Something terrible was about to happen. The knowledge swept through Selena and she found herself gripping the edge of the table with both hands.
“I’m pregnant,” Phoebe said quietly, as if she were asking a question. She dropped her arms, then immediately clasped her hands together again, so tightly that the blood drained from them, and Selena could see the sharp blue bones of her knuckles.
Selena glanced rapidly at Kent, but he was staring at Phoebe. Suddenly he hit the tabletop with his open hand.
“Brian!” he said. His voice was flat and hard, the name a truncated sound. Again inadvertently, Selena found herself wondering what he would say if it turned out to be somebody else. She shuddered, then opened her mouth to say something although she had no idea what. “Is it?” Kent insisted, his voice too loud in the small room. There was a massive swooping of wings, a great wind of sound, and all the birds outside on the lines and in the trees lifted off and whirled away. Phoebe shrank up against the cupboards.
“Yes,” she said. She could hardly be heard. Kent let out a violent rush of breath, at the same time turning his head toward Selena, his expression at once angry and bewildered. Selena was afraid to speak until she could see him settle on one emotion. Finally he turned to her, she could see he was actually trying not to smile—but it would not be a happy smile, it would be a sour, ugly smile—“I suppose that money we borrowed is going to pay for a wedding now.”
Selena tried to speak, but couldn’t. Her own emotions, struggling with each other, rose and filled her chest and throat, blocking out words. Images filled her mind, the wrong things, stupid things—the new sweater she had just finished knitting for Phoebe to wear at university, the basket of tomatoes in the cool cellar, the kitchen floor that needed washing. The one image she did not want to see, Phoebe and Brian together, loomed behind all of them, a dark, unspecific cloud, like a thunderstorm blowing in from the mountains, far, far to the west.
“Does Brian know?” Kent asked, in that same harsh, too-loud voice, as if his vocal cords had inexplicably tightened. Phoebe shook her head, no. “Jesus!” Kent began, but she interrupted him.
“I … I … don’t want to marry him,” Phoebe said. Her eyes had filled with tears, tears began to run down her cheeks. She stared at the floor, sniffling, and let the tears fall without trying to wipe them away. Selena and Kent stared at her in astonishment.
“But,” Selena began.
“Of course you’ll marry him,” Kent said, not shouting now, his tone reasonable. “You’re going to have his baby.” Then, “Jesus!” again. Phoebe began to sob, the sound surprisingly quiet in the shabby, familiar kitchen. Selena found herself searching in her pockets for a tissue, not taking her eyes off her daughter, not able to move from where she sat.
“He … raped … me!” Phoebe gasped, the phrase broken by her sobs. She lifted her head to say this, her voice was loud, her eyes burning now. She pulled in a hard, wheezing breath, it sounded as if she were choking. At that, Selena found her legs and jumped up, hurrying to Phoebe, putting her arms around her, pulling her against her breast. Phoebe began to sob in earnest against her mother’s shoulder, as if she were only now fully realizing what had happened to her, when? months before.
Kent was standing now, too, Selena heard the thump of his boots and his chair scrape the vinyl floor.
“Raped you!” he was shouting again. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Just then Selena caught sight of Jason’s face at the back door. He stood there for a second, looking in, not opening the door, then went quickly away. Selena lifted Phoebe’s head gently and wiped at her reddened, wet eyes with the tissue.
“Phoebe,” she murmured, “Phoebe.”
“He raped you.” Kent repeated. He was striding the length of the kitchen, his boots making a hollow, hard sound on the creaky old floor. “He’s your boyfriend for Christ’s sake! How could he rape you?” Phoebe pulled away from Selena, and bent toward her father where he had stopped with his back to the kitchen door. His face was in shadow, Selena couldn’t make it out.
“I didn’t want to!” Phoebe shouted at her father, then began to cry again. “You told me not to!” She turned to her mother. “Mom?” she asked, in an unnatural, high tone.
“How the hell could he rape you?” Kent asked, as if she hadn’t spoken. Selena, pushing Phoebe’s damp hair away from her swollen, tear-stained face, heard what Kent said. She heard it with her ears, but she pushed it away, he couldn’t have meant it.
