"Why should she show her face around here?" he declared with a cold laugh. "She's got a brother assuming her responsibilities."
My mother had done many cruel and stupid things to me, but the worst, I thought, was leaving me with her brother.
I couldn't imagine how things could get worse. But they could.
And they did.
10 Home Alone
Being confined to the house while everyone else was out doing things on the weekend wasn't actually all that bad. I would have enjoyed it even more if William, who seemed to enjoy my company more than he did anyone else's in the family, had been able to stay home, too. However, Aunt Clara took him to the mall to buy him new clothes and a new pair of sneakers Saturday afternoon. Jennifer went to a matinee with her friends. Before she left, she stopped to gloat by the sewing room, where I was ironing clothes.
"Everyone's meeting for pizza, and then we're going to the movies. I'm sitting with Brad," she bragged, "so no matter what you think, he really is interested in me."
"I'm happy for you," I said dryly. "If you weren't so mean to me, I might get the kids to like you, too," she offered.
"Me? Mean to you?" I smiled. "Do you really believe that, or do you think I'm that stupid?"
"I think you're that stupid," she said, pulling her thick lower lip into her cheek.
"You know," I said, spinning around on her, "I came here feeling sorry for myself and even envying you. You have parents, a nice house, a very nice little brother. You seemed to have everything I ever wanted, and then I got to know you better and see what really goes on here, and now you know what?"
"What?"
"I feel sorrier for you than I do for myself," I said, and turned back to my ironing.
"I have no idea what you're talking about. You're nuts, just like Clarence. I don't know why I even bothered trying to be your friend," she snapped.
"Becoming your friend is like becoming friends with a black widow spider," I retorted.
She spun on her heels and charged out the front door, slamming it so hard the whole house shook and the windows rattled. I smiled to myself, turned on the radio, and started to enjoy my solitude. Uncle Reuben had already left to bowl with his team. There were so few times when I had a chance to be alone and not feel I was being watched or judged.
I had to face the fact that my mother would never come for me or be able to take me to live with her again. When she was caught, they would put her in a real jail this time, and even if she behaved and was released, she would probably be released to another drug rehabilitation clinic. After that, she still might not be allowed to have me live with her, and who knew if she would even want the responsibility?
Perhaps I should stop fighting reality, I thought. I was only hurting myself. I was like someone bound with piano wire, struggling and squirming to be free and only tearing myself to pieces. I had to learn to ignore, to look the other way, to pretend, to make up my own world. Maybe Aunt Clara wasn't all wrong behaving as she did. At least she found some peace in her life by deliberately blinding herself to the unpleasantness in her family. She was able to go on, to face every new morning with fresh hope.
I was really like someone caught in a strong current being carried downstream. I could struggle and struggle, desperately try to fight the water and only waste my strength, or I could turn in the direction the water was flowing and try to swim a little faster than the current. Maybe, if I stayed even a few inches ahead of my fate, I would feel some sense of purpose, some meaning and identity, and be able to think of myself as real, a person with a name, with some control over what would happen to her. The current couldn't go on forever and ever. It would take me someplace, drop me at some shore, and if I endured and stayed strong, I would be able to stand on my own two feet and then, then, make a new life for myself.
That was the only hope I had, the only choice left. Realizing it was like lifting a weight from my shoulders. I actually began to feel good and swayed my body to the music as I worked. I sang along with the singers. I went to the kitchen and poured myself a soda and returned to my room to finish the ironing. After that, I thought I would take a shower and just spend the rest of the day reading, catching up with my English assignments.
It was turning out to be one of the nicest days I had spent living with my uncle and aunt. I laughed to myself realizing that the reason it was so nice was that no one else was home. I washed my hair in the shower and then sat before the small mirror in my room and dried my hair, first with a towel and then with Aunt Clara's blow dryer. My hair was truly my crowning glory, long and thick. My mother always coveted my hair, moaning about her own thin, split strands and then running her fingers through my hair and bringing it to hers as if touching mine might transfer some of the richness to her own.
