One. Two. Three.
I count each one until at last my feet touch the round mat at the bottom. It is new. I sit on the bottom step, curling my toes against the emerald-green fabric. My mother never did get the vomit stains out of the old one. This one is not as nice. It is cheaper, I think.
‘Ah, here, it’s as simple as this, Ned,’ from the kitchen, I hear a man’s voice saying in an inner-city Dublin growl. ‘I’m not a judgemental man, I’m not. But if this girl was in bed with the lad anyway, what was she expecting?’
‘I don’t think she was expecting to get raped, Davey,’ a nasal voice retorts. Posh. Dublin 4. ‘Although yours does seem to be a popular opinion. You agree with him, do you, Eileen?’
‘I do indeed,’ an older woman says. She breaks into a raspy smoker’s cough before continuing. ‘I see these girls walking around town here on a Saturday night, half naked, I tell you—’
‘They are—’ Davey chimes in, but she talks over him.
‘Skirts up to their backsides, and tops cut down to their belly buttons, and they’re all drinking too much and falling over in the streets, they’re practically asking to be attacked, and then when it happens, they start bawling crying over it. As your other man said, what do they expect?’
‘Hmm,’ the presenter says. ‘OK, it’s time for the 9 a.m. news, but stay tuned to us here at Ireland FM because after the bulletin we’re going to keep discussing the Ballinatoom Case.’
I get to my feet as the shrill jingle for The Ned O’Dwyer Show plays out. Ned O’Dwyer, self-proclaimed defender of the innocent. ‘It’s so important that we talk about this,’ he tells his listeners. ‘We need to have a national conversation about this.’
I wish another girl had been the one to start the national conversation.
I am a regular feature on Ned O’Dwyer. They cannot use my name so they call me the Ballinatoom Girl. They cannot use their names either, for legal reasons, but everyone knows who they are. Their lives are ruined because of this. I have ruined them.
The Ballinatoom Girl. Her story told and retold until it’s not her story any more.
She alleges. She claims. She says.
I don’t have anything to say, but they want to hear it anyway. Journalists from Jezebel, from xoJane, from the Guardian, from the New York Times. Everyone wants me to tell my story.
I don’t have a story.
It’s because of The Ned O’Dwyer Show that the ‘Ballinatoom Case’ became national news in the first place, then international, thousands of people tweeting about me. #IBelieveBallinatoomGirl
I am supposed to take comfort in that, I think.
A source ‘close to the family’ rang in to the show to tip the producers off. (Who? my father kept asking. Who is giving them all this information? And we close ranks. We talk less to the neighbours. We watch everyone for signs of betrayal.) The source asked to remain anonymous. ‘It’s a small town, everyone knows everyone,’ they said. ‘And no one wants to upset anyone else.’
People phone in to say that I deserved it. They say that I was asking for it.
At first I was hurt when I heard what they said about me. I cried a lot, in the beginning.
I probably shouldn’t listen. But no one will tell me anything. It feels like I am always trying to finish a jigsaw puzzle with a few pieces missing.
In the kitchen my mother is bent over on the counter, stretched out towards the old radio, fiddling with its busted antenna. A clipped female voice says, ‘Good morning. Here are your news stories. One year on in the Ballinatoom Case, and it’s . . .’
I cough and she slams her hand down on the radio to turn it off. She pretends she wasn’t listening to it. I pretend I didn’t hear.
‘I didn’t hear you come down.’
My mother’s face is flushed, her eyes folding inside creases of puffy skin. She looks pale, faded, her features indistinct. Behind her I can see the calendar propped up against the cupboard, a picture of a French bulldog in a flowerpot. The anniversary is coming closer and closer. I want to mark it, put a big black X on the date. But I never know which day to choose. ‘The alleged attack happened in the early hours of Sunday morning’, the papers said, even though when I think about it, when I force myself to imagine what happened (what might have happened – I can’t remember, I can’t remember, I can’t remember) I always think of it as Saturday night. When you can’t remember something (and I can’t remember, I have told them all so many times that I can’t remember) it is as if it never happened at all.
