Antonia's Choice

by Nancy Rue

  When I arrived, hands aching from clutching the steering wheel, Wyndham was in Dominica’s healing room on a floor cushion, arms folded around herself, rocking back and forth. Dominica, clad in bell-bottom jeans, greeted me wordlessly. The tension in the room could have been cut with a chain saw. I was nauseous by the time I got to Wyndham’s side and pulled up a pillow.

  “How ya doin’, hon?” I said.

  “I’m awful. Just let me get this out, okay? I just have to say it all at once.”

  “Okay.”

  I looked at Dominica, but she was watching Wyndham as if she expected her to lunge for the window. By now, Wyndham had her eyes on her rocking toes, eyes that were puffy from crying.

  “I won’t say a word,” I said. “And no matter what you tell me, I will still love you. I promise you that.”

  “No, you won’t. Nobody could.”

  She started to shake her head, but Dominica stopped her like a stick in a bicycle spoke. “You know you can do this, Wyndham,” she said. “You’ve got God, remember.”

  While I waited in tortured silence, Wyndham took a deep breath, as if she weren’t going to be allowed another one until she’d said all she had to say. I wasn’t sure I could breathe myself.

  “I didn’t tell you everything before,” Wyndham said. “I thought what I already told would be enough. But now I have to—now that Bobbi is out of jail. I just have to now.”

  Though Wyndham wasn’t looking at me, I nodded, just to be sure I was still there. I could feel myself trying to tear away from the very real anxiety and disappear.

  “He threatened them,” she went on. “He threatened Ben and the twins, told them he would do horrible things to them if they told—like drown them in the bathtub or cut them up. They would be crying and screaming, and he would make me take them.”

  “Honey, I know all this—”

  “Just let me tell it!”

  “I’m sorry. Go—I’ll be quiet.”

  I glanced again at Dominica, but she was locked into Wyndham.

  “They would be screaming so hard, especially Ben,” Wyndham said into her knees. “Emil stopped crying that much after a while because it happened to him so often—but Ben wasn’t used to it. When I took them to—her, she would always reach for Ben first because Sid would be in the background yelling, ‘Shut that kid up!’ She would take Ben and she would tell me to bring Emil. At first, I would just leave them with her and go cry or hold Techla. She never comforted Techla the way she did the boys. That’s what she called it—‘comforting them.’”

  Wyndham spat the words out as if they were poison. Her bitterness was so like Bobbi’s on the phone, I was beyond anxiety as she continued.

  “I didn’t know what she was doing at first—until this one day. She had both of them in her room, and Ben wouldn’t stop crying and neither would Emil. The thing is, when Ben screamed, that scared Emil because he loves Ben so much and he thinks Ben is a hero. She looks at me and she goes, ‘Here, this helps them. Do this.’”

  Wyndham flung both hands against her face and wailed. It was a hopeless, baleful sound that would have torn my heart right from my chest if she hadn’t been talking about my son.

  “What did she want you to do?” I said. “What was she doing to the boys, Wyndham?”

  “I can’t!”

  “You have to! Tell me!”

  I felt Dominica’s hand on my arm. I tried to wrench it away, but she held on tighter. It took every ounce of self-control I had not to shove her across the room and take Wyndham by the shoulders and shake her. Hard. Until she told me what I didn’t want to know.

  “You’re almost done, Wyndham,” Dominica said. “Do you need to stop for a minute?”

  Wyndham shook her head. Her shoulders shuddered. She was choking, but she lifted her face and let the rest go. It poured out in one long, painful cry of grief.

  “She was touching them. They were just little boys and she was touching them. She told them that as long as they didn’t tell anyone their secret, she wouldn’t let Sid hurt them. She said she was comforting them, but the look on her face—it was all about her. It was all about her comfort.” Wyndham’s face crumpled. “I didn’t want to do it, Aunt Toni. She made me. And I will hate myself for the rest of my life. I just want to die.”