I sat there in the blue cotton robe Aunt Clara had given me and fantasized, dreaming myself into scenarios with a handsome young man who would come along and see me for myself, fall in love with me, and sweep me away from all this. Why couldn't I be a real Cinderella? Somewhere out there surely was a young man destined to be my lover, my husband, my prince, a young man who would see my strengths as well as my beauty and want me at his side forever and ever.
I was in such a reverie, actually hearing the music, the voices, feeling the wind in my hair as we drove along picturesque country roads, laughing, kissing, and promising our love to each other, that I never heard Uncle Reuben come into the house, nor did I hear him come into my room. It wasn't until he was actually standing behind me, swaying, his eyes glassy, that I realized he was there. I spun around on my chair and looked up at him.
"Getting yourself all dolled up for someone else, are you?" he asked with a cold, crooked smile on his face.
"No. I did all my chores and just wanted to clean up and do my homework," I said. I couldn't believe how timid I sounded. I was wrapped so tightly inside my heart could barely beat.
"Get clean? You?" He shook his head and snorted. "You're dirty through and through," he said. "All the soap and hot water in the world couldn't clean you up."
"That's not so. I'm not dirty!" I insisted.
"You're your mother's daughter. You've proven that in just the short time you've been here," he responded. "Seducing that retarded boy," he muttered.
"I didn't do that."
"Go on with you," he said, waving his hand. "You'll never change. It's just bad blood."
"If there's bad blood in this family," I said, making my eyes small, "it's more in you than in my mother and me."
He stepped back and blinked as if I had reached up and slapped his face.
"Z' at so?" he said. "You still have a big mouth, eh?" He wobbled as he stared down at me. I could smell beer on his breath. It churned my stomach. "I oughtta just throw you out or turn you over to the court and let them put you in one of them orphanages."
"I wish you would. Then I would tell everyone how awful you are--how you terrorize your family with threats and beatings," I blurted.
This time, his eyes widened, and he opened and shut his mouth without a sound. He wobbled, and then his face reddened.
"What are you talking about? What kind of filthy lies have you been spreading? Who did you tell such stories?"
"Nobody," I said. "Yet."
Despite his unsteady stance and his dull, dizzy look, he managed to bring his hand around so quickly and accurately that he struck me across the cheek before I had a chance to lift my arm to protect myself. The blow stung, and the force of it drove me off the seat. I fell to one knee. Before I could turn to stand, he had the back of my robe up as he pulled me closer.
"Naked? Naked sitting here?" he cried.
"It's supposed to be my room," I wailed.
"With the door wide open? You're a tart, a tease, just like your mother was. I'll have to teach you the same lesson I taught her, show you what happens to girls like you."
He reached down and seized me at the waist, lifting me as if I weighed nothing and dropping me on the bed. "No!
" I screamed. "Don't touch me!"
He slapped me sharply across my buttocks and then sat beside me as he pulled my robe up farther until it was at my waist.
"That's all you do want is to be touched," he said, suddenly in a softer voice. Nevertheless, that frightened me more. I felt an icy chill travel up my spine, and I turned to get away, but he rested his heavy torso against my ribs and back, and I was pinned beneath him
I felt his hand on my rear end again and then down between my thighs.
"Just like your mother, all you want is to be touched," he said. I jumped and screamed when his fingers traveled to where I hesitated even to touch myself. "You're bringing shame into my home," he muttered as he continued.
Then, as if he had suddenly realized what he was doing, he stopped and slapped me again.
"Everyone at the bowling alley was talking about the Dunsen boy and what you done. It was embarrassing. They wanted to know what sort of niece I had living with me. You don't listen. You keep being bad," he said. "I've been too easy on you."
