In the attic, I found my old diary. It has a lock, and a tiny key, but there’s also a button that you depress on the lock which springs it open. So glad I moved my key hiding place so often as a child. *insert eye roll* Sorry, Rachel, but this is kind of weird. Like I’m talking to you, but I’m still talking to myself. Ugh. Yes, I read what I just wrote. God, you’re right even when you’re not around! I hope you get a big zit on your nose. No, I would never wish such a thing on a fellow woman, let alone one of the few people I actually care about. Sort of. ;)
Ok Ok. So I was reading about my imaginary friend Johnny, the pig, because his letters were what filled the first few pages, and I felt weird. Like, it made me so happy to remember myself then, young and innocent, happy and silly. But then I realized that it wasn’t happiness I was feeling, but instead like I was watching a scene play out, in the bright yellows and oranges of the seventies, as if to illustrate the flashback nature of this, and there was just sunshine and happiness. But I was outside, looking in. I couldn’t see a barrier, but I knew I was not a part of this bliss.
That was the old me. The Yellow me.
Instead of the happiness I was remembering, my emotions seemed to turn in the opposite direction, the disparity of then and now having been so literally flashed before my eyes. The Black me. I wasn’t happy while I watched my own memory. You know I’m not, Rachel. That doesn’t make me happy you know…er…it doesn’t please me to be unhappy. It’s just a reality. One that I hope you can help me with, because I’m pretty sure the strong part of me was snuffed out the day I was attacked.
Is it good that I hope I can rebuild that strong part of me? The Purple me?
So after I recalled my mom’s patience and indulgence, I read on about my sister Kara, and a game we used to play. Wait for it: Rug. I’d lie down and she’d walk on me! And I permitted this, only being salty when the roles were never reversed.
Which brings me to the biggest news of all….
(I know, what can beat an imaginary pig friend, apparently being the world’s youngest masochist, or my out of body experience?)
I laughed.
Rachel, I laughed!
Well, it was more like the sound that the wheel on the elderly elementary school librarian’s book cart makes, sort of a squeak-scrape-shuffle…
But scratch or not, the intention was behind it.
See? I listen. Stop laughing.
Seriously.
A-N-Y-W-A-Y
The intention was behind it. The desire, the urge, the feeling to express emotion.
And, most importantly, an emotion that falls comfortably into the cotton cushion of Joy.
Me? Who would have thought? Shut up, Rachel. Don’t make me stop doing this bullshit exercise ;) I’m really limited on emojis here, what with my hand and pen. But just know, that winky face meant I know it’s not bullshit, but I don’t have to like it. Huh. Guess I don’t need emojis after all!
Anyway, that’s it. I laughed, I think, and that made me happy, albeit briefly. You’re right, Rachel, emotions are contagious, both internally and externally. They grow and feed on each other.
I want my emotions to be fat and full of cotton candy and unicorns and sparkles. And maybe a few rainbows, why not?
Bye Rach. See you tomorrow.
~ Cass
NINETEEN
Charlie just had this…thing about him. It was like when he looked at me, I wasn’t me. I wasn’t damaged or ruined or utterly terrified to live my life. When Charlie’s green-gold eyes met mine, as they tended to do often, much to my inner indecision, it was like he saw ME. When Charlie’s eyes swallowed me up, I became lighter, I became inflated, and I always felt this funny little feeling in the very depths of me that felt like a ball of molten gold. Charlie put a fire inside of me and I wasn’t quite sure how to deal with this.
✧✧✧
“Cass, honey!” Diane seemed genuinely happy to see me as she opened her apartment door, and that made me feel…good.
I didn’t get to see Diane much, after I was finally allowed to leave the hospital and return to society. As in, my room, my kitchen, and my three-headed monster also known as my mom, Kara, and James. Still, we’d maintained contact, mostly via text and email, but I did manage to go for coffee or visit Diane at her tiny apartment about once a month.
I’d been to the pharmacy and was in her neighborhood and, knowing Diane’s schedule and (lack of) social life, dropped in on her unannounced. I figured, if she wasn’t home, no harm no foul. Luckily, she was doing what she always did during her off time: puttering around in old Ugg boots, feeding her cat, and scouring the abuse message boards that she haunted.
