“Don’t you backtalk me,” she snapped. “Your ceremony is next weekend. If the dress needs altering, I gotta know.”
“Okay, okay,” I said, wishing she hadn’t shamed me in front of Tommy.
I went inside to change. When I came back out, Beef whistled. I smacked him on the head. I liked the attention, though. Of course, I did.
Then Aunt Tildy said, “Oh, Cat,” like I’d done something bad. She was looking pointedly at my chest, so I looked too. There were buttons down the front of the dress, and the cloth gaped open between them. My breasts had grown, that’s why. I could see the dark of my nipples, and how the fabric strained over them. I supposed this was bad in terms of having to let the dress out, but I didn’t yet know to be ashamed.
“What?” I said.
“You had to go and grow you some bubbies, didn’t you?” she scolded, and all the boys laughed, including Christian.
Then I knew. I blushed, though I don’t think Aunt Tildy meant to embarrass me. I realized Tommy was staring at my chest, and it made me feel tingly in a strange and particular way. I crossed my arms over myself, pulling my shoulder blades in to make a C-curve out of my spine.
Aunt Tildy remained clueless. In her mind I was still a little girl, and Christian’s friends were playful, rowdy boys who shot at street signs, tussled like pups, and drank a gallon of milk a day.
She clucked impatiently. “Now, Cat, put down your arms so I can see how much letting out I gotta do,” she said. “Come on over here so I can do a measure.”
I took an uncertain step forward, just as Tommy said, “Or you could come over here. I’d be more than happy to measure those bubbies.”
And just as clear as a bell, Aunt Tildy realized what she’d done. She’d asked me to stick my breasts out, and me with no bra on. I was a tomboy. I wore Christian’s hand-me-downs and ran around with Patrick, catching crawdads in the creek, so what’d I need a bra for?
Yet Aunt Tildy had stood me up in front of three hormone-addled boys slouched in lawn chairs by a burning shed. One of them was my brother, but the other two weren’t. There was liquor. There was the reek of gas and oil from Tommy’s motorcycle. And there was me in my too-small dress, my nipples poking tents in the fabric without my having any say over it.
I’d been to livestock auctions, the calves mewling as farmers pried open their mouths. Right then, I was that dumb calf.
“Cat, go inside,” Aunt Tildy said sharply.
As I scurried toward the house, I heard Tommy say something real low. And then Christian was on him—I heard a chair tip, and scuffling, and angry words from my brother—and then Tommy saying, “Get off me, man! Beef—a little help?”
“No way,” I heard Beef say. “That’s Christian’s sister you’re talking about. You’re outta line.”
“Jesus,” Tommy said. “I didn’t mean nothing by it, all right? Just that she’s hot.”
And then Beef and Christian both went after him, and Aunt Tildy was shooing me in the house and closing the door.
“Ain’t nothing good ever come from trash talk,” she said. “You go get changed. Put the dress on my bed—I’ll take care of it before your ceremony. Right now, I got other work to do.” She disappeared into the kitchen, muttering under her breath.
So I changed back into my cutoffs. I’m hot, I thought wonderingly. Tommy thinks . . . he thinks I’m hot. I reached for the oversize T-shirt I had been wearing, but at the last second I dug around in my bureau and pulled out a baby blue camisole instead. I’d never worn it before, thinking it too girly, but Aunt Tildy had brought it home from the Sharing House one day. She presented it to me proudly and told me it was a real find, and not one stain on it.
I didn’t put on a bra, because I didn’t own a bra. But I brushed my hair. I pinched my cheeks the way I’d seen Bailee-Ann do, and I leaned in close to the mirror and gazed at myself. My black hair framed my sun-kissed face. My eyes shone. Was I pretty? Was I hot?
Back in the living room, I plopped down on the sofa and pretended to read Black Beauty, the part where Black Beauty was a colt frolicking in the meadow. But really, I was watching the boys. I saw the three of them stand up from their chairs, and my heart beat faster. Were they coming inside?
No. A few minutes later, I heard the sound of bullets hitting tin cans. They’d left the shed still burning and gone around back to do some shooting. I felt disappointed.
I despised myself for that now.