He leaned forward and found my hairbrush. The first blow stung so badly I really did see stars. Lights flashed in my eyes. The pain spread out along my back and sides as if I were a plate of glass, shattering. He hit me again and again; his aim was off so that some of the blows fell on my thighs, each taking the breath out of me. When he was finished, he remained on the couch, breathing hard over me.
"You'll get worse if you do another bad thing. I'll burn the skin off you, understand?"
He pinched the flesh under my buttocks harder and harder. "Understand?"
"Yes," I cried. "Yes."
"Good. Good," he said, rising. "Don't you go crying to Clara about this, either, understand? If you do .
I didn't move until I heard him stumble out of the room, closing the door behind him. When I did move, I couldn't believe the burning and the pain. It was the worst beating of all and the most degrading.
I groaned, turned over on my back, and lay there staring up at the ceiling. It was how Aunt Clara found me later. She thought I was sick, and I told her I was just having a bad time with my period. She believed that and let me be, offering to do all the preparation for dinner. As if he wanted to play along, Uncle Reuben did not challenge my story. Jennifer couldn't care less and never even poked her head in to tell me how much of a good time she had had with her friends. William looked in on me, and I tried desperately to hide my pain and agony from him, but he seemed to sense it anyway. His eyes were full of suspicion and fear.
Later, when I came out of my room to join them at supper, I did walk like a girl who was suffering menstrual cramps. Aunt Clara talked about how terrible it was that modern medicine could find cures for almost everything but that.
"Maybe that's because most doctors are men," she muttered.
"That's nonsense, women's lib propaganda," Uncle Reuben piped in, and then went into one of his tirades about the standards in our society crumbling with all the liberal movements in politics and government.
I went to bed early and spent most of the next day in my room lying in bed. The pain went so deeply this time that it changed from a stinging to an aching. I ate little and slept as much as I could. The next morning, Monday, Uncle Reuben did order me to get up and help with the morning chores.
"And don't try to stay home from school, either' he warned. "I know you did a lot of that when you lived with my sister. She probably lost track of the days," he added.
Walking was still painful, but I was terrified that he would think of another excuse to hit me if I didn't obey him I boarded the bus and rode silently to school. During my morning classes, I had to fidget and squirm a great deal to find comfortable, less painful positions. Only Mr. Gatlin noticed and asked if I had ants in my pants. That drew laughter and more whispering and teasing in the halls between classes.
My real problem was in gym class. I tried using my period as an excuse, but Mrs. Wilson wanted me to suit up anyway and stand at the sidelines. I pleaded, but she was insistent.
"My girls always suit up," she claimed. "Those are my rules. No loafers here," she added. She watched me leave her office, and minutes later, while I was changing, she came into the locker room and spied on me.
"My God," she cried, "what happened to you?"
I spun around, holding my uniform to my chest. The welts and black-and-blue marks on my upper thighs were still quite vivid, especially where Uncle Reuben had pinched me.
"Nothing," I said.
"That's far from nothing. You get your clothes on, and you go right to Mrs Millstein this minute," she ordered.
"But . ."
"Do what I say," she screamed. She looked horrified as I began to put my school clothes back on. Then she left to go to her office. By the time I arrived at the nurse's office, Mrs. Wilson had called and Mrs. Mill- stein was waiting, prepared for what she would find.
"Come in, Raven. Please," she said when I opened the door. She had me go into one of the private rooms. "Mrs. Wilson told me about your injuries. Do you want to show them to me?"
"I'm all right," I said.
"I'm sure, but just in case there is something else to do, it might be a good idea to let me see them. Okay?"
I hesitated. And then suddenly, the whole world seemed to come apart for me. I couldn't control myself. The tears that had welled up in my eyes time after time, tears I had driven back or shut off, flooded, poured out of me with no restraint. I began seemingly unstoppable sobbing. Mrs Millstein had to help me to the chair.
"There, there now, Raven. I'm sure it's not as bad as all that," she said.
"It is," I cried. I lifted my skirt slowly, and she looked at the bruises. Then I stood up, and she examined the others.
