Her Story

by Christina Casinelli

  Clearing his throat, yet again, he pulled something out of his jacket pocket. “Here,” he said, handing her an overstuffed, crumpled envelope. She shot him a sideways glance as she flipped it over, unfolded the flap on the pack. She pulled out a wad of folded papers. She scanned them briefly and just looked up at him, confused.

  “What the fuck is this?” she asked.

  “My will. And my life insurance policy.”

  “Yeah no, I can see that. Why are you giving this to me?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” he replied, nonchalantly, dismissing her question with a shrug of his shoulders. He turned back to his coffee. She just stared at him, mouth open. She knew he could feel her staring at him. He squirmed a bit, shifting his weight and doing his best to ignore her.

  “Seriously? You’re just going to hand this to me and not… say… anything?” There was that quiver she had been trying to avoid. “What – are you dying or something?” He just dropped his head.

  “Do you gotta go and get all emotional about it? Of course I’m dying! We’re all dying. The docs just said I sped up the process by chain smoking for the last 50 years. Not much they can do about it now.” Another shrug.

  “So this is what? Your way of making amends for abandoning me to be raised by some random drunk you knocked up? This is your way of being a parent – showing up after I’m already fucked beyond repair and throwing some snide comments and money at me? I’m a bartender. I’m a train wreck. I’m the product of an alcoholic and a…a… a whatever the hell you are!” She could feel the eyes of the few other patrons turn toward them and she could feel the volume of her voice rising. “Let me tell you something – keep it. Keep all of it. Keep your will. Keep your Sundays. Keep yourself out of my life.” She stood to leave.

  “Will you quit being so fucking dramatic already? Jesus. Sit down.” She begrudgingly obeyed. But she wouldn’t look at him. She refused to look at him. “What did you want me to do, huh? Just wait and not say anything, have you show up here to wait for me, having no idea they already buried me? Huh? Or what, you wanted a phone call from my lawyer?”

  She knew he was right. But that didn’t change how upset she was, how unexplainably betrayed she felt. These Sundays had been the most consistent thing in her life, the only routine she had, and soon they were going to end. From the way John had made it sound, he could drop dead any day. Where would he be when it happened? Where would she be? Would he be alone? Would anyone even think to let her know? She realized now how little she knew about him, or, well, about his current life. He had shared select stories from his past with her, and she had discerned some information from comments and facts he had casually dropped into conversation. But did he live alone? Did he have a wife that was taking care of him, that would be there if and when something happened to him? These were questions, in all honesty, she had avoided asking for years, not really wanting to know the answers.

  But now they were the only thing she could think about. She thought about them on her way home from the diner. She thought about them as she crawled back in between the sheets, glad that last night’s visitor had seen himself out while she was gone. She thought about them as she slogged through her shift at the bar. She thought about them as she navigated the dark city streets on her way home, grateful that on Sunday nights the bar was closed by 10 p.m. She thought about them right up until a young girl ran out of nowhere and in front of her car. She swerved hard to the left to avoid her. And drove straight into oncoming traffic.

  Chapter 3

  She had no idea how long she’d been sitting there, knees pulled in to her chest, huddled in the corner, rocking back and forth. She hadn’t bothered to turn the lights on. Back and forth, back and forth. She pressed her forehead into her knees and wrapped her arms tighter around her shins. She wanted to sleep. She wanted to shower. She knew she wasn’t ready to do either of those things yet.

  Her muscles ached. Her stomach was in knots. Her mind was foggy. One realization, however, made her stomach drop. She hadn’t locked the door. Bolting up much faster than her protesting body would have liked, her head became light as she clumsily hurried down the hall toward the front door. Door knob, dead bolt, second dead bolt. Click, click, click, one right after the other. A wave of unexplainable relief overcame her as she slumped back down onto the floor. She cupped her face in her hands, trying to make the room stop spinning. They smelled like wet dirt and drying blood. The smell triggered an overwhelming copper taste in the back of her mouth. Frantically, she crawled as fast as she could toward the bathroom, making it with just enough time to throw back the lid of the toilet before what little she had eaten that day was immediately propelled from her stomach.

  After she had finally stopped retching and her body stopped shaking, she pulled herself up to the sink and splashed cool water onto her face. Before even reaching for a towel, she slid her hand across the wall and flipped the first light switch her fingers came across. What she saw in the mirror was actually worse than she had expected. Staring straight forward, she focused on the reflection of her nose, the one area of her face that seemed untouched, and slowly loosened her focus, assessing the damage as she went.

  Her right cheek had survived with only a few cuts and scrapes, but one small glance to the left and she could tell her cheekbone was broken. It had already begun to swell, causing her left eye to look sunken and lost; the white behind that hazel iris now completely red from what she could only assume was a broken blood vessel, likely obtained from the same backhand that had shattered her cheekbone. Her bangs were matted to her forehead by a mix of sweat and dirt. Her lip was split right down the middle. She vaguely remembered biting it. Looking down at her hands, she realized why the smell of dirt and blood had been so strong when she had brought them to her face. Cuts of various size and depth covered her palms and the backs of her hands. Several knuckles were still slowly secreting blood. Almost all of her fingernails were broken, some missing completely, and at least two fingers on her right hand were so swollen she couldn’t imagine they weren’t broken. She couldn’t examine herself any further. The sight of her battered body was beginning to make her nauseous.

