by S R Savell
“Who are you texting?”
“Your aunt Gert. She’s been so worried about this.”
I’m headed upstairs before she notices my absence.
My room is painted sunset pink. All the furniture has been moved clockwise and the place smells like someone mixed perfume with the paint they lathered on the walls.
I sit in the middle of the floor and look around. The first sanctuary to ever be mine, it’s ruined. Bitch didn’t waste much time.
I rub my pocket to stop my new knife from wanting so much. I’d love to stripe these walls, give them some character.
I go back downstairs instead.
The party is heating up. My old stereo’s in the corner blaring seventies music, and a bunch of old people I’ve never met are shaking so hard I fear for their prosthetic hips. The Happy New Year banner hangs high, balloons sticking to the ceiling.
I want to retreat, but when I see Nathaniel trapped in the fray, stuck between the office whore, her latest beau (aka the unlucky bastard), and Mom herself, I descend the last two stairs and squeeze my way over.
“Can I cut in?” I’m already pulling him away, smirking at the jealousy the whore lady wears like her hair extensions.
“Thanks, Michelle.” He hugs me tight.
“Welcome. Can we go home yet?”
“Um, you know we need to stay a while because . . .”
“Because Mom and I need to try and work out our differences.”
“Yeah, that.” He spins me.
I laugh. “Fine. You convinced me.”
I wiggle my finger.
He leans down, clearly thinking I’m going to whisper in his ear.
I kiss him instead, and he holds me a second before breaking away, ears pink.
Peter.
He’s sitting by the punch bowl, singing to himself. Tears run down his face, and he’s staring at me with empty eyes.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I smile up at Nate.
But he knows me too well. “Michelle?”
“Wanna go to my room?” The words tumble out.
“If I do, will you tell me?”
I’m already pulling him—or trying, that is. It’s like pulling the Trojan horse with a come-along.
“Okay, okay, let’s just go.”
I pull the door closed behind me and drop into the chair by the window.
He stands, waiting.
“I wanted to show you the new paint job,” I say, grimacing at the color.
“No, you didn’t.”
“So what do you think?” I thumb at the wall.
“I think you need to tell me what’s wrong.”
I step around him. “Nothing, okay? Let’s just go.”
The door swings open.
The room clears to perfection, lines and shapes and color stark in the light. I see his dirty nails and greasy hair and shaking spotted eyes. My blood roils under my skin, tearing it apart, lighting my nerve endings all at once, and I want to scream and yell and swear and throw shit, but I just . . . keep . . . staring.
And every destroyed and derailed moment of my life flicks through my head, leaks out my pores, and fuels the fire eating me alive.
“Get out,” I hiss, on my feet. The knife screams for release, and my hand wraps around the hilt.
Peter staggers forward and hits the ground.
Nate goes to pick him up.
“Don’t touch him!”
Nate freezes, looks at me. “I know you don’t like drinking, but—”
The thing on the floor starts to cry rather loudly.
I walk over and stare at it. “Can we go, please?”
He looks at the slime, then at me. Uncertain, he stands and takes my hand.
We’re halfway down the hall when I hear it.
Laughter.
A few fluffs of dandruff sit on his ears, then flutter to his collar. He wipes his nose on his hand, opens his mouth, and slurs, “Run away. Jus’ like tha’ whore Linda—”
“C’mon,” Nathaniel murmurs, but I can barely hear him.
“—said I wasn’t a man! Said I was a faggot in a man’s clothes.” He pitches onto his knees, crying again. “Well, I showed her an’ you too, di’n’t I? Am I a faggot now?” He punches the wall a couple of times, then uses it to stand. “You thought you were soo smart, but I got you good.” He grabs himself and laughs.
Nathaniel says my name.
I don’t know these people. I don’t know anyone.
“Let’s go,” I say.
Nate kneels, something dark rising in his eyes. “Did he—?”
I don’t feel a thing.
“Please, Nathaniel.”
My shoulders are in his grasp. “Is he . . .” He looks at Peter, back to me. “Did he . . .”
Peter laughs again.
Nathaniel . . . he doesn’t know, doesn’t understand. I had this coming. It was karma, and Peter was just the deliverer of bad news.
But that doesn’t stop him from slamming his fists into Peter’s face. Over and over and over he hits him, even when garbled screaming brings people running upstairs, even when I yell for him to stop, he . . . will . . . not . . . quit.
I don’t know them. These aren’t the people I know, not gentle Nathaniel, not silly little Peter.
Peter looks like a hunk of meat on a cutting board, ready for wrapping. His head is cocked at a strange angle, and I want to tell him to straighten it out, but my tongue is lead in my mouth. Someone yells for an ambulance and another for the cops.
All I can see is Nathaniel walking my way.
The people split and run around us, rocks dividing the stream of motion.
He buries his face in my shoulder. Walks me downstairs and into the cold air, where we sit on the steps.
I’m good at making believe.
So this isn’t happening.
I’m looking at him like I never have before, with the streetlight veiling his left side in a faint glow. He’s breathing heavily, hands clenching and unclenching with each breath taken. After a bit, I notice we’re rocking back and forth.
