I have to stand up and be counted.
I have to set a good example. I have to be brave for other victims.
#IBelieveBallinatoomGirl
I don’t want to be their champion. I don’t want to be brave. I don’t want to be a hero.
I’ll have to dress respectably, make sure I look like a good girl. You’re not wearing that, are you, Emma? I wonder if the barrister that the State provides will bring up that I tried to swallow death or the time I scored lines into my wrists. Will that count in my favour? (The pain pulsing in me, begging to be let out, needing something sharp to help it escape. The dribble of blood. Then gushing, faster and faster.) Or will they say it was a sign of a guilty conscience? Guilt over ruining lives. What will my friends have said in their witness statements? She was drunk, she was high, she was asking for it, she wanted it, she wanted it. And I did want it, didn’t I? I took Paul into that room, I knew what I was doing.
Didn’t I?
And you phoned the accused on the following Monday, did you not? You left voice messages, friendly voice messages. Why would you have done that if they had, as you claim, raped you?
I see myself standing in a witness box, and it’s the exact same one as on Law and Order: SVU, my lips mouthing words, but I’m not making any sound.
And you went to see a doctor the day after, a Dr Fitzpatrick, the father of one of the boys you accuse. Why would you have gone to him, if his son had been involved, as you claim, in a brutal gang rape?
Fitzy didn’t do anything. But he saw. He watched.
He has seen my splayed legs showing pink flesh.
(So has everyone else. Everyone.)
And after the alleged rape took place I see you sat your summer exams and your grades were excellent. Nothing below seventy-five per cent, and all higher-level subjects. If you had just endured something as traumatic as you claim, surely you wouldn’t be able to concentrate on your studies?
School corridors, people parting like the Red Sea, shoulders banging into mine and then the whispers, whispers, whispers, slut, liar, skank, bitch, whore. Screenshots of those photos printed out and stuffed into my locker. Ali, Maggie and Jamie not talking to me, it was early days then, the guards hadn’t approached them for their witness statements yet, they didn’t know what I was claiming, what I was alleging. They didn’t know about that word yet so I was still just a disloyal slut. Lunch eaten in a toilet cubicle, forcing it down my throat. New graffiti on the wall. (About me. It’s always about me.)
And your social life continued unabated, wouldn’t you say? You met friends for drinks, you went to nightclubs. We have statements from a number of different men saying that you slept with them after the alleged ‘rape’. You even went to a party in Dylan Walsh’s home, one of the men that you accuse of assaulting you. Does that sound like the behaviour of someone who was violated in the most horrific way?
Dizziness, my knees sliding on the damp floor of the club toilets, falling in a slump over the cistern, a fist banging on the door, someone saying, ‘Hurry up, for fuck’s sake. Who’s in there? Would you hurry up?’ The silence when I open the door and they see it’s me. My smeared face in the bathroom’s mirrors. Cold air outside, a wind cutting through me, arms linked with some faceless man, ignoring my phone ringing and ringing and ringing in my bag, because they were my friends again, they knew what had happened (that word) so there were awkward hugs, and good-listener faces, and you can talk to me, I’m here for you, I’m here for you. The beeps of texts. Where are you Emma, where are you? On my knees again, the concrete cold and hard. I try to reclaim that night. I try to make new memories to replace the ones that were stolen from me. I try to make it my choice, my decision.
It could be another two years before it comes to trial. Two years. 730 days. Will every one of them be the same? Bitter-tasting dreams, like I’m sucking on lemons. The crushing disappointment when I awake and find myself still alive, my heart still beating, my lungs still gasping in air. 730 breakfasts where my father has rushed out the door before I can wake up so he doesn’t have to look at me, 730 days with microwaved Linda McCartney meals for dinner, watching my father stare suspiciously at the food on the table, biting his lip so he won’t ask my mother what the hell this is supposed to be. 730 days of him looking out the window at the ruined vegetable garden, choked with weeds, then glancing at me, so quick you’d almost miss it. But I always catch him (because I hope that he’ll look at me and it’ll be the way it was before, you’re my princess) and I always see it. His eyes, rat-black when he looks at me now, gleam for a second, full of your fault, why were you there? what were you wearing? they say you slept around, did you? did you did you? And I know that I’m not his princess any more and I never will be again.