“It’ll be all right,” she crooned to Phoebe, gathering her in her arms again. “It’ll be okay.” Although she couldn’t see how it could be, ever again.
She turned to Kent, who was still standing there, his back to the door, the pale autumn sun shining in behind him, keeping his face in shadow. Selena peered into the darkness that was his face, trying to find his eyes. It felt as if he was looking out at her, or perhaps at Phoebe. There was a silence, lasting perhaps a full minute, while birds chirped outside, and far away a hawk screeched. So many hawks, Selena thought, this time of year, fall, the young ones learning to hunt.
“Well, you’ll marry him, that’s all,” Kent said. He turned away and put his hand on the door. “The sooner the better, before the whole countryside knows about it.” He pushed open the door. “Get Brian over here,” he said, over his shoulder. Phoebe pulled away from Selena.
“Don’t you care that he raped me?” she screamed. She went toward her father, her nose running, tears pouring down her face again, her body bent at the waist, and Selena was struck by the awkwardness and yet beauty of the movement. “He raped me!” Phoebe screamed again.
Kent hesitated, letting the door go, looking down at her, not speaking. Selena said, “Kent, wait, don’t go.” He looked at her, made a disgusted sound, then stepped out into the cool morning sunshine, letting the door slap shut behind him. For a second he blotted out the light, then he was gone, striding toward the barn, his bootheels striking up dirt.
Phoebe turned to her mother. Her eyes did not seem to be focusing, at least whatever she was seeing, it wasn’t Selena, and her hands were fluttering in front of her. Selena had seen that once before, when a neighbour woman was told that her husband was dead, caught in a power take-off. Whole one minute, torn to bloody shreds the next. Selena had been a child at the time, watching her mother try to comfort the woman. And now she was the mother. She grasped Phoebe by the shoulders and shook her.
“Phoebe,” she said, putting her face close to her daughter’s, “Phoebe.” Phoebe lifted her face to her mother’s and her eyes seemed to focus again.
“He raped me,” she said softly. He did.”
They were sitting side by the side on the living room couch.
“I can’t marry him,” Phoebe said. “I couldn’t …”
“It’s all right,” Selena said. “I understand,” then found herself standing, walking around the room, touching things, and noticed her hands were shaking. “A nice boy.” She spat the words out. “A decent boy.” She felt she might be sick. She crossed the room and sat down again beside Phoebe, taking her hands in her own. “What happened? You’d better tell me what happened.” Although, God knew, she didn’t want to hear.
Phoebe turned her face away from her mother so that she was speaking to the wall. She swallowed and when she began to speak, her voice was quiet and uninflected, as though someone else were speaking, or she was telling her mother someone else’s story.
“We were in the truck, necking. Dad’s right about that part. We were necking. But he kept on kissing me. He put his hands between … my legs. I tried to pull his hands away, but I couldn’t. It was like … something took over in him, and it didn’t have anything to do with me. Like he didn’t even know who I was anymore.” She paused, lifting her hands as if she were about to wipe her eyes or rearrange her hair, then setting them down quietly in her lap without touching anything. “I began to get frightened. I knew what he wanted. I might even have been able to … let h
im, if he hadn’t turned … like that. If he’d … remembered … it was me.” She paused, breathing quickly, but still not moving.
“Did he hurt you? Did he hit you? Or …”
Phoebe shook her head, no.
“I knew I couldn’t stop him, though. And I kept thinking, you can’t do this! Nobody can do this!” She was shaking, and when Selena put her arms out to hold her, she was amazed to find that Phoebe was shaking with rage—not sorrow, not fear. But then the trembling subsided, she sighed, like a child, and went on.
“I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t stand the thought of anybody finding me like that. Helpless. Under him.” All the times she must have gone over it in her mind, Selena thought. “And besides, I couldn’t have called out even if I had wanted to. He put his arm here.” Phoebe put her fingers against her throat.
There was no other sound in the house. Only the faint roar of the tractor pulling the bale wagon in the nearby field marred the silence.