I take his hands, a familiar gesture, and he tugs them away. I take them back, hold them tighter.
We’re rocking harder now.
Sirens break the air.
I feel him take a sharp breath, his heartbeat wild against my cheek.
The cops run out, screaming.
He tries to put me down, but I’m latched on because this isn’t happening, really. They’re all mistaken. We’re inside dancing right now, spinning and laughing and shaking the house down, but they don’t believe my reality.
Nate pushes me away, and they swarm, maggots to a corpse.
And this is the last time, for a long time, that I will see him as a free man.
Chapter 14
It all leaves in a final breath. Everything I kept in exposed. Everything about the rape, that is. And the lawyer before me, the steely professional, has remained impassive.
Mrs. Ramirez jots something down. “Is there anything else you can tell me?”
“Not that I can think of.”
She returns to her paperwork.
“Will this help Nathaniel?”
“Definitely.” She keeps scribbling. “The prosecution will most likely drop the aggravated assault charge to a misdemeanor.” She looks up and sets her pen down. “He’s kept his nose clean. He’s a hard worker, no prior convictions, who recently lost his grandmother. Coupled with the abrupt knowledge of your rape, this is going to bring some leniency.” Sliding me two sheets of paper, she says, “My number. And here’s a list of a few organizations if you need some help coping.”
NOPRA, Pandora’s Project, RAINN—these are a few of the names that catch my eye. “Thank you. But I just want Nathaniel free again.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
“What if he pleads guilty from the start?”
“The prosecution and I will try to arrange a plea bargain. Our legal system likes making deals;
it keeps them from taking the case to trial, saves them money.” She leans back in her chair, a boss amongst crime fighters. “There are extenuating circumstances, after all.”
“Our chances, then?”
“About a 70 percent chance of getting him off within a year. He did some pretty severe damage to that Peter guy.”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me, just for my curiosity’s sake.” The dark-eyed woman leans forward, chin on her hands. “If he goes down for the full sentence, are you willing to stick around?”
“That’s the only option.”
It’s been three days without Nate here. The one time I spoke to him, his voice stayed strong, right until the part when I said hello.
The doctors say Peter is yet to wake from his coma. Mrs. Ramirez contacted his ex-wife to see if she would testify. She said her place was with Peter and refused comment.
The apartment isn’t a home anymore but a sleeping place that doesn’t even fulfill its new purpose. The past three nights, Wolfie and I have been staring at the stupid box, willing it to come on so we’d have something to look at. Wolfie cries a lot, but I tell him he can’t do that. It’s not until he licks my face that the tears become my own.
The edges of my Christmas present have been softened by my anxious thumb. I’m holding it now, studying Nathaniel’s hard work.
It’s a thin wooden bookmark, shined by varnish and lots of sanding, hung by a pretty piece of wool. It’s painted red with my name burned deep into the surface. The letters are boxy and neat, etched into the piece in block lettering. And on the back, seared in the same tiny lettering, is the chorus to a song, the one we sang that night together.
I hate feeling like this, a damsel in distress weeping for the return of her knight. But I can’t help the crying, the anger, the helplessness.
What doesn’t kill you weakens you for the next attack. And right now I’m a crumbling pillar about to snap at the base, judgmental world be damned.
I clean most of the night, all but the bedroom. When I’ve run out of bleach, I start in on my backpack. I pull the book from the dumped heap and stare at the title, letting my eyes process the words.
It’s the very last book, the one I forgot about. The title slides in and out of focus, my hands not steady enough to hold it, so I drop it on the ground and read the title over and over to myself.
I go through those pages, absorbing everything from the title onward. This book is my last constant, a comfort and a distraction. I don’t think about anything, yet I think about every single thing. I can’t explain it.
Four hours later, it’s finished and so am I. It’s a deeper tiredness that surpasses sleep deprivation. It’s a bone exhaustion, a brain fatigue that’s left me with nothing more to give.
The remaining two note cards are in the pocket, calling to me. Two months of wait and anxiety, it can all be over.
I go to bed instead and dream about nothing, watching, for those brief seconds, the black screen of my eyelids before sleep wins out.
We spend the next week snaking through the court system, through preliminary trials and hearings and every other asinine part of the so-called fair legal process.
I’m not nervous or sick today. I should be, but if Nathaniel sees me falling to pieces, he won’t be able to cope. So I sit tall, and when he comes in, handcuffed, with the bailiff prodding him from behind, I give him a comforting smile. The haze lifts for a second, and he smiles back, waving slightly before standing at the defendant’s table.
They hustle through the paperwork. The prosecutor tells the judge that because of the violent nature of the crime, Nathaniel should not be released on bail. Mrs. Ramirez argues that it was a first-time offense and he is not a flight risk.
The judge decides to post bail at a whopping ten thousand dollars, a price I couldn’t pay if I emptied my savings and sold everything I own.
I watch him disappear through the door.
