False Allegations

by Andrew Vachss

  Heather was on her side of the grille when the elevator arrived. This time she was wearing a modest plum–colored silk blouse over a black pleated skirt. But her dark stockings were seamed up the back and the skirt was six inches too short. I could see the faint outline of an ankle chain surrounding the bandage on her left foot. Her spike heels were the same color as her blouse.

  "Hi!" she said brightly.

  "How you doing?" I responded.

  "I'm great…now that it's finally happening. Come on, they're waiting for you."

  I followed her down the hall, listening to the rasp of nylon as her thick thighs brushed together under the short skirt. She turned the corner, ushering me in ahead of her.

  "Mr. Burke," Kite said, getting to his feet. "Thank you for coming."

  "Like we agreed," I replied, shaking the bony, blue–veined hand he offered me, going along with the show.

  "This is Jennifer," he said, nodding toward a young woman seated in a straight–backed teakwood chair. "Jennifer Dalton."

  I walked over to her, held out my hand. "Pleased to meet you," I said.

  "Me too," she answered, not getting up. Her eyes were too big for her thin, pinched face. Her hair was mouse brown, thin at the temples. She was dressed in a slate–gray business suit over a fussy white blouse with a small embroidered collar, modest black pumps on her feet, sitting with her knees pressed together.

  "Would you prefer I…leave you alone?" Kite asked.

  "Up to you," I said to the woman.

  "I'd rather you stayed," she said to Kite. Her voice was low and reedy, but very clear, every syllable articulated.

  "As you wish," Kite said, taking a seat in his fan–shaped chair.

  I took the leather armchair. Heard the tap of Heather's heels but this time, she was wasn't going to stand behind me—she took a position between the woman's back and the hologram, standing with her hands behind her, chest outthrust, orange eyes steady on me.

  I settled in, investing thirty seconds in observing the woman's composed face. "How old are you?" I asked.

  Her face twitched. It wasn't the question she expected. "I'm, uh, twenty–seven. Twenty–eight in November."

  "Were you born here? In New York?"

  "In Queens. In Flushing. But we moved around when I was little."

  "Where?"

  "New Jersey. Teaneck, then Englewood Cliffs. Then to upstate New York. But I really grew up in Manhattan. On the Upper West Side."

  "You went to private school?" I asked her.

  "Yes. How did you know?"

  "Just a guess. You have any brothers and sisters?"

  "I have a brother. Robert. He's two years older."

  "What does he do?"

  "Do?"

  "For a living."

  "Oh. He…doesn't do anything, I guess. He's in rehab."

  "For…?"

  "Drugs."

  "He ever do time?"

  "Time?" she asked, her face confused.

  "In jail."

  "Oh. No, he was never in jail. I mean, just once. A couple of weeks, that's all."

  "Did you go and visit him?"

  She shifted slightly in her chair. "Why are you asking all this?"

  I looked over her shoulder. Heather was in the same spot, standing stony. "Just background," I said.

  She looked over at Kite. He didn't respond, watching her as though she was a chemical experiment, waiting for the result.

  It was quiet for a long minute. "No, I didn't visit him," she said quietly. "We're not close."

  "Are your parents still together?" I asked.

  "No. No they're not. Is that 'background' too?"

  "Yes, it is, Miss Dalton," I said smoothly. "These are…delicate matters. I want to establish a foundation before we explore the central issues."

  She took a breath through her mouth, her shallow chest not involved in the process. "Go ahead," she said finally.

  "Your turn now," I said, switching gears. "Just tell me about it."

  "He—"

  "From the beginning," I said softly. "From before it started, okay?"

  She gulped another breath. "Okay. When I was twelve…I know that's when it was because it was just after my birthday, that's just before Thanksgiving…School was already started. I was doing all right there. Not great or anything, mostly B's and C's on my report card. And I was never any trouble. My teachers liked me. I had friends and everything. But my parents thought I should be doing better."

  "Your grades?"

  "Not just my grades. I was a puller."

  "Trichotillomania?"

  "Yes!" her eyes rolled up, settled back down, focusing on my face. "How did you know about that?"

