by Robin Brande
I can’t do that, I’m afraid. I don’t have the skill or the patience for it. I was thinking about that as I sat there, wishing so desperately that I could skip over this part and land on the other side and look back where I had been and say, “Whew! That’s over! Who would have thought it would turn out so well?”
There’s a famous courtroom scene in the Old Testament, where two women come to King Solomon with the case of the dead baby. Both women had infants who were about the same age, and during the night one woman rolled over and accidentally suffocated her own baby. While the other woman slept, the first woman switched babies and claimed the live one was her own.
King Solomon declares that the live baby should be cut in half to share between the women. The true mother—and this is King Solomon’s trick—says, “Oh no! Please! She can have the baby.” Solomon knows only the true mother would say that.
There were no mysteries like that in my case. One father, one mother, one daughter with no one fighting over her.
“Elizabeth Aimes?”
I heard my name echoing through the tunnel I had built around my head. The sound took so long to reach me that by the time it did Posie had already elbowed me twice.
Everyone was looking at me. Toni Margress motioned for me to come up front. I rose onto watery legs.
“Be brave,” Posie whispered.
I walked down the aisle, pushed through the little wooden gate that separated the audience from the actors, slunk past my father and his lawyer, slipped into the witness chair and couldn’t look at anyone as the bailiff bade me to raise my right hand and swear.
“So help me God.” Shouldn’t it have been, “So help me, God”?
It was too late to turn back now. I would continue to lie and hope for God’s blessing later.
[2]
Okay, so what did I really have? I mean, really?
There was that time when my father came up to me while I was washing dishes at the sink, and he stroked my back all the way down to the crest of my butt. What did he mean by that? Did I remind him of my mother at that age? Did he wish he could have slept with her back then, when she was still a teenager?
Other than that and the time in my room when he was in that frenzy and ran his hands all over my face and body, did he really ever touch me? Did I ever feel threatened by him? Grossed out, yes. Creeped out, yeah. But did I or do I honestly believe that my father would have parted my legs when I was a little girl and stuck himself into me and raped me?
But what did his letter mean if it were not a confession of that?
And then there’s the evidence the sperm, and that cannot be ignored. You can brush it aside like he did—a lab mix-up, some mistake—but I don’t believe in mistakes like that. And the doctor did have the lab check twice. What I believe is that my father had certain tendencies, and that he might have done a fair job at restraining them for most of his life, but he couldn’t eliminate them or stifle them forever.
Do I believe he raped Mikey? You don’t know how hard I don’t want to believe that. I want my brother to be clean and pure all of his life, and even when he’s married and has children I don’t want to have to think about him having sex. He’s a doll, my baby, this perfect bundle of innocence, and I will kill the man who tries to take that away.
I surprise myself when I hear myself say that, because I don’t think I’m a violent person. But there’s something about true purity that makes me want to stand up on my hind legs and defend it to my death if necessary. I feel if I saw someone hurt my little brother I would attack without mercy and claw at him with my fingernails and bite down to the muscle, then the bone, and I would not stop until blood was everywhere and the pervert’s pulse was completely gone.
It makes me nauseous to think these thoughts, to feel just how much I am capable of. I don’t think I would do as much to save myself, but I would do it to save someone innocent like Mikey.
“Can you tell us some of the things your father has done?” Toni Margress asked me.
I trained my eyes on her face, just like she told me to. “He used to come to my room sometimes, after my brother was asleep—”
A low moan hummed toward me from my father’s table.
I kept my eyes on my mother’s lawyer. “—and he would—you know . . .”
Toni Margress waited to let me finish, and when she saw I was having trouble, prompted, “No, we don’t know—you’ll have to tell us.” She gestured toward the judge, and I turned to him to get my eyes further away from my father.
“He touched me.”
“Touched you how?” the judge asked.
“On my breasts.”
The moan.
“What did he do?” the judge asked.
“He fondled them—you know.” I flushed blood red and swallowed hard. “Then he stuck his tongue into my mouth and—”
No one could fail to hear my father’s increased moaning and the low, “No, no . . .” I didn’t want to look over there, but I did. My father stared right at me, anger and anguish on his face.
The judge cautioned Samuel Greaves to keep his client quiet.
“Yes, Your Honor.” Samuel Greaves whispered to my father. My father shook his head and wouldn’t take his eyes off me.
I turned to the judge again. He urged me to go on.
“Then he . . .” This was the part I had thought about saying—had even practiced out loud by whispering in front of a mirror—but it felt like glass I was trying to force out of my throat.
I couldn’t look at anyone. I hated to lie, no matter what better purpose it served. It wasn’t my nature. I knew I had to do it, but it tore at me, at some part that was still untouched but now never would be again.
“Then he raped me.”
A roar erupted from my father. “Thou shalt not bear false witness!” He tried to stand but Mr. Greaves held him down.
“I’ll have him removed from the court,” the judge warned Greaves.
