In the Shadow of Revenge

by Patricia Hale

  “I, I don’t know, the thing shocked me.” I pointed to the planchette.

  “Wwwwooooo.” Amelia giggled, wiggling her fingers in the air. “Here comes the boogey-man.”

  “Is not,” I said, feeling foolish. I glanced at Hilary.

  She wasn’t laughing. She was studying me as if I were like a baby bird out of its nest or like one of those orange salamanders we picked up off the road after a heavy rain. She nodded toward the board. “Try it again,” she said.

  I wiped my damp palms on my shorts and tentatively stretched my hands back toward the planchette. As soon as my fingertips touched the wood, the current flowed again. I raised my eyes to meet hers and a knowing transpired between us. I didn’t pull away this time, but stayed perfectly still as the surge moved through my arms and my neck then wrapped around my head, squeezing like some sort of deranged halo. Keeping my breath steady I asked my question, “Would the powers within the board keep us together forever?”

  The planchette moved to the Yes square. I sat back and shoved my hands under my legs so neither of the others would see how badly I was shaking.

  I listened to Amelia ask her lighthearted questions—would she marry, would she travel the world—and thought it must be nice to have things like that to think about instead of what would happen to me if either of them ever left. I forced the plastic triangle to No after each of Amelia’s questions. I couldn’t allow her to think that growing up meant splitting up.

  When we ran out of questions, we’d place the board carefully back in its cardboard box, then take out the straight razor that had once run along the chin of Hilary’s drunkard father, Duane Wainwright. Running the steel along a chosen spot, we’d press skin to skin until we’d been sufficiently transfused into one another. This ritual assured us that we’d never be just ourselves but always a blend of each other and over time, three embodiments of the same person. Finally, we’d dip into the melted wax just beneath the flames of the candles and let it harden over our delicate skin. Tapping our coated fingertips together we’d repeat our mantra, solidifying our future and our pact.

  Sisters today and sisters tomorrow, no one shall come between. Let it be heard as it is said, any intruder, off with his head.

  Eighteen years later, I still perform the ritual whenever I feel the need, which is more often than I care to admit. The straight razor, which is no longer Duane Wainwright’s, but one that I took from Ben’s shaving kit, is reserved for times when the past gets too close. Like when Hilary ends up in rehab, or Amelia’s one-nighters reach double digits in the span of a month or when one of them says they’re thinking of moving away from Maine. Inside the bathroom of my downtown Portland apartment, a mere seventeen miles from our original meeting place, I lock the door, light two purple candles and repeat the mantra. I tap my waxy fingertips against the mirror. The hand reflected on the right represents Hilary. Amelia is on my left. I close my eyes and feel them with me just as it was. The way I need it to be. We made a vow and it can’t be stowed in a cardboard box like a jump rope or a teddy bear. The issues we dealt with transcended childhood and shadow us still. And though the board itself is thick with dust, the power within me that Ouija awoke still vies for my attention. Ignore it or not, it’s always there.

  Chapter Two

  I hurried down the sidewalk on my way to the hospital as though I could leave the truth behind, but it was stuck tight as pitch. My anger at Hilary over her addictions had more to do with my own guilt. The longer she stayed sick, the longer I had to carry the blame. If she’d just get better, I could let some of it go and I knew that day would come, but I was impatient. Hilary exuded pain like a runner exudes sweat. Sooner or later she’d let out the last of it and wake up ready to move on. But for now, every one of her admissions into a psych unit or rehab sends me back in time. People said that Amelia and I were the lucky ones. And they were right, if you call it lucky to watch your best friend get raped while you huddle in the corner of a rusted-out railcar, thanking God it isn’t you and feeling guilty as hell that it’s not.

  It was the first full week of no school, which to us, meant it was officially summer. Farmers were hanging up signs at their roadside stands advertising early lettuce and little wooden baskets of blueberries sat on rickety tables with honor system boxes beside them. Corn was coming into view, and nature willing, it would hold to its promise: knee high by Fourth of July.