Mrs. Ramirez has been working with the prosecution, trying to get either the sentence or charges lowered. At the moment, she says, the plea bargain is looking pretty decent and he may get off within a year, earlier than that if probation is allowed. True to her word, she works the prosecution down to a lesser charge.
Two weeks later, the jury is deliberating. His guilt’s not in question. The question is how guilty they will find him.
I leave to throw up a couple of times. Ma comes with me and holds my hair while I blow chunks into the toilet.
“I’m sorry, baby.”
I lift my head up and breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth. The toilet flushes, and I go wash my mouth out.
I hear a match being struck and a Marlboro red being lit.
“That crap’s bad for you,” I say, sweaty back sticking to the wall before I slip down.
“I know.” She flicks ashes into the sink and washes them out before coming to stand by me. “Can I sit?”
“If you want.”
She tries to sit, but her pants are too tight. After a struggle, she slides half down the tiled wall and drops the rest of the way. “Ouch!”
I pull out Mrs. Stotes’s book and start to read.
“What’s that?”
“A book.”
“Well, I know that.”
Some lady goes into the first stall; an awful smell comes out.
I’m up and walking in nothing flat.
Mother tries to follow, but her tight pants just won’t allow it.
I’m sitting on an unlevel bench outside the courtroom, making it rock back and forth. I count the squeaks, deciding twenty-nine will be a good number to stop with.
She appears beside me, rubbing her knees. “I need new pants.”
I stare at the shut doors, wondering if I should go in, but I’m only on seventeen.
She sits. “You could’ve told me about, well, you know. You didn’t have to wait for that boy—”
“Nathaniel.”
“Um, Nathaniel . . .” She clears her throat. “You know I would have been there for you.”
“Right.”
She glowers. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”
I can feel one of those Hallmark moments coming on but, of course, not until the shit spatters.
“The last time I told you I got raped, you slapped me. I didn’t want a repeat.”
Her expression doesn’t change. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I turn my head to stare at her premature wrinkles and sniffy expression.
This woman carried me for nine months. Birthed me, fed me, kept a roof over my head. Even if we didn’t get along, surely she could love me enough to admit she was wrong. Wasn’t I worth enough to say she was sorry for letting me down, for letting that slime put his nasty hands on me long after I told her what he was doing?
There’s so much of her in me; it’s inescapable and revolting. There’s one similarity I won’t tolerate, not anymore: delusion. Denying things when they get too real, too inconvenient, that’s something we both carry. My whole life I’ve made excuses and told lies and done anything I could to ease my waking days because seeing the truth would have required some guts.
Never again. Because my denial? It fucked over the man I love more than any long-held dream, more than comprehension. And for that, forgiveness is short in coming.
I can’t really say I love this woman or anything about her, but my anger, my resentment—they’re gone.
So I nod. “You should go home. There’s nothing left for you to do. I’ll ride the bus home, okay?”
She blinks. “Well, if you’re sure . . .”
“I’m sure.”
Her slow nods grow faster until she’s standing and pretty much running down the hall. “I love you!” she calls.
I just wave good-bye.
The proceeding isn’t important. It’s not something unusual and fantastical or amazing. It’s a trial like any other criminal case, so sorry for not boring you with the details.
Nath
aniel’s charge is reduced from felony aggravated assault to a misdemeanor assault.
The jury finds that six months in jail and a permanent smear on his record will somehow convince him that, should I ever be raped again, he should live and let live.
I wish he would have.
The gavel falls.
I drag my mind from its stupor and move to the front, trying to let him know it’ll be okay, he’ll be fine, but I can’t breathe, can’t see him because he’s already through the door. I yell, once, and then I’m crying right there, no longer hiding, no longer caring. They escort me outside and deposit me like weekly garbage on the steps.
I pace and tremor and sit and stare, and it keeps dizzying me until it all runstogetherinonelongstream . . .
Chapter 15
“I’m drowning—”
Some guy nudges my elbow. I keep working.
“—but I’ve never felt so free—”
He nudges again. I take out an earbud.
“Mrs. Wise is talking to you.”
I walk to the desk.
“Mrs. Fanna would like to see you.”
“Mrs. Fanna can kiss my ass,” I say, but I don’t mean it, not really. It’s just that any other time, my teacher would have kicked my kissable ass halfway across the school, but today she’s feeling pity: Poor baby; her boyfriend’s in jail for beating her rapist into a coma.
I’m at Fanna’s door a few minutes later. I knock, and she appears.
“Michelle, come in.” She looks grave.
This is a shock.
She offers a seat, then settles into her own. She’s wearing a black dress, very mood appropriate.
“I wanted to let you know I’m leaving.”
Looks like I do have a gift.
“Why?”
She exhales, then smiles. “I’m pregnant.”
I could be cruel, but today’s a different day. “I’m glad.”
“I’m not.” She laughs, smoothing out her dress.
“Why not?”
“It’s my first baby and all. I’m a little worried.” She looks over at the boxes.
“You can stay a while. You’ve got nine months.” Why I’m asking her to stay, I have no idea. I truly don’t like her, don’t think she even lives in the same world I do.
