by Dasha Kelly
CeCe blew out a breath. “Yeah, I’m here,” she said. “I was just thinking you might be right. I don’t know anything but this, and I don’t know what that means. What it says about me.”
“Says a lot,” Terri said. “There were a half-dozen people who wanted to move in to that apartment when I left, but you chose Carla.”
“She was—”
“I know,” Terri said, cutting off CeCe’s explanation. “The old apartment was going downhill and you wanted her safe. I know. Again, I’m not judging. I’m just saying. You used to roll your eyes, grumble about the errands you had to run for her, but never missed a Sunday going to sit with her. I think you were relieved to move her in back then, for your sake as much as hers.”
CeCe groaned, falling onto her forearm. Her voice sounded trapped in tunnel when she spoke. “Oh my God,” CeCe moaned. “I am a walking tragedy.”
Terri laughed. “Join the club,” she said. “Good news is, you get to decide what that looks like from this point forward. Let go of the notion that you can make a wrong decision. You can’t. I keep telling you, follow your gut. It won’t steer you wrong.”
TWENTY-THREE
BOOBIES
CECE SLID A HAND DOWN her dress, working her fingers until she’d gathered a small clutch of fabric on either side of her hips. The stockings were crawling away from her waist again. More accurately, away from the new threat of her butt.
Cousin Coretta told her she should be glad to grow a booty. “It’s beautiful, powerful, and dangerous, all at the same time,” Coretta had said, laughing. “You’ll see.”
All CeCe could tell about her new curves was that they caused problems. First, it was the tight fit of her favorite jeans. Then there was the anonymous pinch at the bus stop. Now, at the end of the school year, CeCe had to buy ladies’ nylons for the completion ceremony instead of girls’ tights.
In addition to her physical reshaping, CeCe experienced shades of change all around her that year: Pam took her to get her ears pierced for her birthday; she started painting her fingernails and toes; her mother had her order them a television set; her father’s letters came from Detroit instead of San Francisco; the new neighbors in their apartment building were louder, rougher, and younger; Dr. Harper kept monthly appointments for her now; and she received weekly phone calls from her family in Decatur, which CeCe regarded as call-ins from heaven.
At school, CeCe had to share her library assistant job. She was hurt, at first, until Mrs. Anderson explained that CeCe would help train the new assistant before leaving for middle school.
“Like a boss?” CeCe asked.
“Well, I’m still the boss,” Mrs. Anderson had said, smiling, “but you’re like my manager. So, think of everything you’ve learned to make you such a good library assistant.”
CeCe’s smile was broad. “I should write it down?”
“That would be fantastic.”
CeCe had looked forward to their completion ceremony for weeks. She hadn’t felt this good in school since her kindergarten year, and she was excited to stand in front of the auditorium and be handed her certificate and applause from the attending crowd. Plus, she got to dress up. Her dress had arrived in the mail with a note card tucked inside that read: “Special dress, special occasion, very special young lady! Congratulations. Love, Rosie, Coretta, and Family.”
Family. CeCe liked the way this word felt in her head.
CeCe gave the hosiery another fierce tug, panning the small orchestral room to make sure the other students weren’t watching her behind the piano.
“Bathroom,” a voice whispered, startling CeCe. Before she could turn to see who it was, Michelle had hooked her arm and begun pulling her toward the door.
“Dang, Michelle,” CeCe said, stumbling to keep her balance. “You gonna make me run my stockings.”
“Come on,” Michelle said, steering CeCe from the their chattering classmates, through the hallway, and into the girls’ room. Michelle was swift, CeCe realized, even though she’d gained quite a bit of weight. Her twin, Michael, was still slim and promising to have an athletic build. Some girls even thought he was cute, but CeCe and Michelle only saw the saucer-eared boy obsessed with Matchbox cars.
Michelle bolted straight for one of the stalls once they reached the bathroom. CeCe watched the door rattle as Michelle locked it from the inside. She stared at the closed door for a moment, wondering why Michelle had pulled her into the bathroom instead of one of her closer friends, Marissa or Bethanne. CeCe turned to the mirror to check her hair. She’d styled it in a half-mushroom, with one side pulled up in with a sparkly hair comb. She’d slept in hard curlers and everything, just the way cousin Coretta had taught her during Easter vacation. CeCe turned on the faucet and ran water over the tips of her fingers, which she smoothed against the edges of her hairline.