Aunt Tildy had the radio on in the kitchen, set to the country station she liked. I could hear her singing along. I went back to my book, and after a while I fell into it for real. I propped my feet on the beat-up coffee table made from a plank and two cinder blocks, and I went off with Black Beauty, who was fighting against the bit his master stuck in his mouth. I didn’t hear Tommy come in. He must have eased the screen door shut, because all of a sudden, there he was, dropping onto the sofa beside me. He sat so close our thighs touched.
I thought Tommy was the handsomest boy I’d ever seen. Yes, he was cocky. Yes, he was sometimes a jerk, especially to Patrick. But he’d grin afterward, as would Patrick. I figured they were boys being boys.
So I was thrilled he’d come inside to sit with me. I was even more thrilled when he draped his arm over my shoulder and gave me a squeeze.
“Hey, Cat,” he said, leaning toward me. I started giggling and couldn’t stop. I couldn’t even look at him. I kept my eyes glued on my book, fiddling with it until he took it from me, closed it, and set it on the cinder block table.
“Tommy! You lost my place!” I protested.
“You looked hot in that dress,” he said. His hand slid beneath the strap of my cami. He rubbed my shoulder, then right away dipped further, his fingers tracing my collarbone.
“Tommy,” I said, pushing his hand away. I told myself he was just playing. My stomach clenched up, but I tried not to listen.
“You ain’t wearing a bra,” he murmured. His hand went back to my collarbone and kept on going, a tadpole slipping beneath a rock, that easy and quick. He squeezed my breast, grazing his thumb back and forth over my nipple. His voice grew husky. “You like that, huh?”
My eyes widened. I liked him sitting next to me, yes. But his hand where it was? No. No. It was private, the part of me he was touching. Plus he’d never even taken me for a ride on his motorcycle, or sat with me on the porch, or brought me fresh strawberries from his grandmother’s garden.
My breaths came short, making my chest rise and fall.
He laughed, saying, “You’re so cute.” He shifted so that his body was angled toward me, and I felt trapped, even though I wasn’t. Why didn’t I call out? Why didn’t I push him away?
“Tommy,” I whispered. I wanted him to understand without my having to say it. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
His right hand squeezed my breast, and his left hand tried to work my knees apart. When that didn’t work, he slid his hand up my thigh and under my frayed cutoffs. I gasped, because he touched my panties. He went that far.
“Tommy. Don’t.”
“Hush now.” His breath smelled like my daddy’s corn liquor. He fumbled at the elastic of my panties, but my cutoffs were tight, and he couldn’t work his fingers to where he wanted. “C’mon now, Cat. Lemme feel how wet you are.”
I didn’t know what he meant. I pressed my spine into the sofa to get away from him, but moving like that raised my hips and loosened the hug of my shorts. His fingers slithered under my panties.
“Oh yeah,” he said, moving his fingers the best he could. “See now?”
I was lost. Tommy was touching a part of me that no one was supposed to. I was pushing against him, but he was so much bigger than me. And my throat, it was like someone had wrapped a band around it and cinched it so tight, I could hardly breathe. The sounds I made—because I tried, I did—they came from some other girl. They were please and stop, but so trembly that they simply shuddered up into the air.
I heard something outside, and my eyes flew to the wide
front window. Christian stood on the other side, holding a stick he must have used to poke at the fire, which was still burning steadily. His hand went slack, and the stick fell, and it was so slow, the seconds drumming in my pulse, as his face registered what he saw through the grimy pane of glass. I thought, Oh, thank you, God. Thank you for my big brother, and for bringing him here to me.
Christian strode out of view. Any moment he would burst through the door and grab Tommy off me and beat the crap out of him.
Several minutes passed, and I started crying. Christian wasn’t going to beat the crap out of Tommy. Christian wasn’t going to do a thing. He’d gone back to shooting tin cans, or stirring the embers of the burning smokehouse, or sneaking more of Daddy’s moonshine for all I knew.
My face was slick with tears when Aunt Tildy stepped from the kitchen into the living room, saying, “Cat, I need you in the kitchen. Ain’t you heard me calling?”
“Aunt Tildy,” I gasped.