In two years I’ll be twenty-one. I thought I would be at college then. I saw myself in winter, wrapped in matching hats and scarves, my nose and cheeks tinged with red, clutching a takeaway Starbucks as I made my way to a lecture. I thought I’d walk across campus in short skirts and bare legs in the summer, pretending that I don’t notice the men staring at me. I would go to parties with glow sticks and beer kegs and cute boys. I would be living in some awful, damp house, six of us probably, three guys and three girls, and we’d all hook up with each other. One couple would start dating and the rest of us would mock them, but we would secretly think it was cute and hope that they would get married so we could attend their wedding and talk about our ‘wild college years’, like Karen Hennessy and her friends did. In years to come we would laugh about how we couldn’t keep that house clean, but that we didn’t care because we drank vodka for breakfast and watched Home and Away before our afternoon naps, then starting all over again, another party to go to, another nightclub to check out, new boys to meet. I would come home at the weekends to get my mother to wash my clothes, and to see Ali and Jamie and Maggie, and I would talk about my new friends so they would know that I was popular, that I was making a success of college, that I didn’t need Ballinatoom or anyone in it.
I never thought that this would be my life, the small, small world of this house, and my parents and Bryan taking care of me, wrapping me up in their words and kind gestures, tying me down to this life, this existence. There is no escape.
I can’t take it any more, my mother had said last night. I just can’t take it any more.
I don’t think I can take it any more either.
*
‘You look wrecked,’ Bryan says to me at dinner.
‘Do I?’
‘Yeah, your eyes are really red. You all right?’
My mother and I briefly make eye contact, and I can read her mind, Please, Emma, please don’t say anything, as she passes me the mushy peas.
‘I don’t know,’ I say, spooning a portion of the peas next to the burnt chickpea-and-spinach sausages. ‘I guess I didn’t sleep very well.’
A key in the front door. A high-pitched miaow from Precious. A door slamming.
‘You’re late,’ Bryan says, glancing at his phone to check the time as my father drops his briefcase at the door. Everything about him seems to droop, from his limp hair to his moustache; even his clothes are too big for his frame. He’s lost weight. He sinks into his chair and Bryan turns to our mother.
‘Mam?’
‘Yes?’ Her eyes drift out to the garden and she frowns. She gets to her feet and Bryan half smiles, but she only closes the curtains.
‘It’s too bright outside.’ She takes another sip of wine as she sits back down. ‘The glare was hurting my eyes.’
Bryan walks into the kitchen area, neither he nor our father saying anything when he returns with a plate of shepherd’s pie. The scrape of a knife on my father’s plate, shallow breathing and waving a hand in front of his face when he realizes how hot the food is, gulping down water to cool his mouth. We eat in silence. I wonder if it will always be like this. Will it just be me, my mother and my father, eating our dinner every night at the same time, shepherd’s pie on a Monday, bacon and
cabbage on a Tuesday, lasagne on a Wednesday, stir-fry on a Thursday, salmon-and-broccoli bake on a Friday, quiche and salads from the Organic Kitchen Project on a Saturday, a roast dinner on a Sunday, whatever vegetarian dish my mother has bought me for that night twirling around in the microwave until I hear it ping? Bryan would come home every weekend for a while, pulling me on to the sofa on a Friday night to watch The Late Late Show or a movie with him, asking how my week went, did I have any plans for Saturday, had I given any more thought to my Leaving Cert, or college, or an evening class, or an online course, or some other idea he would come up with to try and force me to leave the house and be normal. But he would start to dread it. He would start to hate opening the door into this house full of ghosts. There would be one weekend missed, then another. He would start to come home once a month, then for birthdays and bank holidays, then maybe just for Christmas and Easter. He would move away, to Canada or Australia or Japan, somewhere far enough that he wouldn’t feel guilty about not visiting more often. There would be emails, promises to Skype, packages arriving in the post full of expensive, useless items that he ‘saw and thought of you’. Then he would meet someone, someone who laughed a lot, and her family would be close, loving. They would welcome him as if he was one of their own. He would bring her home to meet us and her eyes would be wary, and she would speak to me in gentle, low tones. They would have children, and they would visit less often. Children are so sensitive to energy, they would tell each other. We don’t want them to absorb the negativity in That House. And he would tell himself not to blame me (my fault). He would tell himself not to wish that he had a different sister (one who wasn’t a slut, bitch, whore). More emails. More phone calls. More Christmases spent with her family, while my parents and I ate Brussels sprouts and stuffing in front of the television, numbing ourselves on carbohydrates and reruns of classic movies. I would look at my mother and my father, and marvel at how old they had become, how they had turned 65, 70, 75, 80, 85, 90, and I hadn’t even noticed. And then I would realize that I was old too, my bones starting to creak as my skin sagged around them. I would lie awake in the same single bed that I had slept in since I was a child, staring at the blank ceiling, wondering where the stars had gone.
