by Nicole Maggi
Everything out in the open.
I wanted that relief. No more secrets.
I was sitting at the dining room table, my homework spread out in front of me, and Dad leaned over my shoulder to peer at my algebra homework. “This one,” he said, pointing. He gave me a wink. “Is that your final answer?”
“No,” I whispered. I erased what was there, thought for a second, and put in the correct answer.
“Smart girl,” he said with a smile and sat down across from me to read his paper.
Mom came in and kissed the top of my head as she walked past me. I suddenly remembered all the nights she has done this, all the kisses: on my forehead at bedtime, on my knees when I skinned them, on my cheek at church. Peace be with you. And also with you.
I had this vision in my mind that if I told them, they would hug me tight and tell me it was going to be okay. That whatever I decided, they would support me.
My heart—it hurts—I can’t breathe.
We were alone in the dining room after dinner and I thought: Tell them. Tell them now.
I wanted my vision to be true so bad that it strained my heart, like a muscle stretching too far.
I wanted to tell them. No. That’s not true. I wanted—I want—that alternate version of my family. The one where they support me no matter what I decide.
The words were about to spill out of my mouth when there was a knock on the door. I heard Bethany open it and then HIS voice was in my living room. HE was here, in our house. My whole body started to shake. The pencil fell out of my fingers. But my parents…they didn’t notice. Dad got up to greet our guest with one of those guy-hugs, the kind where they clap each other on the back, and Mom got this delighted smile on her face and followed my dad. They left me, trembling like an earthquake, in the dining room.
I can’t tell my parents what happened. They are not my imaginary family. I can’t expect them to be different people, and my secret will shatter this house to its core.
They would side with HIM. Their standing in this town, this state, is so tied up with his. I would be a problem who needed a solution.
My chest is tight just thinking about it now. Bethany is asleep, and I’m in the closet with the door shut writing by the glow of a small flashlight trying to breathe again, as if the safety of this enclosed space will expand my lungs.
There’s something comforting about the complete darkness in this closet. It’s warm and smells faintly of mothballs from a generation past. The cotton and wool of my clothes surround me, and my toe grazes the butter-soft leather of my ballet flats, waiting to be worn in summer.
Nestled in here, I know the truth. I can’t trust my parents with this secret. I wish I could. But I can’t tell them. I have to figure out how to get through this some other way.
I tried yesterday. Falling off the balance beam in gym class wasn’t an accident. But it didn’t work. It wasn’t like in Gone with the Wind, where one careless comment from Rhett and a spill down the stairs gets rid of a baby.
I don’t know what to do.
I think I need help. I have to tell someone. Not my parents. Someone else.
But who?
Signed,
Mellie Rivers
February 20
Morning
Dear Ms. Tilson,
I spent the whole night in the closet. I crept out just before dawn, before Bethany woke up and asked what I was doing curled up on the floor. I thought about that, about what I would say if Bethany found me. Could I tell her? Except Bethany’s younger than me, too young to help. Even though she says our parents can be lame, Bethany also craves their approval. Like the rest of us. Like I used to. So I got into bed silently in the near-dawn, knowing that I can’t trust her with this.
Downstairs, after breakfast, Hannah cornered me at the sink. “Can you taste cakes with me this afternoon? I’ll pick you up at school.”
I turned on the water and began to do the dishes. “I thought you did that already.”
“I picked out the flowers. I didn’t settle on a cake.”
“I have homework,” I said, scrubbing scrambled-egg residue off the spatula.
“Come on, Mellie. You promised you were going to help me with the wedding when I got engaged, and you haven’t helped at all.”
Guilt gnawed at my stomach. I glanced at her as she twisted the engagement ring on her finger. When she first got engaged, she showed off that ring like it was the baby Jesus himself on her finger. I used to think it was pretty, but now I think it’s obnoxious. Is it possible to have too many diamonds? The ring is huge—too big for Hannah’s slender fingers—and not at all elegant. It screams, “Behold! I am taken!”
