The memory slides down my back and presses on another nerve. The elevator doors open and we separate.
“I’ll talk to her tomorrow,” he says.
His hand rests on my back as he leads me to our bedroom. The girls’ laughter floats through the air and swaths me in false comfort as I undress. My movements are stilted, slow, painful motions awaiting an aftershock. What I’d heard has broken me. My body is unable to take the punch.
I am beneath the covers, neither awake nor asleep, when he curls around me. “Tonight was terrific, Em. Don’t worry so much.”
My voice is empty and flat. “I’m scared.”
“There’s nothing to be scared of. Trust the girls.”
Emotions bite at me. The name. The bathroom. This birthday. I burst out, “We’re losing them. Their lives are full with debate and lacrosse and their friends . . . soon they’ll be driving . . .”
“Em,” he interrupts, “they’ll always need their mom.”
“And I love being their mom.”
He spoons me, and the nagging doubts dissipate. “Maybe I need to go to back to the stage,” I say. “Theater might be good for me.” Until the doubts crawl back. “Except they need me more than ever . . .”
“Everything’s going to be fine,” he whispers as he drifts to sleep, snoring in my ear.
My mind spins and whirls. A looping spiral I can’t slow down. It’s his fault. He mentioned Monty. He resurrected the name from the dead. He reminded me of what I’d done. It collides with this video and whatever Zoe did on it. I try, but sleep eludes me. I wrestle with barging into their room and asking Zoe point blank, but her friends are there, so I put the idea to rest. Opening and closing my eyes returns a sense of control, but I grow tired of the weary motion and settle for darkness. I lie in his arms long after the whispers and laughter fade from down the hall.
The light of a full moon glares at me. I blame it for what comes next. At once, I rise up and toss the sheets aside. I tell myself I’m just checking on the girls. Their door is closed, but I push through. I trip over bags and clothes and shoes. Shelby and Chelsea share a blow-up bed on the floor. They’re all peacefully asleep.
They’re fine. Go back to your room. Turn around and leave.
I know I shouldn’t be doing this. My heart blares it’s a mistake, but I can’t help myself. I find what I’m searching for: a phone. I don’t know whose it is, and I don’t care. I’m only grateful that it isn’t locked. I tiptoe out the door, careful not to make a sound.
While the phone powers up, I know there’s time to reconsider, to walk away, to save myself from being the mother who snoops on her kids. The bright light burns my eyes, but I don’t stop. I’m searching and scrolling, checking e-mails and texts for anything with a video attachment. I see the group chat. It came in a little while ago. A blocked number. I press “Play.”
The video’s grainy, but there she is.
Zoe. It’s definitely Zoe. Bile burns my throat. She’s on her knees. I can make out her face and a hand against her shoulder. The hand of a boy who’s standing in front of her. The stifled sounds I had overheard in the bathroom are now uncomfortably clear.
My daughter is giving a blow job.
The phone slips from my hand and slams on the hard floor. It takes with it my breath. I panic, and a flood of adrenaline soaks my veins. I stare at the screen as it screams to me: “Don’t stop. It feels good.” I don’t touch it. I don’t want to see her face. But the sounds are loud, and I can’t risk waking Bobby or the girls. I’ll be caught, and they’ll be pissed. Shaking, I grab the phone and fumble with the buttons. The noises mingle with my revulsion. The phone powers down, and I make the few steps to the door.
Only I walk smack into Zoe in the hall. And she’s crying.
CHAPTER 3
“Mommy,” she whimpers.
My heart drops.
“That’s me.” She’s hyperventilating. “That’s me you’re watching . . .”
The phone is a wall between us. It keeps me from throwing my arms around her. I want to slap her, too, but her eyes call out to me. Oh my God, Mommy. Make it go away. I want to. I want to unsee what I just saw, but there’s no way. The images are burned to memory.
Love and pain collide inside my heart. Shame pools around us. She shakes, her cries deep and animal-like. Words come out as sobs. “Don’t hate me.”
