Asking for It

by Louise O'Neill

  I imagine myself standing in front of a courtroom of people, saying I don’t remember to every question. Members of the press would be allowed to be present, the lady at the Rape Crisis Centre told me, and witnesses, but she would be there with me for support, she wouldn’t leave my side for a second. It would be hard, she admitted, and her face was grave. I would have to be brave.

  And it could take another two years for the case to come to trial. I would wake every morning for the next two years, looking at my parents, worry lines scored into their faces. I have ruined their lives as well.

  I grasp the armrests of the chair, feeling as if I might vomit Scottish shortbread and tea all over Aidan Heffernan’s plush carpet.

  *

  ‘How was it?’

  My mother had been parked outside the supermarket in Kilgavan, reading one of those magazines full of baking tips and knitting patterns, waiting for me to finish my therapy session. She had a takeaway cup of coffee in one hand, and a packet of pink wafer biscuits open on her lap, crumbs all over her skirt.

  Terrible, I want to say. Pointless.

  It wasn’t your fault, the therapist keeps telling me. You were the victim of a crime, it wasn’t your fault.

  Doesn’t she read the papers, listen to The Ned O’Dwyer Show? Doesn’t she realize what Emma O’Donovan was wearing (I hear she was wearing a skirt so short that you could see her knickers . . . Wait, I heard she wasn’t even wearing any underwear . . .), that she drank too much (I heard that she had a bottle of vodka before she left her house . . . No, I heard that she had twenty tequila shots and then went on to the vodka . . .), that she had taken drugs (coke . . . pills? . . . No, I heard it was heroin, but she only smoked it . . .), that she was so fucking stupid? Too stupid to live really.

  And now Emma O’Donovan wants to ruin their lives.

  There was silence as I read one of the affirmations on the wall. Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain. I tried to give the therapist what she wants. ‘You’re right,’ I lied. ‘You’re right. It wasn’t my fault.’

  ‘I hope it’s working,’ my mother brushes the crumbs off her skirt, ‘with what we’re paying her.’ She places a hand on mine. ‘Not that we mind about the money, Emma. All we want is for you to feel better.’

  All they want is for me to have been a good girl that night. All they want is for me to have been different.

  ‘It was grand,’ I say and she looks relieved, as if she’s marking it off on her mental to-do list. #3 – Prevent Emma from having a complete nervous breakdown.

  I stare out the window as we drive home, following the meandering river that flows between the two towns, people out jogging, a dilapidated petrol station, the soggy edges of the fields. What would happen if I pulled up the handbrake? (Car flipping over. And over. Necks snapped.) Or if I grabbed the steering wheel and forced us into the way of that truck? (Crushed. Unidentifiable. Mangled.)

  It would all be over. We probably wouldn’t even know what was happening.

  After the second time I tried, people around town said that I didn’t really mean to do it, that I was looking for attention. I don’t think that was the reason. I think I just wanted some silence. But I don’t know.

  I got an anonymous text message (how did they get my new number?) while I was in the hospital: Try harder next time.

  ‘Damn it, anyway,’ my mother says when she sees Bryan’s red Golf in the driveway. ‘I wanted to be here to welcome him home.’

  She slams the car door behind her, not noticing that the end of her thin floral scarf has gotten caught. She hurries up the driveway, holding her leather handbag over her head, almost tripping over Precious on the porch.

  I need to open the car door. I need to walk into the house. I need to meet my brother and ask him how his week was. I need to look normal. As I wait for this body to cooperate I watch the drops of rain dribbling down the car window. It looks like it’s crying.

  The door to the O’Callaghans’ house opens. It’s Conor, staring up at the sky, grimacing at the rain as he pulls the hood of his jacket up. I try and sink down in my seat but he’s seen me, a hand held up in hello. I look through my satchel for my iPod and stick the earbuds in, pretending that I’m listening to music as I get out of the car and that I can’t hear him calling my name, Emmie, Emmie? as I open up the Ballinatoom GAA umbrella to hide from him, moving my satchel strap from one shoulder to the other, ignoring Precious’s miaows for attention, repeating left leg, right leg, left leg, right leg in my head, until I can shut the front door behind me. I lean against it, shaking.

  ‘Hey, Emmie,’ Bryan says as I walk into the kitchen. ‘How are you?’

