Promise Me

by Brent, Cora

“FUCK!” I screamed at the top of my lungs and the remaining nearby customers turned around in the gravel parking lot. A woman tittered with laughter.

  “Go back to your own goddamn business,” Rachel glowered at them as she swung an arm around my shoulders and shepherded me away.

  She walked me briskly over to her trailer and set me firmly against its cool exterior. The light of the moon let me see the intensity in her face. “That’s right, Promise,” she said firmly. “You let it out. What they did to you, what they’re still doing, it’s so fucking wrong there aren’t words strong enough. But if it helps with the pain some, scream them anyway. They are evil; my father, your father, that bastard who abused you, all evil wrapped in a false cloak of godliness. But you know the truth. There is nothing pious or moral about them. They have built a house out of lies and stood on the back of their victims as they preached righteous bullshit.” Her voice softened. “It’s hard to realize how wrong something is if it’s all you know.”

  “You knew,” I whispered. “You knew how fucked up it was. You didn’t let anyone turn you into a victim. I was out in the world, Rachel. I knew where to find help and I didn’t. And because I was too weak to stand up my little sister has been handed over to a madman.” I sank down into the coarse sand and pulled my knees up to my chest.

  Rachel let out a painful sigh and sat next to me. “You know,” she said softly, “I often wonder how I could have done things differently. What if I’d gone to the state ten years ago when I escaped? Maybe filed a statement with Child Protective Services. It might have helped someone. It might have helped you. And it might not have. Promise, there are a lot of long years ahead. You can’t spend them all torturing yourself with ideas about what you might have done differently.”

  “Rachel, what would they do to me if they found me?”

  Her voice was bleak. “I think you know. In their eyes you are married. You are the property of your despicable husband.” She hugged me. “But they won’t find you, Promise. And if they ever tried to take you away they would pay mightily. I would kill them myself.”

  I let my head drop wearily against my cousin’s shoulder. “Love you, Rach.”

  She took a cigarette out of her purse and lit it, staring off into the inky night. “Love you too, hon.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The next day Rachel took me back to Callie Lopez for a follow up.

  The doctor smiled warmly when she saw me. “You look much healthier, Promise,” she noted before examining me. Most of the bruising had faded to nearly nothing. My ribs were still a bit tender but with every passing day it lessened.

  Callie was pleased with my healing progress. Though I had received my period, she performed a pregnancy test anyway.

  “Negative,” she confirmed and I breathed with relief.

  Callie noted a few things in my chart before looking at me thoughtfully. “Rachel tells me you’ve been to school. Midwifery, right?”

  I nodded.

  “And you finished your studies?”

  “Yes, I passed the exam to join the North American Registry of Midwives.”

  Callie was pleased. “Wonderful. You know, Promise, there are a lot of women in this part of the state and not enough medical support.” She tapped her ballpoint pen against her arm. “Are you interested in using that knowledge to help them?”

  I paused. A big reason I had followed through with college and then returned to Jericho Valley was due to the idea that I would be able to help women who needed it. “Yes,” I said slowly. “I would love that. But wouldn’t the Registry require updated contact information?” I kicked my legs against the exam table, feeling anxious. “There are people who can’t find out where I am.”

  Callie shook her head. “Yes, I know. We’ll find a way out of that when all the dust settles. Perhaps we could set you up with a post office box in Phoenix. At any rate, I’m glad to hear that you are interested.” She took a small square of paper and pressed it into my hand. I stared at the words.

  “In case you need to talk about it,” she said gently. “Mia has been a rape counselor for many years. She runs a group which meets on Thursday evenings.”

  “Callie,” I whispered, “do you think I’ll ever be able to have, you know, a normal relationship? With a man?”

  Her face was kind. “Yes, Promise, I do. Allow yourself to heal. To conquer your demons. I have no doubt that you will.” She touched my arm and grinned at me wryly. “And dear girl, I speak from experience.”

  ***

  Three days passed quietly and quickly. Then Rachel had a call from Casper; he and Grayson were expected back early in the morning. I was just getting out of the shower in my trailer when I heard the low rumble of the bikes.

