After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away

by Joyce Carol Oates

Lookin’ good, Trina says. That sharp look in Trina’s eyes meaning she likes me again, just barely.

  I’m wearing jeans, boots, a cable-knit sweater over a T-shirt. My down-filled jacket with the hood.

  Sneaking out of the house! I’ve sort of done this before, slipping out without telling anybody where I’m going, but during the day, not at almost eleven o’clock at night. A school night. Trying not to laugh, I’m so nervous. This is weeks after the thing with Dr. Freer, my aunt and my uncle trust me again or anyway act like they do, if they have doubts, they keep them secret from me. Nobody will see that I’m gone, I’ve shut the door to my room and the lights are out inside, nobody will knock on my door—they’ll be thinking I’ve gone to bed. Anyway, I think only Uncle Dwight is still up, watching TV news downstairs. On my way out the back door, I sneak into the dining room, where there’s a cabinet with wine bottles, liquor, mixes, so I reach inside, to the back row of bottles, where I figure whatever I take won’t be missed, and my fingers close on a heavy long-necked bottle, Smirnoff vodka.

  “Trina, this is a mistake maybe…”

  “Chill out. Nobody’s gonna babysit you.”

  At first at the party Trina is edgy too, nobody’s paying much attention to us, even T-Man who’s hanging out with the guys from Lebanon. There’s Gil Rathke, who’s a big-muscled guy in his twenties with a shaved head and a wiry little beard, there’s Ross Skaggs, who is maybe older, a loud barking laugh and a gap in his lower teeth like one is missing, another guy people call Osk (like Oscar?) and of the guys, we know only T-Man and Jax Yardman, who are trying to act important. Of the girls, there’s only Dolores who we know, the others are older, like in their twenties, their names are Audra, Nancy, Lindy, Marcia, and they work at a hair salon in town, one of them’s a dental assistant, one works at the 7-Eleven out on Route 35, which was where, just a few hours ago, the guys met her, invited her to the lake to the party, except she has a two-year-old at home, wants to tell people about him in a guilty-drunken voice but the party is too loud, music too loud, it’s a German heavy metal rock band that’s like spikes through your head, nobody wants to listen to her, including me.

  “Baby-Mousie, let’s dance.”

  Mousie is a name the new guys are calling me. Like, nobody knows that I am Jenna. Trina has told them I’m seventeen, like her. Still, I look kind of young. The youngest at the party. This guy with a buzz cut and a look to his face like it’s been singed in a fire is asking am I “Mousie” all over or just where you can see, and I’m laughing too hard to answer, so Trina answers for me: “That’s for us to know and you to find out, see?” Trina is dancing with me, Trina is teasing how clumsy I am, dizzy-dazed though I have not been smoking weed like the others, only just drinking, one slow sip at a time from a plastic cup because I am worried about being so far from home. T-Man drove for miles to Yarrow Lake, not the usual way but back roads, this isn’t a part of Yarrow Lake known to me, not many houses close by and everything so dark. By moonlight you can see the lake, which is beginning to thaw in the daytime but at the shore there are sharp-looking slabs and layers of ice. This place we’re in, it’s freezing cold except where there’s space heaters turned on high and the wire coils are fiery red. The guys tried to start a fire in the big stone fireplace, but there’s mostly garbage in it, the kindling is wet, logs are wet, there isn’t much fire, only smoldering, and the chimney must be blocked so smoke is backing up into the room, so windows have to be opened, doors are opened, there’s a sound of glass breaking like somebody got impatient and broke out a window. Trina is handing me another “zombie cola,” which she says is basically vodka so okay for her and me both, in case somebody smells our breaths, like Trina’s mom, or my aunt and uncle, it won’t be detected like other drinks with a stronger smell. “And if, like, that happens, Baby-Mousie, you leave me out of it, okay?” Trina is twisting my wrist like she’s teasing, but actually it hurts. One of Gil Rathke’s friends with eyes like headlights and giving off heat like the fiery red coils wants to dance with both Trina and me at the same time, but my legs are too clumsy, so it’s just him and Trina careening around the room, shouting with laughter.

