Mitigating Circumstances

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  It all happened at once: the noise behind her, her heart beating so fast it hurt, her robe pushed up from the floor over her face and head with lightning speed. As she struggled to scream and free herself, her feet slid out from under her but she did not fall. She was being carried in a suffocating embrace. What must be an arm was placed directly over her mouth. Trying to sink her teeth into the arm, she bit a mouthful of terrycloth instead. She was nude from the waist down and felt the cold night air against her lower body. Her bladder emptied, splashing against the tile floor.

  She tried to move her arms, but they were trapped across her chest inside the robe. Kicking out furiously, her foot connected with what must be a kitchen chair, and it screeched across the floor, landing with a loud thud against the wall.

  The backs of her calves and her feet were burning, and she knew she was being dragged down the hall—toward where her daughter slept. Shana, she thought. Oh God, no, Shana. The only sound she emitted was a muffled, inhuman groan of sheer agony coming from her stomach through her vocal cords to her nasal passages. Her mouth would not move. Her feet struck something. The wall? No longer kicking—no longer struggling, she was praying: “…as I walk through the Valley of Death…” She couldn’t remember the words. Flashes of the past were meshed with the present. Not Shana, not her child—she had to protect her child.

  “Mom.” She heard her voice, first questioning and childlike and then the terror of her sickening high-pitched scream reverberated in Lily’s head. She heard something heavy crash into the wall, body against body, the sound heard on a football field when the players collided. He had her. He had her daughter. He had them both.

  In another moment they were on the bed in Lily’s bedroom. When he removed his arm, the robe fell away and she could see him in the light from the bathroom. Shana was next to her and he was over them both. Light reflected off the steel of the knife he held only inches from Lily’s throat. His other hand was on Shana’s neck. Lily grabbed his arm, and with the abnormal strength of terror she almost succeeded in twisting his arm backward, turning the knife toward him, seeing in her mind the blade entering his body where his heart beat. But he was too strong and with eyes wild with excitement, darting back and forth, his tongue protruding from his mouth, he forced the blade sideways into her open mouth, the sharp edges nicking the tender edges of her lips. She bit down on the blade with her teeth, her tongue touching something crusty and vile. His face was only inches away, his breath rancid with beer. “Taste it,” he said, a look of pleasure on his face. “It’s her blood. Lick it with your tongue. Lick a whore’s blood, a cheating fucking whore’s blood.”

  Removing the knife from Lily’s mouth and placing it back at her throat, he moved his hand from Shana’s neck and shoved her gown up, exposing her budding breasts and her new bikini panties. Shana desperately tried to push the gown down to cover herself, turning pleading eyes to Lily. “No,” she cried. “Stop him, Mommy. Please make him stop.” He thrust his fingers around her neck. She choked and gurgling sounds came from her throat, a trickle of saliva ran from the corner of her mouth. Her eyes were glazed.

  “Be calm, Shana. Don’t fight. Do what he says.

  Everything is going to be okay. Please, baby, listen to me.” Lily’s voice was forced control. “Let her go. I’ll give you the best fuck you ever had. I’ll do anything.”

  “That’s it, Momma. You tell her. Tell her how fucking good it is. Tell her you want it.” His guttural words were uttered through clenched teeth. He had one knee between Shana’s legs, forcing them open, and the other knee between Lily’s, touching her genitals. “Unzip me,” he ordered Shana.

  Shana’s terrified eyes again made contact with her mother’s. “Do it, Shana,” she said, watching while her child’s thin, trembling arm reached for his crotch, unable to grasp the small end of the zipper. He raised his body up somewhat, but the crusty knife remained near Lily’s throat.

  “Do it for her, Momma,” he said, shifting the knife to his other hand and positioning the point on Shana’s navel. “Teach her how to take care of a man.”