I hug her hard and whisper in her ear, “I could never hate you.” Though I’m afraid my mix of reactions is sneaking through.
Zoe steps back. In a split second my daughter is someone else. Her eyes are heavy with regret, her cheeks a dull white. My arm comes around her, and I guide her down the hall to the guest bedroom. My fast pace is fueled by indescribable fear. Yet it feels like the longest walk of my life. Bobby’s steady breathing fills the air as we pass our bedroom. If it could only silence the pounding of my heart. I close the door. The need to protect him is strong. My overreaction will become his reaction. I have no idea what this will do to him.
She collapses on the bed. It’s an ungodly hour, but I’m wide awake. The phone is in my hand, and she grabs it.
“Zoe, don’t.”
She swats my fingers away and powers it up. She knows exactly where to go. The glint highlights her agony. I see the shock. The shame. It splatters across her face. “I can’t . . . I can’t . . . oh my God . . . who sent this? How did everybody get it?”
The rest I can’t follow. Garbled sounds mix with a bone-chilling helplessness. A sliver of nausea climbs through my body. I don’t know what to say. I don’t how to help. She buries herself under the covers, and I get in beside her. The phone falls to the floor, and neither of us pick it up.
“How did this happen?” I ask. It comes out rational and calm, but it’s desperate and ruffled.
The glimmering night sky shines through the windows. We don’t need to turn on the light to see the pain between us. Her body’s rounded in a ball, shaking with each whimper. The sounds escalate.
“I didn’t know I was being filmed.”
Zoe on her knees flashes before my eyes. I seal them tight to shut it off, but the image haunts my internal screen. Was she naked?
“Why were you snooping through our phones?” she asks.
It would hurt worse to tell her the truth. My arms loosen around her—from weakness, not a loss of affection, so I grip harder and let the question fade into the sheets. “Did somebody force you to do that?”
“I want to die,” she whimpers, pressing a fist into the pillow.
I swallow the ache and rub my hand up and down her back. The steady motion keeps me from lashing out at her.
Her lip quivers as she talks. “I didn’t mean for it to happen . . . there was a party . . . I’m so stupid . . .”
“Tell me,” I say, every instinct in my body shouting to be heard. “Tell me, so I can help you.”
“You saw it yourself,” she says. “Oh my God, this is so embarrassing.”
Shame is a dirty, dark secret that knees you in the stomach again and again and again. When you’re your own worst enemy, sharing the grime with someone else—especially your mother—is tough. I give her time to collect her thoughts, because I honestly don’t know what to say.
When she finally starts, it’s in a whisper. “Last weekend . . . I was so excited to go to that party . . . Lily was home sick . . . do you remember?”
I didn’t want Zoe to go without her. I liked when they were paired and looking out for each other. It was a party with older kids. I had every right to be nervous.
“You said it was okay . . .”
Bobby and I were in the kitchen when she came to say goodbye. The blue of her shirt brought out the color of her eyes. Her skinny jeans accentuated parts of her that made me take a second glance. Her friends were meeting her downstairs. Chelsea, Shelby, and Grace. Bobby told her how pretty she looked. And when the elevator doors shut, I’ll never forget, he said, “She looks so much like you.”
The tears spill from her
eyes, and I grab the tissue box next to the bed.
“I thought it would be different . . . we do everything together . . . but then it happened so fast. One minute I was hanging out, and the next I was somewhere else . . . with him.”
“Zoe, who’s the boy?”
“Price.” She wipes her nose. “He’s new. He’s in our grade.”
“Do you know anything else about him?”
She shrugs.
Seeds of something evil plant themselves inside my head. Zoe was fourteen a week ago. She’s still really young. And there are other concerns. “Zoe.” I pause. “Think. Did he do this to you? Did he force you?”
Her voice is normally husky, but her cries make it worse. “Everyone’s gonna see it. They’re gonna make fun of me.”
“Zoe!” I’m shrieking. “Did he force you?” Because it’s the only thing that makes sense.
“I can’t believe this.” She rocks back and forth. “How can I go back to school?”