Diane was attractive, even when she simply tossed her hair up, and there was pretty much nothing that she could do about it. Paired with her warm chocolate eyes and burnt umber waves, were an amazing set of cheekbones. Her lips were naturally red and her thick dark brows were what we all dreamed of. Even as she stood before me in a paint splattered concert tee from a decade ago, baggy sweats, and her signature comfy boots, she looked naturally gorgeous. The mystery of Diane was one to which I was still not privy.
We were just two beautiful women who would have done so much not to be. After our initial chitchat and joking around, Diane got us iced teas and led me to her living room…all of about two feet away from her kitchen. Gesturing to the couch, I sat and she put her glass down next to mine on the side table. Silently, Diane left the room, only to return before I could wonder where she had gone, a tote slung over her shoulder.
Sitting down next to me on the couch, she dropped the tote beside her and turned to me. “I feel obligated to give you what I believe is yours.” Diane looked so serious, I was suddenly terrified of what was in the bag that I had just hoped had contained a present for me. What can I say, I like presents.
She reached down and grabbed my left hand, almost out of habit. Diane was one of the few people that I allowed to touch me; although slightly larger, her hand still felt like my own's counterpart, as it grasped mine. I had only seen Diane’s eyes become this sad and shadowed during my time in the hospital, when she spoke of my assault or her other patients. They never even looked this devastated on the rare occasion that she spoke of her own trauma.
Her hot chocolate was suddenly dark chocolate.
I did not want my present.
“They’re yours,” she said again, as if those two words carried the volume of the Cantebury Tales.
“I don’t want it.” I didn’t know what it was, but I knew that anything that could make my beloved Diane look so shattered, was something that I didn’t need or want in my life. Diane’s eyes didn’t change, but her lips flattened as if she wanted to say something but was stopping herself.
The lines in her forehead were more defined than I had remembered; was she ok? I felt awful as I realized that as close as Diane and I were, our relationship was still one of caregiver and wounded. I needed to be there for her, I needed Diane to know that I could be her rock like she had been, and still was, mine.
“Diane, I don’t even know what that is. But what’s going on? Why do you look so…” I couldn’t even vocalize the utter despair that was pouring out of her.
Diane closed her eyes, exhaled through her nose, and I swear that she was counting. Or maybe I’d just spent too much time with Rachel. Opening them, her brown eyes were a little less deep and dark. “I’m fine, sweetie. Never worry about me. This is about you. That’s why I was so glad that you came over. I wanted to do this here.” Reaching down into the bag, she produced a generic looking Manila envelope, the kind used for inter-department communication, with the string to wind around the circular tab for security. It was pretty thick.
Knowing that I’d never open the parcel myself, Diane reached out and unwound the beige string that held it shut, sliding her pointer finger beneath the flap to loosen it. Once opened, Diane gently tipped the envelope downward, shaking the contents out onto the table.
I couldn’t understand
what I was seeing. What were they?
I was staring at photos upon photos and I couldn’t make sense of what I was looking at.
“It’s totally illegal, but these belong to you. I always make duplicates for my patients, fully prepared to take any fall out. These are you; they don’t belong to the State, or the hospital. They belong to you.” Diane implored me to forgive her, to understand, but I couldn’t quite figure out what I was forgiving her for. “Cass, as abuse victims we must move on, to a certain extent; we can never live if we don’t come to terms with our abuse. But we mustn’t forget. We must never forget.” Diane looked away, her warm eyes dulling and losing focus. Clearly Diane was not forgetting.
Looking back down at the table, I picked up the photo that lay on top of the haphazard pile and gasped. Before I could stop myself, I said, “Poor Thing!” I felt a tear zigzagging down my right cheek, and I didn’t bother wiping it away.
