“Really wonderful,” I say, wanting no part in this. I’ve begun to feel dizzy, and I wonder if you can be allergic to dandelion.
“Be respectful,” says Mom.
The woman recounts how this story, like many stories, starts with innocent fun: a drink, some drags off a spliff.
“A doobie?” asks Mom.
“Shhhh!” says Dahlia, giving Mom a dirty look. Then Dahlia takes several steps towards Petunia, who puts an arm around her. Mom looks sad, but Dahlia ignores her.
Thordis tells us her rapist was someone who lived down the hall in her dorm. He’d once seen her naked after she had forgotten to bring her towel into the dorm showers. She’d tiptoed the hallway, thinking that if she was fast enough, quiet enough, she could make it back to her room before anyone saw her, and even if she was seen, so what? Nudity wasn’t a big deal to her. When her soon-to-be-rapist had seen her: naked, tiptoeing, they had shared an awkward laugh, an “I’m sorry!”/ “No, I’m sorry!”
Weeks later, drunk and slightly high, she’d run into him outside her dorm. She was alone and he explained that he’d been looking for her, that he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He felt, knew, there was a reason she’d shown herself to him that night. She’d laughed, fumbled with her keys, and then dropped them. He’d picked them up, opened her door, and pulled her inside. She didn’t go on about the physical details, but she explained how she had felt after he raped her: confused, angry, ashamed.
When she told her friends, they all asked things like:
“Why’d you let him in your dorm?” “Was he cute?”
“What did you say after he said he’d been looking for you?”
A year passed. She didn’t see her rapist. Many times she’d thought about telling the authorities, filing a report with the police, but she didn’t want any more questions. It was easier to forget. She started dating some football star. He was smart, kind. They fell in love. He threw a Halloween party and her rapist was there, dressed as Jesus Christ. He’d grown a beard. She told her boyfriend what the boy had done. She was afraid. The boyfriend was furious. With the help of his teammates, the football boys dragged her rapist into a dorm room. They defiled him with a broom while he cried and she watched.
“Did you feel better after?” Dahlia asks. She’s got this crazy look in her eye and Thordis stares her down.
“Yes,” Thordis says, “I was freed.”
“What the actual fuck was that?” I ask, my hands in the air. Mom, Dahlia, Petunia and I are all gathered around a stump, and Petunia and Dahlia are chomping on some sort of plant.
“What?” asks Mom.
“I don’t want to hear about shit like that!” I say. “Oh my god!” says Dahlia. “Show some respect!” I’m furious. “I want to go home!” I say.
“It can be overwhelming for the young ones,” says Petunia, still chomping. “You’re so immature,” says Dahlia, “like, it’s embarrassing.”
Mom sighs and says, “It’s only a couple more hours. Then we sleep. Then we leave.” “I don’t want to be near these people any more,” I say. Petunia stares at her hands. “Come on,” says Mom. “Next is cheese and wine. You like cheese. You like wine.” “Cheese and wine and what?” I ask.
“There’s dancing!” says Dahlia.
Mom, Dahlia and I make our way back to the big tent. Petunia is following us, like an overgrown puppy. The tent has been transformed into an old person’s idea of a nightclub.
There’s a small dance floor, a disco ball, and several flashing lights. Christmas lights are wrapped around two of the metal poles that support the tent. Mom calls them a tripping hazard. She says she hopes nobody here has epilepsy. Petunia snorts.
“That’s such an old person’s joke,” I say.
Bane is standing behind a small table, unstacking plastic cups. He smiles when he sees me. “I’m going to get some wine,” I say.
Mom says, “Good idea,” then she follows me to the table. When she sees Bane, she says, “Hey there! You our bartender?” He nods: yes.
“Is there a limit on drinks?” I ask.
“Can you give her half a cup?” asks Mom. Then she whispers, “I don’t know if you can tell, but she’s not twenty-one yet.” Mom elbows me in the side. Bane smiles.
“Either I drink, or I kill myself,” I say. Mom calls me dramatic, but Bane laughs. He holds up his index finger, then he winks at me. Thank God Mom doesn’t see. I can’t help but notice how Bane has got these really lovely dimples. For a second, I want to bite them. I’m a lunatic.