“Will it only be you and me?”
“Yes.” Hannah nudged my arm. “Just come. How often do you get to eat free cake all afternoon?”
I snorted, but kept my face turned away. I put the last dish in the dishwasher and closed it. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll go.”
At least it will only be the two of us. But I’m dreading that too. It’s so hard to hide my feelings from Hannah. She’s known me since before I knew myself. I’m afraid to be alone with her, afraid I’m going to spill…afraid eating all that cake is going to make me sick.
I wish I could be honest with her. Of anyone in my family, she would be the one to hug me, tell me it would be okay, and that she’d support me whatever I decide. But the thought of telling her makes my skin go hot and fills me with shame.
I have to go to school now. I’ll write more tonight.
* * *
Cake tasting wasn’t awful. It was actually kinda great. And a little weird. Because something is up with Hannah, but I don’t know what it is.
When I got in the car in front of the school, she was on the phone with her fiancé. The only reason Hannah has her own cell phone is because he bought it for her. Mom and Dad wouldn’t have allowed it otherwise.
“I’m at the school now,” she said, waving to me as I ducked into the passenger seat. “I have to go. Why do you need me to call you from the bakery?” Silence. I couldn’t hear what was being said on the other end. Hannah chewed at her lip. “No, I…I know how to pick out a cake we’ll both like.” More silence. I could hear his voice rising through the phone, but couldn’t make out what he was saying.
“Fine. I said fine. No, of course I’m not mad. I’ll call you from the bakery. Uh-huh. Me too.” She glanced at me briefly as she set the phone down and pulled away from the curb. I didn’t say anything.
“That other bakery we went to had the worst buttercream,” Hannah said as we drove. “And the baker fawned all over Brandon, who ate it up with a spoon. The fawning and the buttercream.”
“She flirted with him? That seems inappropriate.”
“No—it was a man! And he wasn’t gay.” Hannah turned the car onto a narrow side street and pulled alongside a pretty building painted robin’s-egg blue. “The florist was gay, but he had the good sense not to flirt with my fiancé. No, this guy assumed Brandon would be making all the decisions, so he flattered him up and down, ignoring me. It was rude.”
“Um, doesn’t the bride usually make all the decisions? What was that guy thinking?”
Hannah turned off the car. She stared out the across the dashboard, breathing a long sigh. “You know Brandon. He walked in there, all big man on campus, and I was the little woman who nodded along with him.”
I studied her profile. It wasn’t like Hannah to question, deride, mildly insult the man she was about to marry. She’d been groomed to be the perfectly agreeable wife…much the way I have. And Bethany has. And all of our father’s daughters have. Was she starting to buck the tradition?
“Is the flavor of your wedding cake that important to him?” I asked, thinking about the phone conversation I’d just overheard.
Her shoulders tensed slightly. Then she turn
ed to me, a bright smile across her face. “Everything about the wedding is important to him. Come on, let’s go in.”
I could feel the falseness behind that bright smile. I followed her out of the car and into the bakery, which was charming. The baker was a very smiley lady who kept bringing us cake after cake after cake to taste. And oh, were they good. White chocolate raspberry. Red velvet. Dark chocolate with chocolate cherry ganache filling. Vanilla with blueberry buttercream filling. I stuffed myself rotten. And I didn’t get sick.
In fact, eating all that sugar made me feel good. Actually happy. Was there some magical ingredient in cake that makes you forget your problems as long as you are shoveling forkfuls of chocolate mousse into your mouth?
While we were tasting, Hannah and I laughed over stuff we haven’t laughed about in a really long time. “Remember the time Mom told me to make fresh lemonade for one of Dad’s mayoral campaign rallies, and I forgot to put in the sugar?” Hannah said after we’d finished off the slice of white chocolate raspberry.
“Yes! And everyone still drank it!”
“Because they were too polite to say anything!”