  "I had a friend who had it," I lied. "Did they send you to a doctor?"

  "No. They didn't know it was a…disease, then. They just thought I was strange, I think."

  "So what did they do?"

  "My parents were very religious. Psalmists—do you know it?"

  "No. It sounds fundamentalist."

  "Well it's not," she said primly. "The official name of the church is the Gospel of Job's Song. And its prophet is Job, not Jesus. It was founded in the sixteenth century by John Michael, a man who suffered terrible misfortunes—he had epilepsy, and he underwent a crisis in faith. When the revelations came to him, he started the church. Eventually, the Psalmists had to emigrate to America to escape persecution. They settled in upstate New York. Some say their teachings were an influence on Joseph Smith."

  "The Mormon prophet?"

  "Do you know his work?" she asked, a faint look of surprise playing across her face.

  "Only what I've read," I told her. I didn't know what Kite had told her about my background, so I didn't tell her where I read about religion—prisons get more missionaries than tropical islands. "You were raised in the church?" I asked.

  "We both were, me and my brother. But we didn't shun others, Psalmists aren't a cult or anything."

  "So they turned to the church for help with your…problems?"

  "They said I needed lessons. Religious lessons. So they sent me to Brother Jacob. Psalmists believe you have to pay with your own labor for what you receive. So I had to clean Brother Jacob's house in exchange for the lessons."

  "Tell me about the lessons," I said, leaning forward. Heather was a rock in the middle distance, the hologram winking behind her, shape–shifting in the morning light.

  "The lessons were all about loving myself. Brother Jacob said if I didn't love myself, I would keep hurting myself. He said that's what people did when they were drunks, or drug addicts. Or even murderers. They hurt themselves. That's why I pulled my hair. And I had to stop or I would never be happy."

  "Lessons from the Bible?"

  "From Psalms. The Psalms are the truth, the real truth in the Bible. Brother Jacob said the Bible was written. By people, not God. But the Psalms were songs that had stood the test of time way before anyone knew how to write."

  "So he taught you the Psalms?"

  "The meaning of the Psalms."

  "And how did he teach you, Jennifer."

  "First with the ruler," she said, face tightened as her skin bleached slightly. "He said the ruler was for learning rules."

  "A wooden ruler, like for measuring?"

  "It was for correction, not measuring," she said in a mechanical voice. "First I would get it on my palm. He would ask me, every time, if I was pulling my hair out. If I told him yes, I would get the ruler. It stung at first, but I got used to it. After a while, he'd have to hit me really hard to make me cry."

  "But he did that?"

  "Yes. I always had to cry."

  "When did he switch?"

  "Switch?"

  "To someplace else. Besides your palm?"

  "How did you know that?" she asked, dry–washing her hands, looking at her lap. "How could you—?"

  "Just a guess," I said. "Maybe an educated guess."

  "One day, I didn't want to get hit. So I lied. I told him I wasn
't pulling my hair out. I used to sleep with gloves on. Even with a ski mask on my head—so I couldn't get to my hair. It didn't work. But when he asked me, I lied."

  "And then…?"

  "He used it on my thighs. He made me lift my dress and he hit me on the back of my thighs with the ruler."

  "And it hurt worse?"

  "Yes! Not just my…legs. It made me feel all…crawly inside."

  "So you stopped lying?"

  "Yes. I mean, no. It didn't matter. He started asking me if I had learned to love myself. Every time I said I couldn't, he would hit me. Sometimes with my pants down. After a while, he made me take all my clothes off to be hit."

  Heather had shifted her stance slightly, leaning forward with her back arched, like a ship's figurehead cutting the wind, mouth set and hard. "Did you ever tell your parents, Jennifer?" I asked her. "About what Brother Jacob was doing?"

  "I…tried. But when I started, my mother told me I had to trust him. He was from the church, so I had to trust him. Whatever he was doing, whatever it was, it was for my own good. I never told her any more after that."

  "What happened next?"

  "How did you know there was a 'next,' Mr. Burke?" her voice hardening with suspicion.