Something is growing inside me. It’s destroying any semblance of patience. “Zoe, you need to listen to me.”
She turns away and covers her eyes. “Mom, please, you don’t understand. You just don’t.”
I try to pry her fingers away from her face. “Then explain it to me.”
“He didn’t force me,” she snaps. “It just happened.” She yanks her hand away.
“What does that mean, Zoe?”
She doesn’t respond.
“Answer me.”
Quiet.
I’m back in my Chicago bedroom listening to my mom tell someone on the phone how my father cheated. Sex makes you think you have something special, but without feelings, without respect, you’ve got nothing. I take a deep inhale. “It doesn’t ‘just happen’ . . .” Sex is for those you love who love you back. “Zoe, I don’t understand.”
She cries while I sit with hypocrisy so pungent I can’t finish the sentence. She did this. She wanted this. And I know what they say about girls like that.
“Nobody would’ve ever known about it,” she argues. “It wasn’t a big deal! Now it’s on everyone’s phones! That’s a big deal.”
“What did you say?”
“Please, Mom. Just stop.”
I’m in her face. “No big deal? Is that what you think? You think giving a blow job to a boy you hardly know isn’t a big deal? You’re fourteen, Zoe . . .”
“Fifteen. And everybody’s doing it. That’s what kids do.”
Words can sometimes slap you where it hurts. That’s what hers do to me. When it’s your little girl, you try to protect her, to keep her innocent for as long as you can. But when I think about the flagrant way she describes this reckless behavior, the anger creeps up my body.
“Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? You’re young. Way too young. Did you think you’d get attention that way? Did you think this boy would like you? C’mon, Zoe. Do you have any idea how valuable your reputation is?” I’m shaming her, and I’m judging her; I’m doing to her what I once did to myself.
She curls into herself. “This is why kids lie to their parents.”
We were once her age, Bobby and me, sprawled across a span of beach, palm trees fanning around us. We took things slowly. It didn’t just happen, as Zoe proclaims. My mind travels on the crazy train and stops at my next fear. “Were you drinking? He could’ve slipped something in your drink. He could’ve taken advantage of you . . . been the one to film you.”
Zoe focuses on everything but my face. “I don’t remember every detail, but he didn’t force me to do anything.”
It’s a flimsy voice I don’t recognize, and it heightens my anxiety. Pity and a twinge of fury fill my heart.
“Stop looking at me like that,” she snaps.
“You were drinking.” It’s not a question. And when she doesn’t respond, I know. That she chooses to keep this part from me is mildly ironic. She’s turned on her side, and I lean over, watching her, her eyes closed. The cold air that slithers down and around my body is like a vise, squeezing. “I want this boy’s number. His parents need to know.”
She shoots up, her eyes ablaze. “No, Mom! You can’t do that!”
“The hell I can’t!”
She recoils, and for the first time in her life she acts afraid of me. My chest is heaving, my face hot. I see her hand lying limp on the bedspread next to mine, but I can’t bring myself to touch it.
“I’m calling his parents, Zoe. He could’ve put something in your drink.” That’s what I want to believe. What I need to believe. “You don’t know anything about him.” My eyes throb, and I worry I will burst into sobs.
But I can’t do that. This is about Zoe. I push back the feelings and face her, taking her shoulders in my hands and trying not to shake her. Her hair is scattered and unruly. The leftover makeup from the party has left her with raccoon eyes.
“Where were the parents?” I ask. “You told me the parents would be home. It’s one of the reasons I let you go.”
“I didn’t know they weren’t going to be there!” she cries.
“How can I trust you, Zoe?”
Her eyes are steeped in sorrow. “I’m telling you the truth.”
“Why am I hearing it a week later? Why didn’t you tell me?”
She pouts and starts to chew on a fingernail. “I didn’t know someone was going to video me. It was nobody’s business.”
My stomach knots when I ask, “How long have you been drinking? Was this the first time?”
“You’re more upset about what I did than about someone videoing me and sending it around.”
