Relief flooded me at the sight of door number eleven. After knocking twice and getting no answer, I tried the door. It pushed open easily. This wasn’t a good sign. I stuck my head inside and whispered, “Rachel, you here? Rachel? Can I come in?” No answer.
I stepped through the door, stomach churning with trepidation. Dirty clothes, old newspapers, and empty food containers littered the small room. No furniture except for two folding chairs, an oblong table—the kind in church fellowship halls everywhere—and a tattered, black, beanbag chair. The table held state-of-the-art computer equipment, so I felt secure in locking the door behind me. If someone had broken in to rob the place, the computer equipment would be gone. It was the only thing of value that I could see. Kicking clothes and Styrofoam containers out of my path, I walked into the bedroom and in a loud voice called out, “Rachel, it’s me. Are you here?”
The mattress on the floor had a lump of bedding on it that hadn’t seen a washing machine in weeks. The stench of stale alcohol permeated the pile. I took a deep breath of air through my mouth. Pulling the covers back revealed a mass of oily, tangled, blonde hair.
“Come on, Rache, wake up. I need to talk to you.”
Rachel’s eyes flickered open and then closed again.
Putting my hands under Rachel’s armpits, I dragged her to the bathroom. My passed out, skin-and-bones friend proved harder to move than I envisioned. With much grunting and groaning, I heaved her over the lip of the tub. I turned the water on full blast—cold. Rachel whimpered at the first sting of chilly water, but couldn’t find the energy to move.
Wrenching the shower curtain closed, I felt sick to my stomach. How could Rachel sink so low? Why was she living in housing that wreaked of vomit and urine? And where was the church in all this mess? Where were all the Christians? Oh yeah, we were discussing the bigger issues of hymns versus praise songs and whether pre-, post-, or millennialism is closest to the truth. I was angry with the church, angry with Rachel, but mostly angry with myself. Forget about the church, where was I? Back in Montana with my happy little home and comfortable life while Rachel lived in squalor.
Anger and housecleaning go together, at least for me. The parsonage is always cleanest after David and I have a disagreement. Silly, but the madder I get the more productive I become. First, I pried open the windows to air out the place. Checking under the kitchen sink, I found a treasure trove of cleaning products. Windex, Pine-Sol, Endust, and Ultra-flex Hefty garbage bags sat happily unused under a thick layer of dust.
Grabbing a large garbage bag, I tackled the front room with a vengeance, stuffing filthy clothes, molded food, and empty beer cans into it. Within a few minutes, three garbage sacks bulged at the seams, so I attacked the bedroom. Cleaning doesn’t take long when you throw almost everything away. I scrubbed the floors until they gleamed.
After several trips to the dumpster, the two rooms looked livable. The only thing left was computer equipment, chairs, table, and a soiled mattress. And if I’d been strong enough, the mattress would have been dragged to the trash too.
My rage finally spent, I walked into the bathroom and opened the shower curtain. Rachel sat under the stream of running water, knees pulled up to her chest, arms wrapped tightly around her legs, and head down. She was shivering and crying, rocking back and forth, but not making any attempt to move. I turned the water to warm and drizzled Pantene Pro-V onto her head. Scrubbing with a gentleness I hadn’t shown the kitchen floor, I shampooed her hair.
“It’s your turn now, girlfriend. Time to rinse.”
Handing her the bar of soap and a clean washcloth from my suitcase, I said, “You need to get undressed and finish showering. Throw your clothes outside the curtain. I’m going to clean in here a bit.”
Rachel didn’t say a word, but she pulled the curtain shut. Sodden clothes plopped over the edge of the tub to the floor, creating a huge puddle on the filthy, linoleum floor.
I tossed the sopping wet apparel into yet another garbage bag and scoured the dingy, porcelain sink. It looked better, but still couldn’t be called white by any means. The toilet required extra elbow grease. The small mirror, hanging on a rusted nail above the sink, had water spots on its water spots. I decided to wipe it down later. Rachel’s hair brush, comb, toothbrush, and paste perched on the toilet tank in a plastic bowl, which I scrubbed clean. I added Pine-Sol to the water puddle and mopped the floor. Fetching a towel and clean clothes from my suitcase, I laid them on the toilet lid and spoke to Rachel through the curtain.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes, and you need to be ready to go.”