  Lily had to distract him, somehow get him away from Shana. She had to find a way to get the knife. Quickly unzipping him and removing his penis, she placed it in her mouth, the ragged edges of the zipper scraping her face. She smelled urine and putrid body odor, but he was becoming erect and moaning, throwing his head back, moving the knife away from Shana’s body. He grabbed a handful of her hair and jerked her head back. He fell on top of Lily, looking straight into her eyes and relishing the fear he saw reflected there. Something struck her chest, then her chin. It was a gold cross with a crucified Christ dangling from his neck.

  Suddenly he thrust himself up. “No, I want her, Momma. I don’t wanna whore, a fucking old redheaded whore.” Once again he expertly tossed the knife from one hand to the other and placed it again at Lily’s throat. “Watch, Momma, watch or I’ll gut her.”

  With one vicious yank Shana’s underpants were torn off and tossed aside. Her body bounced up on the bed and then fell under the weight of him. He forced himself inside her and Shana screamed in pain. Lily had never felt so powerless in her life, except once before, all those years past. There was no God. She knew it now. No reason to pray. She wished that he would just cut her throat and end it all.

  “Oh, Mommy. Oh, Mommy,” Shana gasped.

  Lily found her hand beside her and squeezed it tightly. It was cold and clammy. “Hold on, baby. Close your eyes and make believe you are far away. Hold on.”

  A loud siren wailed in the street somewhere. He jumped and sprang from the bed. “The neighbors heard and called the police,” Lily said, hearing the sound growing nearer and nearer. “They’re going to shoot you, kill you.” He was directly under the light emanating from the bathroom, his red sweatshirt and face completely outlined and visible as he frantically tried to snap his jeans. Lily sat up in the bed and screamed, in raw panic and fury, “If they don’t shoot you, I’ll kill you myself.” The siren was blaring now, only a few blocks away. In seconds he was gone.

  She held her daughter tightly in her arms, stroking her hair, softly whispering in her ear. “It’s over, baby, he’s gone. No one is going to hurt you ever again. It’s over.” The shrill of the siren was becoming distant, fading from earshot. No one had called the police. Their agony had gone unnoticed.

  Time stood still as she rocked her daughter in her arms and listened to her pitiful, wracking sobs. A million things were racing through her mind. Two or three times she tried to wrench herself away and call the police. Shana was holding on so tightly, though, that she stopped. He was long gone anyway by now, lost in the night. Every sordid detail replayed itself in her mind. A hard ball of rage was forming in her stomach and spilling bile into her mouth.

  “Shana, darling, I’m going to get up now, but I’ll be right here. I’m going to get a washcloth for you from the bathroom, and then I’m going to call the police and your father.” Lily inched away and pulled her robe back over her shoulders, tying the sash loosely around her waist. The rage was somehow calming her, moving her around like a machine with a great churning engine.

  “No,” Shana said forcefully in a voice Lily had never heard. “You can’t tell Dad what he did to me.” She reached out and grabbed the edge of Lily’s robe as she tried to get up, causing it to fall open and expose her nakedness. She retied it again. “You can’t tell anyone.”

  The face and voice were a child’s, but the eyes were a woman’s. She would never be a child again, never see the world as a safe place without fear. Lily placed a hand to her mouth, biting her knuckle, stifling a scream that welled up inside her. In those eyes she saw herself. Back in bed with Shana, she held her and rocked her, comforting the child she had been. “We must call the police. We must call Daddy.”

  “No,” she screamed again. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  Shana ran to the bathroom. She threw up on the tile floor before she got to the commode. Lily dropped to the floo
r with her and wiped her face with cold towels. She went to the medicine cabinet and found the bottle of Valium a doctor had recently prescribed for her insomnia. Her hands were shaking as she poured two pills out, one for her and one for Shana. “Take this,” she said, handing her the pill with a paper Dixie cup of water. “It will relax you.”

  Shana swallowed the pill, watched with round eyes as her mother tossed one into her own mouth. She let Lily help her back to the bed. Once again she held her in her arms.

  “We are going to call Daddy and we are going to go home. Leave this house. I won’t call the police, but we are going to tell Daddy. We have no choice, Shana.”

