ‘You will die!’ I shouted. ‘You will die.’

  When Momma, bordering on complete hysteria, was pleading with the police to ‘find her boy, please, find him,’ we snuck off into the night. We were soaked again, in minutes, the lightning flashing, thunder booming, shadows threatening.

  I then understood the meaning of, ‘It was a dark and stormy night.’

  But no one had ever mentioned the white-hot fear that went along with it.

  We searched for hours, my sisters and I, in the rain, our figures outlined by the forking lightning, the thunder splitting the earth.

  We turned away from the foster home, the police cars and ambulances and searchers, and from Momma, who was getting a shot from a medic.

  It was three o’clock in the morning.

  ‘Where would he have gone? Which way?’ Janie moaned, asking the same question we’d asked again and again.

  ‘We have to be Henry,’ I insisted. ‘The second he was free from those restraints, he would have run,’ I said.

  ‘He might have run out the front door, but the back door was a possibility, too.’

  We stood at the back door, the wind howling through the trees.

  ‘And if he had run out the back door, he would have been running into blackness.’

  ‘Henry doesn’t like night-time, but if he was trying to hide, he would have run towards it anyhow.’

  ‘And he would have run straight until he couldn’t run anymore.’

  We started to jog, yelling back and forth through the cacophony of the weather.

  ‘He would have run ’til he fell…’

  ‘And he probably would have curled up and fallen asleep.’

  ‘He does that when he’s scared or upset.’

  ‘Yeah, he takes a nap.’

  We ran about ten feet apart from each other, our feet sloshing through the mud.

  We crossed a field behind the home, hopped a fence, and ran through columns of fruit trees. We shouted his name and our names, so he would know who we were. We kept running until we were a little bit tired because that’s when Henry would have stopped running.

  ‘This is about as far as he could have gone until he couldn’t run anymore.’

  The wind wrapped around us; the rain poured down.

  We had stopped in the middle of a farmer’s yard and we yelled again, our voices seeming to carry on the wind, blending with the howl. A lightning bolt split a tree and we all jumped, then hit the ground.

  When we could breathe again, Janie yelled at me, ‘Where would he go from here?’

  We searched the blurry horizon.

  There were lights on in the houses lining the field, and a farmhouse in the distance.

  ‘He wouldn’t go to one of those homes.’

  ‘No, they’re strangers.’

  ‘The strangers he was with had tied him down.’

  I felt my stomach boil with liquefied fury.

  ‘He would be tired now.’

  ‘He wouldn’t even be thinking.’

  In the distance, I could see a tree. It was one of those big, leafy trees. ‘Henry loves trees,’ I said.

  ‘He loves the tree in front of our apartment. He’s there all the time,’ Janie said.

  ‘At night, since he’s scared, and running, he might have thought it was the same tree,’ Cecilia said.

  We took off at a dead run, straight across the fields. The ground grew muddier and soggier, the rain pounding down in sheets, soaking every inch of us, and we still ran.

  When we got to the tree we screamed his name, so hopeful that he would be under those sweeping branches, somewhat safe, curled up, sleeping.

  There was no Henry.

  We collapsed against the rough trunk of the tree, defeated. I beat down the panic that kept rising and rising in my chest.

  We had to find Henry.

  I could not live without Henry.

  I don’t think any of us could.

  ‘Henry!’ Cecilia screamed, her head back. ‘Henry! Henry!’ Her screams got coarser, the screech of some wild thing, only the wild thing was my twin sister, and her raw pain wrapped itself around my heart and squeezed. I put my hands over my ears to shut her out.

  No, we could not live without Henry.

  ‘Henry!’ My shout was as primal, bare, and lost as Cecilia’s.

  In the silence we heard the raindrops on the leaves, Janie’s incoherent pleas, Cecilia’s choppy panting.

  But then…

  A small noise.

  Low and deep.

  I froze, sure an animal was above us in the branches.

  Cecilia and Janie heard it, too, and we all grasped hands and backed away.

  It moved.

  But it was wearing a brown sock and jeans and a black T-shirt with a picture of a white cartoon cat on it.

  It was Henry. Way up in the tree, between two crossing branches.

  ‘Henry go home,’ he said, his voice broken, crackling with misery. ‘Henry go home.’

  The three of us propped Henry up between us and carried him across the fie
ld.

  He wouldn’t speak, his tears mixing with the rain, an occasional lightning bolt highlighting the field.

  When he saw Momma, at first he wouldn’t hug her, wouldn’t let her hug him. I could feel my heart thudding, watching that scene. I so wanted Momma to hug me, and here Henry was, rejecting her hugs.