  Amelia, Hilary and I spent the morning swimming at Rabbit Run Pond. By early afternoon their shoulders were pink and hurt to touch; my black skin didn’t mirror the burn, but pain is pain. We finished our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and wrapped the Fritos and Devil Dogs that Amelia had snuck from her pantry in our towels and stowed them in our backpacks, then pedaled our bikes over the dirt road and to the path that would lead us to the railcar that doubled as our clubhouse. Dust rose in puffy clouds around our bicycle tires and clung to our damp skin. It made Hilary and Amelia’s legs look dirty. It made mine look powdery, almost white. At the head of the trail, we dropped our bikes amongst the trees and continued on foot.

  We smelled his cigarette as we neared the railcar and slowed to look at each other, each of us thinking the same thing at that moment...turn around. But you never pay attention to that voice inside your head until after whatever’s going to happen happens and then you say, “I knew we shouldn’t have gone in there.”

  His back was against the wall, his legs outstretched, his Red Sox baseball cap pulled so low that only his eyes were visible above the kerchief that covered his nose and mouth, cowboy style. He smelled like a drunk. I knew that smell at nine years old because it was the same way Hilary’s father always smelled, and my mother called him a drunk, though never when Hilary was around.

  He shifted a little when we climbed into the car, but didn’t speak. I thought he might be asleep. Hilary nudged the bottom of his boot with the toe of her sneaker. “This is our clubhouse,” she said. “You gotta get out.”

  Before any of us could move he reached out and grabbed her ankle. I’d heard of people being swept off their feet, but this was the first and only time I’d seen it done. Hilary’s head slammed down against the metal floor and she was beside him, flat on her back. Then he raised his legs, planted one boot in Amelia’s stomach and one in mine and sent us flying backward. Amelia landed against the wall. The metal gave a thunderous clap as it yielded to her sixty pounds. Her head left a red streak on the rusty surface and she slid to the floor. I landed against the corner of the fireproof trunk that held our matches and candles and Ouija board. I still have the scar on my right side, just beneath my ribs, to prove where that trunk broke through my skin. Not that I’ve ever needed proof that that day happened.

  “See this?” The kerchief covering his mouth billowed out with his breath. In his right hand he held up the straight razor we used for our blood sister ritual. It was then that I noticed the lock on the trunk was broken off.

  I nodded. I don’t know if Amelia did or not, because I was too scared to turn my head to look at her.

  “Either of you move and I’m going to run this right across her neck.”

  He dropped his hand and with the razor an inch from Hilary made a sweeping movement across her throat to demonstrate just in case we didn’t understand what he meant. Then he slipped Hilary’s pink cotton shorts down over her dusty bare feet. She never made a sound. My mother had told me that a hard bang on the head could kill a person and I remember hoping that Hilary had only been knocked out when she fell. I’d squirmed so I could see her face. Her eyes were open, staring at nothing and I thought she looked like the bodies in the police shows my father used to watch. But I knew she wasn’t dead ’cause even though she was still as a corpse her fingernails kept scraping the floor of the railcar like she was trying to grab onto something.

  I remember forcing my eyes to stay on her because looking away would have felt like I was le
aving her there all alone. Her face frightened me, so I’d kept my eyes on her bloodied shins. We’d been climbing over the rocks at Rabbit Run Pond and she’d told me she banged up her knees, but I hadn’t paid much attention. Now I couldn’t tear my eyes away from those scratches and the dried trickles of blood as her legs lifted off the floor of the railcar each time the man pushed against her.

  I was wearing navy blue shorts over my one-piece bathing suit. It had yellow and purple flowers across the top that flowed down one side like a waterfall. I’d loved it when my mother brought it home from the Goodwill store where she bought my clothes, but I never wore it again after that day. I’d stuffed it into the trash in my bedroom and let it go out with the weekly pick-up. I remember thinking that if I was next he’d have to take all my clothes off, not just slide my bottoms down to my feet the way he’d done with Hilary. Amelia had on her red polka dot bikini and I’d hoped he’d realize if he turned to us after he finished with Hilary that Amelia’s clothes would be easier. I’ve never told her that, but it’s in the mix of what I carry.