  Turning her back to the mirror, she reached in to the shower and turned the hot water up as high as it would go. Slowly and carefully she began to remove what was left of her clothes. Her t-shirt, ripped and bloody, her jeans, covered in dirt and soaked with sweat, fell to the floor in a heap that looked as tattered and torn as she felt. Afraid her legs wouldn’t support her on the slippery surface of the shower, she pulled the shower curtain back and sat down immediately in the back of the bathtub. The water stung her skin as it slowly began to attack the outer layer of grime she felt encased in. She watched the water race toward the drain in brown swirls, and again pulled her knees in to her chest.

  As steam quickly began to fill the tiny bathroom, she finally allowed herself to ponder the most disturbing, yet most obvious question; how the hell had this happened?

  Chapter 4

  The next thing she knew, she opened her eyes to see strangers standing above her, poking and prodding. And she was moving. Or, well, being moved. The generic fluorescent overhead lights beamed down on her as a sea of white coats and blue scrubs ebbed and flowed over the railings on either side of her. She slowly began to realize more and more about her surroundings. She couldn’t move her neck. Or her head. Or her arms. At first this made her panic, and that’s when those around her realized she was awake and started to ask her questions. Did she know where she was? Could she feel various pokes and prods? Follow the light that was pointed directly at her pupils. Squeeze this hand or that hand. They wheeled her in between two blue curtains and started hooking her up to all kinds of machines.

  She closed her eyes again. This time when she opened them she was by herself. There were all sorts of conversations and movement and beeps and buzzing outside of the curtains. She was no longer strapped down. She slowly turned her head from side to side. She felt sore all over. She looke
d down at her hands, expecting to see the mangled mess they had been before, but instead saw clean, neatly wrapped, bandaged hands. All of a sudden the curtain was ripped back by a phantom hand.

  “There you are! I’ve been looking for you all over! They wouldn’t tell me anything!”

  “Rebecca? What the… What’s going on?” she stammered. Her head started swimming again as she struggled to take everything in.

  “I found you passed out in the shower! There was blood everywhere – I had no idea what to do so I called 911!”

  “Oh good – you’re awake!” said an uninvited nurse as she entered through the gaping hole Rebecca had left in her blue curtained fortress. “Now, we just have a few more tests to run and a few questions to ask you.” The next thing she knew this unwelcome woman was bombarding her with questions. All the questions Rebecca must have been unable to answer; things about her medical history, what medications she was on, and the most important question of all – what had happened to her tonight – were thrown at her at rapid fire speed, while Rebecca just stood by and watched on, likely curious about the answers to some of those same questions herself.

  “I think you should call the police,” was all she said.

  Chapter 5

  It felt like it took them forever to arrive. The whole time she was waiting Rebecca just kept standing there, staring at her. Rebecca had wanted to call her parents, but she had somehow managed to talk her out of it.

  Two male uniformed cops eventually showed up. And by the time they had she almost wished she hadn’t asked to see them. Rather than letting her tell her story, they simply shot rapid fire questions at her. Did she know her attacker? Why was she walking home by herself so late? What had she been wearing? What were her exact movements that night? Had she had anything to drink? What exactly did she remember?

  He had beaten her pretty severely. As she had suspected, her cheekbone was broken, as were two of her fingers. She had suffered a concussion and had needed some stitches in her scalp where he had slammed her head against a tree when she had ceased to fight back. It had seemed almost as if that was something he hadn’t expected to happen.

  “Always be a ‘bad’ victim,” her mother had repeatedly told her. “Make it as difficult as possible for them to get what they want from you. You know what they want from you…”

  And that’s exactly what she had tried to be – a bad victim – yelling and screaming and clawing and fighting and eventually causing her attacker enough trouble that she had had the opportunity to run, and luckily he had declined to follow.

  No, she did not know who had attacked her. He had come up on her from behind and it was too dark during their scuffle for her to get a good look at his face.

  She was walking home so late because she didn’t have a car, and when her bus had never shown up, she gave up waiting at the bus stop near her classmate’s apartment and decided to walk home. Even though it was dark out, the weather was still relatively pleasant for a New England fall, given that the rain from earlier in the day had stopped.

  She had been wearing a zip-up hoodie over a t-shirt, jeans, and canvas sneakers. The only reason she volunteered this information was because her attacker had grabbed the hood of her sweatshirt when she had been walking by. Had that not been the case, she couldn’t understand why that question of what she had been wearing would even be relevant.

