by Amy Bryant
I reached the glove before Brendan did. I was conscious of his stare as I straightened up, stuffed the glove in my pocket, and then pulled on my coat. Smoke from his cigarette wafted over to me. My zipper stuck, and I struggled with it.
“I’m sorry,” he said. For a second I thought he was referring to the trouble I was having with my zipper.
“I guess we’re both pretty drunk tonight, huh,” he said.
I gave up on the zipper. “Give me a cigarette,” I said. I wanted to sound tough.
Brendan took a pack of Camel Filters from the front pocket of his pants and tossed them at me. I caught them easily. If this had happened an hour ago I might have remarked on my good hand–eye coordination. I pushed the matchbook out from between the pack and the plastic wrapping. There was an advertisement for a phone sex number printed across the matchbook in red. “We’ll make your fantasies come true,” the matchbook promised. I lit my cigarette and threw the pack back, aiming for Brendan’s chest. It fell short and landed at his feet. I watched him bend over to pick it up as smoke traveled into my throat and chest. Instead of a coat he was wearing a thin pullover with a hood, the kind surfers and hippies wore. I stifled a cough. I wasn’t used to the harshness of his cigarettes. I smoked only lights.
“I’m really sorry,” he said.
I dropped my cigarette and stepped on it. I could smell his patchouli everywhere. It was on me, on him, hanging in the air between us. I made a break for the front door, cutting as wide a circle around him as I could manage on the tiny porch. Brendan stayed perfectly still, staring at the spot I had just been in. When I got inside I slammed the door behind me. The carpet slowed the door down, and it bounced softly against its frame.
When I got home I sat at the kitchen table, listening to the ticking of the antique grandfather clock in the foyer. I looked at the digital clock on the microwave. It was 1:37. Not early, but not late either. Nothing in the kitchen looked real. Not the beige cloth toaster and blender covers. Not the dark brown floor tiles. Not the rust-colored countertops. Not Mom’s pink and orange carnival glass that she kept on display in a glass cabinet. Not yesterday’s newspaper stacked in the corner. All of it seemed like props, like plastic imitations you’d see in a model home kitchen.
Already I was starting to feel like it had happened to someone else. I felt like someone trying to recall what it was like to be hypnotized or have an out-of-body experience.
I hadn’t screamed. If I’d screamed, Mike and Adam would have heard, and Brendan would have stopped. Or maybe Mike and Adam would have come downstairs and seen us. I hated the idea of them seeing me like that. Would they have understood what was happening?
I let go of the screaming scenario. Instead I pictured myself somehow pulling the lamp off the side table and crashing it over Brendan’s head. I doubted the lamp would have knocked him out, so maybe I would have just gotten a black eye for my trouble. Still, I could have tried.
I didn’t want to think about it anymore. I got up from the table and crept upstairs to my room. Mom was a light sleeper, so I was careful to take it slow on the stairs. If I woke her she’d turn the light on in the hallway before going to the bathroom to pee. Depending on her mood, she might cross the hall to my room and tell me to get to sleep.
I changed into a T-shirt and got into bed. I was exhausted, but I still couldn’t sleep. There was something else that was bothering me, something important. I wasn’t convinced Brendan knew what he had done to me. The way he’d said he was sorry made it sound like he’d spilled beer on me or something. Maybe he didn’t think he had really raped me. Maybe he thought he’d done something short of that, something that meant saying he was sorry was enough.
And I’d told him I was scared of getting pregnant. I was mad at myself for that. It was true, of course, but that wasn’t the main reason I wanted him off me. I wanted him to know I hadn’t wanted him.
And he hadn’t come. If he didn’t have an orgasm, what was the point?
The phone woke me up in the morning. I wasn’t about to answer it. I felt as if I hadn’t slept at all. I dragged myself out of bed, pulled on a pair of sweatpants, and staggered down the hall to the bathroom. I sat down on the toilet, barely remembering to kick the door shut behind me. My urine felt like it was pouring from an open wound, and I pressed my forehead into my knees to keep from crying out. When I was finished I checked for blood on the toilet paper and in my underwear, but there wasn’t any. It felt like there should have been blood.
I went down to the kitchen. Mom and William were sitting at the kitchen table. A jar of mayonnaise, a loaf of bread, cold cuts, and a bag of chips were spread out before them.