“Sit down and shut up,” I heard Greaves hiss at my father, who glared at him hatefully for speaking so plainly. “I’m sorry, Your Honor. Won’t happen again.” Greaves kept his hand firmly on my father’s shoulder. I looked at the shoulder rather than the face just above.
“He had intercourse with you?” the judge asked me.
I nodded.
“You have to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for the record,” the judge informed me.
I said, “Yes. Intercourse.”
My father slumped forward and pounded his fist on the table.
“Lizzie,” Toni Margress said, “before that night, were you a virgin?”
“I’m not sure,” I answered quietly.
“You’re not sure?” Toni Margress repeated. “Why is that?”
“I think he also had . . . intercourse with me when I was five. The doctor found sperm in me.”
My father wailed and rubbed his forehead back and forth on his folded arm. The judge signaled his bailiff, who quickly strode to the table and lifted my father by the elbow.
“You’ll have to wait outside,” the judge said.
“She’s lying!”
“That will be all.” The judge flicked his hand dismissively and turned back to me and pretended to ignore the man shouting that I was a liar.
But I could not ignore him. His face enthralled me. I watched his mouth as it formed the words, “Stop! Please stop!” and “God knows you’re lying!” and “Lizzie, why are you doing this to me?” And then the double doors swung closed and the courtroom was unnaturally quiet. I breathed out a breath I didn’t know I had been holding. I wanted to cry and be led out myself. I hated every inch of me, from the lying eyes to the lying mouth to the feet that had carried me up to the witness stand to do what I had to do.
I spoke rapidly now to get it over with. “He had sex with me six times last summer. He always pulled out so I wouldn’t get pregnant.” This was a detail I was proud of thinking up. “I always begged him to stop, but he wouldn’t. He said if my mother wasn’t the
re to do it—”
And here I glanced at my mother and hated myself for what I saw. Her hand covered her mouth and her eyes were tear-filled slits. She sobbed as quietly as she could. I had forgotten that she was hearing most of these details for the first time. I had forgotten that they might hurt her—horrify her—and this last bit of dramatic license about me filling in for her was simply more than she could stand. She let out a heave like someone had punched her in the stomach, then she laid her face on her arms and sobbed away.
Posie was crying too, and so I figured I might as well, too. I covered my face with my hands and said, “This is too hard!”
The judge misunderstood me. “That’s all right, you go ahead and take your time. Leonard,” he said to his bailiff, “some water please, and some tissues.”
I ignored the cup of water—how could I swallow past the shard of glass in my throat?—and worked through four cheap, stiff tissues before I could look at the judge again.
“Do I have to say any more?” I pleaded.
“No, but Mr. Greaves may have some questions.”
“I do,” said the pompous ass as he stood, and I’m sorry, but I have no respect for the man. What if I really had been raped by his client? Would he have asked these same questions?
“You say he came to you . . .” He pretended to refer to his notes. “Six times. Is that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Only six times?”
“No, we only had intercourse six times. He came to me almost every night.”
“Oh, so he came to you—where was that? In your bedroom?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Were you alone in the house?”
“No, my little brother was there.”
“That’s Michael?”
“Yes.”
“And where does he sleep?”
“In the room down the hall. My father’s bedroom is across from mine.”
“What time of night would this be?” Greaves asked.
“I don’t know, late, after Mikey went to sleep.”
“All right, so your father would come to your—did you have a lock on your door?”
“No,” I said, happy for a question I could answer truthfully, “he wouldn’t let me have one.”
“So he just walked into your room and then what?”
“He’d start touching me.”
“Yes, all right. And where was that exactly?”
“I told you. On my breasts.”
“Anywhere else?”
“All over.”
“All . . . over,” he repeated, distracted by his notes.
I waited nervously while he flipped through pages on his legal pad. I glanced at Posie, who had nothing to offer but a sympathetic half-smile. My mother had composed herself and sat riveted to Mr. Greaves’s slow, ponderous search for just the right zinger to flesh out the liar my father said I was.
“So you say you were a virgin? Maybe?”
“I would be if not for him,” I answered smartly.
“Yes, yes, I see,” Samuel Greaves mumbled, pinching his cheek thoughtfully. “So you’re probably not on birth control of any kind.”
“No.”
“No reason to be, right?”
“Right,” I agreed.
“In fact,” he continued, glancing at his notes, “you told Dr. Henrietta Parse, the court’s custody evaluator, that you have never used birth control, correct?”
“Correct.”
“So if someone told us that you had been on birth control from the time you were thirteen, that would be a lie?”
“Yes,” I answered easily. I admit I was slow to understand. Greaves nodded a few more times as he flipped through the sheets of legal pad. “One moment, Your Honor.” He traced his finger down the page until he found the words he was looking for.
He peered at me over the top of his half glasses. “Do you know a young woman named Tessa Blake?”
My face went slack. Cold penetrated my bones. I stiffened and stared at my tormentor. Now, finally, I understood exactly where he was going.
That bastard was going to get me.
A Promise Made
The banner above the stage read, A PROMISE MADE, A PROMISE KEPT. It hung behind the choir, strung from the ceiling speakers by bright yellow cording.