  My head is so dizzy; I’m trying to stop the spinning by lying on a leather sofa pushed back against a wall and shutting my eyes. There’s a buzzing in my head like electricity. I’m beginning to worry I will be sick to my stomach, the zombie colas are so strong. If I am sick, Trina will be disgusted with me, and the guys will laugh at me, I will be so ashamed. A while ago one of the older girls, I think her name was Audra, pressed her hand against my forehead, saying I didn’t look so great and how old was I, who brought me here, but Trina told her, chill out, Mousie is cool.

  Don’t see Audra now. She hooked up with one of the Lebanon guys and is gone.

  This is wild: Two drunk guys are trying to dislodge the mounted deer head that’s on the wall above the fireplace. I’ve been staring at this deer head, it looks so alive. Beautiful antlers like a spreading tree. Glassy eyes fixed on me. I was alive once, like you. Your turn is coming.

  One of the drunk guys prods at the deer head with a poker, like he’s attacking the deer, yelling and stamping his feet, so suddenly the head comes loose and crashes to the floor, antlers and all. Everybody is laughing like hyenas except Gil Rathke, he’s pissed because this is his grandpa’s place and he doesn’t want it trashed.

  Later, Trina and Dolores are freaky dancing. The guys are really into watching. Somebody I never saw before, with what looks like a dagger tattoo on the back of his hand, is hunched over me, calling, “Mous-sie,” trying to pull me to my feet, but I’m still feeling kind of sickish.

  A shaved-head guy says, “I’m not feeling it. She’s too young.”

  It’s then I notice that not just Audra is gone but the other older girls. Some of the guys too. For a long time people were coming in, going out and coming in, but now there aren’t more than five or six guys. Then Dolores is gone. Now there’s just Trina and me and these guys I don’t know. T-Man is gone, Jax Yardman must be gone. There’s a look in the lodge of broken things. There’s a smell of burned garbage. My eyes are watering from the smoke. Outside, there’s the noise of a motorcycle revving up, and I’m thinking, Crow is here, Crow will take me home. Maybe all this time I have been waiting for Crow, thinking that he will take me home. Though I know that Crow won’t be here. I know that Crow won’t be taking me home. Why is T-Man gone, wasn’t T-Man supposed to take us home…? In spite of the cold, Trina is dancing barefoot. She’s in just a little tank top, jeans. Sexy/skinny legs. Lately Trina has been letting her hair grow in, it’s a mix of ash blond, dishwater blond, brown, and streaks of purple. Trina’s face is slick with sweat like oil, and as she dances, she throws her head from side to side as if she wants to break her neck, she’s flailing her arms that are painful to see, they’re so thin. The German rock band is getting louder, and Trina is dancing harder like electricity is coursing through her, she can’t stop.

  Then Trina is squealing, guys are lifting her. Carrying her into a back room, and she’s squealing and kicking like it’s a game. The buzz-cut guy with drunk eyes and a snout look to his face like a pig is trying to lift me, calling me Mous-sie and squeezing my left breast so hard I’m whimpering in pain. The guy named Ross is helping him except suddenly I’m starting to vomit, a hot clot of something acid comes up into my mouth, I’m gagging, spitting and choking, and the guys drop me quick, letting me fall back onto the sofa and onto the floor, disgusted.

  The floor is so cold, I’m pressing my hot face against it. I can’t stop coughing. There’s something sticky in my hair. There’s something sticky on the front of my cable-knit sweater that my aunt bought me for Christmas. My jeans are torn in front. One of my boots is missing. I’m trying to crawl somewhere, to hide. The broken deer head is on the floor a few feet away, one of its glass eyes is gone. I can hear Trina screaming. The guys are shouting with laughter and excitement. It’s the hyena laughter that scares me. I’m stumbling, trying not to fall.
I’m in the doorway, seeing Trina naked on a grungy carpet on the floor, scissor kicking as the guys hunch over her, she’s crying, really crying, I’m saying, “Let her alone! Don’t hurt her!” and one of the guys rushes at me and shoves me away, shuts the door in my face. I’m so scared, I’m pounding on the door with my fists shouting for them to let Trina alone, but nobody pays attention to me, so I run from the lodge, stumbling in the snow and ice, desperate to get help for Trina. I don’t have my cell phone, I’m missing my left boot, so scared the guys will come after me and hurt me, in a panic staggering through underbrush to a lakeside house about a hundred yards away, where earlier this evening lights were burning, I’m pounding on the door, begging for whoever is inside to open the door, after an excruciating few minutes a light is switched on overhead, and an older man opens the door astonished to see me, I’m pleading for him to please help us, please call the police, my friend is being hurt.