  He’s sitting on a stool at the island. At his feet he’s thrown his navy Adidas gym bag and a black plastic bag with a tear down the side, bed-sheets and socks seeping out. He looks thinner, bluish smudges under his eyes. He needs a haircut. He gets up to hug me, his arms wrap around me tightly, and I can’t breathe. I want to tell him to stop touching me, but it’s Bryan, it’s only Bryan. He lets go, as if he can sense my discomfort.

  ‘How are you?’ he asks again.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Did you go to school this week?’

  ‘Your scarf got caught in the car door,’ I tell my mother. She is pulling packets of pasta and a jar of white sauce out of the cupboards, apologizing to Bryan for not having time to make her own today.

  ‘What was that?’ my mother asks me, raising her voice to be heard over the whirr of the extractor fan. She heats some oil in a frying pan on the hob and throws in a couple of salmon fillets. The smell is strong. Nauseating.

  (Bet it smelled fishy!!!!!!!! one of the comments on Facebook said. I am an It. I am an It. I am an It. Seventy-six people liked the comment. I made my mother go out the next day and buy vaginal cleanser in the chemist. I used it again and again and again. I wanted to be clean. I wanted to smell of nothing.)

  ‘Your scarf,’ I say, ‘it got caught in the door on your way in.’

  ‘Did you bring it with you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What is wrong with you? That was expensive, Emma. Your brother gave it to me for my birthday. For God’s . . .’ Bryan frowns at her, and she tries again. ‘OK. Can you go out and get it for me, please?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  I don’t want to explain to her about Conor.

  ‘What am I supposed to eat for dinner?’ I say instead. ‘Is that all you’re making?’

  ‘There’s a vegetarian ready-meal in the freezer,’ she says, her eyes flicking to Bryan, but he doesn’t comment, too busy texting.

  ‘Any plans for the weekend?’ she asks him as she gets two wine glasses from the dishwasher.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you not meeting up with the lads?’ She opens the fridge door and takes out a bottle of white wine, pouring herself a large glass.

  ‘None for me, Mam.’ Bryan looks up from his phone just as she’s about to pour wine into the second glass. ‘Thanks.’

  She doesn’t offer any to me. I am not allowed to drink any more.

  ‘Oh, come on, Bryan.’ My mother waves the bottle at him. ‘It’s your favourite, a lovely Pinot Grigio – that wine critic in the Sunday Times recommended it. Just one little glass. It’ll relax you after the long drive.’

  ‘My favourite?’ he says. ‘I don’t even like wine.’

  ‘A beer? I have Heineken.’

  ‘No, honestly, I’m grand, Mam.’

  ‘What about a Coors? Or a Budweiser?’

  ‘No,’ Bryan says firmly. ‘I’m grand, I said.’

  A key scraping in the front door, my father muttering under his breath that blasted cat, wiping his shoes on the mat. ‘Bryan?’ he calls out. My mother puts the wine bottle back in the fridge, hiding her glass behind the kettle. She picks up the wooden spoon and stirs the jar of white sauce into the pasta.

  ‘In here, Dad.’

  My
father shakes the wet out of his hair, walking from the door to where we are sitting in three strides. He stands between Bryan and me, his back to me, one hand on Bryan’s shoulder, asking him question after question, how’s college, have you thought about getting back on the football team, how did that exam go, how are the lads in the house, do you have enough money, I see you brought your washing home, good lad, your mother will take care of that for you.

  ‘Come on, son.’ He walks away, gesturing at Bryan to follow him. ‘The match is about to start.’

  ‘That’s a wonderful idea,’ my mother says. ‘I love it when my boys spend some quality time together.’

  Bryan doesn’t get up. ‘What about Emma?’

  My father’s face pinches at my name, then he smooths it away so quickly I wonder if I’ve only imagined it. ‘What about Emma?’ His words are careful, exact.

  ‘You haven’t said a word to her since you arrived home. Aren’t you going to ask how her day went?’ Bryan looks at me. ‘You didn’t go to school, did you?’

  ‘She had to meet her therapist today,’ my mother says, ignoring my father’s tight expression at the word therapist.

  ‘But surely she should be going to school?’ Bryan persists. ‘It’s her Leaving Cert in a month. Is she sitting her exams? Or is she going to take a year out and sit them next year?’

  ‘Bryan, we talked about this last weekend.’

  ‘Yeah, Dad, we did, and we talked about it the weekend before that, and the weekend before that too, and I still haven’t heard a proper answer.’