  "There's always a 'next,'" I told her. "The only question is what it was."

  "Don't you know?" she leaned forward in her chair, a sly, challenging look on her face.

  "You learned to love yourself."

  She put her face in her hands and started to cry. Heather stepped close behind her, putting her hands on the woman's shoulders, unblinking orange eyes steady on mine.

  Kite didn't move.

  If I was a therapist, I would have stopped it then. We'd been going a long time, it was a natural place for a break. But if anything was going to break, it was going to be Jennifer Dalton. "Tell me about it," I said.

  She looked up at me, her thin face framed by her hands, too–big eyes blurry from the tears. "It sounds like you could tell me," she said. "How did you know? I need to know how you knew!"

  "I didn't really know anything," I assured her. "But when you hear the same material over and over again from different people—"

  "You think I'm lying? That I made this up?"

  "No. I don't think that."

  "Then you believe me?"

  "Not that either. I'm just listening, okay?"

  "When do you make up your mind?" she asked me, her hand twitching near her hair.

  "When I'm done," I said, going along patiently, letting her take me wherever she wanted me to go.

  "Could I have—?"

  Heather was already in motion, her heels tapping a faster rhythm than usual. She was back in a few seconds with the heavy brass tray, this time loaded with two small bottles of Coke, a heavy–bottomed clear glass tumbler, and a chrome ice bucket. She used a pair of tongs to drop three precise ice cubes into the tumbler, screwed the top off one of the Coke bottles in one long twist, and poured carefully. She held the tumbler in her left hand, watching it closely, like measuring medicine. Satisfied, she handed it to Jennifer Dalton—a bartender serving a regular customer the usual.

  Dalton took a long, deep drink, wrinkling her nose from the bubbles' tickle. She smiled up at Heather. "Thank you."

  "Sure, baby," Heather replied, holding the brass tray in one hand, patting Jennifer on the shoulder with the other.

  Jennifer cleared her throat, facing a task. When she spoke, her voice was flat, just–the–facts uninflected. "He told me to…touch myself," she said. "First my chest. I mean, I didn't really have a chest then, but it was…enough. So you could see it, I mean, enough. I had to smile while I did it. A real smile—he would always know. Then I had to do it…other places. Every other place."

  "Were you still pulling your hair?"

  "Yes. But mostly my eyebrows by then. He was giving me a drug—"

  "Brother Jacob?"

  "Yes."

  "Was he a doctor?"

  "No. He sent me to a doctor is what I should have said. A Psalmist doctor. Psalmists love the natural sciences—it's part of the teachings. The doctor prescribed the drug, but Brother Jacob gave it to me the first time."

  "You only took it that one time."

  "No, I took it every day. Once with each meal, and one more time before I went to bed."

  "So you had to take them yourself, right? You weren't with Brother Jacob all day…"

  "He told my mother," Jennifer said, as though that settled it. "He told her I had to take it. She made sure I took it."

  "What was it, do you know?

  "A capsule. Orange and white. That's all I remember."

  "Do you think it helped? With the hair pulling?"

  "In a way, I thought it did. But I thought the…other stuff did more."

  "Touching yourself?"

  "Yes. Like a good medicine that tastes bad, you know?"

  "Were you still getting hit?"

  "When I did something wrong, like lying. But not very much. I didn't touch myself…down there," she said, nodding toward her lap, "the right way. But Brother Jacob didn't hit me. He said he would show me. To help me."

  "Did it help you?"

  "Yes. Yes it did," she said earnestly. "He did it…better. It was…it made me feel…warm. And safe. When he did it, I mean. It was safe when he did it."

  "Why was that so safe, Jennifer?"

  "Because he was in charge. He was in control. When he was in control, he could make me do things. Things for my own good. I never pulled my hair in front of him. Never. He told me, once I got my period, I would never pull my hair again. Because he had prepared me. But he wasn't finished…"

  She was quiet for so long that I tossed her a question to snap her out of the trance. "He wasn't finished with preparing you…?"

