Juniper frowned. “I don’t think Xavier’s like that.”
“That’s why it works: because you don’t see the truth. I’ll bet he’s a really intelligent guy, right?”
“Yes,” Juniper said hesitantly. The woman was so confident, same as the police had been. She was making Juniper feel less sure of herself, of her sense of the events, her perception of their relationship. Juniper said, “He graduated at the top of his class.”
“There you go. Smart guys like him, they look for innocent girls like you who can be manipulated, and then they rape you.”
“Rape?” Juniper shook her head. “I keep telling you all, that’s not what happened. I could have said no.”
“Are you sure he would have stopped?”
“I…” Juniper paused. “Yes. I mean, I think so.”
“Tell me about the knife.”
“He needed it for the food.”
“Food that he deliberately chose so that he’d have an excuse to display that knife. He’s a smooth one, but believe me, I have seen it all. None of these tricks are new.”
Tricks.
Ms. Sheridan must have been reading Juniper’s expression. Self-doubt. Mistrust. Confusion. She said, “Listen, sweetie, nobody likes to think they can be fooled. It’s natural that you want to resist believing it. It is a fact that two-thirds of rape victims don’t initially think they’ve been raped. Those of us who know how these men think, though, can see through them like glass. His behavior is slick and calculated and not your fault. You are a victim.”
She went on, “I’m sure this afternoon was upsetting for a lot of reasons, but the good thing is that he won’t be able to take advantage of you anymore. Now, let’s take care of a few forms, then we’ll do your physical exam and get you on your way.”
The physical exam was yet another humiliation: After Juniper went to give urine and blood samples, she returned to the exam room and another nurse came in to stand as witness while the now-naked Juniper, draped in flimsy paper coverings, submitted to a scalp-to-toe examination that included oral and vaginal and anal swabbing and photographs of her undraped body front and back. When Juniper thought about it later, this was what felt like a violation.
Throughout it all, Juniper considered Ms. Sheridan’s assertions, comparing them against her recollections of every encounter between herself and Xavier up to today and today especially. Could he have been fooling her all along? Was she that gullible, that ignorant? Had he seen her the way Meghan and Kathi did—Junipure, the princess? The gullible Christian freak? Look at her, she got played by the first boy who’d ever really tried.
Was it true?
The adults were all saying it was true, and what did she know?
She knew Xavier.
Didn’t she?
38
Valerie was in her living room with a book in hand. Xavier, upset and unwilling to divulge why, was in his bedroom playing guitar. Whatever was going on, thought Valerie, it had to be something with Juniper Whitman. Even so, Valerie held her tongue, reminded herself once again that she needed to let him do and feel and be without her input or interference. Treat him with the same respect she accorded her undergraduates—even the freshmen who sometimes looked as if they needed hygiene interventions. Electing to stop showering daily was apparently a form of celebrating one’s independence from home.
The knock on her front door came as a surprise, but not as big a surprise as the sight that greeted her when she opened it: two uniformed police officers who stood there, tense and serious, each with a hand resting on his service revolver’s grip. A second car was pulling into the driveway.
A big surprise that was no surprise at all.
If you are a black person in the United States, you live each day with the knowledge that this scene or one very much like it may be in your future. You needn’t have done anything illegal or have broken any rule. You might be browsing dresses in a high-end clothing store. You might be enjoying a sunny day at your neighborhood pool, or grilling hot dogs at a lakeside barbecue pit. Maybe you’re a black firefighter in uniform making building inspections. One of two black guys waiting for a friend in a coffee shop. Among a group of black women playing a slow golf game. A black man moving into a just-leased apartment, or moving out of one you’d lived in for years. You could be an excellent black student who got into Yale, for crying out loud, and fell asleep on the sofa in your own dorm’s lounge. Maybe you’re a black boy playing with an Airsoft or BB gun, same as lots of white kids do. And next thing you know, patrol cars are showing up, lights flashing. You have done nothing wrong, and yet you’re facing one or two or five or a dozen men like the ones now standing on Valerie Alston-Holt’s front stoop, and your heart tries to leap out of your chest as if attempting to free itself, to get the hell out before some hothead gets twitchy and draws a gun.