But it did happen. I know that now.
‘You’re late for school.’ My mother tightens her dressing gown around her, the white stripes yellowing, a splotchy tea stain on the lapel.
‘I’m not going in.’
‘But you promised me last night that you would go in today, Emma. Your exams are only a month away.’
‘Maybe tomorrow.’
This is a game we play. I pretend that I might return to school. She pretends to believe me. We both pretend that I might sit the Leaving Cert in June. We’re good at pretending now.
I take a seat at the dining table, willing my hand to stop shaking as I tip some Alpen into a bowl, pouring the milk in after. It folds out in thick lumps, plopping on to the cereal. I stare at it. I should get up. I should throw away the cereal. I should wash the bowl out. I go through all the actions in my head, watching my body move as if it’s easy.
‘The milk . . .’ I break off, my voice drying up. I swallow some water. ‘. . . it’s gone off.’
‘Shit,’ my mother says. She picks up the carton, sniffs it, pulls a face. ‘Don’t tell your father about this.’ She throws the mess into the sink, opens the cupboards with a clatter, hands me a new bowl and a pot of natural yogurt. ‘You’ll have to make do with that until I get a chance to do a shop.’
I begin again. It is a process, and each step must be taken carefully. Alpen in bowl. Yogurt. Stir. I am focused on the present moment. Mindfulness, the therapist calls it.
If I do this right, if I get every part of this right, maybe today will be OK.
‘Where’s Dad?’
My mother turns away from me. She rinses out some dishes and puts them in the dishwasher.
‘Where’s Dad?’ I repeat, forcing myself to take a spoonful of cereal. It tastes like glue and cardboard, but I swallow it. Have to keep your energy up, the doctor tells me. And starvation seems a long, slow route to death.
‘He had to go to work early,’ she says. She opens the cupboard door and stands on her tiptoes to reach the top shelf. ‘Some problems at the office.’
‘Oh.’
I stare out the patio door. Helen O’Shea is herding Ollie and Elliot into the car. They are both wearing raincoats over their school uniforms, jumping into puddles and screaming with laughter so loudly I can hear them through the glass.
I want to eat them. I want to make myself fat on their innocence.
It’s not your fault, the therapist tells me, but she is wrong.
‘Did Dad leave my phone for me?’
‘I thought we discussed this.’
‘I deleted my Snapchat. I changed my number.’ My voice rises. ‘What more do you want?’
I didn’t want to change my number. I was afraid that one of the lads might change their mind, that they might want to apologize, that they would decide to plead guilty and then maybe I wouldn’t have to go through with all of this, people would know I wasn’t an attention-seeking whore, that this wasn’t my fault.
(Kevin Brennan tweeted: OK girls, just get drunk and slutty, and then shout rape the next day. It had been favourited 136 times.)
‘But it just upsets you, Emma, and—’
‘I want my phone today.’
‘Fine,’ my mother says. ‘I’ll give it you after breakfast.’ She fills another glass with tap water and brings it to the table, placing it in front of me. She holds her cupped palm out, a green-and-cream striped pill and a small round white one in it. They are like pearls in a s
eashell, tiny, precious. Valuable. I put them in my mouth, washing them down with the water.
‘Still?’ she asks as the glass almost falls out of my trembling hand. ‘Maybe we should go back to Jimmy and ask him to adjust the dosage.’
‘Dr Manning.’
‘What?’
‘It’s Dr Manning now. You said Jimmy.’
‘Did I?’
She squeezes my right shoulder, a little too tight for comfort.
‘Tongue?’
I stick out my tongue. I have to show her my intent to get better, my promise not to be foolish again.
‘Good girl.’
The room is so silent, the noises from outside quietening when all the neighbours have gone to work and to school. Their lives continue as normal. Maybe I should tell her to turn the radio back on. We could sit here, listen to those strangers tell us where it is we went wrong.
– She should have known better.
– She was asking for it.
– What was she expecting?
– Not to get . . .
Not to get. Not to get that word.