  "For my period. He said I had to be a woman before it came. My period, I mean. He did it with his hand. His thumb, I mean. He was very gentle. It took a long time. And he was right."

  "About what?"

  "About everything. He stopped hitting me after that. He just…prepared me. We were in love by then. Both of us. I mean, he was older, but he truly loved me. He said we would be together forever. First in spirit. Then in body. Then in wedlock. In the church. We were already together in spirit. But we couldn't join in body until I became a woman. He loved me, so he said we had to wait for that. And we couldn't wed until I was through with college, that's when it would be right."

  She went quiet again, but this time I didn't prod her, warned off by a sharp glance from Heather. "It came when I was a couple of months past my thirteen birthday," she finally said. "That was late, everybody said. I couldn't stand the waiting, but Brother Jacob was a rock. We did…other things. But he never came inside me until I had my period that first time. I couldn't wait to tell him."

  "How long did it last?" I asked.

  "That first time?"

  "No. The…situation. With you and Brother Jacob?"

  "Oh. Until I was fifteen. Almost sixteen."

  "What happened?"

  "They transferred him. To another community. In Buffalo—all the way on the other side of the state. We wrote to each other. I still thought it was okay. But then I found out—he had another…girlfriend, I guess it was. Whatever. She was much younger than me. Just a baby."

  "How did you find out?" I asked softly, needing her to tell me the whole thing before she shut down again.

  "I went to visit him. A surprise, it was supposed to be. I took the bus. I told my mother I was going on a school trip. It took all day. By the time I got to his address, it was late afternoon. When he opened the door, I could see the shock on his face."

  "Did he let you in?"

  "Yes. He had to. It was cold outside, and getting dark too. He told me he was angry with me for just showing up like that, but he said he wouldn't tell anyone. He took me into a front room and told me to sit down. He said he was seeing somebody, but he'd only be a little while. That's when I saw her. That's when I knew."


  "What did you see, Jennifer?"

  "I heard a door open," she said, hands clasped together so tightly they were mottled with bloodless white patches. "I heard him walking down the hall. Away from me. I hear another door close. That's when I knew what he was doing. Going to the bathroom. He always used to do that, just after…"

  Her voice trailed off. I let this one go, warning Heather with my eyes to stand where she was.

  "She was about ten years old," Jennifer finally said. "I snuck down the hall while he was in the bathroom. I looked in and I saw her. Skinny little girl. She was…playing with it. With the ruler. I used to do that too. That's when I knew."

  "What did you do?"

  "I just left. I walked out. I don't even remember going to the bus station. I just went home. And then I just forgot about it."

  "What do you mean, forgot about it?"

  "I mean forgot it," she said. "Blanked it out…I don't know. But I never thought about it again until…"

  "Until…?"

  "Until I tried to kill myself. The last time. Psalmists have a prohibition against suicide. A powerful, strong prohibition. Job wished for death, but he never tried to take his own life. His refusal mocked Satan and so made Job great. I knew I could be shunned for trying to kill myself, and I was afraid. But the church counseled me. First a neighbor—"

  "In the hospital?"

  "A 'neighbor' means a member. All Psalmists are neighbors. They can't do pastoral counseling, but they can be…supportive, I guess. But it was a minister who did the real counseling."

  "Why did you try and kill yourself, Jennifer?"

  "Because it was all…nothing," she said, just above a whisper. "Just nothing. No matter what I tried to do, I failed. I flunked out of school. College, I mean. The work wasn't hard, but I just never did it. I drank. A lot. And I smoked marijuana. I took pills too."

  "The orange–and–white capsules? Too many of them?"

  "How did you…? I did do that, but that wasn't what I meant. Uppers mostly. Speed. The church helped me with that too. When I flunked out, they got me a job. In an AIDS hospice. Psalmists are the leaders there," she said proudly. "The Church has an encyclical condemning anyone who says AIDS is God's punishment for sin. Job's suffering was multiplied by his neighbors' belief that he committed some hidden sin. But really it was Satan who had tricked God into testing Job's faith. Job passed, and God has never tested any of us that way since. AIDS is a plague, not a punishment."