By that point, Tommy had unbuttoned my shorts and yanked them down around my thighs, along with my panties. I was gripping them, trying to get them back up, but he was stronger. He no longer had his hand down my tank top, but instead had his right arm stretched along the back of the sofa, bearing his weight while his left arm rode the length of my belly, straight as a rod until the sharp flex of his wrist.
With Aunt Tildy standing frozen behind him in the doorway, he got one finger up inside me. I whimpered. He kept at it, the heel of his palm driving into my pelvic bone, until he got in two more.
Then he moaned. That sick bastard moaned, and Aunt Tildy snapped out of her trance.
“Cat,” she snapped. Her face went hard like stone. “I said I need your help with the berries.” She whipped around, went back into the kitchen, and turned the radio up way loud.
“I gotta go,” I said through my tears and snot. I squirmed, but that just made it worse. It hurt. I could feel his fingernails, which I knew to be grimy with oil, and I squeezed shut my eyes, wanting to make everything disappear.
There was a bang outside, explosively loud, and Tommy jerked away. He jumped to his feet and said, “Fuck,” as panicked as I’d ever heard him. He straightened his jeans as best he could over the bulge of his crotch, but already he was striding for the door and out of the house.
“Shit, man,” I heard Beef say.
“Fucking hell, get it outta there! Help me drag it outta there!” Tommy yelled.
“Bro, it’s over,” Beef said. He barked a laugh of stunned amazement. “That baby’s one gone motherfucker.”
Male voices washed over me: Tommy’s furious; Beef’s sympathetic, but not overly so; my brother’s just plain flat.
Shaking, I stood and buttoned my shorts. I moved silently to the edge of the window, where I crossed my arms tight and took it in. Pieces of chrome. A fender blown several feet away when the gas tank exploded. The rubber grip of the accelerator. The smoldering remains of the smokehouse blanketing the bones of Tommy’s BMW.
“Told you not to park there,” Christian said.
Tommy lunged at him, and Aunt Tildy, whom I hadn’t yet noticed, cried, “Boys!”
My head turned toward her voice, and there Aunt Tildy was. The boys were on one side of what was now a bonfire—thanks to the dousing of motorcycle fuel—and Aunt Tildy was on the other side. Her cheeks were flushed, and her bunned-up hair was coming down in sweaty tendrils. Her eyes were so wide I could see the whites, even as far away as I was.
But how had she gotten there so quickly? If she’d gone out the back door, which opened out of the kitchen, why hadn’t I heard the screen slam?
Because of her country music, cranked up so loud. And she was sweaty because of being so close to the flames, and also because she’d exerted herself. The shed was going to collapse one way or another. Aunt Tildy just kicked a particular burning plank, maybe. The plank that would make the shed topple in the right direction.
Aunt Tildy had been incapable of coming right out and saying to her boss’s son, “Tommy Lawson, you leave my niece alone,” so she figured out another way to make him stop. That’s what I assumed. No, that’s what I knew.
And she didn’t own up to saving me because she just . . . couldn’t. Ruining Tommy’s motorcycle used up every ounce of courage she had, and there wasn’t any left over for talking about it. I told myself I was selfish to want more than what she’d already given me.
As for Christian, all I knew was that he saw me and Tommy through the window and walked away. Did it kill him inside to see his friend going after his baby sister? Probably. After all, he was a kid, too. Older than me, but still a kid, and he must have felt almost as helpless as I did.
In the months to come, in moments of loneliness so deep it hurt to breathe, I tried to put aside my fury and betrayal and humiliation and forgive him. That’s how much I missed him.
But Christian was my hero, and he let me down when it mattered most. I couldn’t forgive him. I couldn’t, no more than Aunt Tildy could untie the knots inside of herself so that we could talk about what happened. So that I could heal.
Daddy, for the record, didn’t even come out of the garage. A motorcycle blew up in his yard, and he downed his liquor and thought, Lookit that. Them boys got a real good fire going. Ooh boy, sure do like a good fire.
Two weeks later, Tommy got himself a new motorcycle, a bright yellow one, and he bragged about it more than his first.
As for Christian and Aunt Tildy and me, we suffered his boasting and shoved the ugly under the rug. If we didn’t see it, it wasn’t there, right?
