The Elegant Gathering of White Snows

by Kris Radish

  “Honey, just tell us about it. It's not good that you never talked about it. Alice is right about that, keeping things in can always keep them lurking on the tip of your tongue waiting to jump out of your mouth. I can't believe you never told anyone. But then again, we all have our secrets.”

  I told them the whole story, from the beginning through to the end, which is exactly what I thought the telling would be—the end.

  The images come in jagged pieces—prom night, tuxedos, the proud look in my father's eye as he ushered me into the foyer where Jeff was waiting with a pink corsage. The ride in Jeff's brother's convertible, the bottle of whiskey in the backseat, and me not wanting any, and him drinking all the way to the dance, during the dance, after the dance.

  Now I wonder if there were other girls watching me that night who had been through the same thing. Did he throw each of them on the backseat, put a hand around their necks, rip holes in their clothes, thrust himself into them so quick and hard that it felt as if they were being ripped open?

  “I was a virgin, you know,” I told the girls. “I was one of those popular girls who also happened to be good, and I was caught totally off guard. I'm not certain I even tried to fight back. I think I might have been in shock.”

  Gail, Mary and Chris were so angry when I was telling my story that they got up and moved around Janice's small living room as if they were pacing a cage.

  “I hate this,” Chris finally said. “The same thing happened to my sister's best friend, to my college roommate, to the woman who sits opposite me at work. Sometimes I get so angry about this shit that I could explode.” She hesitated for a second and then went on. “I bet nothing happened to him, did it?” She didn't wait for an answer. “What gets me is how many of these guys are trying to raise daughters. I bet they dance a whole different way now.”

  “Chris, sit down,” Alice said softly. “We are all angry about this, but let J.J. finish. She needs to tell us.”

  There wasn't much more to say. Just being able to say what happened, that's what I needed to do. Still, I told them the rest. About coming home and running to the bathroom and stripping off my clothes, then ripping them into shreds while my mother stood outside of the bathroom door and pounded on the door to get in.

  I did let her in because I was in such shock I could not remember how to turn on the shower. I was standing by the door, naked. She saw the marks on my throat, up and down my legs, and my ruined clothes in a pile on the floor.

  “Mommie, please, please help me.” I fell to the floor, sobbing.

  My mother was a good mother. She loved me and took care of me and was always home when I needed her, but this time when I needed her to do something, to make Jeffrey pay somehow, to stand up to the world for me, she could not do it. “Don't tell anyone about this, Joanne. Just let me talk to your father about this.”

  When my first daughter was born, sliding so easily from inside of me I knew for sure that birth was a miracle, I held Jess tightly, so close, I could not imagine anything or anyone ever coming between us. I promised her that second, the first time she looked into my eyes, that I would never let anyone hurt her, and if someone ever tried, they would pay a high price. They would have to face me. A mother. Her mother. Now my daughters are women themselves. Jess is seventeen, beautiful and wise, and Caitlin, at fifteen, has a glow of confidence and life that makes me stand back in amazement. They have made my story more demanding, more urgent.

  Maybe you can guess the next part of my story. After I was sedated with a white pill and lying in my bed, Mother went to tell my father what happened. My father was an executive in a large manufacturing plant in Milwaukee who relied heavily on his community contacts. I don't know what his reaction was exactly, but I can imagine—I know my father's work was more important to him than anything, even me. I found that out when my mother came back to me an hour later. She was crying as she got into bed next to me. She whispered, as if she were the child, “Your father believes we should just pray that you don't get pregnant. He told me this will pass and you'll feel better.”

  My mother was right about the feeling better part, but not about things passing. This treacherous event in my life never passed. The rest of my high school days I spent in a shell, counting the seconds until I could graduate and leave everyone and everything behind me.

  In college, I had a chance to forget temporarily what had happened. I found new friends, people who didn't know me in high school. I dated, though it was practically impossible for me to let anyone get physically close. While the rest of my friends were all sleeping with each other, I was hovering in the background wondering how I would ever be able to let anyone touch me. One night I simply picked out the nicest guy I knew, consumed a large amount of alcohol and let him take me to bed. From what I can remember, he was gentle and kind but there was nothing remarkable about the sex. He didn't hurt me, so I joked to myself that I'd saved several thousand dollars in therapy fees.

  I remained cautious after that. It was so difficult for me to trust men that I could barely stand to go out with anyone more than once. In a different world I would probably have chosen the company of women. My friends then gave me great comfort without even knowing that I had this tragic shadow sleeping behind my eyelids. All those girlfriends who shared my dorm rooms, came home with me on the weekends, studied with me all night and shared the secrets of their hearts and souls gave me hope. Somehow their support and love kept me from falling completely apart.

  Loving one of my girlfriends romantically might have been a natural thing to do, but it really never dawned on me. Still I did love them. I loved Sharon when she let me put my head in her lap to comfort me without asking questions. I loved Meg for talking to me one night for six straight hours when I told her I was afraid of the dark. I loved Debbie for letting me go home with her two Christmases in a row so I wouldn't have to face my own parents.