“What? Go where? I am not going anywhere with you. You can’t make—” I shut the bathroom door, cutting off her defiant response.
At least her words weren’t slurred. She must have sobered up.
Walking outside and up to the nearest group of young men, I said, “Does anybody want to make fifty bucks?”
Insolent stares.
“I need two strong guys who can carry a lice-infested mattress to the dumpster. I have fifty bucks you can split. Any volunteers?” I waved the money over my head so they could see I meant business.
“Hey, I know what we can do on the mattress, lady. You won’t even have to pay me.” This out of the mouth of a young man probably not more than thirteen. Still his words and accompanying Michael Jackson gesture brought a chorus of laughter to the group.
I gave him my best, it’s-prayer-time, close-your-eyes-NOW glare that I generally reserved for the twelve-year-olds who sat in front of my pew on Sunday. If I intimidated him, he was reluctant to show it.
I repeated the offer. Two guys, who should have been in high school, shrugged and glared at me, but followed me up the walk amidst a refrain of jeers and sexual innuendos. I rolled my eyes at the tough-guy boys, trying so hard to be men. I walked with feigned confidence—like I paid people every day to remove bedding from crummy apartments. It was a bit more bravado than I felt, but I couldn’t let them know I was scared. Once inside, the boys gathered up the saggy mattress and hoisted it onto their shoulders. I gave the fifty to the smallest of the duo and out they marched.
I stifled a laugh when I saw Rachel come out of the bathroom. Not that Rachel’s five-foot-nine, thin-as-a-rail frame was funny, but with my jeans and large T-shirt as a covering, she looked like the poster child for the reality show The Biggest Loser. Rachel held my jeans at the waist to keep them up, but the hem of the pant legs only came to mid-calf.
“Okay, so a fashion statement you’re not. A little power shopping at the mall should fix that,” I told her.
Rachel’s gaze traveled from the clean windows to the empty bedroom. She sighed. “Where’s my stuff?”
“You mean the empty food cartons and rotting garbage? Or the filthy blankets and mattress? Gone, just like the cheap wine bottles and empty beer cans. The dumpster behind your building needs to be emptied though.”
“How dare you?” Rachel exploded.
“Sober and indignant. That’s a change, but it looks good on you.”
“Get out!”
“Listen, Rache. I’m sorry if I took some liberties with your trash, but I’ll replace the bed, sheets, pillows, and buy a dresser for your clothes.”
“I don’t want you buying nothing. I want you out.”
I counted to ten, slowly and not out loud, hoping the quiet would calm Rachel down. As softly as I could speak, I pleaded with her. “I need you.”
“Maybe you should of thought of that before you ransacked my place.”
“It was a pigsty, Rachel. I was trying to help.”
“Sorry Miss-holier-than-thou, but it’s my pigsty and I didn’t ask for help.”
Chagrined and knowing I had no real argument, I changed subjects.
“I really need you to come with me,” I said.
“I can’t go back to Anderson. I won’t.”
I didn’t reply. I just looked at her.
“Why’d you come here?” she asked, still irritated.
>
“Because I need you.”
Rachel avoided my eyes. “I’m sorry you had to see me like this, but this is my life. I didn’t invite you into it.”
I silently walked over to the glistening window and looked down on the dirt and gravel playground.
Rachel’s eyes flashed defiance. “I won’t go back to the other life. Not for you, not for a clean place to live, not for anything.”
I looked back at her. “I’m not asking you to go back to your old life. I’m asking you to come to Anderson for a couple of days to help me figure out who killed Tim.” My voice quavered with desperation.
Rachel shook her head. “I can’t do it.”
“You can.”
“What can I do that you can’t?”