  14

  …in the Yarrow Lake Medical Center vehicle jolting and lurching along the unpaved road to the highway, siren shrieking over our heads like a deranged seabird, the medics allow me to hold Trina’s hand, she’s moaning and writhing on a stretcher, covered in blankets, strapped in place, half conscious, sobbing, her thin cold fingers clutching at mine and her swollen, bleeding mouth moving almost inaudibly: Don’t let me go, Jenna, stay with me.

  15

  Think of the places you aren’t.

  Places from which you are absent.

  Like, if it’s a school day and you aren’t in school. And your homeroom desk is empty. And your homeroom teacher stares at the empty desk, blinking and distracted because she has heard that something has happened to you, that’s why no one is seated in your desk this morning.

  Each desk, in each class, through the school day. An empty desk. By midmorning word is starting to spread about what happened to you and Trina Holland the previous night, by the end of the day everyone knows, or knows something.

  Trina Holland, brought by ambulance to Yarrow Lake Medical Center sometime after midnight.

  Jennifer Abbott, in “police custody.”

  Whatever happened happened at the lake.

  A party, drugs and drinking, older guys, drug dealers from Lebanon, maybe Trina and you both OD’d on Ecstasy, or crystal meth, or heroin. Maybe you were both gang-raped and beaten. Maybe police arrested all of you in a drug raid.

  T-Man Dubie and Jax Yardman are absent from their classes too. Maybe, last night, partying with her drug dealer friends, Trina Holland went too far, finally. Maybe the spoiled rich girl is being punished like she deserves. And you with her.

  “…‘stable condition,’ we’ve been told. We won’t be able to question Trina for another day at least. So, Jennifer—”

  Stable condition! I’m so grateful to hear this, the rest of the detective’s words hardly register.

  “—what happened last night that you witnessed? That you can describe to us, in detail. Please take your time, Jennifer. This is very…”

  Two Yarrow Lake detectives, middle-aged. Looking more like schoolteachers than cops. The woman is the one who mostly addresses me, calling me Jennifer. As often as she can: Jennifer.

  Because I’m looking so young, I guess. Shivery and scared. A stark-white square Band-Aid on my forehead above my bruised right eye. My mouth swollen. Something clotted and nasty in my hair that needs to be shampooed and combed out, soon.

  Jennifer is a technique, you could call it a trick, to make a witness feel less anxious. A “material witness” to a crime. In this case, to crimes. The detectives must make the witness feel that they are to be trusted.

  To make me feel, if I give the names of the guys who assaulted Trina Holland, I won’t be in danger.

  Because I’m fifteen, a minor, my aunt Caroline McCarty has accompanied me to police headquarters. Poor Aunt Caroline! Looking stunned still. Her shock at seeing me last night, 2:40 A.M., in the bright fluorescent-lit emergency room—my face puffy and swollen and wet with tears and the bandage on my forehead where somehow I’d been cut, and my swollen mouth, where somehow I’d been punched by a guy’s fist, and my hair, and the heather-colored cable-knit sweater she’d given me for Christmas, clotted with vomit—this shock is still in Aunt Caroline’s eyes as she stares at me.

  Until the call came from Yarrow Lake police, waking them from their sleep, the McCartys had thought their niece Jenna was asleep in her room as usual. Where else could she be?

  Not Jenna, how could you? We’re beyond that now.

  Not Jenna, how could you? How, when we love you?

  “…as you know, arrests were made at the scene, but there may be others involved who escaped before the officers arrived. We understand that you’re upset and confused and probably don’t know the identities of most of the men, but we need to know as much as you can provide, Jennifer. Until Trina Holland is able to give a statement, you are our sole witness. For the time being, rest assured that your testimony will be held in strictest confidence.”

  I’m shivering, I am so cold. So scared. Absent from school on a school day means something special, but this “something special” isn’t a good thing.

  For the time being. Strictest confidence.