  For a moment as I stood there and dripped onto the cracked linoleum my heart skipped around in my chest. I toweled off quickly, eyeing the plain capris and t-shirt I’d planned to wear. I heard Rachel’s voice talking about how she’d seen Grayson looking at me. Critically I stared at my reflection in the cloudy vanity mirror. I didn’t know quite what to make of what I saw. But as I glanced back at the casual clothes which hung on the doorknob I felt like it wasn’t enough. I felt like I really wanted him to see me.

  I hadn’t yet worn the dresses Rachel had talked me into ordering. One was cream colored with dark blue stripes. The neckline was cut just above my breasts and the sleeves rolled slightly off my shoulders. The feel of the flared skirt was delicious as it fluttered just above my knees. Looking down, I was pleased at the swell of my breasts under the fabric and wished I had a larger mirror to see what the full effect was.

  Rachel had purchased some cosmetics for me and I tentatively dabbed on a little bit of power and blush. I dried my hair, brushed it, and returned to the mirror. I was sure I was not beautiful like Rachel, but the image staring back at me seemed pleasant enough. I bit my lip and went to the door.

  The sunlight was as fierce as ever and I squinted into it, the extreme heat pricking at my skin. I didn’t see anyone at first. Grayson’s trailer sat there in stoic solitude and I couldn’t tell if he was already in there or not. I looked down at my dress, suddenly feeling foolish. I didn’t know where Grayson Mercado had been or what he had been doing. It seemed very unlikely that he would be in any rush to see a needy neighbor.

  With a sigh I started to walk toward Riverbottom. Rachel would certainly be busy with Casper all afternoon, but maybe Kira needed help in the bar or around the house.

  I saw him before he saw me. He was bent at the waist and fiddling with something under his bike handlebars. He straightened up, arching his back, a grimace on his handsome face. I had stopped in my tracks, watching him, but the movement of my dress fluttering in the hot breeze caught his eye and he looked up.

  His arms fell to his sides and he stared at me as if he didn’t know who I was. I tried to smile. “Grayson.”

  “Hey, Promise,” he said slowly. Then he immediately turned back to his bike and began rooting around in one of the saddlebags on the far side.

  With my head lowered I started to walk toward the entrance to the bar.

  “Where are you going?”

  I crossed my arms over my breasts, feeling suddenly very exposed. “Uh, I was just looking for Kira. Have you seen her?”

  He stared at me. “No. Come here, okay?”

  When I stood next to him I was struck again by the powerful contours of his muscled body. He had to have been hot in his dark biker clothes and black boots but he didn’t seem eager to be on his way. Grayson pulled my arm out and placed a rough object in my hand. I blinked.

  “It’s a rock,” I said.

  “It’s a rock,” he agreed.

  I turned it over in my palm and touched the rough gray surface. It weighed about a pound and was more or less round. When I looked up at him he read the question in my eyes and smiled broadly. He took it out of my hand and scavenged around his bike compartments again. I was rather at a loss when he removed a hammer. Grayson set the rock on a fl
at piece of clay tile. With a swift and deliberate lunge which made me jump he brought the hammer down expertly on the center point of the rock. It broke cleanly in two and Grayson knelt in the sand, examining the pieces.

  “It’s a geode,” he explained, handing one half to me.

  “Wow,” I breathed, kneeling down beside him and turning the geode toward the light. The plain exterior completely belied the crystallized wonder on the hollowed inside. I touched the shimmering crystals, marveling at their complexity. “I missed you,” I whispered.

  “What?”

  I shook my head, embarrassed. “Nothing.” He was still down his knees, only about two feet away from me. My own knees began to burn from contact with the scorching sand and I rose quickly, brushing off my dress. “Where did you find this?”

  Grayson got to his feet. “You kidding? Shit’s everywhere if you know what to look for.”

  “Oh.” I started to hand the geode half back to him, but he shook his head.