I listen to the rhythms that make up the morning, the tiny slurp as my mother drinks her coffee, the ping of the spoon hitting the china bowl, the patter of rain against the glass pane.
‘This weather,’ my mother says, staring out the window. ‘Goodness, do you remember . . .?’
She stops herself. Do you remember this time last year? is what she was about to say.
This time last year, it was sunny. This time last year we were in the middle of a heatwave, waiting for it to break.
‘What the . . .?’ She sniffs the air, her forehead creasing into a frown. She pushes her chair back and runs over to the oven, opening the door and waving at the black clouds of smoke that are wisping out of it.
‘My muffins,’ she wails as she rescues the tray, slamming it down on the hob.
I follow her into the kitchen area and we stand side by side, staring at the baking tray.
‘They’re not so bad,’ I say. ‘Just burned around the edges. It’s nothing.’
And it doesn’t matter anyway, I want to tell her.
‘Are you still going to the farmer’s market?’ I say. ‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘But—’
‘Are you going to come with me?’ she asks as she trims the blackened pieces off.
‘No.’
The word comes automatically. No. No. No. It’s all I say these days. It is as if I am making up for the time when I couldn’t say it. When I wasn’t given the chance to say it.
No.
My mother faces me, her hands in fists at her hips. ‘You haven’t gone outside in two weeks, Emma.’
‘I’ve gone to therapy.’
‘But besides that.’
It’s been a year, Emma. It’s time to get over it, Emma. Don’t you think it’d be best to just put it all behind you, Emma?
‘It will do you good to get outside, pet.’
I left this house by myself seven weeks ago. My mother lent me her car, asked me to get some messages for her in town. There was an awkward exchange with the girl on the till in Londis, neither of us knowing how to act. I felt as if I was playing a part, like I should burst into tears at any moment, as if a smile or a laugh might be used against me. When the boys had first been brought in for questioning, I tweeted about watching reruns of SpongeBob with Bryan. Wait, Sarah Swallows had replied. You say you were ‘raped’ and then you tweet happy shit? #IDontGetIt #DumbBitch. (It was retweeted fourteen times. Paul O’Brien retweeted it. So did Dylan Walsh.)
I thanked her as she gave me my change. Then, as I was leaving Londis, I saw Paul and two of his friends coming out of the bookies’ office, shoving betting slips into their pockets. I went to dart back into the shop, but he saw me and he knew I had seen him. He nudged one of his friends, whose face darkened when he caught sight of me. I could read his lips mouthing a word. Slut.
There are certain words I can lip-read now. I know them so well.
Paul stayed where he was, calling out his food order as his friends crossed the road. He is supposed to stay away from me. If any of them tries to harass you, intimidate you or assault you, Sergeant Sutton told me in a bored tone, contact the Garda station immediately. A voice was screaming in my head to start walking, to get away from there as fast as I could, but I couldn’t move. (My body doesn’t belong to me any more.) ‘Whoops,’ one of his friends had said as he banged into me hard. My fingers released involuntarily and the plastic bag fell to the ground, a smash as a bottle hit the concrete. ‘Careful, Timmy, she’ll probably say you raped her too,’ the other guy said, and I could feel my breath warp into a desperate wheezing.
You’re not dying, the therapist told me, or having a heart attack. They’re just panic attacks. They’re very common. You need to learn to manage them, to calm your breathing enough to withstand the attack.
It feels as if I might die. (I wish, I wish, I wish.)
The two of them walked past me into the shop, ordering chicken-fillet rolls and spicy wedges, flirting with the girl on the till as they paid. Paul rested against the window of Molly’s Bar, sucking on a cigarette, blowing smoke rings out of his mouth, his eyes never leaving me for a second. He had gained weight, but that was the only difference I could see. He stood and watched me, the girl who ruined his life, and he waited for his friends to come back. The three of them started walking up Main Street, and he turned around, walking backwards, and smiled at me. It was as if he had won already, and we both knew it.
‘Where’s the wine?’ my mother had asked when I got home. ‘I told you to get a bottle of that Shiraz that was on special offer.’