  I loved those girls like I love the girls right now who are walking with me, who have shown me how to feel the power of my own legs moving me down a highway that is as new and wonderful as anything I have ever seen.

  If I only could have known the magic and power in this personal performance of ours, the knowledge could have saved me so much trouble all these years. I have spent countless hours reading books and articles about the lasting effects of rape on its victims. I have scanned the television listings for all those goofy talk shows where women talk about their own rape experiences, and I have spent a thousand nights staring into space, wondering if I would ever feel the power of my own healing.

  Once I read somewhere that the agonies of life never disappear. The pain may splinter, and parts of it might dissolve but the anger and the struggle always remain inside of us. In some cases, we can never get rid of it. A few people even learn how to treasure the traumatic experience that has settled inside of them.

  That is a powerful thing, I think, and maybe what has happened to me. The simple telling of my trauma—to my sisters here—has seemed to set me free in a way that I never thought possible. I imagine when I tell my daughters and my husband, I will become even more empowered than I could ever have dreamed.

  Then too I have come to know because of these walking women, that I need to be an example for my own daughters. How different my life would have been, Chris told me, if my own mother had risen up with a whip in her hand to defend me and to right the wrongs. These steps along the highway are giving me back something powerful that was taken away from me a long time ago. I know with all my heart that I must pass this power on to my own beautiful girls.

  Another thing that I know is that Tim will take me in his arms and engulf me with his love just as he always has. Somehow I finally feel confident that when I do tell him, he will not shrink away from me or even be angry. I have been lucky to have him love me all these years, and that has been the single gift that has kept me moving ahead, slowly at times, but I have at least moved.

  I know that I must go back to my mother, too. She has never
been able to look me in the eye all these years and it is only now that I realize her life must have been filled with anguish and loss and anger too. I know she loved me. When this walk is over, I'm pretty sure I will be able to go to her and tell her that I forgive her. I will try.

  I will try to forgive her for everything and everyone that she could not control. Forgive her for being able to hold me for only an hour or so in my tiny single bed that rocked and swayed with her own well of tears. Forgive her for all the long nights when she sat on one side of the upstairs bedroom, and I sat on the other, both of us so alone, so sad, and so scared. Forgive her for what she could not do to make my life sweet again.

  But first, before I go back to them all, there is this walking that seems to be lifting up the very soul that holds my bones together. I have to be careful these days not to wish myself swept away into the eternities on this wave of happiness. I need to go back to my two daughters, my mother, my Tim and finish this incredible journey.

  CHAPTER THREE

  IT WAS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE to get Alice out of Lenny Sorensen's bathtub. “Girls!” shouted Alice, who left the bathroom door open so she could talk to the other women. “This is wonderful, I haven't felt anything this wonderful, well,” she said, stumbling over her own words, “well, just never mind.”

  Everyone else was sitting around Lenny's house wrapped up in a towel or an old bathrobe or one of the few oversized shirts of Jackson's that Lenny hadn't thrown into the hog pen. Lenny had ushered them into the house, pointed them toward the refrigerator and bathroom, and then had ordered them to strip so she could wash their clothes.

  “My God!” shouted Sandy, as she waltzed through the kitchen sipping wine in a red towel that barely covered her rear end. “This is about the most hilarious thing I have ever seen in my life. Lenny, go put a towel on, you're overdressed.”

  Lenny didn't say much as she gathered up underwear and socks to throw into the old green washing machine at the back of the kitchen. She was surprised that she didn't know any of the women who had marched through her yard and into her life, but she told herself that was most likely because she had spent way too much time feeding pigs and driving a tractor instead of going out in public and actually acting like a human being. She watched the women move through the house talking, helping each other pull off pants, and pour glasses of wine with such ease she considered for a moment stripping off her own clothes and joining them.

  “What's so funny?” asked Sandy, leaning against the washing machine. “You've got the biggest grin on your face.”

  “I was just thinking how comfortable you all seem around each other, and I thought I should take off my clothes and join you.” Lenny settled next to Sandy as the thirty-four-year-old washing machine kicked in, sounding like a helicopter landing in the living room. The noise forced them to raise their voices.

  “Well, you've probably got the best looking ass here, especially if you work the farm. Why'd you let us in?”

  “Why'd you come in?” Lenny fired back, stalling a few more minutes before she opened up her heart, before she exposed her admiration, before she told this unknown half-naked wild woman drinking wine in her kitchen that the sound of their footsteps had already changed her life.

  “You're a woman for starters,” answered Sandy. “You know,” she said honestly, turning to look out the window. “I'm not sure, but it was like we were supposed to stop here for a while, take a break or something. We never really talked about it but when I saw you, I knew that we'd be safe.”

  Lenny turned to look into Sandy's eyes, dark and deep, offering a sea of understanding. While the machine gurgled and belched, she told her about Jackson and college and her two kids who are grown and gone as far away as she could convince them to move. She told her about a dream that had somehow slipped away during the years of diapers and pigs and sleeping alone in a bed the size of the Grand Canyon.