  ‘I mad at you, Momma. I no like that place. Henry go home.’

  ‘Henry,’ she choked, ‘Henry, you’re going home. You’re not going back. Not ever. You’re coming home.’

  ‘OK, Momma. OK.’

  He let her hug him. ‘Bommarito hug,’ he said, weakly, pathetic. ‘Come on, sisters. Bommarito hug. I love yous.’

  We stood together and hugged.

  It was only the beginning of yet another tragedy.

  ‘He was repeatedly raped.’

  The white walls of the hospital seemed to squish in on me at the doctor’s words.

  ‘He has old wounds, and new ones. I’m sorry.’

  The police officers and the doctors and nurses in the conference room with me, Cecilia, Janie, and Momma all disappeared in my mind as the walls squished and squished until I could barely breathe, until I could see the doctor’s mouth moving, opening and closing, but I couldn’t hear any other words.

  I couldn’t hear anything at all, actually. Nothing. It was as if I were in a white, soundless box with people moving frantically all around me and I was disappearing into the white along with all the noise.

  I saw Momma clench her fists and she opened her mouth and her head fell back and I was sure she was screaming, but I couldn’t hear anything. I saw two nurses hold her as she slumped to the floor, her face a twisted mask of grief and fury. The nurses and the doctor picked Momma up off that white floor, her head thrown back, her fists clenched to her eyes.

  Two nurses sprinted in with a stretcher and lifted Momma onto it. She struggled, her arms out towards Henry’s room, and I watched her mouth form the words, ‘Henry, Henry,’ but in my mind, she was doing it in silence, the white walls sucking up all of the noise as if everything she said and did and screamed and banged was being sucked out through a funnel.

  I saw Janie fall backward, the police officer behind her lifting her up, two doctors rushing to her. Their mouths were open, flapping, I knew they were shouting, but I couldn’t hear a thing.

  I saw Cecilia whip around and slam her forehead against a wall. A hollow ache immediately formed in my head. A police officer and a doctor manhandled Cecilia away from the wall. She arched her back and whipped her head around to me and her tears and the blood from her forehead hit me in the face.

  They took her away, too.

  Soon I was left alone with the squishing white walls.

  It was silent.

  Henry never went into a foster care situation again.

  He wouldn’t talk to us or to the police about what happened.

  It was only when I told the police, in front of Henry, about the two snarky, demented boys at the foster home and Henry started chanting repetitively, continually, ‘I no tell I no tell I no tell no kill sisters no kill sisters, no kill Momma, no please, no please, no kill Henry’s sisters!’ that Cecilia, Janie, and I knew we had our rapists for sure.

  The policemen shared a glance and headed out.

  Momma did not leave Henry’s side for a week. We stayed home from school. When it was pretty clear that Momma was going to lose her job at the club, we baked and baked, selling our cookies, pies, and cakes door to door, to teachers at school, outside a church on Sunday mornings, in front of the library.

  We remembered to sift flour twice, to drizzle with a light hand, and to never, ever overcook, like our dad had taught us.

  We did OK moneywise, not great, and we didn’t even attempt to pay any of Henry’s hospital bills, but we did OK.

  As for the boys who we knew had raped Henry?

  They caved within minutes. When I was older, I read the transcripts. They said they raped Henry themselves and with pencils and one time with a screwdriver. ‘He drove me to do it because he wouldn’t shut up,’ one said. ‘He kept begging for his mommy and his sisters. What a baby. I had to put two socks in his mouth to keep him quiet. Two socks! Not one, two!’

  ‘We were having fun with him,’ the other said. ‘He’s a retard, OK? What does he know about what’s going on? His face was in the pillow. He liked it. I’m telling you, he liked it. Plus, who’s ever going to have sex with him? We did him a favour. Now he’s not a virgin. He’s a fag.’

  Momma got herself an ambitious, young female lawyer, eager to prove herself in what was then a man’s world, and she sued the foster home and the state. Henry was unable to testify, but the doctors did. The police did. And a fourth boy who was in the foster home testified, too, as he had also been attacked by the boys.

  Trent’s record as a child molester didn’t help the state’s case, nor did the fact that he and Thelma always slept in the home next door to get a good night’s sleep, despite their assurances that was not the case.

  Add in the boys’ candid confessions, repeated as if they were proud of themselves, and it was a done deal. The boys went to a residential centre for young male criminals until they were twenty-one, then were transferred to a prison for five more years.

