by Winnie M. Li
The nurse puts an awkward hand on her arm, the hot pink nail polish ludicrous against her bruises. “You take care there.”
And then she leaves. The fluorescent lights buzz above the blue walls of the examination room, and there’s nothing more to say.
*
He’s home, or near enough. It’s past midnight and he’s dead tired. Walked all the way from East Belfast where he was in the Paki’s shop, to here – up the Falls, past the cemeteries, past Andersonstown. It’s too dark to go through the park and somehow he knew to steer clear.
If she already blabbed to the peelers, who knows what’s going on there?
No, he’s taking the long way up the road, walking past houses and fields and more fields. Where no one drives this time of night.
Maybe Da or Michael will be back, but he doubts it. Bastards couldn’t give a fuck about him anyway.
Except for Gerry, he hasn’t spoken with anyone real today. Just random buffers – the Paki, your man in the shop.
Oh, and the woman.
That bitch.
Just couldn’t keep her mouth shut, could she?
He’ll figure how to deal with this in the morning. Too fucking tired and hungry now.
The moon is half tonight, and there’s a silver glow on everything. The road, the street signs. Even when he holds his hands out, he can almost make out his fingers in the moonlight.
Here on the fringes of the city, it’s all quiet. Back in town, he passed pubs with loud music and chat spilling out. Buffers all carrying on with their perfect happy fucking lives.
Saturday night, and he’s walking home alone by the light of the moon.
What a loser.
His feet have frozen to ice blocks inside his trainers. He’s got blisters. He don’t care.
He breathes harder, as the road slopes up to the halting site. This is the best bit: the lights of the city are behind him, the fields spread as far as you can see.
He can smell the shite of cows and sheep nearby, but he don’t mind.
He stops for a moment to breathe it in. The fields, the moon, the dark hills.
But he just wants to go home, lie down, and sleep.
Not far now. Not far to the caravan.
*
Barbara’s hotel room. It’s a cozy, boutique place, away from the main tourist drag of the Europa Hotel. Again, she’s grateful for that.
She’s taken her bath, picked her way through some bland room service dinner, and is in bed, trying to distract herself by reading the newspaper. Political Leaders Commemorate Good Friday Accord, 10 Years On. Titanic Studios Welcomes New Hollywood Production.
Her whiplash has worsened – her neck and shoulders have stiffened to the point where they refuse to move.
Barbara called reception and asked if they could borrow a hot-water bottle, but they only have the large glass bottles that their posh spring water comes in.
So she fills that with hot water, and it’s almost comical. Pressing a hard glass bottle against her stiff neck and shoulders, trying to wring some comfort out of that. How fitting for Belfast. But it does help, in some minuscule way.
While she was in the bath, Barbara made phone calls for her.
“Do you want me to call your parents?” she had asked.
No, no. Definitely not.
“Call my sister and my boss,” she had said. “You can call them from my phone.” Her boss is in London, her sister in California.
“Tell my sister not to tell Mom and Dad.” Serena, the lawyer, will understand. But her parents won’t be able to handle the news. And she is in no state to handle their reaction right now.
And her boss? Erika will be expecting her to show up at the red carpet tomorrow – be her usual practical self, outgoing, networking, dressed to the nines. Somehow she knows she can trust Barbara to speak with a calm voice, convey the facts, suggest the best plan of action.
“Tell Erika I’ll still be coming to the premiere. I just…”
I just won’t be the same person she knew when I left the office on Wednesday.
I am not the same person.
I am different.
I am now a rape victim.
She still can’t quite bring herself to use those words. I was raped. I have been raped.
She flicks off the light now and settles awkwardly under the duvet, the whiplash wracking her body. That word continues to echo in her mind. Was raped. Have been raped. Am raped.
A nightmarish conjugation through all the many tenses, without knowing where this verb will take her. What happens in future tense?
I will be raped. I shall be raped.
If only she’d had that kind of premonition that morning when she stepped out on the trail. But the thought had never crossed her mind.
And even then, was it too late?
Why didn’t she run faster? Or fight harder? Or realize, just a moment earlier, what she was walking into?
“You didn’t have any choice,” Barbara had reiterated to her. And the policewoman, Detective Joanna Peters, had as well. You did what you had to do.
Then why does she feel like she should have, could have, done something else? At what moment could she have stopped, thrown her backpack onto the ground, and made a beeline for the road, just run like hell over the field, to safety. What would have happened then?
A million scenarios could have played out differently.
In a parallel universe, she was never raped. She never met the boy. She finished the hike, triumphant, in the late afternoon, took the bus back to her bed and breakfast and would be out with her friends right now at a pub.
In a parallel universe, she did throw down her backpack and she did reach the road. And even though she no longer had her wallet or her phone or her guidebook, she still was able to walk, still was able to find her way back to the B&B and all she had to do was cancel her credit cards, get a new phone. But she was safe. She would be cozied up at the B&B, after a pint or two to take the edge off her strange encounter. But she would remain unraped.
The parallel universes splinter into a shower of countless possibilities and what-might-have-beens, as she drifts off to sleep, stiff muscles stiffening further, exhaustion quickly bearing her away from consciousness.