My father clears his throat. ‘I have some news.’
My head snaps up. News. Two years, it might take. Two years. But maybe they heard something, maybe Fitzy decided to change his plea to guilty and they just rang Dad instead of me. Maybe it’s all over.
‘News?’
‘Yes.’ He fidgets with the edge of the tablecloth. ‘Nora, this tablecloth is filthy.’
‘Really?’ We all look at the grubby linen tablecloth. (Be careful! she used to shout at us before. That was expensive.) ‘That’s odd. I washed it yesterday.’
‘Are you sure?’ my father persists.
‘I said I did, didn’t I? I don’t know why you feel the need to question every little thing I say and do.’
‘Nora, I just asked a question. Look at—’
‘You have news?’ I interrupt them. (Maybe it’s all over.) ‘What is it?’ (Maybe things will go back to normal.)
My father frowns (maybe I can forget all of this ever happened) as if trying to remember what he had been talking about. ‘Ah,’ he says. ‘Yes. Well, the area manager came in to the branch today.’
Disappointment is a spear through my chest, puncturing my lungs. I can feel them shrivelling inside me. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Of course it’s not over.
‘And, well, we had to discuss the recent spate of transfers from the bank.’
‘That’s not your fault.’ My mother’s voice is fierce. I wonder if she is going to turn around and say, It’s Emma’s fault. She grips the stem of her wine glass. ‘The fees of current accounts are so high now, loads of people are switching to Ulster Bank or to one of those other banks. They were discussing it on The Ned O’Dwyer Show the other day and I’m sure I read an article about it in the Examiner as well. That’s hardly your fault, Denis, is it?’
He looks as if it’s taking all of his energy to keep his body upright. (I used to think you were like an oak tree. I used to think you were tall and good and strong, and that you could never be broken.) ‘Well,’ he says, ‘they’ve made their decision.’
‘What decision?’ Bryan asks.
‘They’re transferring me to another bank, in the city.’ He tries to smile at us. ‘The assistant manager of the Douglas branch is retiring, and it’s so busy there that they want someone with experience to take over.’
‘Assistant manager?’ Bryan says.
‘Well, it’s a much bigger branch than Ballinatoom.’ My father shrugs. ‘It’s fine.’ He turns to my mother, puts his hand over hers and squeezes. ‘It’s a good thing, Nora. Sure, what difference does it make? Work is work, wherever I do it, right?’
My father has worked in the Ballinatoom branch for nearly forty years. He started there when he left school, working his way up from a teller, to assistant manager, and then manager. He used to joke about how the bank was his mistress, and my mother would roll her eyes, but I’d hear her on the phone to Sheila Heffernan saying, ‘Oh, Denis works so hard – that place would fall apart without him.’ Apparently it was my father who insisted that they start using computers in the banks before anyone else in town, it was my father who persuaded head office to give him the money for a complete refurbishment a few years ago, it was my father who made sure the flower boxes were done beautifully every summer, who organized special treats for the staff Christmas party to show his appreciation for their loyalty. When people asked him what he did for a living, he would answer, I’m a bank manager, and it was as if he was saying, I’m a professional footballer with Man. United, or, I’m the President of the United States.
