by Janet Walker
***
“As I said, Tracy told me something this weekend that you should know about.”
Madge’s mouth fell open in dreadful perplexity. Tracy’s jaws, plump with food, fell motionless and the girl peered at her aunt with hesitance and curiosity.
“Tracy? Honey. Tell your aunt what you told me.”
The women looked at her, waiting. The teen’s face blushed. She finished chewing, swallowed, and mumbled an answer.
“Um…Mama the one beat me that time. When I told you Jinya Daggett did it.”
Two emotions assailed Madge in that moment: relief, because she realized Miss Grace did not know about the molestation suspicion; and miserable disbelief, because of what Tracy had just revealed.
“What! Diane did that to you? Why did she do that, Tracy?”
“She always do that.”
Madge’s disbelief became anger—and then a horrifying realization. “Oh, no! And I…”
Aunt and niece looked at each other. Both were thinking the same thing: Madge had accused Virginia Daggett.
“Mrs. Porter, Tracy said that her mother loses her temper and makes Tracy lie about how she gets her injuries. Her mother had her convinced that if Tracy ever told anyone the truth, she would kill her…and hurt anyone she told. Especially you.”
Madge closed her eyes and brought a hand to her forehead in distress. “Oh,” she bemoaned. She lowered her hand, opened her eyes, looked at the two on the sofa. “I had no idea! Tracy, baby, you could have told me! Nothing would have happened to you or to me!”
The teen kept her head lowered.
“Tracy? Do you feel comfortable letting her see what you showed me yesterday? In the dressing room?”
The teen hesitated.
“She should see them, baby,” Grace urged gently. “I think she’ll understand why you were afraid to tell anyone.”
The girl sighed. Looked at her aunt. Stood. Began pulling her burgundy shirtwaist out of her khaki pants.
“What—?” began Madge before deciding to remain silent.
Tracy’s cheeks were flushed by the time she had unbuttoned and opened the shirt. Running across her abdomen was a horizontal scar, a faded slash of tan about the width of a pencil and the length of a ruler. “Remember this?” Tracy asked her aunt softly.
The aunt nodded. “Yes. You got that when you and Diane were in that car accident. With her boyfriend.”
The teen looked resigned. “We didn’t have no accident. Mama did this.”
The aunt gasped. Stared at the girl in astonishment. “What!”
Tracy was silent.
“Why did she do that, Tracy?”
The teen hesitated before answering. Her throat worked and her eyes grew rosy, but she tried not to cry.
“She used to take these pills. Scooby said it was LSD. And sometimes at night, she came in my room and…did crazy things like, one time, she put her hand over my nose so I couldn’t breathe. I almost blacked out. And then another time, she came in with a knife.” The teen glanced down at her belly. “Said I was pregnant and she was gonna cut the baby out.”
From the aunt came a sound, a cry with a gasp that sounded like the moan of one wounded. Immediately, Madge’s eyes welled and shimmered. She rose and in moments stood close to her niece. “Oh, Tracy!” she lamented. As a prelude to an embrace, she touched Tracy on the arm, but when the teen’s body remained rigid, Madge did not execute the hug.
“And, um,” the teen continued, unbuttoning the cuff of a sleeve and rolling it up, “these came from cigarettes.”
Madge ran her fingers over the skin of the girl’s forearm, caressing tiny dots of de-pigmentation. There seemed to be a field of twenty. “Diane said it was scars from chicken pox. I always thought it was strange that they weren’t anywhere else on your body. I feel so stupid.”
“You shouldn’t” came the quiet voice from the sofa. “Those are credible explanations. Even our school’s doctor didn’t question them when Tracy got approval to join the team.”
Madge heard the reassuring voice, appreciated it, but nevertheless kept gazing at her young relative with pity. “Oh, Tracy.”
“Show her your back, hon,” the calm voice ordered.
Tracy pushed the shirt off her shoulders so that it slipped down her torso to reveal a rectangular wad of scar tissue, a ragged keloid of shiny flesh, located just below a shoulder blade.
“What is that?”
Tracy slipped the shirt back onto her body and peered at her aunt with curiosity. Now the teen’s eyes brimmed and because she did not trust her voice, she did not speak.
Grace stood. “Tracy said that when she was twelve, she tried to straighten her hair. Her mother took the hot comb…touched it against her back…to teach her a lesson.”
“Oh, Tracy!” cried Madge, gazing at her niece in amazement—and then with a memory. “When you were twelve! That’s why Diane didn’t let me take you with me to Ed’s mother when I came to town that year. She knew I’d see the burn!” On the word burn, Madge’s voice warbled in a sob, and immediately she was horrified by another realization. “You were always bruised, weren’t you? That’s why you were always afraid to undress in front of me. I thought it was because you were shy!”