“He had no right,” Phoebe said. “Nobody has the right to do that to anybody else. To turn them into … an animal.” Her voice had lost its composure. She turned to her mother. “Is that how it is, Mom? It can’t be like that. It can’t.”
“No,” Selena said. “No. That’s not how it is.”
“I didn’t think it could be. I thought, the world would die if that’s how it is.” She was silent now, thinking. “You should have told me, Mom,” she said, softly, not reproachfully.
“I thought I did,” Selena said, helplessly. “I said, wait till you’re married. I meant, then you’ll know it’s right.” She could hear the uncertainty in her voice. What else could I have told her? she wondered, searching her mind, trying to think what she had missed, hadn’t understood herself, perhaps. But no, she did understand, only she had thought that Phoebe was still a child, that she was protected, that nothing would ever happen to her. I could kill him, she thought.
“Brian doesn’t know about the baby?”
“I don’t think so. I didn’t tell him.”
“What do you think he’ll say?”
“He’ll want to get married, I guess.”
“Have you talked about getting married?”
“No.”
“You should have told us when it happened.”
“I couldn’t. I was ashamed. I … couldn’t understand … what had happened. I couldn’t believe that was the way the world is, and I had to … think about it.” She was silent, her mouth working as she tried not to cry.
“I never dreamt I’d wind up pregnant. I never even thought about it.” She gave a little laugh that was cut off by a sob. Selena was torn between her own sorrow, anger at Brian, and bewilderment at what Phoebe was saying, such peculiar, unnatural things to think, they baffled her.
“I won’t marry him,” Phoebe said. “Mom, what if he kept doing that to me? And we were married?” Her voice cracked with fear, or was it disgust? Selena put her hands on Phoebe’s shoulders.
“No,” she said. “You won’t marry him.” Although how she could persuade Kent otherwise she didn’t know. “We’ll go to Rhea.”
“Why?” Phoebe asked, surprised.
“Because,” Selena began, then paused, the idea having simply popped into her head without reflection. “Because … she’s been around a long time; she’s seen this before, I’m sure. She’ll maybe know how to … help, what we should do.”
After a minute Phoebe said, “You mean … an … abortion?” They looked at each other and Phoebe seemed to turn inward, frowning. Selena didn’t answer her, realizing only now, herself, that this would be one of the things Rhea might say. “All right” Phoebe said, slowly. “But what will Dad say?”
“He doesn’t need to know.”
“But he’d know if I lost it.”
“Women lose babies all the time,” Selena replied. “I lost my first baby. I was six weeks pregnant and I just lost it.” There was a silence.
“I like…. babies,” Phoebe said.
“I do too.”
“If I have it,” she hesitated, “Dad will make me marry Brian. Brian will want me to marry him, if I’m having his baby.” She put her hands over her face, then took them away again. “I don’t suppose he’d let me have it without a husband.” She picked at the worn threads on the couch between them.
“Go phone Brian,” Selena said. “Tell him to come over tonight. By then we’ll all have had time to calm down. Him too.”
“I won’t marry him,” Phoebe repeated, as if she hadn’t heard Selena’s instructions. She scuffed the carpet with her running shoes so that Selena wondered if there was a stain there.
“One way or another we have to talk to him,” Selena said. Phoebe rose and went into the kitchen. Selena could hear her dialling.
Selena stared at the rose-coloured mahogany piano, an old-fashioned, secondhand upright. They had been lucky to find such a good one so cheaply. They had bid on it at an auction sale. It was one of the household goods that belonged to an old piano teacher in Chinook who was going into a nursing home. She hadn’t even been at the sale. Her daughter, who had come home to look after the sale, had said to Selena as her husband, Kent, and Kent’s older brother, Gus, were loading the piano onto the pick-up, Mother loved that piano. I think she loved it more than us kids. She glanced at Selena guiltily, then scurried away, obviously surprised and embarrassed by what she had said. We’ll take good care of it, Selena had called to her retreating back. And she had, polishing and dusting it even more than it needed.