I wanted to tell her. But I couldn’t. What happened? she would demand. What did you say? I hope you didn’t react, I hope you remained dignified, I hope you didn’t show him you were upset. I hope you didn’t give him the soot of it. Then she would remember herself, what a mother was supposed to do, how the therapist had told her she needed to behave. She would wrap an arm around me, cover my head with soft, meaningless words that were supposed to comfort me, and I would want to ask her, Do you believe I didn’t want this, do you believe it wasn’t my fault? But I couldn’t ask her that. I was afraid of what the answer might be. So I lied. ‘I forgot,’ I told her. ‘I’m sorry. I just forgot the wine.’
‘No,’ I say again, more firmly. ‘I’m not going out.’
My world has become smaller and smaller in the past year, shrinking to fit the parameters of this house.
My mother’s mouth tightens. ‘Well, it’s either the market with me, or school. Which would you prefer?’
*
‘Can’t we get any closer than this?’ I say as my mother indicates into the cathedral car park, waiting for an old lady in a tweed skirt to hobble past us on the zebra crossing.
‘It’s market day,’ my mother replies. She reverses into a space and switches the ignition off. ‘We won’t get parking anywhere else. It’s always chock-a-block in town.’
The journey had been quiet, my mother clearly not daring to turn on the radio. ‘Allegedly . . . she claims . . . the Ballinatoom Girl has been making headlines all over the world . . . trending on Twitter . . .’ I don’t understand why there’s so much fuss about this particular case, I overheard her saying to my father a few weeks ago, the hiss of the iron as it released steam. I muted the TV so I could eavesdrop. People get . . . These things happen all the time. My father didn’t reply. I went upstairs, opened the diary that my therapist, a woman Hannah had recommended because she had experience with this type of thing, insisted I buy, and I made a list.
Reasons why people are interested in the Ballinatoom Case:
1. Four boys, one girl.
2. The effect of social media on young people today.
3. When will young people learn the value of privacy?
4. Should the photos of the Ballinatoom Case be admitted as evidence?
5. The Americanizat
ion of Irish culture.
6. Does ‘jock culture’ support rape culture?
7. Does ‘rape culture’ even exist?
8. One in three reported rapes happens when the victim has been drinking.
9. We need to talk about consent.
These are just titles of editorials in newspapers. There have been so many. I have them bookmarked on my laptop so that I can find them easily whenever I want to read them again. My therapist thinks this is a bad idea.
‘I want you to draw me a picture,’ she said in our last session, the two of us holed up in a box-like room above a supermarket in Kilgavan, a town about fifteen miles from Ballinatoom. The walls are painted a cheerful yellow, two blue armchairs too close together, a box of tissues placed at the foot of my chair. There are framed posters on the wall, pictures of snow-capped mountains and horses galloping on beaches, inspirational quotes like ‘Never give up!’ and ‘Don’t let your wounds transform you into something you’re not’ typed in block letters across them. There are a couple of certificates as well, which my father had demanded to look at during our first, and only, family session. Once he had seen them he was satisfied. This woman was qualified. She would fix me. He could leave us to it. ‘Draw me a picture of where you are in relation to your body,’ she said, and she handed me a blank piece of paper and some crayons. ‘Why do you have these anyway?’ I asked her. ‘For my younger clients.’ She pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘I have a degree in play therapy as well.’ I wondered what these younger clients came there for. Were they being bullied? Had a parent died? Were they being sexually abused? Did they find the therapy useful? Did it cure any of them? The therapist pointed at the paper and cleared her throat so I began to draw. I drew the body that was to blame for all this. (I want to erase it. I want to make it disappear.) ‘And where are you?’ the therapist asked. ‘Where are you, Emma?’ I drew a tiny dot at the other end of the page, as far away as I could possibly make it, and the therapist shook her head. She spoke of the importance of getting back in touch with my body, of being present, of feeling connected. She recommended yoga and acupuncture and massage. I said I would think about it.
Asking for It Page 13