"How did this happen, Raven?" she demanded in a firm voice. Again, I hesitated. "You must tell me, Raven. Who did this to you?"
I took a deep breath. Did it matter anymore who knew and what sort of a horrible life I had? I sat again and stared at the floor. The tears dripped off my chin.
"Raven?"
"My uncle," I said in a tired, defeated voice. "How did he do this?"
"He beat me with a hairbrush," I said, "and he pinched me after. . after. . ." My tears rushed out again. My chest felt as if it would cave in and crush my heart. Mrs. Millstein fed me tissues and then took my hand.
"Tell me slowly, Raven. Take your time, but tell me everything. I'm here to help you, sweetheart. Go on," she said, kneeling in front of me and holding my hand. "What else did he do to you, honey?"
"After he began to beat me, he touched me where he shouldn't," I blurted. "Then he hit me with the brush until I nearly fainted."
"Did this happen before?" she asked.
"Yes," I moaned. "Last time, it was with a belt." I started to cry softly.
She stared quietly for a long moment, and then she stood up. "Just rest now, Raven. You're going to be fine," she said. "I'll be right back."
Everything that happened afterward happened so quickly it all blurs together like a movie running too fast in my head. Soon afterward, a woman from the children's protection service, Marjorie Rosner, arrived, and Mrs. Millstein urged me to describe what had happened to me. She questioned me in more detail, and then she and Mrs. Millstein went off to confer. Minutes later, I was escorted out and taken to a doctor who examined my injuries and gave Marjorie Rosner a written report. All the while, things were buzzing around me, telephones ringing, policemen arriving, and then I was taken to a temporary foster home run by an elderly couple. They provided me with a hot meal and a place to sleep. I didn't think I would, but the moment my head hit the pillow, I drifted off, feeling my body sink into the mattress.
In the morning, Marjorie arrived and explained that I was going to a courthouse to be questioned by a family court judge. She warned me that my aunt and my uncle might be in the courthouse as well.
"Your uncle was questioned by the police, as well as your aunt," she told me.
"What about what he said he did to my mo
ther?"
"Let's just concentrate on you for now," Marjorie told me.
I was so frightened I could barely walk to Marjorie's car. She kept reassuring me that everything would be all right.
"He'll never lay a hand on you again, Raven. I promise," she said.
When we entered the courthouse, I saw Aunt Clara sitting alone on a bench in the corridor. She had her head down, her hands in her lap. She looked so small and lost. I felt sorry for her. When she heard us in the hallway, she looked up. Her eyes were bloodshot, her face pale.
"What have you done, Raven?" she asked in a tiny voice.
"It's not what she's done, Mrs. Stack. It's what your husband has done," Marjorie Rosner said.
"He wouldn't do those things," she said. "He wouldn't." She looked up at me hopefully.
"I'm sorry, Aunt Clara. I think you know he would," I said.
Aunt Clara brought her small fist to her mouth to stop the cry that strangled in her throat.
Marjorie moved me ahead. I looked back just before we entered the judge's chambers. Aunt Clara had her hands over her face and was rocking gently on the bench like someone in great pain. My heart felt like a lump of lead.
"I hate hurting her," I said.
"You're doing the right thing, Raven. Just answer the judge's questions," Marjorie said.
I sucked in my breath and stepped in, feeling like someone on a roller coaster who was just reaching the top of another incline. In moments, I knew I would be raging downward, holding on for dear life, closing my eyes, screaming, wondering where the next turn would take me.
Epilogue
Uncle Reuben denied everything, of course. He admitted beating me but claimed that I was so rotten to the core he had no choice. The judge didn't believe him and certainly had no intention of placing me back in Uncle Reuben's home. With my mother gone and no other relatives who could bear responsibility for me, I became a ward of the state. It was what Uncle Reuben had predicted for me all along, so in a way, I suppose he got what he wanted.
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