  Lily knew exactly what she would be subjecting her daughter to if she reported the crime. The police would stay for hours, forcing them to relive the nightmare, making every detail of it live forever in their minds. Then the hospital and the medical-legal exam. They would probe Shana’s ravaged body and comb her pubic hairs looking for evidence. They would swab their mouths. If they apprehended him, months and months of testimony and court appearances would consume their lives. Shana would have to sit on the witness stand and repeat the sordid details of this night in lurid detail to a roomful of strangers. She would have to rehearse her testimony with the prosecuting attorney like lines in a play. In that room, breathing the same air, he would also sit. Then the ordeal would become known. Even some kid at school might learn of what had happened and spread it around.

  The most despicable thought of all, a truth that Lily alone was far too aware of, was the fact that after all they had suffered, would suffer, while the nightmares were still the sweating, waking, screaming kind, before they could even begin to resume normal life, he would be free again. The term for aggravated rape was only eight years, out in four. He would even receive credit for time served during and prior to the trial so that by the time he was on the bus to prison, his countdown to freedom might amount to only three years. No, she thought, he could receive a consecutive sentence for the oral copulation, amounting to a few more years. It was not enough. It could never be enough. And she felt certain he had committed other vicious crimes. She recalled the taste of dried, old blood on the knife. Possibly even murder. This crime was a murder: the annihilation of innocence.

  She also had to consider her career, her life’s work, and the reality that although she could prosecute rape cases, she could never try them without bias as a superior court judge. A door was closing in her face. Thought by thought, she was getting further away from reporting this to the authorities.

  His face kept reappearing before her, and somewhere in the far reaches of her mind, she knew she had seen him before. Her memory of the attack crowded out the past, and she was no longer able to distinguish reality from imagination. But that face…

  Shana had calmed somewhat; the drug was taking effect. Moving slowly away, Lily called John on the bedside phone. He was in a deep sleep when she awoke him, his answer a muffled and annoyed “Hello” as if he was expecting a wrong number.

  “John, you have to come over here now.” She spoke softly and rapidly. “Something has happened.”

  “My God, what time is it? Is Shana sick?”

  “Were both okay. Just come now. Don’t ask any questions until you get here. Shana is right beside me.” Her voice started to crack. She didn’t know how much longer she could maintain her composure. “Please come. We need you.”

  She hung up and looked at the clock—only one o’clock. A mere two hours to destroy their lives and take away the happiness they were finally finding in each other. Her thoughts turned to John and what this would do to him. Shana was his life, his shining star, his protected and sheltered baby girl. When Shana was born, he had shoved Lily away and centered all his affection on the child: holding her, stroking her, kissing her when he no longer kissed his wife. Starting to tremble, Lily hugged herself. She had to be strong.

  It seemed like only minutes passed before John arrived. Time had been standing still, hanging over them like a dark storm cloud, refusing to move, the unleashed downpour contained and waiting. He appeared in the door to the bedroom. “What in the hell is going on here? The front door is wide open.” His tone was accusing, demanding, and it was vented at Lily.

  Shana’s muscles had began to relax in Lily’s arms, and her breathing was shallow, her body too still. “Daddy,” she said, hearing his voice, crying out to him. “Oh, Daddy.” He ran to her side of the bed and Lily released her. As John engulfed her in his large arms, she pressed her body to his chest, sobbing. “Oh, Daddy.”

  He looked at Lily, his dark eyes full of fury, but in their depths, fear was rising. “What happened?” he shouted. “Tell me what happened here tonight.”

  “Shana, Daddy and I are going to go in the other room and talk,” Lily said gently. “You’ll hear us talking and know we are there. We’ll only be a few feet away.” She got up and motioned for John to follow.

  The Valium had calmed her somewhat and she told John what had happened. It was an emotionless recitation of facts. If she allowed one tear to fall, the floodgates would open. They were sitting on the newly purchased sofa with the amber light from a Tiffany lamp creating an almost surreal atmosphere. The photo albums were still open on the floor. He leaned up close and with his fingers touched the small cuts at the side of her mouth, but it was not a gesture of concern or affection. It was more like reflex, confirmation of the reality of what she was saying. His eyes clearly said that she was responsible, no matter what reason predicated. She should have found the strength to stop him. That’s the way he saw her, Lily thought. A tower of strength, invincible.