“There’s cereal in the cabinet, if you’d rather have breakfast than lunch,” Mom said. I grunted and opened the refrigerator door. I wasn’t ready to hold a conversation yet, much less eat solid food.
“Or there’s bread and cold cuts here, if you’d rather have that.”
“Jesus, Fran, she has eyes in her head,” William said. His mouth was full of sandwich.
I poured a glass of orange juice and eased into a chair, ignoring the pain in my crotch as I sat down. I blinked into a sunbeam that bored through a space in the window blinds like a searchlight.
“Honey, you don’t have socks on. You’re going to catch a cold.”
I slowly turned my head in Mom’s direction, holding back the tears. I studied her turquoise sweatshirt. I wasn’t ready to look into her face yet. “I’ll put something on in a minute,” I said. “I’m not quite awake yet.”
“If you ask me, I think someone needs to cut back on her alcohol intake,” William said. “You look like you’ve been beat up.” He shoved a handful of chips into his mouth.
“Well, nobody’s asking you,” I said.
Mom pushed her chair back and carried her plate over to the sink. “That was Mike who called just now,” she said as she turned on the faucet.
I spent the afternoon on the couch in front of the television. When the balm of the TV wore off I went upstairs to shower. The heat of the water was soothing, but I couldn’t keep my mind off Brendan Davis. Maybe I’d moved my hips when he’d gotten inside me. Maybe just at first, from the memory of being with Ian. Maybe I had. I couldn’t be sure. As I dried myself off I thought about how on TV rape victims scrubbed themselves raw under scalding water as soon as they got home. These women also tended to do things like call the police and get forensic reports. Hardly anybody believed them, but at least they tried.
Instead of packing for spring break I had brought my laundry home. While I’d been watching television, Mom had washed and stacked a month’s worth of clean clothes on my bed. When I came in from the shower and saw what Mom had done I wanted to curl up on her lap and bawl, like I had when I was little. I wanted Mom to run her hands up and down my back and tell me I was going to be okay. I waited for the tears to come, but they didn’t.
For the first time that day I thought about food. I would brush my teeth, get dressed, eat a decent meal. I was still me. I could do these things. I draped my towel over my desk chair and dressed myself with random items from Mom’s piles. A pair of gray cotton underwear. A black bra. My favorite Ramones T-shirt.
I was pulling my jeans from the middle of one of the stacks when I saw them. My blue and gray pajama pants, resting between my long-sleeved thermal undershirt and my black hooded sweatshirt. My clothes from last night had been in a pile beside my bed. Mom must have scooped them up with the rest of my laundry.
I grabbed the pants, knocking the pile over. I turned them around in my hands, examining them for evidence, stroking the dull, worn satin. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for exactly, but my pants had survived Brendan Davis intact. There wasn’t so much as a frayed seam to indicate what they’d been through. I refolded the pants and set them back down on the bed, away from the rest of my clothes. I couldn’t imagine wearing them again, but I didn’t want to throw them away either. Finally I decided to hide them at the top of my closet
, between my parents’ wedding pictures and my old yearbooks.
I put my jeans on and combed out my hair. I looked around for my headband. It wasn’t anywhere. I moved my clothes to the top of my dresser and pulled my bedding apart. It wasn’t there either. Finally I gave up and shoved my hair into a ponytail.
Hiding out during the week wasn’t hard, but I had the problem of the weekend to sort out. There were bands playing at the high school Saturday night for some sort of benefit. Since I wasn’t going back to school until Sunday, I had told everyone at Mike’s party that I was going. Massive Hemorrhage was playing, along with just about every other Reston hardcore band. It was safe to assume that everyone I knew would be there. It was safe to assume that Brendan Davis would be there.
I could tell Carrie I was sick. But a small, crazy part of me wanted to see Brendan again. I was sure that something in his face would confirm what I needed confirming. I needed to know that I had a real reason to feel the way I did.
Saturday Mom woke me up early to go shopping. I was too tired to think of a good reason why I couldn’t go. Besides, it was time. I hadn’t left the house in a week.
Mom kept one hand on top of the steering wheel and rested the other on the gearshift while she drove, like always. The sight of it made me mad. I was mad at everything familiar, especially the way Mom kept up with her domestic habits and rituals. Running the dishwasher when it was full, laundry twice a week, keeping the bathroom clean. Her daughter had been raped, but there were things around the house that needed to get done.