That night, she dreams she is running.
Straight across a bright field. As fast as she can toward a busy road. Legs pumping, heart racing, lungs drawing air in and out.
She is running away from something, but cannot see it in her dream. In front of her, other creatures reach out to grab her.
They have haunted faces.
Ice-blue eyes boring into hers.
Skeleton fingers wrap themselves around her throat, burying into her neck. She can hardly breathe. Her mind goes blurry.
She’s thirsty, so thirsty.
She just needs to drink. And somewhere nearby, she knows there’s a bottle of water, unopened, gleaming somewhere in the undergrowth. If only she can find it.
But she can’t move. She struggles, trying to pull these hands from her throat. In the dream, she knows she still hasn’t been raped. Still has time to get out of there, reach the busy road.
But she can’t. She’s pinned down, she’s choking, and the skeleton fingers close in, relentless and final, sealing her air passage shut forever.
She wakes up. She’s drenched in sweat, and a wall of pain has entombed her back and shoulders. She can’t move. Her heart hammers in her chest.
Her throat is dry.
She is surrounded by darkness, in some unfamiliar place, and for several moments, she can’t remember where she is.
Then she remembers.
The trail, the forest, the field, the boy.
This hotel in a quiet part of Belfast. And in the bed next to hers, Barbara sleeps away soundly.
She needs something to drink and turns her head, slightly, to the nightstand on her left. Her sore muscles, almost paralyzed, refuse at first, but she glimpses the glass bottle of water standing next to the clock
radio.
The digital blue numbers glow 2:04am.
She waits a few minutes, somehow needing to gather all her strength just to pick up that bottle. Her body has never been this disobedient before; it’s like pushing against a block of stiffening molasses just to get any of her muscles to move.
She grits her teeth, wrenches herself to the left, and then, in a flash of pain, she has the bottle in her hands.
Even swallowing hurts. She feels around her throat. Knows there will be bruises.
She looks up at the unyielding dark ceiling above her. She should go back to sleep, but she doesn’t want to return to those dreams.
A tear escapes the corner of her eye and runs a wet trail down the slope of her left temple. Her shoulders are too stiff, she doesn’t bother to wipe the tear away.
How did she get here? How did she possibly get here?
*
Sunday morning.
He wakes up to someone rapping on the caravan door. He’s having the creepiest fucking dream – some faceless woman screaming and clawing at him, wailing right in his face – when he hears it.
Rap rap rap.
First he thinks it’s that muppet from next door, but the rapping’s too heavy to come from a little kid.
Leave him alone. He just wants to sleep this off.
Rap rap rap.
They’re not going away. He sits up.
Shite, maybe it’s the peelers already. Could they have found him that fast?
A cold feeling slices through him. It freezes him to the spot, twists his insides until they want to burst. Maybe it’s called fear.
He bunches up tighter into a ball, wishing he were invisible.
Go away. I’m not here.
Whoever it is, they don’t say nothing. The rapping stops after a while and he hears footsteps moving away from the caravan.
Another five seconds, and he creeps silently to the window and looks out. It’s Gerry, standing with his back to him, looking at the field and the other caravans. Another bright day, not as sunny as the day before, clouds and shadows here and there.
He’s about to call out to Gerry, when the Callahan woman from next door comes by. The last thing he needs.
“Morning, Gerry, how are ya?”
“I’m grand, Nora. You?”
She don’t answer his question, just nods. “What brings you here?”
“Ah, just happened to be in the neighbourhood, wanted to see if the lads were in.” Gerry jerks a thumb back to the caravan.
“I saw Johnny here yesterday, but not his brother for a while. Nor Mick neither.”
“Oh, is that right?” Gerry feigns. “Guess they went away then.”
Nora shrugs. “You know how them Sweeneys are. Here one minute, gone the next. And that young one, with no one round to feed him.”
“Ah, Johnny’s practically all grown up. Bet he can take care of himself now.”
That’s me boy, Gerry. Put her straight.
“Well, I try to do what I can. Make up for his da being away all the time.”
Gerry coughs. “And your own man, Brian? Can’t recall seeing him around here recently…”
She stops smiling. “Now that’s different. Me Brian’s away earning good, honest money, bringing it back to me, not scrounging around like them Sweeneys here.”
Gerry holds his hand out. “Nora, I was just having a laugh…”
But she’s angry now. “For sure you were. You want to know where your friends are? Ask them peelers who were here yesterday.”
She spits this out fierce, goes to leave, but Gerry’s onto her like a starving cat on a field mouse.
“Peelers? Here?”
Nora turns around, still fuming.
“They speak to anyone here?”
“Not to none of us, no. But they come marching out across that side of the field into the woods, and then for the rest of the afternoon, they were all over that area – see, where they’ve set up the police tapes.” She points to the far edge of the field.
He squints in that direction.
How could he be that blind, not seeing nothing? There’s the flash of bright yellow police tape, he can just make it out. But he stays where he is behind the door, straining to hear what else Nora says.
Gerry’s playing it cool. “Jaysus, what do you think it was about?”