“I’m upset about all of it!” I shout. “The drinking, the lack of supervision, your judgment, the video. I’m trying to help you. I’m trying to understand, but you’re not explaining yourself. How much did you drink? Who drove you to Grace’s house? And where was Lisa? God dammit, Zoe, I trusted you!”
The faint light paints her face and makes her hopeless and small. Our bodies are near, but we do not touch. She’s hysterical when she screams at me, “It’s not my fault!” She rolls over and pulls the sheets over her head. “Make it go away.”
I’m not sure if she means the dim light shining on her face or something else. I’m afraid to blink. Life can change in an instant. Drinking. Sex. Hours ago none of these things were an issue. I should go wake up Bobby, but I’m crippled. This would kill him. When I was faced with sobering truths, I chose door number two. To lie. And my excuse was to protect him. But Zoe’s so young. Much younger than I was. And even though she’s covered in Victoria’s Secret Pink pajamas with a splatter of childish hearts, her decisions remind me she’s no longer a child. I study her body for a sign, something that signifies a change, a missing piece, a code that would break down why she would let this happen. I shudder when I think, She’s just like me.
“You’re making this more than it is.” Her voice is muffled, an echo under the sheet.
“How do you expect me to react? Last time we talked, you hadn’t even kissed a boy. We were far away from drinking and blow jobs.”
The words taste awful. Regret unwinds. Flashes of conversation unravel—lectures on alcohol, taking pride in your body, boundaries, and the meaning of no. Bobby made it very clear when he had said, “No doesn’t mean yes. It doesn’t mean maybe, and it doesn’t mean someone has the right to push you into yes. No means no. Period.” So much for doing everything right. What did it matter, when my daughter spits back at me about the alcohol she drank and tells me it’s no big deal to do things with a boy she doesn’t really know?
She pops her head out. “I’m sorry.” Her eyes are so tired and sad I slide next to her and gather her into my arms. Maybe if I hold her close she won’t slip away. “I don’t need a lecture.”
“I’m going to lecture, and there will be repercussions. What business do you have drinking at your age? Your father’s going to raise holy hell, so you’d better prepare yourself.”
The lone tear that slides down her face takes my heart
with it. She stutters when she speaks. “For one single minute in my boring universe I was having fun.” She stops. It’s hard to watch someone so gifted in language trip over a sentence. “I wasn’t . . . I wasn’t worried about what people were thinking. I wasn’t being compared to anyone.”
The wound that stretches across her face lands deep in my abdomen. Her pain is my pain, and I don’t know how to make it go away. “Do you really feel that way? You’re happier to be drunk and . . . doing that?”
“Mom, you don’t get it.”
“I get it, Zoe. I know what it’s like to lose yourself. I know about temptation. Trust me.”
Her lithe body curls into my belly like long ago. She raises her voice and sinks her head when she says, “I don’t know what I feel.”
I’m remembering a time when I was free and it, too, “felt good.” But I’m not that young girl. I’m her mother. And I whisper into her hair and hug her hard. “Alcohol does that to people, Zoe. It impairs judgment and confuses you. And it’s not how you get a boy to like you.”
“Do we have to tell Daddy?” Her tender voice takes on a childlike tone, and it chills me to the very core. “He’s going to ground me for life.”
“We don’t keep things from your father.” And I notice how my fingers are crossed, fending off the hypocrisy.
This is how it will go down. Bobby will scream. Then he’ll mandate punishments: no phone, no sleepovers, no parties, no social life whatsoever. Then he’ll question me. He’ll ask if I had the talk with her. He’ll ask if I knew about the boy and kept it a secret from him, the private mother-daughter language, he calls it. Then he’ll break down, and his eyes will well up. Just when they’re about to brim over, he’ll wipe them away. And like that, he’ll cross out what Zoe did. Because he can’t stand to see his daughter as anything but his innocent little girl.
This hits right at the heart of my worst fears—for Zoe and for myself. Because for the coup de grâce, he’ll exact revenge on the boy and his parents and whoever videoed them. He’ll make it his personal cause to destroy all their lives.
Somebody's Daughter Page 3