We cackled like two mischievous hens. The baker brought over another slice—vanilla cake with a dark chocolate buttercream frosting—and smiled at us. “Now, that’s what I like to see,” she said. “A bride who knows how to enjoy herself.”
Hannah smiled back at her, but it was the same overbright smile she’d given me in the car. I watched her take a forkful of the cake before digging in myself. Was she genuinely enjoying herself? We were having fun, but she froze up at the mention of the wedding. Why? This match is what everyone wants. The Rivers family and the Talbot family are close friends. Of course their children should marry. They’d been courting forever…high school sweethearts. So what was going on? Why wasn’t she over the moon? Where was the rosy glow that all brides are supposed to have? I haven’t seen it…I can’t remember ever seeing it.
“Weren’t you supposed to call him from the bakery?” I asked after our seventh piece of cake.
“This is my favorite,” Hannah said, pointing her fork at vanilla cake with dark chocolate frosting. She sighed and licked the last bit of frosting off her fork. “Yeah, I guess I should call.” She pulled out her phone. When she turned on the screen, I could see it was filled with texts and missed calls. The top one, the most recent, was in all caps. WHERE R U? WHY AREN’T U ANSWERING UR PHONE?
I sucked in my breath hard and fast. Hannah glanced at me. “He’s just stressed out,” she said. She sent a quick text back—I couldn’t read it—and clicked off the screen. She pointed at our empty plate. “I wish I could get this one.”
“Why can’t you?”
“Brandon would never approve of a cake without white frosting. He’s so traditional. Like Daddy.” She rolled her eyes. “Can you imagine Daddy’s face if his eldest daughter had a cake frosted in chocolate? Oh, the shame!” Then, she got this little gleam in her eye, the same gleam she got before the Little Mermaid/horror movie incident.
I leaned forward. “Don’t tell him. What’s he going to do? Prevent the cake from being served at the wedding?”
Hannah’s lip curled into a tiny half smile. “Which one? Brandon or Daddy?”
“Is there a difference?” I asked with a snort before I could stop myself. I gasped. “I didn’t mean—”
“No, you’re right.” Hannah’s jaw tightened. She barked out a short, sharp laugh that didn’t sound like she was amused at all and waved her hand toward her phone. “I’m marrying my father. What a fucking cliché.”
Ms. Tilson, I have never ever heard Hannah swear. In fact, this could’ve been the first time in her whole entire life that she swore. I was so taken aback that I couldn’t speak. There were so many things I wanted to say, to ask her, to confess, to spill my secret at her feet, and I was just about to open my mouth when—
“Well? Did you decide?” The baker was back, her dimpled smile kind and encouraging. “Is the vanilla with dark chocolate buttercream the one?”
Hannah took a deep breath. “Is it possible to do a dark chocolate cake with a vanilla buttercream frosting? A white cake will go better with our color scheme.”
“Absolutely,” the baker said. “Now that we have the flavor, let’s talk design.”
And that was it. Hannah was back to being the perfect wife who nodded along, a pretty white cake to match her pretty white life. I sat by numbly while she called her fiancé, apologizing before she’d even said hello. I said nothing while he berated her so loudly that I could hear him too. I stayed quiet when he calmed down and Hannah put him on speaker with the baker. He dominated the discussion of roses versus lilies and the ratio of fresh flowers to edible sugared ones, making the final decision, despite what Hannah wanted.
But I saw it. Her streak of rebellion, that inner life that is brighter than all the muted colors she’s forced into. What does it mean? I don’t know. But once she marries him, it’s over. She’s done. She can’t walk away from that life, not in our world, not without losing everything.
It hits me—neither can I.
But no matter what I decide, in some ways, I’ve already walked away.
Signed,
Mellie Rivers
February 21
Dear Ms. Tilson,
I saw you today at the Women’s Day Fair, after school in the gym. I’m starting to really hate the gym. It smells like sweat and dirty socks and failure. That is not conducive to morning sickness. It was a miracle I didn’t throw up.