She stepped back, admiring her work for the day—the hair, the dress, the lip gloss, the pantyhose—when she heard a muffled whimper coming from Michelle’s stall.
“Michelle?” CeCe said, turning to walk toward the stall. “You OK?”
More whimpers.
“Open the door,” CeCe said. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Michelle cry. Their friendship had ranged from hues of fierce to convenient since kindergarten, but it was always an honest alliance. Considering their bonding moment was the horror of watching their mothers get into a catfight in front of their school, they had no choice but to have each other’s back.
“Open the door,” CeCe said again, giving the metal door a push. She could hear Michelle moving and shuffling inside the stall. When the door opened, Michelle stepped out and CeCe stepped aside, looking at her friend’s stricken face.
Michelle took long, slow steps to the sink and began to wash her hands. CeCe was used to her dramatic flair and, for a moment, prepared for a wail about chipped nails or someone looking at her funny. As Michelle dabbed at her face, CeCe calculated how long they’d been away from the orchestra room and whether they might be missing the processional lineup.
When Michelle crumbled into fresh torrent of tears, CeCe forgot the ceremony march. Michelle sank the heels of her wet hands into her eyes and turned to face CeCe.
“Michelle, you’re scaring me now,” CeCe said. “What’s wrong?”
CeCe placed her hands on her friend’s shoulders and waited. She’d seen teachers do this in the hallways many times. It always seemed to make the students stop crying.
“What’s going on?” CeCe repeated to the back of Michelle’s hands. Right before CeCe’s patience expired, Michelle lowered her hands and began to speak.
“I want to die, CeCe,” Michelle said, her voice was thin and her lips hardly moved.
“What are you talking about?” CeCe said, grabbing her chin. “Don’t say that.”
“But I do,” Michelle said, unshaken by CeCe’s bark. Her gaze stretched far from them in that bathroom, the same way Mrs. Castellanos’ did before moving to the hospice last year. CeCe knew these were not theatrics.
“You can’t die,” CeCe said, folding her arms across her chest. She didn’t know what else to say. In the after-school movies, the friend always offered the perfect uplifting speech. CeCe had nothing else.
“You can’t die,” she said again, even more gently.
“Yes, I—,” Michelle began, melting into more warm tears. “You can’t tell anybody, CeCe.”
“OK,” CeCe said.
Michelle took a deep breath, looking toward the ceiling, and then down to her shoes.
“Papa,” Michelle said to the tops of her black wedge pumps. “He comes in my room.”
CeCe thought how pretty they looked today, Michelle wearing a turquoise-and-navy panel dress and CeCe in the soft gray dress with its thin pink vinyl belt. Everyone looked so grown up tonight.
“When?” CeCe said, more like a rush of air than a word. “Did he hurt you? Did he—?”
So grown up.
“Last summer was the first time,” Michel
le said, alternating her attention from her shoes to the turquoise fabric pinched between her fingers to CeCe’s eyes and back to her shoes. “I woke up and he was rubbing on my chest. It felt . . . it felt nice. So I fell back to sleep.”
CeCe crinkled her nose.
“When your boobies come in all the way, you’ll see,” Michelle said. “They’ll be sore and stuff. I thought he was helping ’em not hurt so much. He came in my room all the time after that. My boobs stopped hurting and grew really fast.”
CeCe nodded, trying not to look at the heaping bosom Michelle had now.
“Did you tell your mother?”
“No,” Michelle said, her eyes starting to swell again. “Papa said it would hurt her feelings that she hadn’t figured out how to stop me from being sore.”
The bathroom door opened, breaching Michelle’s confessional with the girlish giggles of two classmates. CeCe grabbed Michelle’s hand and led her friend into the open hallway, down a short corridor and inside a stairwell.
Seated on the hard stairs, Michelle told CeCe how her father kept coming into her room at night to reach under her covers and under her nightgown to rub her breasts. By Halloween, Michelle said her breasts weren’t swollen anymore and she told her father she was OK.