  My lungs had been tight as fists and the voice inside my head said run, but my legs couldn’t be trusted. Standing up wouldn’t have gotten me out of there, it would only have drawn attention to the pee that was warm in my shorts and it might have gotten Hilary killed if he’d been serious about running that blade across her neck. So I sat there shaking like it was January instead of June and watched my best friend get raped.

  Finally, he stood and pulled up his pants, covering at last the skull tattoo with its gaping red mouth grinning at Amelia and me from his right butt cheek, a characteristic that neither of us would ever forget. With his back to us, he lowered the kerchief and put a cigarette in his mouth. Hilary never moved, though I saw her blink. She was looking at something far away like she was somewhere else entirely and I hoped that that was true so she wouldn’t have to know what happened. He pulled his baseball hat low over his face the same way it’d been when we first climbed in and without ever looking at us, jumped out of the railcar and walked away.

  “Stay here,” I’d told Amelia, though I knew she wasn’t going anywhere. And I ran. I ran faster than I’d ever run, not even caring about the pee burning the inside of my legs. I’d taken the woods instead of the path, running in the opposite direction from the way he’d gone. My legs were scraped and bleeding by the time I’d reached the road and the stitch in my side had made it almost impossible to breathe, but I just kept thinking of Hilary lying there and I couldn’t stop until I was pulling open my own back door. I ran into the kitchen and through the house until I found my mother kneeling beside her bed, rosary beads draped around her prayerful hands like a spider web. I stood in the doorway and looked at her, imagined wrapping my arms around her neck and her drawing me in, holding me. I imagined feeling safe. She glanced at me standing there then dismissed me with a nod of her head, knee deep in Jesus. I turned and ran for the telephone.

  Now, eighteen years later, there are nights when I stare at the ceiling at two o’clock in the morning and imagine leaping onto the guy’s back or hitting him over the head with a scrap of metal that might have been lying right beside me, had I looked. I console myself with the fact that at the time I was frozen stiff and scared out of my nine-year-old mind, but I never for a minute forget that I owe her. Nor does she let me. I never went back to the railcar after that day except for once, to get the board and neither of them know I have it. Hilary suspects, but I’ve never confirmed her suspicion. I’d rather they think the police took it with them when they combed the car looking for evidence on the day of the rape. I haven’t touched it again since that time, except to pack it amongst my belongings when I moved from my mother’s house. But I know that the spirit still lives within me and that I need only touch the board to feel the current. And when it flows, I know the ground beneath me is about to shake.

  Chapter Three

  Amelia and I met where we always did, at the bench outside the rehab’s main entrance. I saw her before she noticed me and smiled at how little she’d changed. Her hair was still thin and fine and mousy brown, but her two braids had matured into one and grazed the tooled western belt she wore to tame a gauzy tunic. She was carrying a canvas bag full of fruit and a bottle of organic apple juice. Over the past five years Amelia had worked her way from cashier to manager at The Green Goods Market. Much to her parents’ chagrin, she’d turned down a scholarship to Juilliard and their dream of her as a concert pianist. Instead she now gave lessons to kids on weekends and during the week supervised free-range chickens and overpriced organic produce.

  I crossed the street toward her and the heels of my pumps clicked against the asphalt. My hair escaped its workday coif like a loaded spring, free at last. With my briefcase in one hand and a Starbucks latte in the other, I approached her, trying not to splash coffee on my dry-clean-only suit. It struck me what an odd couple we appeared to be, but peel away her Mexicali Blues and my Jones New York and we were still the same little girls who’d pressed their blood-smeared palms together and swore to an oath. So there we were.

  Sometimes I thought we were both afraid to be happy in our lives, at least while Hilary faltered with her own. But it wasn’t about codependency, It was about friendship, guilt that it wasn’t us, and the fact that we’d sat there watching while our best friend was raped. When the guilt became too much, I reminded myself that we were nine years old then and rape wasn’t even a word we understood. We were still tighter than sisters and there’s nothing better than friends like that. But it’s been stifling too. We can’t let go of each other, can’t free ourselves from small-town Maine to venture into the big world beyond.