  “Nah, you keep it.” He tossed his half lightly in the air and caught it. “How about this? You keep half and I’ll keep half.”

  “All right. Thank you.”

  He tossed his rock up and caught it again. His dark eyes searched me intently. “How are you, Promise?”

  I shrugged. “I’m good.” I told him about going back to Callie Lopez. And then, with halting words, mentioned the group she recommended for me.

  “Today’s Thursday,” he observed.

  “Yeah, I know. But I hate to ask Rachel to take me since she’s busy with Casper and the bar.”

  Grayson was thoughtful. “I’ve got some business in Parker. I’ll take you.”

  The idea hadn’t occurred to me. “You would do that?”

  He nodded, grinning as if I’d said something funny.

  “Thank you,” I said quietly.

  He nodded and started to walk away, turning back abruptly when he hadn’t gotten more than a few steps. “You got a pair of jeans, right? You’ll want to change from that dress.” He winked. “No matter how pretty you look in it.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Grayson came to my door before I was ready. He seemed reluctant to enter the trailer but slowly stepped inside, looking around at the checkered curtains and sparse but comfortable furniture acquired from Goodwill.

  “Good job,” he said, “look like a shithole before.”

  I tucked my shirt into my jeans, feeling a little off balance by how near he was and how large he loomed in the confines of the small trailer. “I’m ready,” I said, grabbing a small purse Rachel had given me and crossing it over my shoulder. As Grayson followed me out I felt his hand rest lightly on my back for a split second before he quickly removed it.

  Grayson saw my hesitation when it came time to climb on the back of his bike. The last time I’d ridden there seemed so distant, yet it had been only ten days.

  “Pull your strap tighter,” he said, pointing my helmet.

  The group met in a classroom of an elementary school in Parker. Grayson dropped me off out front and casually said he would return in an hour. He rode off without a second look.

  I was nervous going inside. The other women seemed to have known each other for quite some time. There were about a dozen of them of various ages. A grandmotherly woman with gray hair secured in a bun reached me with a smile and I guessed her to be Mia.

  “You must be Promise,” she said, taking my arm and leading me to a chair. “Now, you can participate at whatever level you feel comfortable with. There’s no pressure here.”

  A few of the other women looked at me with curiosity as I crossed my legs at the ankle and stared into my lap. For the first half hour all I did was listen. One woman, Genie, talked about her fears as her attacker came up for parole. A teenage girl named Jasmine popped her knuckles nervously and described how she’d begun being homeschooled since it was too difficult to return to the place where the classmate who had assaulted her remained.

  As these women spoke I was struck by their bravery, by the candid way they shared the most awful details of the things which had happened to them. I listened to their voices become stronger as they shared their horrors and I remembered Rachel telling me to let it out.

  When I stood, everyone in the room looked at me with quiet expectation. “Hello. I’m Promise.” I paused, looking at each of them in turn and drawing strength from their kind faces. “I was coerced into marriage to a man who already had four wives. And then, over the course of several days, I was repeatedly raped and beaten by him. I got away. I was lucky.”

  They didn’t gasp or widen their eyes with shock. They listened as I spilled out all of the ugliness. The horrors of my time with Winston. The cruel discovery of my sister’s fate.

  And when I finished speaking each one of those women hugged me in turn as I cried. But then suddenly I was finished crying. I raised my head and wiped my tears away and thanked them.

  Grayson was already waiting for me. He sat on the curb next to his bike, idly playing with a pocket knife. I wondered how long he’d been there. And if he’d actually any business in Parker.

  “Hey you,” he smiled gently. “Did it go well?”

  I drummed my fingers on the leather of the motorcycle seat. “Yes.”

  “You hungry?”

  “I’m fucking starving.”

  He laughed out loud. “Since when do you talk like that?”

  “Since I fucking can.”

  He continued to laugh. “Well, don’t fucking overdo it.”

  I sat next to him, suddenly serious. “Thanks, Grayson.”

  “You can call me Gray, you know.”

  “Okay, Gray. You know, it’s another night.”

  He folded up his knife. “What?”