  She hurled herself forward, face to the floor. It was a violent move, so convulsive I could only stare in horror. And then I wanted to slap her—hard—over and over.

  “Direct the anger where it belongs,” Dominica murmured to me.

  Much of what happened in the moments that followed was a blur to me, a montage of hurled pillows and screamed epithets and hard, hard hugging of my niece as we rocked together and cried. I told her it wasn’t her fault. I shouted it, I ground it out through gritted teeth, I sobbed it up from my throat. But I told her—until I finally believed it.

  I stayed at Trinity House until Wyndham was asleep, around nine o’clock. The therapist on duty on the hall promised me that she would be under constant watch all night.

  “Who’s going to watch me?” I said to Dominica as she walked me out to the car.

  “Do you need watching? Should we go back in and call somebody to be there when you get home?”

  “I’m not going to hurt myself. I couldn’t leave Ben now.”

  “Do you want to be alone, though?”

  “I don’t know what I want. I’ll decide on the way home.” I started to go. She didn’t move, as if she knew I was going to turn and ask her another question.

  “Why didn’t she tell me all this before?” I said. “Is she telling us the truth—I mean, how do we know?”

  “Very few kids disclose everything the first time they start to talk about it,” she said. “They have to be sure they’re going to be believed, that they can trust the adults they’re telling. And she’s had to shift adults several times in the course of this, which slows down the process.” Dominica tilted her head, dark eyes watching me closely. “She was also afraid you would hate her. She keeps saying you’re all she has. She thinks if you turn away from her, she’s alone.”

  “I don’t hate her.”

  Dominica waited. I swatted at the swarm of mosquitoes gathered in a pool around the outside light. She didn’t move.

  “I don’t hate her,” I said again. “But I feel like I want to slap her—just smack her right in the face.” I clutched at my hair. “What is wrong with me?”

  “She touched your child.”

  “She was forced to! It wasn’t her fault. She never would have done that on her own. You saw the remorse she feels—she wants to die!”

  “But your first, gut response doesn’t care about that. She touched your child.”

  “All right, we’ve established that. You don’t have to keep saying it.”

  “But you have to keep saying it so you can accept it and move on to something you can do something about.”

  “Like what? Tell me. Whatever it is, I’ll do it. I just can’t stand this!”

  Dominica held open the door and motioned me back inside. We stepped into the air conditioning, away from the swarm, and she led me to a lounge just off the reception area. She opened a small refrigerator and produced a Diet 7-Up, which she planted in my hand and all but curled my fingers around for me. When she pointed to a leather swivel chair at the table, I sat and drank dutifully. She perched herself on the edge of the table and watched me.

  “I really need to get to Ben,” I said, without making a move to actually do that.

  “You really think that’s wise? In the shape you’re in?”

  “What shape am I in? Is it that bad?”

  “If you don’t mind scaring the Nikes off your child, you’re fine.”

  I nodded and took another sip. The carbonation burned my throat.

  “Let’s get you centered before you go to your boy,” Dominica said.

  “Centered on what? God?” I punched the can onto the tabletop. “I’m struggling with God at the moment—for obvious
reasons.”

  “Sure. But it’s like I was telling Wyndham before you came and all she wanted to do was flog herself.”

  “With a straight razor,” I said.

  “I told her it’s circular. If you don’t love and forgive yourself, you can’t love and forgive God. But it’s God who gives you what it takes to love and forgive yourself—and without both you can’t love and forgive anybody else.”

  I gave her a wry smile. “This is supposed to clear things up for mer “All through our time together, you and I have been working on your being conscious of God and jumping into whatever it is you think He’s doing. I can tell you for a fact He’s busy forgiving. It’s what He does—He’s God. So you have to jump in there. You have to start by forgiving Wyndham, getting this anger at her—which you have every right to feel—out of your system so you can love her, love Ben, love you, and keep loving God. Because He’s going to give you more and more ability to handle all this stuff.”

  “I can’t just go ’poof, I forgive Wyndham,’” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t feel it.”