Sometimes you get shot. Sometimes they leave you lying in your pooling blood and you die.
At her door, Valerie gripped the knob and said, “How can I help you, Officers?”
“We’re looking for Xavier Alston-Holt.”
“Because?”
“Is Xavier Alston-Holt in the residence?”
No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
She said, “May I ask what the problem is?”
He displayed an arrest warrant. “We have reason to believe he was involved in the commission of a felony. Is he or is he not in the residence?”
Valerie forced herself to say, “Yes.” Possibly all they wanted was to question him.
Right.
She added, “Do you want to step inside?”
The officer who’d been speaking nodded to the other, an apparent signal for him to go to the back of the house and monitor any other exits. Two more officers were exiting their patrol car.
“No. Send him out. I’ll wait here.”
Valerie was sweating as she went to Xavier’s room and knocked on the door. She felt the dampness in her armpits, along her back, her forehead, her palms.
What has he done?
Has he done anything?
Where was the trapdoor into the escape tunnel?
Right now it made no difference to Valerie what this was about. She’d been alive for forty-eight years, almost half of those as a black woman in the South. Whatever this was, it was going to be worse for him than it’d be if his mother had been white.
Escape tunnel. Why hadn’t she dug one? Because that would have presumed this day would arrive and she had naively believed it couldn’t, not for him, not for them.
The music stopped. Xavier said, “Yeah, what?”
See Xavier in Valerie’s mind’s eye at this moment: He’s eleven years old, it’s the end of fifth grade and his music teacher has arranged a recital. His first serious growth spurt is under way, so it seems that all he does is eat and yet he’s still gangly, a bronze cricket, curls drooping over his forehead as he leans over his Epiphone (he is so proud of that guitar, bought with money he made mowing the neighbors’ lawns) and begins to play.
Her voice was shaking. “The police are here for you. What’s this about?”
But there was no time for him to explain much. Xavier preceded her out of the room, saying, “It’s got to be some bullshit with Brad Whitman,” and she said, “I’ll call a lawyer, don’t say anything, don’t get upset, do not get upset. Do you understand, do you hear me?” and then he was being handcuffed. He was being led to a police cruiser. He was locked inside of it. He was gone.
39
An hour or so earlier, Juniper had arrived home and gone straight upstairs before Julia laid eyes on her, locking herself in her bedroom and telling Julia when she knocked, “I’m not talking to anyone. Leave me alone.”
Then Brad had arrived. He was on the phone and went straight into his den, mouthing Later and then shutting and locking his door. Julia could not hear him well enough to make out his conversation or decipher who was on the call.
Now she returned to the guest suite, where she and Lo
ttie had been watching TV before all this commotion. Magnum P.I. with Tom Selleck, Lottie’s dream man in her dream location. Both Julia and Lottie were eating cheese puffs from the bag.
“What in the world is going on?” Lottie asked Julia.
“I have no idea, except that Juniper seems to be in some kind of trouble. Nobody will talk to me. Brad’s on the phone.”
“Didn’t Juniper say she was working tonight?”
“She did.” And Brad had said he was going out for wings with Jimmy. “Maybe Brad caught her in a lie? I mean, why else would she be acting so hostile?”
“That girl, a liar?” said Lottie. “Hardly.”
Julia looked at her. “Really, Mom, how would you know?”
“What, because I ain’t been here but a couple weeks? Makes no matter. I know people. I don’t have to live with them years on end to know. I think there’s boy trouble behind this. Got her heart broken or something.”
“She’s not involved with any boys.”
“Now, that’s where you’re wrong.”