Except the ugly was there. It was inside me. I tried running from it, but that didn’t make it go away. I dropped Patrick and Bailee-Ann and the rest of my friends. That didn’t make it go away, either. I looked back on those wasted years and here’s what I saw: a spook retreating from the world step by silent step, until I was a ghost instead of a girl.
I came back to the present, here in my room with a dead cow tongue flung yards away in the dark . . . and I wasn’t a ghost. My body was real and strong and capable, just as my brother was real and strong and capable. As for what happened three years ago . . .
Of course, Aunt Tildy was outside by the fire. She dashed out as soon as she heard the explosion. That she was already there before I thought to look for her meant nothing, just that my eyes had gone first to the flaming motorcycle. So had everyone else’s.
As for how flushed and sweaty she was, that was from standing by the hot stove, stirring blackberries as they boiled and broke down into pulp. She’d been making jam, not kicking over a burning shed.
I felt dizzy.
“Talk to me, Cat,” Christian said. “Tell me who done it.”
“It was you,” I said, my words as new and uncertain as a baby’s. I was sixteen, and in my bedroom, and I shook my head in an attempt to unscramble my thoughts. “Not the tongue. The fire.”
I shut my eyes, then opened them to make sure I hadn’t made this thing up.
Aunt Tildy had found something to mess with on my dresser, and it was my brush. She lined it up straight alongside some loose hair bands, and then she tidied the hair bands, too. Her expression was as blank as meringue, smooth and bland with no place for anything to latch hold.
But Christian hadn’t taken his eyes off me, and in his expression I saw a slew of emotions: shame, defiance, fury. Fear, but not for himself. For me. I saw my big brother, who carried me off the ledge at Suicide Rock when I froze up. Who came after me when I skipped off to visit Wally with his rottedout leer. Who thought I was a fool and had no problem telling me so, but who stuck up for me anyway.
Christian stepped toward me. “Who wants you quiet? Is it Tommy? Is he after you again? If so, then say it, goddammit.”
Aunt Tildy tutted, this close to hysteria. “You children stop picking at each other. Pick, pick, pick, when some of us got to get up early in the morning.”
I blinked at her. Her image wavered.
I looked at Christian, and h
e was solid. I found my voice and told him, Yes. Tommy.
“I’ll fucking kill him,” Christian said, heading for the door.
Aunt Tildy got in front of him, a flapping moth. “I don’t know what you two are up to, but I won’t have none of it.”
“Move, Aunt Tildy,” Christian said.
“Getting yourselves into a tizzy over a joke!” she exclaimed wildly. “Nossir! You don’t even know what it means, that business with the . . . with the . . .” She was practically hyperventilating. “Boys will be boys. They tease a girl when they like her. That’s what they do!”
“My pillow has blood on it,” I said.
Christian moved Aunt Tildy aside. He wasn’t rough about it. I watched him stride out of my room, and I noticed how broad his shoulders had grown.
“I’ll tell your daddy!” Aunt Tildy called after him shrilly. “I’ll tell him to spank you! I will! You ain’t never too big to be put over your daddy’s knee!”
Please, I told her. Just leave.
When I first saw the tongue on my pillow, and I screamed, it felt like Tommy had won. Now I felt calm, almost frighteningly so, although I wished Christian would get on back. But Christian knew how to take care of himself. Anyway, it was ten o’clock on a Monday night, which meant Tommy’s parents would be there. Tommy wouldn’t try anything with his parents there.
I also felt a strange, floaty sense of amazement. I knew things someone didn’t want me to know. I’d figured out things someone didn’t want me to know. The tongue on my pillow was proof of that. It was also proof that knowledge was power, not being a bully or rich or thinking you were better than everyone.
Knowledge wasn’t all I had. I had Jason, who was an ally and possibly a friend, and who thought I had pretty eyes. I had Christian, my brother, who loved me. Knowledge was more powerful than fear. Love was stronger than hate.
So guess what, Tommy? I said silently. Step closer. Feel my lips against your ear. You don’t scare me anymore.
CHRISTIAN CAME BACK SAFE AND SOUND. WHEN he woke me, it was past midnight. He rapped once on my door, stuck his head in, and said, “Done.”
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