Nora shrugs. “Can’t say. They didn’t come over. Spoke to none of us, as usual. But about a half hour before, I saw a young girl come out of those woods. Couldn’t really see her. She had a backpack on and long black hair, that’s about it.”
Gerry’s nodding. “And then?”
“Then that same girl come back with the police and they went into that area and that’s when they started setting up the tapes and all, bringing over dogs.”
“Dogs?” He bolts up, alarmed.
“Yeah, those kinds of sniffer dogs, but I couldn’t see very well what they were doing.”
“The dogs ever come over this way?”
“No, not this way.”
“And what happened to the girl?”
“She went back with the police, into their van, and drove off.”
“Jaysus,” Gerry says. “What do you think it was?”
“Can’t say. Poor little girl. Maybe got roughed up by someone? Hope she’s all right.”
“Aye, I hope so, too,” Gerry plays along. The two of them stand there, looking out, faces soaking in the morning sun.
“So… what do you reckon you’ll tell the peelers if they come asking?” Gerry ventures.
“Just what I told you,” Nora says. “Nothing else to say.”
Gerry grins, and circles Nora around her shoulders with a bear hug. “You’re grand, Nora,” he says. “Your man Brian don’t know what he’s got.”
“Ah well, that’s how it goes, I suppose,” she says, and pauses a moment. “You want a cuppa tea or something?”
“Nah, thanks, Nora, I better be going. But, uh, if you see either of the lads, can you tell them I’m looking for them?”
Nora nods and walks off. Gerry stands for a minute longer, watching to make sure she’s back inside.
“Gerry!” he hisses, pushing the door an inch open.
Gerry slips inside the caravan. Door closed, his head pushed down close, whispering quickly to him.
“You feckin eejit, why’d you come back to the caravan?”
“You told me to come home and sleep!”
“Aye, well, I reckon you should scram. There’s peelers just over the other side of the field there. Vans, lights flashing and everything.”
“Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. That fucking bitch!”
“She pulled a fast one on you. Looks like she called the peelers right after you left.”
He don’t understand. He can see her sitting right there by the side of the trail, eating her apple.
Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.
He’s gets up and starts pacing around. Kicks in one of the kitchen cabinets. Heart beating, head filling with anger. They have dogs after him. Fucking dogs.
“Whoa whoa whoa, there – take a deep breath.” Gerry puts up both arms to calm him down. “Whatever she said to you, she’s done something else. And you need to figure out how to get out of this.”
He tries to calm down, taking deep breaths.
Gerry keeps on talking. “Because if the peelers figure out who you are, it’s open season on the pavee boy.”
Open season. He don’t like the sound of that.
He sits down, puts his head in his hands. That pounding headache is coming back and there’s that dark clawing at the back of his mind, scraping away, trying to remind him of something he wants to forget.
Gerry stands up.
“Let’s get that white jumper off you,” he says quickly. “Take that with us and bin it. You need to grab a change of clothes and get the fuck out of here.”
“Where we going?”
“I’ll take you to mine, you can lay low there till we sort s
omething out. Let’s hope my mam won’t pick up on anything for a while.”
“Where the fuck is Michael?” he shouts. He’s raging at Michael and Da for being fuck-all there for him. Where’s his own family when he needs them?
“Yeah, where the fuck is Michael? Don’t worry, I’ll find him. I’ll track him down.”
He’s peeling off the white jumper, rummaging around for another shirt, another jumper, clean socks and pants.
“Put on another pair of trousers, too,” Gerry says. “You’ve got dirt all over this pair.”
Gerry finds carrier bags in the kitchen cabinets, stuffs the soiled clothes in one of them.
“Where’d you say you have family? Other than Armagh and Dublin?”
“Ah, I dunno… everyone moves around. Cork? Kilkenny? Wicklow? Michael and Da have all their numbers.”
“We’ll sort something out.”
He’s put on a T-shirt and grey hoodie, his other pair of jeans. Gerry bends down and scrubs some of the dirt off his trainers. Stands back and looks at him.
“Put on a cap,” he says.
He finds a New York Yankees cap an uncle once gave him.
“Michael have any aftershave? If they’ve dogs on your scent, you’ll be wanting to cover that up.”
He rifles through Michael’s stuff and finds a posh-looking bottle called Hugo Boss, something his brother must have pinched from somewhere. He splashes it on, sneezes. Ain’t this stuff supposed to make you feel older, manlier? He just feels out of place, a toddler play-acting. If the dogs won’t pick up on him wearing this, for sure everyone else will.
“Good. Perfect,” Gerry approves. “You’re a whole new person. Now let’s get you the fuck out of here.”
He crouches down low beside the door and Gerry peeks out the far window.
“What d’ya see?” he asks.
“Three, four police vans. Parked by the road. Peelers going back and forth with dogs from there to the woods.”
The dark clawing has scraped its way to the front of his mind, but he pushes it back. Not now.
“Any way to avoid them?”
“Yeah, they’re all busy over there by the woods. Just be fast about it and walk away. Not too fast. Don’t want to be attracting any attention.”
At least the front door is on the opposite side of the caravan, facing away from where all the peelers are. He looks around one more time at the inside of the caravan. “Wait, hold on a second.”