“You just said she’s not a liar. Well, if she has a boyfriend, that means she’s been lying.”
“Not telling’s different from lying.”
“I think this is all nonsense, but whatever you say.”
“What’s your better theory?”
“I told you, I think she lied—not about a boy. I’d know if my own daughter was messing around. My guess is she went out joyriding in that stupid new car of hers.”
“You’re suspicious minded because when you were her age, you didn’t hardly speak that you weren’t lying about something. She ain’t you. She’s nothing like you.”
“No, you’re right. She’s too polite to say something like this to her mother: shut up, all right? You’re not helping.”
And so they waited, faces turned toward the television. Julia wasn’t seeing the program, though. She was seeing Juniper on a day when she, Julia, had been late to pick her up from after-school care because she’d gone out for a quick drink with a man who’d been a customer earlier that day at the Hot Nuts kiosk where she worked in the mall. The “quick” drink had been slower than she realized, and then suddenly it was seven o’clock and she rushed across town to Juniper’s school, guilty, guilty. Juniper was the last kid left in the classroom, just her and the openly hostile teenager whose job it was to tend her. Juniper, eight years old, hurt and angry and silent.
“I’m so sorry, sweetie. Mommy had car trouble.”
… you didn’t hardly speak that you weren’t lying about something.
Julia heard Brad’s tread on the back stairs.
“Okay, ladies,” he said a moment later, joining her and Lottie. He shut the door behind him. “I’m sure you’re wondering what’s up. Thanks for being so patient.”
Lottie said, “Did we have a choice?”
“I guess you didn’t.” He gave a tight smile and sat down on the edge of Lottie’s bed. “I had to work out a couple of things, get a few ducks lined up so I could help our girl. Now, what I’m going to tell you is going to be shocking and upsetting, so let me preface it by telling you that Juniper is going to be all right. As you saw, she got herself home without a problem, and there’s nothing the matter with her that some time won’t fix.”
Julia’s mind spun, attempting to measure this information against her supposition. “Was she in an accident, then?”
“Nothing like that,” Brad said.
Lottie said, “Someone did her wrong.”
“Well, now, that’s astute of you, Lottie.”
Lottie turned to Julia. “What’d I tell you?”
“There’s a boy involved?”
Brad said, “There is. So, okay, to give you a little backstory—bear with me, now. It turns out that the boy behind us, Xavier, has been more or less stalking Juni, trying to get her to go out with him. She didn’t say as much, but I’ve been piecing it all together.”
“From what?” Julia said.
Brad held up a hand. “I said bear with me. Anyway, she’s such a nice kid—as we all know; she tried to put him off, but she didn’t try very hard. She didn’t want to be seen as ‘mean’ or difficult, you know how girls are. So she said she’d date him. It hasn’t been going on for very long.”
He paused, took a deep breath, put his palms together, then continued, “Okay, so today she had just got to the park for her run and he showed up acting like they were going to have a little picnic and hang out. She says she’d told him she would. He brought wine, and she didn’t want to make him mad by refusing to drink it. They were in a cabin. He’d set it up like a real seduction scene—wine, blanket, food. And—now, don’t overreact here—he had a large knife, and he kept it where she could see it and she knew if she didn’t do whatever he wanted, he might cut or stab her. He might kill her.”
“Jesus God almighty!” Lottie said, voicing Julia’s silent response.
“Thing is, she’s terrified of him still. We—the police have already questioned her, and we couldn’t get her to admit to it, but it’s plain.”
Julia said, “How did you get involved with all of this?”
“I’m getting to that part. So you remember you called and asked me to look for her phone. Well, I thought I would just drop it off to her on my way to meet up with Jimmy. Figured she’d want to have it—you know how teens are about their phones. I walked in on them. If only I’d been five minutes earlier—”
Julia said, “Did he…?”