“He didn’t stop?” CeCe asked.
“He stopped rubbing my boobs,” Michelle said, shrugging one shoulder and looking down to her shoes again. “He told me to lift my gown and breathe slow, like a music bar.”
Michelle demonstrated four staccato intakes of breath, and one slow four-count to exhale. CeCe knew Michelle loved to sing. She tried to understand her friend doing vocal warm-ups in bed with her nightgown lifted.
“He had his finger in me,” Michelle said. “He would move it in and out when I breathed.”
Michelle told CeCe how her father’s visits escalated from his finger to his cock. He promised Michelle it would only hurt the first time but would help his aches go away, like he’d done for her. For two days after that first time, Michelle said, she felt like she’d fallen on the cross bar of Michael’s bike. Her father rubbed baby oil on her bottom for the next few nights, holding her and singing to her like a preschooler again. She thought it was over, until he maneuvered her onto his lap in the middle of a lullaby one night. Michelle said he came into her room almost every night after that.
“I made Michael sleep in my room every night during Christmas break,” she said.
“Did you tell him?” CeCe asked, her face wide with surprise.
Michelle nodded. “He didn’t believe me at first, but when he saw Papa peeking in at night, he did.”
“Were you scared?” CeCe asked, feeling herself tremble in the cold stairway with these chilling secrets swirling around them.
“We both were,” she said. “Remember that Amelia movie they made us watch last year, the one with the guy from Cheers and he went to prison? CeCe, I don’t want my Papa to go to prison. I knew he would stop one day . . . ”
Michelle’s voice trailed off. Her arms were folded across her knees and she dropped her head onto them. She cried again. CeCe’s eyes welled, too.
“He didn’t stop, CeCe!” Michelle wailed. “He didn’t stop! I hate him! I hate him! He didn’t stop!”
Michelle’s cries had turned beastly and CeCe began to tremble.
“He even made me sit in his lap today,” Michelle whispered hoarsely, once her sobs were under control. “Mama took Michael to get a new pair of shoes and we were alone. He made me do it in the daytime, CeCe. I still have creamy stuff coming out of me. I hate him, but if he goes to prison, my mother and my brother will hate me back. That’s why I want to die.”
CeCe had tears rolling down her face now. She felt desperate, scared, and helpless. She didn’t want breasts anymore, either.
“You can’t die, Michelle,” CeCe said, sniffling. “I’ll go with you to tell somebody. You gotta tell somebody.”
Michelle swung her head back and forth while tears poured down her round cheeks.
“We have to,” CeCe said, hearing how she’d included herself in the solution. “That’s what the counselor said to do after the movie. It’s not your fault and you gotta tell if you want it to stop.”
Michelle was quiet, head on her arms. Knees and ankles tucked tight.
“You want it to stop, right?” CeCe asked.
Michelle’s head bolted up, her brown eyes ignited with rage. She leaned in dangerously close to CeCe’s face and exploded, “You think I like having my own daddy put his nasty dick inside me?”
Neither of the girls heard the footsteps coming up the stairs. Mr. Markeweiz, the social studies teacher, stood frozen on the landing behind them. Only CeCe turned to face him. Michelle buried her face and cried out again. Stuttering, Mr. Markeweiz explained the class was lining up and he had been sent to look for them.
“CeCe,” he said, “why don’t you head to the office and wait for me there. I’ll let your mother know where you are.”
“She’s not here,” CeCe said, remembering her own home woes. Worse, Mr. Markeweiz gave CeCe an “of course not” nod. CeCe had Mr. Markeweiz for social studies. He was corny but nice and seemed to own corduroy pants in a hundred different colors. He wore the forest green pair tonight.
“Can I stay with Michelle?” she asked.
“That’s up to Michelle,” Mr. Markeweiz said, turning his soft eyes to Michelle. “I’ve got to be upfront with you, Michelle. I have to go and pull your parents out of that auditorium.”
Michelle’s face contracted into a painful wince. “No!” she screamed. “They’ll put Papa in jail!”