  “You said you would tell me about yourself on another night. It’s another night.”

  “So it is.” He got to his feet and reached out, pulling me up. “All right, Miss Promise, I’ll buy you a fucking pizza and tell you all about my fucking self.”

  ***

  Grayson had a constant habit of toying with nearby objects, as if he couldn’t bear to stop moving completely. He turned the glass salt shaker over in his hands again and again as we waited for our food at a local pizzeria. He seemed almost shy as we quietly sat across from one another.

  “So what does it mean?” I asked.

  He was confused. “What does what mean?”

  I pointed to his left shoulder. “The cross tattoo under your shirt. ‘No man can judge me.’ Right?”

  He lifted up his shirt and peered at the dark cross as if he’d forgotten it was there. “Yeah. It means that once upon a time I was a teenager with big ideas about who I was and where I was going.”

  I took a sip of my soda. “In New York?”

  “In New York. Queens. You ever hear of Queens?”

  I was exasperated. “Yes, I’ve heard of Queens.”

  He flashed a grin. “Sorry. Wasn’t a bad neighborhood to grow up in and my folks kept a pretty close eye on us anyway.” He started to roll the salt shaker back and forth across the table as he grew more comfortable talking. “My mom, she was the daughter of a cardiac surgeon out on Long Island. He wasn’t too pleased when she took up with a Dominican immigrant from the Bronx. But my mother didn’t let anyone keep her from her heart. She had my dad had a good thing together for all their years.” His face suddenly fell and his voice grew hoarse. “They were driving up to the Catskills a month before my high school graduation for a long overdue anniversary trip. The other car was going the wrong way down the Taconic State Parkway. My dad was dead at the scene and my mom died later that day.”

  I swallowed. “That’s horrible, Gray. I’m so sorry.”

  He was quiet for a moment, not looking up when the pizza arrived at our table.

  “Did you have any brothers or sisters?”

  The question seemed to pain him. “A sister. Callista. She was, is, three years younger than I am. She went to go live on the north shore with
our grandparents. My mom’s dad never really took to me. Thought I looked too much like my father and that I would bring trouble. But it was gonna be all right. I had an academic scholarship to NYU. I could live on campus and everything would be fine.” He looked out the window in to the descending sunlight. “Everything would be fine,” he repeated.

  But I knew it hadn’t turned out fine. “What happened?”

  He started playing with the salt shaker again. Neither of us had touched the pizza. “A guy from the old neighborhood turned up one night. Yeah, I knew he was into shit I didn’t want to touch but he was a friend. A friend,” he shook his head. “He was dealing bad bricks and stashing his garbage at my place. A man died from the crap he was peddling. When the heat started turning up under his feet he gave them my name.” He stopped talking suddenly and smiled at me. “This is sort of alien language to you, isn’t it?”

  “What, English? No.” I took a slice of pizza. “So I get it. You were wrongfully convicted.”

  He made a derisive noise, looking away with a grim expression. “No man can judge me,” he said darkly. “Until one did.”

  I didn’t like seeing him like this. Bitter and sad. “This was in New York though, right? How did you end up out here?”

  He smiled without any humor. “Even prisoners get fucking outsourced in today’s corporate aristocracy. State of New York discovered it was cheaper to ship a bunch of theirs out to a private facility in a low cost part of the country.”

  “And that’s where you met Casper.”

  “Yup, that’s where I met Casper.”

  “So do you ever talk to your sister?”

  The question hurt him. He shifted in his seat and looked down. “She doesn’t talk to me,” he said tersely. He sat up straight and abruptly turned the salt shaker over. I let my hand cover his, a gesture of comfort and friendship.

  “You know, that pizza isn’t going to eat itself,” I finally said.

  Grayson shook his head with a smile. “My mom used to say shit like that.” He met my eyes suddenly. “She’d have liked you.”

  “Was she white?” I’d just blurted it out. I didn’t mean anything by it, but it once the words hung in the air they sounded terribly rude. I took my hand away and retreated to my side of the booth.