You probably saw our table and rolled your eyes. Most people do. Despite the banner that took me two weeks to create and the fresh flowers that Delia brought, no one was crowding around to read our pamphlets on keeping yourself pure until marriage. I mean, let’s face it. Most kids aren’t too interested in staying virgins. And the ones that are already know what’s in our pamphlets. So our table wasn’t exactly popular.
When Delia and I signed up to have a table at the Fair, I was still a virgin. I still thought I had total control over that decision. I had no idea that choice would be taken from me.
Sitting next to me behind our pretty, flower-covered table, Delia made a snort of derision. I followed her gaze to the RAINN table, where everyone seemed to gravitate. Probably not because they were victims of rape or incest, but because Cara Sullivan sat on the edge of the table in a very short skirt, holding court. My jaw clenched. How dare she? How dare she sit there, chatting happily, surrounded by pamphlets about what to do and who to call if you’ve been raped? As if she had any clue what it was like to be raped. To be violated. To be carrying the baby of your violator, a constant reminder of your failure to remain pure.
Red-hot anger surged through me. I grabbed my water bottle and unscrewed the cap with shaking fingers. Gulping down water, I tried to cool the anger in my veins. It wasn’t her fault that she didn’t have a clue about what it was really like to be raped. It was my fault that I did.
“Hey, did I tell you my mom’s blog hit five hundred thousand?”
I turned to Delia. “What?”
“My mom’s blog. It hit five hundred thousand followers the other day.”
“Oh, really? That’s great.” I reached out to straighten the pamphlets on our table. We got them from church, so they were a little cheesy. Not that I’d tell Delia that. Her mom designed them. She did all the newsletters and pamphlets for the church.
I picked up one, a glossy trifold that read God & You: A Very Special Relationship in black cursive across the front. The background was pink with flowers around the border. Inside were several paragraphs about how God wants us to save ourselves for marriage, that the bond between husband and wife is as sacred as the bond between a person and God. The brochure was clever. It never specifically stated “this applies only to girls” but that was implied in every detail.
My fingers tightened on the p
amphlet, wrinkling the edge. A few months ago, I never would’ve noticed that. I never would’ve been aware of the subtext. It’s like my blinders have been removed.
But I’m not sure I like what I can now see.
“Yeah, she might get a book deal,” Delia said.
“Wow.” I glanced around the gym, only half listening. The Equal Pay for Equal Work table was giving away free donuts.
“Yeah, my dad just wants to make sure it’s not going to take up too much of her time before she signs anything. He doesn’t want her to have to travel or anything.”
I nodded and moved around the side of the table. It was hard for me to look at Delia these days. She picked up a stack of Make the Promise: Save Yourself pamphlets (also pink, also floral) that advertised the purity ring sales, and began tapping them on the table too. Years ago, Delia and I had made that promise in our church youth group. We put on those little gold rings, a sign of our vow to stay virgins until marriage. I looked down at my hand. I still wore my ring, a burning brand on my finger that seemed to scream “Liar! Liar!” every time it glinted in the light. But I couldn’t take it off. That small action would be noticed, and I’d have to give a reason. I tucked my hand behind my back and looked out over the array of pamphlets on our table.
“How come there aren’t any pamphlets for boys?” I asked before I could stop myself.
Delia stopped tapping her stack of papers and laid them squarely on the table. “Um, because this is the Women’s Day Fair?”
“Yes, but…” I swallowed. “Shouldn’t we be teaching guys how to treat women too? Shouldn’t we encourage them to make the same promises that we make?”
“Well, sure, but…you know.” Delia rolled her eyes. “It’s not the same for boys.”
“It should be.”
“But it’s not.”
I pressed my lips together and sucked in my cheeks. Had I always been as blindly accepting as Delia?
Delia’s gaze returned to the RAINN table. “Did you see what Cara Sullivan is wearing today? She’s such a slut.”