  About twenty years later a book was written on the horrid conditions of that residential centre for boys, and the author, who had been there at the same time as Henry’s rapists, made tons of money.

  Momma won a huge settlement against the foster home and the state. All Henry’s past medical bills were paid for by the state and the Veterans who were finally brought in. The young attorney started her own firm and continues, to this day, to prosecute the worst, most dangerous criminals.

  So we got victory, financially, but the whole incident had eviscerated any emotional strength Momma had left. She was done.

  Completely, utterly done.

  ‘We’re going home,’ she told us one night, her cheques in her trembling hand, her body frail and worn down, her mind shot. ‘We’re going home to Grandma. Pack up, girls.’

  Packing up took about twenty minutes, because that’s all we had left of our lives. Our car broke down halfway to Trillium River, and Momma wrote a cheque for an only slightly used van that started the first time Momma turned the key. The engine purred. We thought it was the most beautiful thing we’d ever seen. We were so comfortable in the padded seats, I remember thinking it would be just fine to live in if we had to.

  On the way there we stayed in hotels with pools and went out for hamburgers and shakes twice. Momma bought us new clothes. She bought Janie an embroidery set, Cecilia books, Henry a new checker set, and me a camera. We felt we were in heaven.

  Grandma’s Queen Anne house was a safe palace. She instantly proved to be a stable – if cranky – force. We went to school; Grandma helped with Henry, who had stopped speaking completely; and Momma went to bed.

  When Momma got up two months later, she used part of the settlement money to open the bakery.

  It was rape money in my mind, but we had to use it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I hopped on my motorcycle and went to visit Momma one afternoon later in the week. My nightmares continued, my fear continued, my depression continued to slither around the corners of my mind like black ink, but I was functioning. I was proud of that. Sometimes, I think, we have to praise ourselves for simply functioning. Simply getting up to try out another day.

  I called ahead to schedule with Momma. I knew from Sinda that she’d been at Bunco Club that morning before her girl gang went out to lunch.

  ‘Well, I’m weak,’ she told me over the phone, her voice teeny, tiny, tiny. ‘Bone weary. I haven’t been out of bed for days. Days! I have called the doctor and discussed my health with him and my lack of progress.’

  I tried not to laugh.

  When I arrived she was in bed, her robe on, lights dimmed, the curtains pulled against the bright sun.

  ‘Momma?’ I said. ‘Momma?’
>
  Her eyes were closed. Slowly, she opened her lids.

  ‘Isabelle,’ she croaked out.

  ‘Hello, Momma.’ I bent down to kiss her forehead and stifled my laughter.

  ‘Be careful with me. I ache all over. I’ve hardly been able to move.’

  ‘I am so sorry to hear that, Momma.’

  She opened one eye. ‘Your face is not as bad as it was, Isabelle.’ She actually reached out and held my hand.

  I was touched.

  ‘Every time I think of what that man did to you I want to kill him, and every morning when I wake up and I know he’ll be electrocuted soon, I’m glad. Damn glad.’ She cleared her throat. ‘You’re a pretty woman, Isabelle. A good woman.’

  ‘Thank you, Momma.’ We sat there for a minute together, and I basked in such rare motherly love.

  ‘You’re too skinny, though.’ She speared me with those emeralds of hers. ‘Stickish. Scarecrowish. Put on some weight. Cecilia’s still fat, I’ve told her she needs to reduce, and when Janie was here – oh – that tapping!’ She rolled her eyes. ‘And that counting! Not from my side of the family, I’ll tell you that!’

  Well, that did it. I had to stick it to Momma a wee bit. I am such a bad daughter. I cleared my throat. ‘Momma, there’s something I’ve been needing to talk to you about.’ I breathed in deep. ‘We need you to come back and work at the bakery—’

  Momma’s eyes flipped open and she sat up in bed as if a spring had binged her back. ‘That is out of the question!’ she huffed. ‘Haven’t you heard a thing I’ve said? Have you gone deaf, Isabelle Bommarito? Deaf? Have you?’ She coughed a couple of times, squeezed her eyes shut as if fighting a tsunami of pain, and fell straight back to her pillows.

  I bit my lip.

  ‘I’m sick!’ she rasped. ‘The doctor will never release me from this boring rat hole in my condition. Never.’

  ‘But we need you.’

  ‘You’ll have to stick it out, Isabelle. You and your sisters. I’ve worked hard for years.’ She flushed with anger. ‘Surely you three can do the work of only me? Can’t you girls do that?’

  ‘It’s hard, Momma—’

  ‘Life is hard, suck it up!’