It was a Saturday afternoon, bright and hot with summer, and there were a dozen of us fourteen-year-olds standing in a column down the center aisle, our parents flanking us on either side.
The girls held bouquets of white daisies. Each boy had a white carnation pinned to the pocket of his dress shirt.
The organist smiled. I think she loved these ceremonies as much as weddings. She lifted her fingers to the keys and positioned her feet on the pedals and started to play. The congregation rose together and sang along. The twelve of us and our escorts began our slow procession down the aisle.
Tessa Blake and her parents were in front of me. She was my best friend. I had known her since first grade. Even though we attended different schools, I spent more time with her than with any other girl. We saw each other at church at least three times a week, and slept over at each other’s houses a minimum of twice a month.
As we marched up the aisle—step, pause, step, pause, just like Pastor Mills had taught us—I stared at Tessa’s bare, tan back. No surprise, she wasn’t wearing a bra. While the rest of us had dressed modestly for the occasion, Tessa wore a white halter sundress, dangerously high white sandals, and half a dozen tiny jeweled clips in her short black hair. Her eyeshadow was charcoal gray and her lipstick pearly pink.
I had bought a new dress just for this day. It was made of soft rose-colored cotton, gathered slightly at the bust and waist, the hem falling just below my knee. My mother had braided my hair—it was longer then, all the way to middle of my back—and loosened a few auburn tendrils to wisp around my face. And even though she didn’t believe in makeup before high school, my mother made an exception. After I was dressed she called me into her bedroom and sat me at her vanity and swept blush onto my cheeks and painted glimmering rose lipgloss onto my mouth. She showed me how to use her eyelash curler and apply mascara. My green eyes suddenly looked wider and brighter. I felt beautiful, if it’s not too vain to say that. And I felt ready—grown up. It must be how other girls that age feel when they go through their own ceremonies—Confirmations or Bat Mitzvahs or whatever they do.
My parents dressed up, too. My mother wore a sea-green silk dress with a long matching jacket. Even in her high heels she was an inch shorter than I was. My father looked tall, gray, and handsome in his blackwatch suit and the burgundy tie I had given him for Father’s Day the year before. We all grinned at each other as we left the house. We knew we looked good.
The hymn drew to a close. Our procession reached the front of the sanctuary and we fanned out along the stage, our backs to the congregation, our faces turned to Pastor Mills. He smiled and opened his arms wide. “Welcome, children of God!”
The congregation applauded. A few of us had already begun to weep. This was a day I been waiting for—my transition out of childhood. In a few weeks I would be starting high school. This was it.
Tessa winked at me. I smiled and brushed away a tear.
Pastor Mills continued to hold his arms aloft, signifying the majesty of the occasion. He had designed this ceremony himself a few years ago, and written all the vows. It was hugely popular with the parents.
“These children,” Pastor Mills told his flock, “are here today to affirm their love and commitment to Christ. In the presence of their families, their friends, and their fellow Christians, today they pledge to devote their minds and their bodies to God, to abstain from any sins of the flesh, and to maintain their purity and innocence until such day as they are joined with another Christian in holy matrimony. Loved ones, today we represent the Body of Christ. Children, is this your pledge to us?”
“It is,” we answered in unison.
“Let us pray.”
We all bowed our heads. I was too wound up to close my eyes completely. To my right I saw Danny Blaisdek rolling nervously back and forth from his heels to the balls of his feet. His mother grabbed his arm to stop him. I sneaked a peek to my left. Tessa’s eyes were closed. Her face was as serene as an angel’s. She took a quick chomp of gum she wasn’t supposed to have.
“Amen,” Pastor Mills said, and we all agreed, “Amen.”
He lifted his head, smiled, and clapped his hands together once as if preparing for a meal. “Shall we begin?” A few people in the audience tittered.
We turned to face the crowd. Pastor Mills started at the end furthest from Tessa and me. I would pledge before her.
Pastor Mills laid his hand on the first girl’s head. “Margaret Peacock, do you take Christ as your Savior, forsaking all others, and pledge yourself mind, body, and soul to follow His teachings and live a pure and holy life?”
Margaret’s voice broke. “I do.” Her parents beamed.
“Do you promise yourself, your parents, and the Lord Jesus Christ that you will remain pure and untouched until the day you are lawfully wedded?”
“I do.”
Margaret’s eyes glistened as her father lifted her hand and her mother slipped the Promise Ring onto the fourth finger of Margaret’s left hand, where it would remain until a wedding band took its place. Margaret’s parents hugged her.
Pastor Mills addressed the crowd. “You have borne witness to Margaret’s pledge. Does anyone know any reason why we may not accept this child into the body of Christ? Speak now or forever be silent.”
“We do not,” the congregation dutifully answered.
Pastor Mills moved on.
“Do you, Claire Murray, take Christ as your Savior . . .”
Again I glanced at Tessa. She swayed a little bit, dancing to some tune inside her head, completely unaffected by what was going on. Her parents stood placidly waiting, staring at nothing in particular.