After Bane fills up my glass, he puts the bottle under the table. “This will be here when you need it,” he says. I think I see him look at my chest. Then he says, “Be right back, need ice.”
When he’s gone, Mom says, “you’ve made a friend,” in this really annoying, teasing tone.
Then Mac hooks up a microphone and says, “So, um, there’s a two drink limit… per hour… just kidding! This is what you paid for!” Nobody laughs, but an overweight woman wearing a shirt as a dress screams, “You think that’s a joke?”
I look at Mom. Mom looks at me. Dahlia and Petunia appear. Dahlia looks at me and Mom. “Sheesh,” she says, “you two need to lighten up.”
“I need to lighten up?” I demand, but everybody is back to gulping down their wine.
The sun has gone down, but the tent is warm. Mac has asked us all to make a circle in the middle of the dance floor. Dahlia fights to stand next to her. Mac says, “Bring your wine.” We have to wait a couple of minutes as half of the group has gone for refills. I’m watching one of the older women stroke Bane’s arm. I can see her whispering to him. Once everyone is back, Mac tells us to hold hands. We all look at each other, wondering where to put our cups of wine.
Petunia puts her wine on the floor behind her, so we follow suit. Once everybody is holding hands, Mac asks us to close our eyes. “No peeking!” she says. Then she points at me, “I see you peeking!” she says. Once our eyes are closed, Mac tells us to hum. We’re supposed to do it one after another. “Feel the energy build!” she says. She explains how she’s studied meditation. “Meditation, medication, magic!” she yells. I open my eyes to look at Mom, but she’s still got her eyes shut. Dahlia sees me, and mouths: “Close your eyes.” So I do. “What do these words have in common?”
I whisper, “They all start with an M? Meditation, medication, magic, Mac, madness, mental, m–” I hop in place. Mom elbows me, but I can feel her laughing through my hand.
“These are our tools!” Mac cries, suddenly ten times more passionate, “These are our strengths, if we choose to own them.” Then she lets out a wild scream. I open my eyes again and am surprised to see that everyone seems relatively ok with Mac’s outbreak. Mom’s eyes are still closed, but she is snorting with the effort of not laughing. “Will you own these strengths with me?” Mac asks.
Dahlia and a couple of other women yell, “YES!” “I can’t hear you!” Mac says.
“YES!” scream the women, teeth bared. Dahlia lets go of Mac’s hands and punches the air again.
“Now,” says Mac, “I am going to pass around some mandrake. You needn’t take very much, just a pinch. Historically, mandrake has been used by witches to prevent demonic possession. If used correctly, it will strengthen the mind, spirit and heart. Bane–” she gestures him forward, “pass out the mandrake.”
I mouth “Witches?” to Mom, but she ignores me. Bane puts down the ice chest he was carrying. When he comes around to me, I smile at him, but he doesn’t smile back. He hands me a bushel of something that looks like dirty carrots. He nods.
Dahlia asks, “Isn’t mandrake from the Harry Potter books?” “Don’t eat it too quickly,” Bane says. Dahlia makes a face.
As soon as Bane gives Dahlia her bushel, she shoves the whole thing into her mouth.
Chomping and spitting, she asks, “Is this lady-like enough for you?”
Bane shakes his head, “If eaten in large quantiti
es, or if consumed too quickly, the root causes hallucinations, vomiting, the shakes, paranoia…”
Dahlia pounds on her chest. She screams through her chomping, and little bits of mandrake fly all over. After she swallows, she narrows her eyes, and says, “Bring it on!”
“What the actual fuck?” I ask. Bane hands me my own bushel of mandrake, but I throw it on the ground. “I’m not eating that crap.”
Mom doesn’t eat her mandrake either. She holds it up to me, “It looks like a little man!” she says, delighted. Then Dahlia grabs it from her and shoves it into her own mouth.
On the far side of the tent, Dahlia is talking to a tree. She is staggering around like a drunk person. When I ask Mom if Dahlia is ok, Mom only shrugs her shoulders. Dahlia yells at me to join her, “Have some drinks!” she says, stumbling towards us.
Mom says, “She doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to.” Dahlia says, “Jesus, Mom, isn’t it past your bedtime?”