“I’ve already talked to Scott. He’ll get you into the police mainframe. We’ll meet with the rest of the Cliffhangers to talk. Pick each other’s brains, come up with some ideas. I think Tim’s death is related to Darcie Stewart’s death.”
“Stewart?”
“Remember our student teacher in English class?”
“Yeah, but she skipped the country, ran away or something, didn’t she?” Rachel asked.
“They found her body a couple of weeks ago. Tim had clippings of the story in the personal effects he left to me. Maybe you can find a correlation between the two.”
“It’s not that easy,” Rachel insisted.
“Maybe not, but if we all work together, we might be able to reason it out. Or at least give you enough data to get started.”
Rachel shook her head.
“If you can’t find any more info than the police already have, you can come back here to your alcohol-soaked life, and I’ll leave you alone.” The last statement came out harsher and slightly more self-righteous than I intended.
Rachel studied her feet—embarrassed and silent.
“Come on, Rache, at least let me take you to the mall and get you some clothes that actually fit. Convince me why you can’t go to Anderson, and I’ll let it drop. Promise.” I paused. “Right now my freedom is on the line, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why you wouldn’t want to help. Can all of this be that important to you?” My arm made a sweeping movement around the bare apartment.
A shadow of pain passed through Rachel’s brown eyes, followed by a look of determination. “Give me a belt for these pedal pushers and let’s go.”
Three pair of jeans, five shirts, underwear, socks, a pair of tennis shoes, and a windbreaker later, we sat in the food court, downing pretzels with cream cheese and Dr Pepper. I’d chattered on about David and the boys during the shopping excursion, but now I was silent. I would wait however long it took Rachel to start talking, or we were kicked out of the mall, whichever came first. At eight forty-five, store clerks started vacuuming the day’s grime away, assistant managers checked tills, and the volume of mall patrons decreased dramatically. Rachel played with her food, oblivious to the surrounding commotion. The silence deepened. I dipped the last bite of pretzel into the tiny cheese tub.
When Rachel finally spoke, her words came out barely more than a whisper.
“I was thirteen when it happened the first time—the first time Dad came into my room at night. He sat on the bed and told me my birth had been too hard on Mama and that she wasn’t able to respond like she should to a husband. He told me he didn’t know what he was going to do, but he needed more out of life. He said if things didn’t change, he would leave Mama and me and find someone to make him happy.”
Rachel picked up her soda and took a long drink. Her eyes locked onto mine, a dare, waiting for me to blink first. I remained still, not looking away.
“He started to rub my back, and then he put his head down on my shoulder and cried,” she said. “Cried like a wounded puppy. I held him until he stopped crying, but suddenly his whole manner changed. He turned different—started pulling at my pajamas and then kissed me on the lips. I was so scared and grossed out, but I didn’t know what to do—so I didn’t do anything. I just let him do it. He didn’t stop with the kiss. It was horrible.”
I quelled the gag that came up my throat. I’d never even suspected this.
Rachel’s voice carried no emotion. Her words came out evenly spaced, monotone, as if her soul had abandoned her body and only a shell remained—a talking mannequin.
“And then it happened again and again, and I couldn’t tell Mama because Dad insinuated it was my fault. That if I weren’t such a bad girl, this wouldn’t happen, and if I told Mama, she wouldn’t love me anymore.”
Rage welled up inside of me for the second time today. I wanted to throw something—to scream, to get sick, to kill. What I did, however, was remain silent. I focused on Rachel’s lifeless eyes. I’d heard this story in a dozen different forms in David’s office. The human casualties were horrific. What was always the same was the incredible amount of damage done to the soul, and how any reaction—good or bad other than listening—would cause retreat and make the victim shut down. I couldn’t risk it with Rachel. She needed to talk, so I held my emotions in check.
Rachel took a deep breath. “Then there was the ad from you about the mystery club, and the Cliffhangers became my safe haven. I lived from meeting to meeting. The club kept me from curling up and dying. It was then that I realized I could make it. No one had to know my dirty little secret.”
I sipped Dr Pepper, barely able to keep from hurling it as far as I could throw it.