I was looking at someone, a girl, with long dark hair. That was the only distinguishing feature. Even the disheveled hair was unidentifiable since the front quarter of the right side of her face was shaved. The result was an odd lopsided effect, the other side seeming twice as voluminous and knotted. Just beneath the shaved forehead rested a plastic plate; a white half-mask, concealing and immobilizing that half of her face, fastened with Velcro straps that wrapped around her head. The dim room contrasted with the harsh light glinting off of the ghostly white of the mask, lending an otherworldly feel to the picture.
If I were wondering what lay beneath the mask, I needn’t. Her other half, her left half of her face, was bare and unobscured. She was still unrecognizable. The mottling of blues and blacks, swirled with purples, created a Piscasso-like effect, his Blue Period personified. Crusted scabs adorned the bruising, one on the forehead having been sutured. The corner of her mouth had been torn, a good inch beyond natural, the stitches lined up neat and tidy along the gash.
My tears were fully flowing and Diane was still staring off into space. The girl was even more grotesque as my vision blurred. I catalogued the large brace on her shoulder that disappeared beneath the blankets, distorting her silhouette as it continued to other large reinforcements down her body that buttressed the covers. At least that’s what I assumed was creating the effect, otherwise there was a small person curled up next to her under the sheets. Doubtful.
What was I looking at?
Diane must have snapped out of it because she suddenly pulled the picture from my hand and held it up to me. “Do you see this?” she asked, cold fury in her voice. If I didn’t know her so well, I’d have assumed that she was enraged with me. I could only nod. I did see it. “This, Cassandra, you must never forget.” She tossed the photo down and snatched up another. Bare breast. Deep red scratches marred porcelain skin, the once pink nipple a fiery red.
The picture was tossed down, another picked up and thrust at me. I recoiled; I couldn’t touch them. This one was of a hand, a right hand. The ring finger was black and crooked, twice the diameter of the other fingers; the fingernail of the middle finger torn off completely.
Buttocks. More deep scarlet scratches disfiguring milky skin.
Diane seemed crazed. Each picture that she threw down, she exchanged for a new one, barely looking at them as she held it to my face. I’d ceased to cry.
An earlobe, half torn from the head.
Something I couldn’t recognize…Flesh thickly striped with indigo.
“Those are strangulation marks.”
The next batch was less abstract. Now I could see the girl’s face. This set must have been taken immediately after her assault, as her head was unshaven, although here it was tangled and plastered to the side of her head with…blood? Her eye was completely hidden by the swelling of her right cheek and brow bone, but below that her face had an unnerving concavity to it. Her lip wasn’t sown yet; dried blood remained around the tear.
Again, Diane pushed another photo into my vision and I couldn’t look away.
Her good eye. The one that was still visible. And yet, it was as dead looking as I imagined the damaged blue one to be.
“Are you looking, Cass?” Diane's voice had quieted, her hands shaking less. I nodded, unable to speak. Why was she showing me these awful photos? They were making me both sick and horrifyingly sad for this victim. Diane specifically chose the next photo, shuffling others aside that I vowed never to look at.
Unblemished feet. Not a mark on them; soft and smooth. Bubble Gum Pink on the toenails.
I knew because I’d painted them the night before.
I looked at Diane this time, really looked at her. I had seen the photos, but I hadn’t looked at them.
My photos. Me. Me looking more ravaged than I thought possible to survive. I had a newfound respect for my doctors, and Diane. I had a newfound respect for the human body.
“You almost did not make it, Cass.” Diane let those words sink in. I’d known this somewhere in the back of my head, like I’d overheard it once or twice in the hospital, but I must have blocked it out…or at least muzzled it. Truthfully, though, I didn’t think a dead person could look worse than…what those pictures were depicting. “But you did.” She paused again, as the power of that statement settled around us.
“I did,” I whispered. How? I had been in much worse shape than I’d realized. I mean, I was in agony in the hospital all those months, and the physical therapy had been equally awful, but… The right side of my face peeked up at me from the table. I unconsciously lifted my right arm and lightly fingered my right cheek, closing my eyes and then opening them, relishing the ability to control my lids and to have vision in both eyes.
Always the lucky girl. ‘Miraculously,’ my orbital nerve was undamaged.