‘So that’s that,’ he says. We start eating again. I look at them, and I see how tired they are.
I have done this. I have done this to us all. I am ruining their lives.
And, I can see the boys’ defence lawyer saying (would they share one? No, surely Ciarán O’Brien could afford a better solicitor for Paul than Dylan Walsh could get?) You changed your statement, didn’t you, Emma? You admitted that you were lying in your first statement. How are we supposed to trust the word of a girl who has admitted to being a liar? The men that stand accused have never lied. They have given honest accounts of their actions. Their character witnesses have spoken, they have told the court about what upstanding members of the community these boys are, how dependable they are, what respectable families they come from. And you want to ruin their lives, ruin their futures.
They couldn’t say that. Could they?
Liar, liar, pants on fire. Emma O’Donovan is a liar.
She was asking for it.
‘Wait,’ I say, and my family look at me.
The men have said that you agreed, that you consented. They say that it was your idea. They say that you wanted it.
But I can’t remember. How can they prove I gave consent?
How can I prove I didn’t?
Did you know the rate of conviction for rape is only one per cent in this country?
What’s the point then?
‘What’s the point of what?’ my mother asks. I didn’t realize I had spoken aloud again. Is this going to become more common? Will Bryan’s future children be afraid of me, whinge at the thought of coming to visit Ballinatoom. She’s weird, they would say. She talks to herself. She smells.
I do smell. When was the last time I took a shower? I don’t like getting undressed or seeing my body in the mirror. It is not my body any more. (Her tits are tiny, aren’t they? Yeah, but her ass is great.)
‘Emma?’ My mother is getting impatient. ‘Do you have something you want to say?
Father Michael has stood as character witness for Paul O’Brien today. Would a man of the cloth do that if he had any doubts about the veracity of Mr O’Brien’s statement? Father Michael christened you, did he not? He was a regular visitor to your house, a good
friend of your parents’. Would you say that he had reasonable opportunity to get to know you, appraise your true character?
I am Eve. I am the snake in the garden of Eden. I am temptation.
Would you say you were promiscuous? Would you say that you slept around? Would you say you are a slut and a whore?
Mother Mary, blessed virgin. O Mary, conceived without sin.
They can’t say that, can they? Can they? They said at the Rape Crisis Centre that the case wouldn’t be open to the general public. But would people come anyway? Would a crowd wait outside the court, baying for my blood?
‘Emma?’ Bryan looks worried. I am a constant source of worry to him now. I will make him old before his time. I will make him broken too. ‘Are you OK?’
I didn’t want to ruin anyone’s life. Fitzy was going to art college, and Paul was going to be on the Cork senior football team, and I shouldn’t have made a fuss, and everything would have gone back to normal, and everyone would have forgotten about me and about all this. I wouldn’t be That Girl.
I can’t take it any more. I need it to stop.
‘I just wanted to tell you that I have news as well.’ My voice goes up at the end of the sentence like I’m asking a question. And maybe I am asking a question, maybe I’m asking them if this is what they want from me, if this will make it all better. ‘I’ve made a decision.’ I take a deep breath, getting the words out in a rush. ‘I’ve decided to withdraw my complaint.’
I stand up, scrape the leftovers into the bin and rinse the plate clean before putting it in the dishwasher. Turn around, I tell myself. Turn around and face them.
Tick, tick, tick, tick. The kitchen clock moves on, counting the seconds for us. And still no one says anything. The air feels dead, like it’s made of weeds.
‘Did you hear me?’ I say. ‘I’m going to withdraw my complaint.’
‘We heard,’ my mother says, her voice so very careful. ‘What’s prompted this decision?’
‘Oh,’ I say, and I sound like I mean it, ‘you know what the statistics are like for conviction. I just don’t see the point of putting myself through all that when I’m never going to win anyway.’
Asking for It Page 21