  ‘Well, she couldn’t go to school today; she had to go visit the solicitor,’ my mother pipes up. ‘Much good that it did us, when he can’t tell us anything anyway.’

  ‘I still can’t believe she’s not allowed her own solicitor.’ My father shakes his head.

  Not unless they make an application to bring up my sexual history, I think, and they will. Of course they will.

  How many people have you had sex with?

  What counts as sex? Full penetration? Oral?

  (Remember you’re under oath.)

  Mam’s face, Dad’s face, Bryan.

  (Remember you’re under oath.)

  ‘Did he say anything about their performance in the District Court?’ Bryan asks. ‘I can’t believe those fuckers are saying they’re not guilty.’

  ‘Language, please.’

  ‘Sorry, Mam, but as if anyone is going to look at those photos and not convict them.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ my mother says. ‘Well, Aidan Heffernan isn’t sure if the photos will be admitted as evidence.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Please don’t shout at me, Bryan. I’m only repeating what the man said.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She looks at me for support. ‘They might be allowed, he’s just not sure. They probably will be. I’m sure they will be.’

  Bryan’s teeth are gritted. ‘After all that . . .’ Hassle, he wants to say. Trouble. Effort. He has seen all the photos. He has seen my legs splayed, pink flesh. (I bet it smells fishy.) He has seen me as a slut, whore, bitch.

  ‘I’ve started seeing a therapist too, this woman at UL,’ Bryan told us last month over dinner. My father pushed his chair back from the table and left the room without saying a word. I am infecting them all with my sadness. I am ruining their lives too.

  ‘I’ll phone Aidan tomorrow,’ my father says. ‘He’ll tell me.’

  ‘He can’t.’

  ‘Nora, I’ve been friends with Aidan Heffernan since national school.’ My father’s chest is puffed out. ‘He’ll tell me.’

  ‘He can’t, Denis. He doesn’t get to see this Book of Evidence thing either. It’s only the other side will get to see that.’

  ‘The other side? You mean Paul O’Brien and those scumbags will get to see this before Emma?’ Bryan asks, and my mother nods. He looks sick. ‘We’ve got to do something; we can’t just sit around and watch Emma fall apart while—’

  ‘She’s not falling apart,’ my mother says sharply.

  I am not falling apart. I am being ripped at the seams, my insides torn out until I am hollow.

  ‘That’s none of your concern, Bryan,’ my father says.

  ‘Well, Dad, since I’m the only one who is prepared to face up to the reality around here, then I think it is my concern. It’s my sister we’re talking about.’

  I wish Bryan would leave it alone. It’s because of him all of this is happening anyway. He was the one who persuaded me that I needed to press charges, that I needed to change my statement to say that I couldn’t remember what had happened that night. And if I couldn’t remember, how could I have given consent? And I did what he said. I thought it would be better for him to think of me as the victim (helpless, blameless, stupid) rather than a dirty slut (slut, liar, skank, bitch, whore) like everyone else.

  And it spiralled out of control.

  ‘Hi, I’m a producer from The Ned O’Dwyer Show – we’d love to have you on with us?’

  ‘I’m with xoJane – we want you to write a piece for us. It will give you a chance to share your side of the story. I’ve attached some articles that we’ve run previously, girls with similar stories to yours.’

  (I read the articles. I want to find stories that are worse. I need to know that there are girls who have been through worse. Did they survive?)

  ‘I work for Jezebel. We want to support you. You are not alone in this, Emma.’

  I feel as if I am alone.

  ‘And I just think it would be nice to know that there’s some sort of plan for her future,’ Bryan says, ‘and not just everyone sticking their head in the sand and pretending like—’

  ‘Bryan –’ my father’s voice is firm – ‘just quit while you’re ahead. Your mother and I will deal with this. And that’s that. Now, are we going to go watch the match?’ He stops in the hall doorway, looking back over his shoulder at me. ‘Sure, Emma doesn’t want to watch soccer, do you, love?’ he asks me out of the side of his mouth, his gaze hovering at a point an inch above my head. ‘It’s not really her thing.’

  My mother waits until they’ve left before rescuing her glass of wine. ‘Why don’t you go upstairs?’ she says. ‘No point in you waiting here. Go on now, out of my sight.’