  “Who said you had to feel it?”

  “If I say I forgive her and I don’t, then it’s a lie. That isn’t forgiveness.”

  “True—but if you don’t forgive her for what she’s done, what are you going to do with her?”

  I couldn’t answer that. I could only look at her.

  “Darn, you’re good,” I said.

  “I know. That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”

  I sagged against the back of the chair, soda can still clutched in my hand. The chair swung lazily to one side. “It’s not really her fault,” I said. “It’s Bobbi I hate.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes! Don’t get me started.” I looked threateningly at the can.

  “Just don’t break any windows.”

  “Then don’t try to get me to sit down and pray for my sister right now and tell God I forgive her—when I don’t.”

  “What do you think forgiveness is, anyway?”

  I had to think about that one, and my brain wasn’t functioning at its normal speed.

  “When you forgive somebody,” I said finally, “you tell them, ‘It’s okay, forget about it, let’s go on as if it never happened.’”

  “No, that makes me want to throw up,” Dominica said. “I mean, sometimes that’s appropriate, like when you fight somebody for the last blouse on the sale table. But most of the time that approach is just being a doormat.”

  “Then what’s forgiveness?”

  “It’s saying to God, ‘I’m going to stop tearing myself up over this person, and I’m going to pray for him and get on with my life. I no longer wish he would go directly to hell and not pass go and not collect $200.’”

  “Do I have to mean it?”

  “You have to want to mean it.” Dominica raised an eyebrow at my 7-Up can, and I handed it to her. She took a swig out of it and then looked at me as she ran the back of her hand across her mouth. “You’ve got a tough road ahead of you, Toni. You can’t go down it with a clear head—you can’t hear God, you can’t know what Jesus would do—if you’re all clogged up with hate. And guilt.”

  “Don’t even talk to me about guilt. I’m drowning in it.”

  “Do you want God to forgive you for whatever it is you think is your fault in all this?”

  “Are you kidding me? I want out of the guilt and on with what I’m supposed to be doing for my child right now.”

  Dominica stuck the soda can between her knees so she could illustrate with her hands. “All you have to do is ask for God’s forgiveness and it’s yours. That was the point of Jesus’ dying for us. He’s already taken the rap.” She pushed her head forward. “But, and this is a big but, you can’t expect forgiveness from God if you in turn aren’t willing to make the effort to forgive the people who have taken you and your son and your nieces and nephew and ripped you apart.”

  I sank my head into my hands, elbows on the table next to her thighs. “I don’t know if I can do that.”

  I felt a warm hand resting on the back of my head. “All you have to do is be willing and try. If you’re trying, God’s good with that and He can use you. Otherwise, you’re dead weight. Ben and Wyndham don’t need dead weight.”

  We prayed then, both of us. I left crying, but Dominica let me go. She said they were healthy tears—as long as I could see through them to drive.

  I left Ben with Yancy until morning, and for the second night in a row, I sat up until the sun rose. I couldn’t have slept if I’d tried, and I couldn’t just lie in the bed and let the visions of my own sister molesting my little boy run through my head, not yet.

  So I stayed up and I tried. I talked to Jesus…no, I begged. I slammed my face into my pillow and wailed for help. I hugged my knees and rocked back and forth and gave voice to despair until I was hoarse. And then I cried.

  At dawn I made tea from generic bags and sipped it from the mug Ben had painted for me for Mother’s Day. Huh. Being a mother was not what anyone had told me it would be, certainly not what I’d imagined when I’d found myself pregnant. In fact, nothing about my life or Ben’s was unfolding in a way anyone would have dared suggest. I—independent Antonia Kerrington Wells—would never have predicted this kind of loneliness for myself.

  Suddenly, for the first time since I’d left Virginia, I longed for Chris’s arms around me.

  Not for his attorney’s rationale explaining this all away. Not for his stubborn denial or his fear or his one-track desire to bring me back to our old, unhealthy way of life.

  I just wanted his arms.