Mr. Markeweiz’s face went ashen. He smoothed his hands over the pockets of his corduroys and CeCe could tell he was uncomfortable. A strand from his comb-over fell onto his forehead as he looked from CeCe and then back to Michelle.
“Honey,” he said, leaning on the stair railing, “I am so, so sorry for what has happened to you. You’re a smart, talented young lady and you don’t deserve this. But I’m sorry; if I don’t report this, then I’m committing a crime, too.”
For the rest of their graduation night, CeCe, Michelle, and Michelle’s mother and Mr. Markeweiz were in the office talking to Mrs. Patterson, the guidance counselor. Michelle’s father had been left inside the gym to watch her twin brother, Michael, accept his lapel pin. He’d been told Michelle was having awful cramps and asking for her mother.
In the office, CeCe watched Mr. Markeweiz twist at his wedding band while he relayed his disturbing discovery and prompted Michelle to tell her mother what was happening to her at night.
CeCe sat on the floor next to Michelle, holding her hand the entire time. CeCe would squeeze her friend’s trembling fingers each time Michelle had to say “my chest” and “his finger” and “inside me.” Mrs. Johnson’s face remained stoic and framed, as CeCe had always known her to be, but her thick makeup was streaked with tears. CeCe knew now that everyone, even icy queens like Mrs. Johnson, had a breaking point.
The police detectives came before the end of the ceremony. The vice principal had asked them to send plainclothes officers, because of the graduation. CeCe hovered near Michelle for the rest of the evening, although Mrs. Johnson had finally embraced her daughter. Every now and again, she’d catch CeCe’s eye. CeCe felt badly for her. She knew how much Mrs. Johnson liked to brag about their “middle-class” family. CeCe wondered which she resented more, having a crack in their foundation exposed or seeing her daughter cry.
Mr. Johnson was discreetly escorted into the science lab and confronted by the detectives. CeCe was dismissed from the office, but was allowed to dispense one hug to Michelle.
“You promised, CeCe,” Michelle whispered into her ear.
“I won’t tell,” CeCe whispered back.
Walking back to orchestra room for her jacket, CeCe saw Michael and Mr. Markeweiz in the hall. Mr. Markeweiz had his hand on Michael’s shoulder as they walked and CeCe could see Michael fume. Their eyes locked. CeCe gave him a
sympathetic look.
“This is all your goddamn fault!” Michael yelled. Mr. Markeweiz clamped his hands on Michael’s shoulders and whispered into his ear as he guided Michael past CeCe and toward the office.
CeCe froze in her steps, mouth agape and arms lifted to the side. Moroseness coated her bones. She was tired. She was sad. And she’d missed her own commencement ceremony. As she turned around, back toward the orchestra room and her jacket, she saw two boys standing near the band door.
“Never heard him cuss like that,” the redhead said.
“Yeah,” said the smaller boy, his mouth too small for all the metal brackets inside. He turned a steely stare to CeCe and asked, “What the fuck did you do?”
CeCe didn’t know the redhead very well. Only that his name was Scott. The shorter boy, with the braces, was Jesse. Jesse had been in the same fifth grade class with CeCe and now was in the same math block this year. Jesse was more of a taunt than a bully, a housefly buzzing in and out of the curtains. CeCe had never been significant enough for Jesse’s sights, but she avoided his flight patterns anyway.
“Nothing,” CeCe mumbled, walking past them and into the orchestra room. She scanned the scattering of empty chairs and cups for her jacket.
“What’s ‘all your fault,’ then?” Jesse asked from the doorway.
“Nothing,” CeCe said, more forcefully. She spotted the windbreaker draped over the piano bench and moved toward it.
“You were down at the office for a super long time,” Jesse said. “Something happened.”
“My dad said he saw a police car outside,” said Scott, still in the hallway.
Jesse’s eyes winked with mischief and he asked, “You and your homeboy getting arrested?”
CeCe folded her jacket over her arm and walked toward the doorway. The boys had already disheveled their black slacks and white button-down shirts. As she moved to walk past them, Jesse said in a low voice, “I’ll find out what you did, Crimson.”
“I didn’t get in trouble,” CeCe said, moving past them.