  When I shut my eyes, it’s Trina I see: her small naked body on the filthy floor like something flung down, a naked doll. Trina is screaming for the guys to let her alone, and the guys are laughing at her, and one of them rushes at me with a look of fury like he wants to kill me, shoving me back, slamming the door in my face….

  Sure, I’m scared. What they might do to me if I inform on them.

  Gil Rathke. Ross Skaggs. “Osk.” The guy with the buzz cut and the singed-looking skin, calling me Mousie and squeezing my left breast like he wanted to twist it off my body.

  In the ER the hurt breast was examined. Already turning purplish orange, ugly. Aunt Caroline was told but has not seen. Aunt Caroline has been told a number of things but has not seen.

  “…unlikely event of a trial. Five of the suspects are in custody and being interrogated, in cases like this the usual procedure is…”

  Unlikely event of a trial! I don’t understand this but hope that this will be so.

  My mouth feels numb, my upper lip is swollen. When I try to speak, my voice sounds like something rusted. I will tell the detectives what I remember: It happened so fast.

  How they turned on us. On Trina.

  How in, like, a few seconds everything changed. Like a match lighted and held to flammable material.

  Must’ve been speed, crystal meth. Must’ve been more than just drinking and smoking weed. “Wasted,” “smashed,” “smashed out of their skulls”—that’s what I saw.

  Happened so fast!

  Once started, couldn’t be stopped!

  I guess, yes. I’d been drinking too.

  Not drugs, only just…

  “Zombie colas.” Vodka plus Diet Coke.

  Something else in the drinks? Maybe…

  …from my uncle’s liquor cabinet. The vodka.

  No, not usually. Not hard liquor. Mostly beer…

  Not ever before. Not anything I’d taken from…

  Not liquor, or money. Some pills: OxyContin. From my uncle’s medicine drawer.

  Last year. Last fall. No.

  He never discovered the pills missing, it was an old prescription.

  Just myself. Except for one I gave to Trina Holland.

  Just that once. To Trina. Because…

  Yes. I guess. Pretty often…

  Christmas Eve, that was…

  …an accident, I didn’t mean…

  …a boy at the high school, a senior…

  …friend of Trina’s, Jax Yardman…

  …T-Man Dubie, don’t know his first name…

  No. Not like last night. Not ever.

  Older guys: Gil Rathke, Ross Skaggs, “Osk.” From Lebanon. The others I don’t…

  …could recognize them, yes. I guess.

  Through Trina, it was Trina’s…


  …Trina’s friends…

  …heard her scream, pushed open the door, saw…

  My statement to the Yarrow Lake police detectives takes all morning. My statement is recorded on tape. My statement is all the truth I know about what happened to Trina Holland in the lodge at Yarrow Lake sometime after midnight of April 7, 2005. By the time my statement is completed, my voice is almost gone. My head is pulsing with pain. My aunt Caroline has had to excuse herself to leave the interview room, she’s so upset.

  But when the detectives escort me from the room a while later, Aunt Caroline is waiting for me in an outer room. Managing to smile though her eyes are still stunned. She takes my hands in hers, she hugs me. So tight, it’s like she’s fearful I might be torn from her. Saying only “Let’s go home, Jenna. You must be exhausted.”

  16

  So sorry didn’t mean

  don’t know why

  feel so bad…

  not ever again

  not ever again

  not ever again

  NOT EVER AGAIN

  17

  “Hello? Hello? Hello? Is that—Trina?”

  The line clicks dead. It’s Trina’s cell phone—at least it’s Trina’s number I’ve called—but no one answers when my call goes through.

  Next time I call, the screen reads UNAVAILABLE.

  One of the guys might’ve taken Trina’s cell. One of the guys who hasn’t been arrested yet. I guess the police would know this?

  Can’t call Trina Holland in the Yarrow Lake Medical Center; her phone is blocked to incoming calls. Can’t visit Trina, no visitors are wanted. I send a card, “THINKING OF YOU GET WELL SOON,” and a dozen purple-plum crepe paper flowers I make myself, needing something to do to distract myself the five days I am home from school, something with my hands that I can see, something that’s meant to make people smile, but I guess it’s not the right thing for Trina, Trina never replies.