  *

  I’m lying on my bed looking at Facebook when I hear my mother call us for dinner. Sean has commented on Ali’s wall about the poetry question for English Paper Two, Ali replying that she’s betting on Heaney to come up. Jamie commented underneath that she’s prepared an answer on John Donne too, just in case. Sean liked Jamie’s comment.

  ‘Should you have your laptop in your room?’ It’s Bryan, standing in the open doorway. I shut the computer.

  ‘You again?’ I joke weakly.

  He has come into my room every fifteen minutes for the last hour, asking if I had seen his old Ballinatoom jersey, or if he could borrow my phone charger, or wondering if I had heard about this new comedian and wanting to show me a clip on YouTube. ‘Aren’t you missing the match?’ I asked him, and he shrugged it off. He’s always like this when he comes home, following me around, keeping an eye on me. He is the only one who looks at me any more and he looks too closely. I am afraid of what he must see.

  ‘Just wanted to check that you heard Mam calling us for dinner,’ he replies, walking before me down the stairs.

  I don’t want to be caught, I want to tell him. Let me fall.

  My parents have already started eating when Bryan and I sit at the table, the sounds of biting and chewing and slurping unbearably loud. I cut the tofu-burger up into little pieces, placing each one in my mouth gingerly and making myself chew it and swallow, washing it down with the rest of my juice.

  ‘No good?’ Bryan asks.

  ‘Food tastes a bit grey these days.’

  My parents stiffen. Medication = depression = things we do not talk about in this family. That’s why I go to the therapist.

  ‘Well, it’s tofu, what can
you expect?’ Bryan says, and my father guffaws, as if it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. I go to the fridge to refill my juice. There is a different bottle of wine in the fridge door now. I check the label. It’s a white wine from Chile, a quarter of it gone already. I sit back at the table and I say nothing.

  ‘Now tell me this, and tell me no more,’ my mother says to Bryan, ‘have you been on any dates recently?’

  ‘No one goes on dates, Mam.’

  ‘Well, any romance? A gorgeous-looking boy like you – they must be queuing up.’ She sucks her lower lip. ‘Unless you’re not ready. Are you still upset about Jennifer?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about that.’

  ‘You poor thing, it’s only natural—’

  ‘The boy said he didn’t want to talk about it, Nora.’ My father drops his cutlery on his plate with a clatter.

  Bryan looks sad. That’s my fault too.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry. You’re my beautiful boy. You’ll find someone yet.’ She reaches across the table to take hold of his hand, knocking over my juice as she does so. I try and catch the glass, scrambling to my feet to grab a dishcloth.

  ‘Have you been drinking?’

  ‘I had one glass, Denis. Surely I’m allowed to have one glass of wine?’

  I wrap my legs around the feet of the chair to stop myself from running out to the utility room and getting rid of the recycling bin, all the empty bottles, clink clink clink, before my father can see it. What if he decides that my mother has a drinking problem and that she needs to be sent to a clinic somewhere to get sober? Will she have to go up to St John of God’s like Jamie’s uncle Billy had to do a few years ago, everyone in town joking that the publicans would be put out of business if he went on the dry. I could already hear them gossiping, saying like mother, like daughter, sure everyone knows that girl was demented with the drink when this ‘attack’ happened, and I mean, who poured the drink down her throat? No one forced her to drink that much. I imagine my mother at an AA meeting, sitting around in a circle talking about her feelings, and maybe she would want to start talking to me too, talking about things I don’t want to remember. (I can’t remember, I told you.) The therapist tells me that I need to stop engaging in Catastrophe Thinking, that I should visualize a large Stop sign whenever your thoughts start to spin in this way, but I can’t, no one will tell me anything, no one will tell me what’s really going on, so of course I have to imagine it for myself. What if my father doesn’t want to have a lush, a stupid, ugly, fucking lush, as a wife any more? (Why can’t she be strong? Why can’t she pretend like the rest of us?) What if he decides that he wants someone who has her make-up on in the mornings, and who cooks dinners from scratch for her family, not just for show at the farmer’s market? (We can’t let them think they’ve got the better of us, Emma.) What if he meets someone else, and doesn’t want to have anything more to do with this family, with his stupid, drunken wife and his stupid, damaged daughter? And my mother would blame me. She would wish that I had never been born. She would hate me for breaking up her perfect family. After all those years of wishing my mother was different, that she would just leave me alone, it’s strange how panicked I feel at the thought of her giving up on me.