  I called him at six to tell him about Wyndham’s disclosure. There was no answer, so I left a message for him to call me. The fact that he wasn’t home at that hour on a Sunday morning erased the desire to be held by him. I didn’t dwell on where he could possibly be.

  I met Yancy and crew at church and brought Ben home with me after the service. He was testy—wouldn’t eat his lunch even though he himself had selected peanut butter and jelly and had specifically requested that it be cut into triangles. I knew it was probably because I’d left him so much over the weekend, but I didn’t let that stop me from doing what I realized I had to do.

  Around two o’clock he was playing relatively peacefully in his room, tying a long string from every conceivable knob and hook to another until the place looked like a giant spiderweb. I made him sit down on the floor with me, my head bent beneath the string-web, and I told him listening to me for just a few minutes was in the box right now. It was only because there is God that he nodded and waited for me to speak.

  “I’m so sorry about what’s happened to you,” I said. “I know about Uncle Sid. I know about Aunt Bobbi. I know about Wyndham and all the things they did to you. I will do everything I can to make the hurt go away, and so will God. We can both imagine Jesus giving us big old hugs and telling us it’s okay.”

  His brown eyes grew round. He wanted to glaze them over, I could see that. I had to get it all out before I lost him.

  “Please believe me, Ben—I will never ever hurt you. I will protect you, no matter what happens. I know I didn’t before, but now I know things I didn’t know then. Let me be the one to take care of it now. You don’t have to anymore.”

  He watched my face for a moment, the way a baby does before he decides whether to reward you with a smile or scream his head off.

  “Is that all?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Can I go play now?”

  “You can. But first tell me whether you understand everything I just said.”

  Slowly, he nodded, the cowlick bobbing the way a little boys cowlick should bob.

  “Okay?” I said.

  And he answered, “Okay.”

  The rest of the day, all night, and throughout the next afternoon—as I explained over and over to customers what civet of piglet was and stuffed the resulting tips into my apron pocket—I pondered wh
at I’d said to Ben. I had to, because I had no idea where it had come from.

  I knew how it had come—from staying up Saturday night and putting everything aside but my responsibility to my son and pulling up whatever trust in God I could muster.

  I thought at that point that I had already given up everything I could give up—a prestigious career, a palatial house, a luxurious car, a hefty stock portfolio, a lifestyle that required no manual labor. And in essence, I’d given up my own idea of myself. I’d sacrificed it all for Ben’s healing.

  And then suddenly there was more I had to throw away: my homicidal anger at Wyndham and Sid and Bobbi and Mama and Chris; my need to get revenge; my desire to turn my back on the whole thing and pretend it had never happened. Now I couldn’t fantasize about lopping off Sid’s privates or Bobbi’s fingers. I couldn’t spend hours venting to Reggie and Yancy about my mother’s idiocy or Chris’s ignorance. I could no longer give in to those urges because I had to focus even more on my child—who had experienced more abuse in just a few months of his young existence than most people do in an entire lifetime.

  At that moment when I sat down on the floor with Ben and let unplanned words pour out of me, I knew an old Toni had died—and God had created a new one.

  I finally knew what it meant to be born again.

  The second it hit me—as I was headed for Table 7 to greet my next set of diners—I turned over that new life to a God I knew was real. Real in the person of Jesus Christ. It was as natural as breathing.

  That could have been why I didn’t drop my order pad as well as my teeth when I saw who my customers at Table 7 were. I would have known that bald head anywhere—and the set of health-club shoulders across from it.

  “Mr. Faustman, Mr. Marshall. Welcome to La Belle Meuniere.”

  I took great delight in the fumbling and sputtering that went on as Jeffrey Faustman and Charles R. Marshall looked up in bewilderment from their menus. I wasn’t sure whether it was the fact that I was their server or that they didn’t understand a word they were reading that had rendered them speechless, quipless, and suaveless. Didn’t matter. I simply smiled and said, “May I recommend the civet of piglet?”