It must be ten years we’ve had that piano, Selena thought. She could hardly believe it. Ten years. Standing in the kitchen year after year listening to Phoebe striking the keys, timidly at first, then more boldly, playing little tunes, exercises, working her way up to more complicated pieces. Starting, making a mistake, starting again.
What kind of a person is Phoebe? she wondered, staring at the piano. Making a mistake, starting again, speeding up, slowing down. I’ve known her since before she was born. I ought to know, but I don’t. She could hear Phoebe’s light voice in the kitchen, rising, now falling, mingling with the piano notes Selena was hearing in her head.
Phoebe sitting at the piano, playing. Her hair so fine, shiny as silk. Her shoulders softly rounded, the skin delicate and fine-grained, glowing. Her torso tapering inward to her slender girl’s waist, then flaring outward to form the curve of her hips. Phoebe playing the piano. The notes rose, floated over her shoulders, coloured the light of the room. Notes pure and clear, each one beautiful. And Phoebe a part of that beauty.
“Mom?” Selena turned to the doorway and saw Phoebe standing there. She saw the stringiness of her shoulder-length hair, her skin blotchy with emotion, her new chubbiness, the vulgarity of her too-tight jeans, her ragged, faded blue sweater. Phoebe suddenly leaned against the door frame. She slid one hand half-way into her pocket, her toes in their scuffed runners turned clumsily inward. Her expression was despairing.
Who is Phoebe? Selena thought, and stared at her, bewildered.
Phoebe looked back at her. Her blue eyes had lost their colour, only blackness remained, and then, flushing, she lowered them to the threadbare patch in the rug at her feet.
The day grew warmer. Selena debated, then sent Phoebe outside to help Jason dig the potatoes. As soon as she had gone, Selena put her jacket on too, and went to look for Kent.
She found him in the shop. He didn’t seem to be doing anything in particular, just rearranging the hammers, screwdrivers, and other pieces of equipment and tools scattered over the worktable. She stood in the doorway with her hands in the pockets of her jacket, studying his back before she spoke.
“Kent?” He looked over his shoulder at her, then resumed whatever he had been doing. She walked in, avoiding Jason’s bike, which was parked in the middle of the shop with a flat tire, a five gallon pail of oil and a tire leaning against it. She stood beside him. He stopped moving things and looked at her.
“We should talk about this.” He turned aw
ay from her again.
“Is Brian coming?”
“Seven tonight,” she said. “Phoebe didn’t tell him why.”
“He probably knows why,” Kent said angrily. “Stupid kids.” She leaned toward him, trying to get him to look at her.
“Kent,” she pleaded, “remember us? It was just luck that we got away with it. How can we be hard on her?”
“It wasn’t luck,” he said. “We always took … precautions.” She wanted to tell him that lots of times, everybody knew, precautions didn’t help.
“I feel so sorry for her,” she said. “Her plans wrecked, not knowing what’s going to happen to her.” He threw down the piece of metal he was holding and walked to the wide doorway and stood in it, leaning against the frame, one hand high against it. She watched, then walked the length of the shop to stand beside him.
“What will we do?” she asked him, wanting only that he should help her, help them plan something, anything.
“Brian will marry her,” he said. “I’ll see to that.” She had thought at first that it was anger that clogged his voice, at Phoebe, at Brian, at the mess they had gotten themselves into. She looked at his profile, as he stared toward the front yard where even the lawn grass was turning yellow. She saw then that he didn’t know yet how he felt or what to do. Marry him, that was all he could say. She thought that she should leave him for now, give him a few more hours.
“You’ll tell Brian?” He nodded. “You’ll stand by Phoebe?” not daring to say what she really meant. He turned his head quickly to look at her, a little surprised.
“Of course I will,” he said. “She’s still my daughter. I’ll make him marry her.”
“I mean …” she said, helplessly.
“What?”
“Kent, she said he raped her.” He dropped his arm, then slammed his fist up against the door frame.
“Raped her,” he muttered angrily. “That’s stupid. It’s just her excuse.” Then he walked away, back to his worktable and began shoving boxes of machinery parts, and jars full of screws or nails, from place to place.
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