  “Hey,” I say and kiss Amelia’s cheek. She brushes a strand of hair out of my eye. “Thanks.” I shrug, nodding to my laden hands.

  “Ready?”

  I’ve never been ready to see Hilary like this, and by the time the elevator opened to the sixth floor, my stomach was playing leapfrog. Each time I came to see her, just before I walked into the hospital unit or rehab of the hour, I forced myself to remember the fearless little girl she’d been at nine years old, yet untouched. Thick blond hair trailed down her back, full of leaves and twigs and most of the time, in need of water and a brush. She’d taken us places other kids would never go, partly ’cause they were scared and partly because their parents would kill them. We jumped from railway transoms into the Royal River and explored hidden caves where bats hung upside down in the dark. Once we snuck onto Mrs. Adelson’s back porch and stole cupcakes right off the table. For Amelia and me it was an afternoon snack. For Hilary it was dinner. And when we were older, she took us to Jewels, the farthest island from the Portland shoreline. We ran through underground tunnels left behind from World War I, a single flashlight as our guide. I was scared shitless, but Hilary reveled in the risk. And when I look at her now, I try to see the beautiful, strong woman she’d be, if not for that fifteen minutes of her life.

  We check in at the desk and an aide walks with us to the Day Room where the windows are barred. It’s a voluntary unit and if a patient really wants to leave they can, just not through a window six floors up. The inmates, as Hilary likes to call them, watch television to take their minds off their cravings; others pace the room like dogs in a shelter.

  She was sitting near the window with her face tipped to the sun, her skin pale but for a hint of pink across her cheekbones, purplish bags or bruises beneath her eyes.

  “Ahh, the sisters of charity,” she said as we pulled chairs up to hers. “Thanks for coming, but I wouldn’t want to infringe on your busy lives.”

  “Too late for that,” I said. “Anyway, what else am I going to do, go home and cook dinner?” I took one of her limp white hands in mine and laid my palm over her scraped knuckles. “What’s the other guy look like?”

  “A sidewalk.”

  Amelia laughed.

  “Hey, this is no lau
ghing matter,” Hilary said and grinned at her.

  “How many times you going to do this, Hil?” I asked, hoping my tone didn’t reflect my waning patience.

  “As many times as I goddamn well feel like it. When are you gonna stop tellin’ me how to live my life?”

  “Not happening.”

  She shrugged. “Then you’re gonna waste a lot of time.”

  “As always, it’s a joy to see you.”

  “No one asked you to.”

  I looked down at her hand and studied the barbed wire tattoo that ran around her wrist like a handcuff. The same artwork bound one of her ankles. “At some point you have to start looking forward instead of back. You’ll never get better if...”

  “What’re you, my new shrink?”

  “I’m just telling you the same thing everyone else does. You’ve gotta get out of the hole you’re in.”

  “I like my hole,” she said snatching her hand back. “At least I own up to my fucked-up past and don’t keep it buried under designer clothes and a boyfriend with a six-figure paycheck.” She shook her head. “Take care of your own life, Cecily. I’ll handle mine.”

  I stumbled, but only momentarily. “And I can see you’re doing a good job with that.”

  “No thanks to you.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  Hilary looked at me for a long time without answering, then she glanced at Amelia and back to me. “You know what I want.”

  I did, the same thing she’d been after for the past eighteen years, for me to dust off the Ouija board and use it to find the guy who’d raped her. She was convinced that I unlocked some kind of power within the board and had every faith that if I’d just try, I could locate that man in the baseball hat. But I had my own convictions regarding the board, never again. One thing the board had taught me was that Newton’s Third Law holds true. For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Even if I could find the guy, he’d come with a price I wasn’t willing to pay. I’d packed that board away when I was nine years old because it scared the hell out of me. It still did.