Stroking my smooth cheek as I stared at how He’d dented it, I absorbed how He’d apparently strangled me. I hadn’t recalled that. The after effect that seeing those pictures was having on me, could possibly be worse than the actual viewing. I was suddenly realizing how much of my attack I’d blocked out. I didn’t even remember him injuring me so extensively; up until now all I knew was that I’d tried, but I’d failed.
“You’re getting it,” Diane said, dropping the last photo back down onto the chaos of the heap.
“He hurt me…” It was redundant and simplistic, but it was the truth.
“Yes, Cass,” Diane said, reaching over and placing her hand on my knee. “But you fought him. Cass, you fought your god damn heart out, and I was so proud of you when the paramedics wheeled you into my ward.” Huh? I’d clearly gotten my ass handed to me, to say the least. “Don’t you see, so many defensive wounds…look at your hand! You clawed your own damn fingernail off!” I was suddenly feeling queasy. “Cass, honey, look at me.” Diane forced my eyes to hers, the chocolate warm and welcoming, but glistening for the first time in memory. “You did not go down without a fight. You did All that you could, and here is proof.” She gestured to the photos without breaking eye contact.
“I said never forget. We must Never forget. Never must we forget that we are standing here today because we won. We fought and we lost, but we left with our lives. And you, Cass, you fought for what was yours and for that, you should always be proud.” Diane was actively crying now, the tears freely streaming down her face. “I will always be proud of you, kiddo.” Time stood still as she lost the battle, she lost her war with herself.
Diane leaned toward me and embraced me. As she held me, her familiar smell gave me peace. It was that smell that had gotten me through those hard months, her powerful voice which contradicted her gentle manner, her silent understanding. This was the first time in the 2 years that we’d known each other, that we had hugged. Despite that, being held by Diane felt like coming home.
I could only grasp my life preserver tighter as I whispered, tears choking my voice, “Thank you, Diane.” Diane’s silence was, once again, enough.
TWENTY
“Ok Ladies and Germs, we’re going to be working in groups for the next f
ew weeks.” The Professor looked like we’d thank him for this. Me, I was about to run out of the classroom. “There will be groups of four, with one group of three. But I have a little secret weapon for our unlucky group of three.” Professor Ando literally winked at us when he added this part. I guess you had to be a little alternative to live a Journalist’s life.
Groups. Several Weeks. Outside of class time. Meet up and work together.
These words were swirling in my head long past the point when the Professor had started calling out names. Through my fog I managed to make out, “Cassandra Ward…Harrison Zane.” Umm, apparently my clever Professor had simply grouped us alphabetically. “Well…” Professor Ando glanced down then back up, “Cassandra and Harrison, you are the lucky group of three.” Ummm… “You get Charlie, our TA as your third!” The Professor announced this like we’d run up and hug him. In my other life, I might have.
Instead, I was tailspinning. Groups. Harrison. Charlie. Cassandra.
Charlie.
Charlie.
Charlie was sitting next to me, as was now a guy who I had seen in passing. He was relatively good looking, dark hair that was long on top and the back but short on the sides, dark eyes, a little stubble and a white T-shirt. Jeans and black boots. He was currently shaking hands with Charlie as I continued to sit there frozen.
“Well I already know Cassandra,” Charlie had surprised me by saying, as he’d flashed me a smile that felt like it was a true unguarded reflection of his feelings. “So you must be Harrison,” Charlie had stuck out his hand, shaking Harrison’s who had gone in for a fist bump. Awkward. Dropping his hand and opening his notebook, Charlie said, “Well I already took this class, so it’s up to you guys.” And then he laughed.
He had a really great laugh. It was loud but hearty, pleasant and powerful at the same time. Charlie laughed like he did everything as far as I’d gleaned, with abandon. Charlie seemed to eclipse a room when he was in it, something that did not go unnoticed by the endless female puppy dog eyes and looks of admiration whenever he said anything. And Charlie said stuff. Charlie had opinions, loud, strong, well-crafted opinions and he felt it was his duty to expose them to the world.
TWELVE MINUTES Page 8