Brad nodded. “She went along with it, meek as a lamb, you know, that knife laying there where he could reach it if she fought him. She says, ‘I could have said no, but I didn’t.’ Well, Christ, of course she didn’t! We need to make sure she understands we do not blame her a bit.”
Julia was on her feet and moving for the door.
“Leave her be,” Brad said, catching her arm. “For at least a little while longer. She’s been through a lot and needs time to lick her wounds.”
“She needs her mother,” said Julia, even as she remembered how she hadn’t sought comfort or counsel from Lottie in the aftermath of her own rape. That was different. She’d wanted to protect Lottie—hadn’t she? Or had she been too ashamed to tell?
Brad said, “Seems to me she doesn’t think so.”
“You don’t have the first idea about anything where that child is concerned.”
“She’s not a child, I know that.”
“Stop it, you two,” Lottie said. “I’m trying to get clear on what happened. You found them … in the act?”
“I did. There’s more to all of this—if you’ll sit and listen, Julia, you’ll see why I want you to wait.”
She perched.
“I opened the door, saw them there, and as soon as the boy saw me, he came charging after me. Lucky he didn’t think to grab the knife first—I gave him too much of a surprise, I’m sure. He got a few good licks in, but I managed to run him off. Told him I’d kill him and I believe I would have, if he’d stuck around. But then I got my head about me and called 911.”
He continued, “We went to have her examined. She’s … I want to be delicate, here … she was not seriously wounded by the act, and there’s pretty much no risk of pregnancy. They told her it was smart of her to cooperate, under the circumstances. Better to be alive and get justice.”
Julia was horrified and she was livid. She said, “Why didn’t you call me?”
“Nothing you could do, so why complicate things? I knew you’d see her before long.”
“I need to talk with her.”
“You will, just hold on a minute. Now, one other thing the policewoman and the nurse both told me was that a lot of rape victims have trouble admitting they were raped. Some are scared of repercussions. Some feel like what happened was their own fault. Some deny the crime because they reject the idea of being a victim. Some don’t consider date rape actual rape. We can expect some or all of these to be true with Juni. She kept saying, ‘It wasn’t rape. I planned it,’ whi
ch is maybe all of that at once. But trust me: I saw her. She was terrified. She was trembling afterward and crying like I’ve not seen her do ever. That’s a girl who’s had a trauma, the authorities who checked her out agreed.”
He turned to Julia. “So here’s what you need to do: After you see her, get yourself and the girls packed up with the essentials, and when that’s set, you all will go on out to Mom and Dad’s place—they’re happy to keep the girls for three, four weeks, no problem. And I just talked with Tony, too—”
“Who’s that?” Lottie asked.
“The district attorney. He’s a friend of mine. I asked him to make the situation a priority. The boy will be in custody tonight.”
“Good!” Lottie said. “Nice to see justice working, for once.”
Brad said, “Yes indeed. So, anyway, as I was saying. Things are gonna be a little … noisy here, for a time, once the news gets hold of this, and I want you all clear of the commotion.”
Julia, her head aswim with outrage and anger and concern for Juniper’s well-being, was ready to put his plan into action. “You’ll pick up Lily from the pizza party?”
Brad said, “Yep, and then let’s aim for you getting on the road by sunrise.”
“That early?”
He nodded. “I don’t know for a fact, but my guess is there’ll be news trucks on the block by nine A.M. Before you ask,” he added, “no, they don’t have Juniper’s name and they won’t get it, since she’s a minor. And the assault part with me’ll be kept out of the news for now. Nobody in the media will know the assault charge particulars until later. It’ll all be on the boy.”
“Thank God for that, anyway,” Julia said. “Juniper’s anonymity, I mean. She’s been through enough.” She paused for a moment, then said, “I should have known that boy would be trouble for her. From the minute we met him I thought, he’s way too smooth, too confident. Damn him.”
She wasn’t thinking about how easily Brad had engineered the situation; it was so much easier to demonize the black boy.
A Good Neighborhood Page 23