Rachel’s voice sounded hollow. “My junior year was worse. One of the teachers started making me stay after class. He said my grades weren’t good enough, I didn’t try hard enough, and he was going to have to call my parents and tell them about my behavior unless I joined study group at his house. Like an idiot I did. Only when I got there, no one was studying. No one was even there.”
“Oh no.” The words were out before I could reel them back in.
Rachel picked her napkin to shreds. “It was the same as Dad. He forced me to . . .” Her words trailed off into nothing.
She started again. “He told me it was all my fault. I tempted him, he said. He said if I told anyone he would have me removed from school permanently. I didn’t know what to do—so I didn’t do anything. I was so ashamed. Something about me was terribly, terribly wrong, and I didn’t know what it was.”
“What teacher?” I asked, my teeth clenched.
“Does it matter?” Now that Rachel was talking, it seemed like she couldn’t stop. The story spewed out of her in the same empty tone.
“I think Mama knew though,” Rachel said. “Not about the teacher, but about Dad. Remember when I was the first one in class to get the Pac-Man game? Remember when I got a computer for graduation? They were just on the market for home use and cost a small fortune. I think it was easier for Mama to buy me gifts than to face the truth.
“I don’t blame her for not wanting Dad. I vomited afterward—every time. I hope I saved her from feeling like that. Still, something hardened in my heart when I left home. I stopped loving Dad, and I think I stopped loving Mama. I hated them for who they were, for what they’d done to me, and I swore never to go home again.”
“I’m so sorry.” My words felt grossly inadequate.
Rachel went on as if she hadn’t heard me. “Hating them didn’t solve anything. I hated myself more. I felt like the whole world could see that I was a bad, bad person. Like it was tattooed on the way I walked and talked. When I graduated from Citrone, I did freelance computer work, and the more computer literate the world got and the more the Internet took over, the less I went out. Now people couldn’t see me. Couldn’t know I was used goods. Couldn’t see my shame. Most of the time I don’t even look in the mirror so I can’t see it either.”
Tears rolled down my cheeks.
“The liquor store delivers my booze, and the grocery store brings my food. It’s been over a year since I’ve been out of my apartment. The landlord stops by once a month for his check. That’s why I can’t go back to A
nderson. I hate them. I hate my parents. I hate me.”
I brushed off my tears, but I couldn’t swallow past the lump in my throat. “I am so sorry. I didn’t know. I don’t know how I could not have known—but I didn’t. How could we meet every week for four years, and I still not know?” I asked the question more to myself than Rachel. “I don’t know what to say.”
“I don’t need words. I don’t need answers—there aren’t any. I just need you to know why I can’t go back,” Rachel said in a flat voice.
I took a deep breath. “I have no excuses for not being the kind of friend to you that I now need you to be for me, but it doesn’t lessen my need. I promise you if you come back with me, I will protect you. We can stay at a motel and not even see your parents.”
Rachel cleared the table and stood up, saying nothing.
I grabbed her arm. “You can’t believe how sorry I am, but for now I need to put your pain on the back burner, unfortunately, like I’ve always done. I need you to help me, Rache. Please, I’m begging you. I could be arrested for Tim’s murder.”
Rachel stood still, looked at my hand on her arm, then at the empty tables in the food court. I tried to read her eyes, but couldn’t. Seconds ticked by.
“Okay, I’ll go. But don’t ask me to go to the class reunion.”
I let out a huge sigh of relief. “No problem.”
“I won’t go to your mom’s, and I won’t go see my parents.”
I nodded. “Your call.”
“I’d like to see the Cliffhangers though. You can’t tell them anything—nothing. I couldn’t bear it if they found out about any of this.”
I felt sick. I closed my eyes. How could I ever find the right words to make Rachel see the truth about herself? She was the victim, not the villain. “You have nothing to be ashamed of. You didn’t do anything wrong. You were a child, but no, I won’t tell anyone.” I promise not to tell the group what appalling things you dealt with while I sat by and did nothing.
Dry Bones Page 4