  Then he sobbed, his masculine body wracked with pain, that unfamiliar and pitiful sound that signified a grown man crying like a child. He did not scream or yell or threaten revenge. He was quite simply heartbroken. His sorrow left no room for rage.

  “Well, do you want to call the police? You’re her father and I can’t make this decision without you,” she said. “It’s not irreversible. We can always file a report later if we change our minds.” As she spoke, her eyes darted to the kitchen, wondering about evidence, fingerprints on the door.

  “No, I agree with you. It would only make it worse for her,” he finally replied. Tears were still streaming down his face, and he wiped them away with the back of his hand. “Would they catch the bastard if we reported it?”

  “How the hell do I know, John? No one knows. We don’t have a vehicle description.” She cursed herself for not running after him, for staying with Shana. “Maybe we’re doing the wrong thing, for chrissake, by not reporting it. God, I just don’t know.” Her mind was so muddled, full of barely suppressed rage. Memories of the past and years of untold secrets were tainting her reason. Something inside her was diving, sinking, twisting. She had to stop it. She had to rewind the tape. Erase it. John’s voice sounded distant. She stared at him and tried to focus.

  “I want to take Shana home, take her away from this place.” His voice was a choked whimper. “I don’t know or care about anything else. I just want to take care of my child.”

  “I know,” she shouted, and then lowered her voice so that Shana would not hear, “and she’s our child, not yours. Don’t you think I want to take care of her? I don’t want her to suffer. I couldn’t stop this. I tried, but I can stop it now. I gave her a sedative. Let’s just bundle her up and take her home. I’ll pack a bag and follow you.”

  He stood and then stopped dead in his tracks, staring at her. A look of utter horror shot from his ravaged eyes. He had not combed his hair over his bald spot, and a long strand dangled over by his temple. He looked so old, so haggard. “Could she get pregnant? My baby, my little baby.”

  She started to reply but found herself disgusted by his weakness; it was this that had caused her to lose respect for him over the years. As she had forced herself to overcome the past, to confront the violence of the world they lived in, he had lived in a fantasy world that didn’t exist. Why couldn’t he make the decisi
ons that had to be made for once in their life? She couldn’t stop herself from thinking of Richard, wishing he was there instead of John. For the first time she had reached for happiness, touched the soft edge of pleasure. Pleasure, she thought. That man had found pleasure in her terror, in Shana’s terror. He had found pleasure in their degradation. Just as her grandfather had found pleasure in the forbidden recesses of her young body.

  “He didn’t ejaculate. The sirens scared him away. We can take her to the doctor tomorrow, and they’ll give her antibiotics for possible disease and check her. There’s a slim chance she could get pregnant from pre-emission sperm. We’ll just have to pray.”

  “Will she ever get over this, Lily? Will our little girl ever be the same?”

  “With you and I beside her and all the love and help we can give her, I know she will. I pray to God she will.” As she said the stock comforting words she had said to dozens of victims, their worthlessness struck home. Shana was strong, had been strong. Lily had tried to make her strong, refusing to baby her and shelter her as John had. And if they didn’t drag it on and on with the authorities, perhaps it would someday become like a bad dream. Like her own bad dreams, and she had made it. The only alternative was to become a hopeless cripple, and no child of hers would fall into this abyss. She would not allow it.

  After they wrapped Shana in the new comforter off her bed, John led her to the door. She turned and looked at Lily, and their eye contact locked and lingered. Lily had wanted to be her friend and confidante, to guide her without her father’s intervention. Instead they had witnessed hell together, forming a bond, but one forged in terror.

  “You go home and go to sleep. Daddy will sleep on the floor next to you.” She embraced her. “I’ll be there in the morning when you wake up.”