Overcome, Madge reached forward and drew the girl into her arms. Tracy allowed the embrace but did not reciprocate.
“Poor baby! To go through all of that, all those years, and not be able to tell anybody! You must have thought nobody cared!”
For Tracy, something about her aunt’s final statement made it happen—the sobbing came in that instant, deeply but silently, squeezing out of the girl’s soul with the greatness of a fountain long buried and newly set free, and so Tracy relented, finally, and held her aunt in return. Both cried.
“If I had known Diane was… I would have gotten to you even if I had to swim to do it. You know that!”
The girl nodded. “I know.”
Beside aunt and niece, the coach stood silently, hands clasped primly before her body. A deep unidentified emotion tried to make inroads in the expressionless mask of her face, but she managed to keep it contained.
The teen’s sobbing subsided and she lifted her head from her aunt’s shoulder. Madge, responding to the cue, released her. Tracy wiped her face dry and looked at her coach. They exchanged small reassuring smiles and the girl returned to her seat on the sofa.
“I never knew,” Madge said to Grace. It was a plea for absolution.
“How could you? Adults who abuse children are masters at hiding what they do.”
The women hesitated and then each returned to her seat—Madge, to the armchair; Grace, to the sofa, where she sat close to her pupil and used a hand to comfortingly squeeze the girl’s hands, which rested on Tracy’s thighs.
“You okay?” Grace asked softly.
“Yes, ma’am,” the girl answered softly.
“You did the right thing. It’s going to be okay now.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
It was a conversation, Madge noted, that did not include her. “Well,” she announced from her seat. When the two heads on the sofa turned to her, Madge finished, “Obviously, Tracy won’t be going home to her mother on the weekends anymore.”
“That’s precisely why I wanted this talk, Mrs. Porter. I had planned to discuss it with you anyway, but when Tracy told me this afternoon that her mother wanted her back home, I knew you wouldn’t allow it if you knew about the abuse.”
Madge lowered her eyes, embarrassment seeping back into her demeanor. “Yes, and—thank you so much—Miss Grace—and I suppose I owe you an apology.”
“Why?”
Madge closely watched the other woman’s face, for she was still not sure how much Tracy had revealed to the coach. “We just…thought she needed to be home more. I hope we…didn’t offend you…”
“Not at all. I understand why you would want her home. Why her mother would insist is beyond me.”
Madge’s expression dried with bitte
rness. “My sister’s not a happy woman. And she doesn’t like it when other people are. I guess it looked like Tracy was having too much fun with you.”
“I see,” said Grace. “But I completely understand your decision about Tracy’s weekends. I don’t like it,” the woman admitted with a playful smile. “But I’m willing to respect it.”
Madge became nervous again. “It—it’s just that…we didn’t want her to…wear out her welcome.”
Aunt and niece glanced at each other. For the sake of diplomacy, Madge had just told an untruth.
“Oh, never that,” insisted Grace. “I enjoy Tracy’s company. I think she’s absolutely adorable. And for what it’s worth, I owe you an apology, as well.”
Aunt and teen looked at the coach questioningly.
Grace fidgeted slightly, searching for words, before relaxing into an explanation. “As a coach and administrator, it’s been my rule not to develop friendships with my students or players. I’ve always thought it was unprofessional. But with Tracy, I…” The woman glanced at the teen, smiled lovingly. “She’s so talented on court and so lovable off that before I realized it, I was”—the woman chuckled and admitted, “smitten by her!”
Madge chuckled.
Tracy smiled, pleased by the compliment, though she didn’t know what smitten meant.
“But my apologies to you, Mrs. Porter, for getting carried away—with demanding her time, and the gifts. I guess I never realized how much I missed having a daughter until Tracy came along.” Coach and player smiled at each other.
Understanding sobered Madge and she nodded, lips parted with realization, and looked at the woman on the sofa with new and penitent eyes. “You don’t owe me an apology, Miss Grace. I understand. Truth is, I’ve always looked upon Tracy as my daughter,” she admitted, and both women smiled.
“I certainly wouldn’t want to interfere with that,” said Grace.
“Oh, no,” insisted Madge. “I know that Tracy enjoys being with you, and I wouldn’t want to interfere with that.”
The teen, fully recovered from her bout of crying, didn’t like the way the adults’ conversation was headed. Fearful of coming out on the losing end of the women’s deferential bargaining, she suggested plaintively, “I can have two mothers!”
A pause—and then the women laughed. Grace placed an arm around Tracy’s shoulders. “How about a mother-aunt,” the coach suggested, with a gesture indicating Madge, “and a mother-friend?” she said, touching her own chest.
“All right,” the teen agreed eagerly, to which the women laughed again.
Tracy smiled, and for the first time in her life she felt not only fought for but completely and lovingly and maternally owned.