  She had been at her classmate’s apartment studying. Her study group had a rotating schedule for who hosted their Sunday night study sessions. This had been Julie’s week. Mike had offered to give her a ride home so that she wouldn’t have to wait for the bus, but she had declined – primarily because something about Mike had always seemed a little bit off. When she had hosted study group a few weeks prior, Mike had excused himself to use the restroom and instead “accidentally” wandered into Rebecca’s room, where she had found him. There were currently no words to describe how much she had wished she had taken Mike up on his offer.

  Of course she hadn’t had anything to drink. She was a first year law student at Brown – since this semester had started she couldn’t remember the last time she had touched alcohol. And yes, the others in her study group could indeed verify that she was not drinking. And no, she wasn’t using any other “substances” either. She was beginning to become impatient. What did any of these questions have to do with finding her attacker?

  Finally the officers asked her to walk them through her night. She had left her apartment a little before 4 p.m. to catch the bus. She arrived at Julie’s apartment in Elmhurst right around 4:30. She was one of the first to arrive and the rest of the study group slowly began to trickle in. They hunkered down around 5, dividing up who would outline each chapter, each case, quizzing each other on facts related to the cases that would be covered during the upcoming week. Julie had laid out a spread of various snacks and finger foods in the kitchen, and the group floated between the kitchen and her living room – shouting back and forth between the rooms. The group dispersed around 10 p.m., each member heading off to spend the rest of the night reviewing the notes they had taken throughout the night, the over-achievers of the group off to start outlining.

  Mike offered to give her a ride, which she declined, and headed toward the bus stop she had gotten off at earlier. She waited at the bus stop. And waited. And waited. Being much colder than it had been when she had left that afternoon, she pulled her favorite zip-up hooded sweat shirt from her messenger bag, and rather than fusing with the cross-body strap, just threw it on, zipping it up over the strap. It wasn’t unusual for the buses to run late. RIPTA wasn’t exactly the most reliable form of transportation, but it was the cheapest. Well, other than walking, which is what she eventually decided to do.

  She had made the cross-town walk before, several times before actually. The most direct route didn’t take her through the greatest neighborhood, but she had never had a problem, and she knew which streets and corners to avoid. If she just kept her head down and kept moving forward she couldn’t imagine she’d run into any problems. Oh, how wrong she had been.

  She had been walking along a row of trees that lined the park when she felt a hard, strong tug on the hood of her sweatshirt that not only made her lose her balance, but almost brought her to the ground. After that, everything seemed to happen in a blur. Her assailant was dragging her behind the tree line and into the park, both hands now firmly grasping the hood of her sweatshirt. At first she struggled to break free of his grip. Unable to do so, she unzipped the hoodie and began to run as hard and as fast as she could. There were no lights on in the park. The only thing illuminating the landscape was the glow of the streetlights on the road that she was quickly leaving behind her. She started to lose her footing on the mud and loose rocks of the open field she was making her way across. She was breathing so hard, she didn’t even hear him rapidly approaching behind her. He tackled her, wrapping his arms completely around her, pinning her arms to her body, leaving her with nothing to break her fall as he used all of his weight to bring her down to the ground. Her knees met the ground first, followed quickly by her forehead.

  He rolled her over onto her back. She closed her eyes and started screaming as loud as she could. This was when she felt the back of his hand across her face. “Shut up!” he growled, pinning her hands above her head, squeezing them tight, while lowered his body on top of hers, using all of his body weight against her. She kicked and bucked and squirmed. Eventually she was able to free one of her hands, which she started swinging wildly toward his face. She felt her fingernails dig into his flesh and he shifted his weight as he recoiled just enough to allow her to free herself. She crawled to her feet and took off. Now completely disoriented, her only goal was to put as much distance as possible between herself and this mystery man. Her cheek throbbed. Her hands ached from her wrists through the tips of her fingers. Her legs just kept pumping, but she could hear his heavy breathing closing in behind her. The next thing she knew he had latched onto her arm – but she kept
pulling away, fighting to get away. She heard herself screaming out for help, but they had moved so far away from the road she knew her screams were all but useless.

  ‘Be a bad victim. Be a bad victim.’ Her mother’s words echoed in her head. “Shut up!” he said. He had her by the shoulders now. She continued to try to pull away, but the mud caused her to struggle with her footing. “Shut up – shut up – shut up!” he said as he shoved her backward, slamming her head against the trunk of a tree. Her mouth slammed shut. She literally saw stars. Her footing slipped on the roots of the tree. She felt her legs giving way, slowly slumping her toward the ground. That was exactly where he wanted her, and she knew that was absolutely the worst place she could be.

  Steadying herself against the base of the tree, she propelled herself forward, landing the top of her head squarely in his gut. There was an audible ‘whoosh’ of the air that exploded from his lungs. As he stumbled back, she grabbed the sides of her messenger bag, and using all of her remaining strength, cracked the bag, weighed down by all her books and legal pads, across his face. And with that, she was off again - running toward anywhere that would get her out of that park and away from that man.