Mom looks at her watch. “It is,” she says. “Are you girls ok here by yourself?” I want to tell her not to go, but I’m tired of looking weak in front of Dahlia. I nod, and Mom says, “Our tent is back by where we did embroidery. They’ve got a bunch of lanterns set up. Its really cozy.”
“Ok,” I say, “I don’t think we’ll be too long.”
Dahlia throws her arm around me, “I’ll look after her,” she says.
I don’t know who started it, but soon everybody has their clothes off. I’m hanging out with Bane over by the bar, teasing him about how red his face has gotten. “I can’t look anywhere!” he says, “All I see is boobs, boobs, boobs.” When he asks me if I am going to take my clothes off, I choke on my wine.
Dahlia has worked herself into the middle of these women, who are all swaying as a mass, chanting and stomping. She’s only wearing her underwear and suddenly I am worried that Bane will prefer her over me. Every few seconds, one of the women lets out another scream.
They remind me of wild animals, of wolves.
Someone is pounding a drum, and the music is so loud, I can’t hear Bane, not even when he yells into my ear. It seems most people have finished drinking, so Bane has come out from behind the bar. He mimes a waltz, offering me his hand. I let him pull me around, feeling drunker by the minute. Everybody is so into what they are doing, that nobody pays attention to us, and even if they did, I wouldn’t care.
When a slower song comes on, Bane starts doing the chicken dance, real exaggerated and dramatic. I don’t know how he keeps a straight face. Then he points outside, fanning himself. He offers me his hand again, and the two of us dip under the tent flap. “Woo,” he says, pulling me away from the tent, “hot in there.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“You smoke?” he asks, offering me a cigarette. “No,” I say.
“You come to these sorts of things often?” he asks. “Nope,” I say. “Never.”
“Yeah,” he says. “You don’t look like the type.” “What does that mean?” I ask.
He leans against a tree. Then he says, “No tattoos. You’ve got a full head of hair.” He motions for me to come stand next to him. My heart sounds like: what if, what if, what if? “Hi,” he says, quietly, and through a lop-sided grin. He rests his hand on my thigh, then he lets it slide down to my knee, “Your legs are shaved.”
“Yeah, well–” I can’t think of how to finish the sentence. My armpits itch. My throat is making weird sounds that I can’t control. I look up at Bane, who doesn’t seem to hear, thank God. He isn’t looking at me, but his hand keeps inching up my thigh. It must be around forty degrees. Suddenly, all I want is to be back in the tent with all of the animal-women. I say “I’m going to go–”
Bane says, “I’m going to kiss you now.” And then he does. Before Bane, I’d only kissed Erik Han during a game of Spin-the-Bottle, and last year Missy’s brother shot-gunned a Budweiser, then he stuck his hands down my shirt when nobody was looking. I don’t hate the kiss. Before it happened, I probably would have said I wanted it, but now I’m thinking about how my breath must stink, and how I haven’t showered in ages and– How long are kisses supposed to go on anyway?
I’m sort of petting the back of Bane’s neck, wondering if I should be putting my tongue in his mouth more when I start to feel like I can’t breathe. I take a little step back, but Bane follows. He holds me against him. Then he starts pressing his dick against me. When I start to squirm, he says, “Let it happen.”
So I just stand there for a minute, Bane pressing into me. I’m half worried that Mom and the other women will find me, half terrified that Bane will whip out his dick. Then Bane puts his hand down the front of my pants. His hands are freezing. When I try to push him away, he says, “You’re so pretty, baby.” Then he kisses me again.
My heart is pounding in my head. Ten more seconds, I think, ten more seconds and then we can go back to chicken dancing. I won’t drink any more. I’ll chicken dance some, and then I’ll go to bed. Bane takes my hand and places it on the crotch of his jeans. He says, “You’re so hot, baby.” Then he pulls my pants down to my knees, and I’m horrified to find that my underwear has slid down as well.
“Stop,” I say. I’m half embarrassed that I am wearing crappy Snoopy underwear, half pissed that all of this is happening and I never said it was ok. Bane says, “Just relax, baby.” And when I go to push him away, he calls me feisty. “I can work with that,” he says.