  Sandy listened, smiling, nodding, thinking the whole time how much she liked this woman with the boots and the fine hair and hands as strong as steel. Before Sandy could tell her how she felt, her turn in the bathroom came. The stove timer beeped and Lenny began mashing potatoes. No one saw that she had quietly taken the phone off the wall and stuffed it into the drawer where she kept towels and hot pads.

  “Hail to you, Lenny,” J.J. finally said after the women finished their feast. “This is just the nicest thing you could have done for us.”

  Lenny put her fork down on her plate, glanced quickly toward Sandy and then away, and told the women how much she admired them, how easy it would be for her to slip out the door and walk with them, how she knew for certain that other women were listening to the same footsteps.

  “The minute I heard about you on the radio, I knew something was going to happen,” Lenny told them, keeping her eyes on her plate. “You have to keep going, you can't stop yet. Not until you go for days and days and more people hear about you.”

  The women felt dazed. Janice, J.J. and Susan looked at Lenny as if she had just told them they were all going to die of some terrible disease in thirty minutes. Alice coughed. Chris smiled, knowing exactly what Lenny was talking about. Sandy had not been able to take her eyes off Lenny since their conversation at the washing machine.

  “Come on, women,” Chris said forcefully. “Didn't you think this would happen?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Gail responded defensively.

  Chris shifted forward and put her hands on either side of her empty plate. “When was the last time you heard of a group of women just getting up from something, a church meeting, or as in our case a drunken evening at the home of a friend, to start walking down a highway?”

  The other women had not thought about their decision in quite this way. They had thought about dead babies and rape and heartaches and uncles who shoved their fingers in private places where they shouldn't have, but they had not thought about what their decision might mean to someone else.

  “Well, shit,” Janice said, as if she had discovered a pile of gold. “This is only for us, it's our walk.”

  “No, it's not.” Lenny spoke softly, moving her fingers around the edges of her plate. “Look at me. Apparently you have no idea how many women in the world would love to say, ‘Piss off,' and take off hiking.”

  Sandy smiled, watching Lenny turn her head and lift her eyebrows and lean forward close to the center of the table, and then breathe. She watched Lenny breathe.

  “But . . . ,” stammered Gail. “It still has to be about us. Don't you think? Don't you all think?”

  Chris couldn't believe they had come this far in so few miles. While her friends debated the ins and outs of what they were doing, why they were doing it, and what would happen next, she could only remember how she saw them at first. Alice sad and old; J.J. mousy and equally as sad; Janice alternately quiet and startling, always second-guessing herself; Sandy, wild and bold, and crazy and ready for something, someone, anything new; Gail, always holding something back, afraid of losing something; Susan, in desperate need of a kick in the ass, so beautiful, so in need of a push in the direction that will honor who she truly is. And Mary, just wonderful, happy Mary who is content with the confines society has set, with tradition, with staying safe inside those boundaries.

  “What the hell are you smiling about?” Sandy finally asked Chris.

  “Look at us,” said Chris, moving her eyes across every face at the table. “It wasn't that long ago we were talking about Christmas cookies and what deal there was on lettuce at the grocery store and what the hell are we going to do about Monica Lewinsky?” She laughed mockingly at the ceiling. “How far we have come!”

  “Oh God!” Susan suddenly pushed herself from the table, cupping a hand over her mouth and running toward the laundry tub behind the kitchen.

  “Oh piss,” moaned Sandy. “It's the baby!”

  Alice helped Susan while Sandy told Lenny about the pregnancy and the broken glass and them on the floor and then walking. The women,
all of them, even Lenny, grew somber, thinking of things horrible and cruel.

  Susan recovered quickly, determined not to let a brief puking session keep her from talking and claiming a spot where she could sleep before they began walking again. She has been pregnant before, so she knows she can eat again in a few hours and the food will stay where it belongs. “What a damn nuisance,” she told Alice, who was leaning over to wipe the corners of her mouth. “Alice, do you hate me for not wanting to have this baby?”

  Alice really only hates the parts of herself that she has never been able to forgive, and although she could never in a million years consider having an abortion herself, she understands why Susan would not want to see this pregnancy through.

  Alice dabbed softly around Susan's mouth and then rested her hands on Susan's soft face. “No, sweetie, no, I could never hate you. I can see this would be a mistake for you. A costly one, huh?”

  Susan nodded and then rested against Alice, who looked as if she could be blown clear to Chicago on a windy day, but is in fact as solid as the whitewashed barn in Lenny's yard. Susan cried again, and the two women stood by the laundry tub, each of them thinking at the same moment how lucky they were to know each other, to be in Lenny's kitchen, to be walking through a season wild with possibilities.

  Lenny's house was littered with beds—bunk beds in her son's room, two double beds in her daughter's room, the Grand Canyon bed in her own room, two couches, and a basement filled with an assortment of sleeping bags and cots and two very funky mattresses for the long-since-ended family gatherings that stopped abruptly the last time Jackson forgot to show up for Thanksgiving dinner.

  Near midnight, everyone but Chris and Sandy went to lie down after dinner. Chris escaped to the kitchen to call Mary, Sandy followed Lenny from room to room, talking as if her mouth had been set on fire.