He kisses me again, pinning my arms against my side. I try to free my arms, but he is holding me too tight. I trip over my pants. I’m forced to hold on to Bane for balance. I’m wishing that I had never had anything to drink, sure that if I were sober, I could figure a way out of this. I tell myself that if things go any further, I’ll scream for help. But then I think, what if Dahlia or Mom sees? How will I ever live this down?
Bane smacks my butt. It hurts so bad, I wonder how anybody could ever find something like that sexy. Then I hear footsteps. Someone crashes through the leaves and says, “What the fuck!” Only Dahlia could sound like a valley girl while also sounding that furious, “Get the fuck off her!” Dahlia yells.
I’m crying. I don’t know why. I wish everybody would go away and I’d be left alone in these woods until someone like Dad came to get me. I wish he were here now. He’s no fun, Dad, but whenever you’re around him you know nothing terrible is going to happen.
Mac appears behind Dahlia. I pull my pants back up. Mac’s wild hair is swinging in her face, but the visible half of her mouth is snarling. She asks, “What exactly is going on here?” Then she stumbles forward, and grabs Dahlia for support.
“He was raping her!” yells Dahlia. She looks cross-eyed. She must be pretty drunk. Bane takes several quick steps away from me. I pull my pants up.
I look at Bane. He’s got his hands in the air. His lips are moving, but no words escape from them. I try to work out if I was really being raped or not. Then more women appear, crowding around us. The women ripple with whispered words. Dahlia pulls me up. She holds my hand, then she slips me a few pills. “These will calm you,” she says. I swallow them, but immediately regret this.
“What did you give me?” I ask.
Bane, hands still in the air, starts to back away from everyone. Dahlia sees him and yells, “Don’t let him leave! Grab him!” and for some reason, Mac listens to her. Dahlia’s got a crazy look in her eye, and at that moment I am more afraid of her than anybody. She cries, “You tried to rape my sister. You’re a rapist!” Mac repeats the word: rapist. “Rapist,” echo the women.
Then Dahlia lunges for Bane, and the other women follow her lead. They grab him and pull at his clothes. His shirt rips. He cries out. Then one of the women shoves him to the ground so that he falls onto his knees in front of Mac. Even though I know she won’t be there, I look for Mom.
Mac cries, “Can you imagine? This atrocity, this scum, here, in our very own sacred space!” She’s slurring her words too, and all the women sway agai
nst each other. I doubt there is a sober person among them. I’m being pushed from all sides. With every second that passes, the women become louder. I wish I’d never come here.
Bane is silent. He looks confused and afraid. I say, “We weren’t doing anything. He wasn’t doing anything.”
Dahlia ignores me. Staring at Bane, she yells, “You tried to rape my sister!”
Rapist, rapist, rapist. The whispered word grows louder until the women are shouting.
They push closer towards us. Then someone screams, “Grab him! Don’t let him get away!”
Bane’s mouth is open. His lips are moving, but no words are coming out. Two of the women emerge from the seething crowd. They grab Bane and tie his hands behind his back while he cries, “Wait, wait, wait!”
“Stop!” I yell, but no one listens to me. I find Dahlia, and make her look me in the eye. “Dahlia,” I say, “this is crazy! You need to make them stop.” Then there are more cries of anger, more women. I can’t breathe. They yell, “Rapist! Rapist! Rapist!”
“Do you know what Mom said to me before she went to bed?” asks Dahlia, “She said to protect you.”
Someone produces more twine. They bind Bane to the tree trunk. He screams, so they gag him. Even after that, he keeps looking around, as if expecting someone to rescue him.
Mac approaches Bane. She shoves her face into his. Then, she points to two of the older women, and says, “Leah, Julie,” she greets them, “you know what to do.” The women nod.
Looking at one-another, the older of the two takes out a small, silver knife and cuts Bane’s pants and underwear from his legs while the other woman exchanges his gag for a leather bit. The circle of women chant. Even though Dahlia can’t possibly know the words, she is chanting too.
I’m shoved to the outside of the mob. I see Petunia and I think Bane is saved. Petunia is a professional, a vet, someone sane enough to go to school and pass tests. “Do something!” I yell, but I don’t think she can hear me.
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