I tore my attention away from Mom’s hands and stared out the window, listening to the dull hum of the car’s engine. Reston was ill-suited to the depressed, with its neat rows of houses and manicured lawns. We passed the golf course and the man-made lake. Freshly painted rowboats were thoughtfully secured to well-built docks. If I wasn’t an outsider before, now it was official.
In Hecht’s I sifted through a pile of T-shirts while Debbie Gibson’s sexy, childish balloon voice blasted from a speaker directly above me. I could see Mom over in Shoes, examining the size-nine sale rack. Her tan raincoat was slung over one arm. I drifted over to a row of junior dresses that were 30 percent off. I scraped one hanger after another across the rack. I didn’t wear dresses. Maybe I would start.
I watched Mom slip off her loafers and try on a pair of brown pumps. I could walk over to the shoe department and say it. Mom, I got raped over at Mike’s house last Saturday. It would be that easy.
Mom walked to the end of the size-nine sale rack and examined her feet in the shoe mirror. What would she say when I told her? Would she comfort me? Would she stop what she was doing and wrap herself around me, like she had when I told her that Mike’s dad was dead? Would she get angry? Would she blame me? Would she tell William? Would she call the police? Would she call my father? Would she cry? I didn’t want her to cry.
“See anything?” Mom was holding a shoe box that had an orange sticker on the side. The orange sticker meant the shoes were 25 percent off. Yellow was 50 percent off.
“Not really. It’s hard when you don’t have anything in mind.”
“Isn’t there anything you need for school?”
I studied her wide, dark eyes. Ask, I thought. Just ask.
“I don’t see anything,” I said.
I called Carrie when I got home.
“Where the fuck have you been?” she said. “I was starting to think you had some kind of family tragedy or something.”
“I was sick,” I said. “But now I’m better.”
“You don’t have anything contagious, do you? I just got over strep two weeks ago, and if I get sick again I’ll kill myself.”
“I don’t think so. I feel fine now.”
“Do you still want to go out tonight?”
I stayed in the shower a long time, deep conditioning my hair and shaving everything that needed shaving. I blew my hair dry and brushed it until it was glossy. At the mall I had found a black headband identical to the one I had lost, and I fitted it carefully behind my ears. I wore jeans (button fly—Brendan would have had trouble with these), boots, a black sweater, and my army jacket. I put on red lipstick. I looked normal. Happy. Adjusted.
I went downstairs to wait. Mom was in the kitchen, chopping onions at the counter. There was olive oil heating up in a frying pan on the stove. I sat on a stool on the other side of the counter.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” Mom said. She kept her eyes on her chopping.
“What about?”
“You don’t know this, but your father had some trouble with depression when he was your age. That was when he started drinking.”
I checked out the window for Carrie’s headlights. “I guess that makes sense,” I said.
Mom stopped chopping and brought the cutting board over to the stove. There was the hiss of the onions hitting the pan.
“You remind me of him,” she said. She wiped away onion tears with one sleeve as she carried the cutting board over to the sink.
“Like how?”
“Your sense of humor, for one. And he has a head for numbers.” She was at the refrigerator, rooting around in the crisper.
“I didn’t know Dad was good at math.”
“Where do you think you got it? Not from me.”
“I never thought about it.”
Mom shut the refrigerator door without getting anything out.
“Polly, I want you to talk to me about this depression of yours.”
“I’m not depressed.”
“Honey, I know depressed when I see it.”
“Where’s William?” I asked.
“He ran over to the hardware store.”
I shifted on my stool. The room smelled like onions. “I got raped,” I said.
Mom went over to the stove and turned off the burner.
“Someone you know?”
I looked down at the countertop. “Sort of. Not really.”
Mom exhaled, and my eyes filled with tears.
“Don’t tell William,” I said.
“I won’t.” She came over to my side of the counter and stood beside me. After a minute I leaned into her, and she put an arm around me. I had stopped crying.
“This happens to a lot of women,” Mom said. “It’s not your fault.”
“I feel like shit,” I said into her shirt.
“I know.”
Outside, Carrie honked her horn. I hadn’t heard her pull up. I straightened up and looked out the kitchen window. I could see Lyle’s elbow poking out the car window. He was wearing his leather jacket. His elbow went up and then down again. Lyle used his hands when he spoke.
“I have to go,” I said.
“I was supposed to be there to help set up,” Lyle was saying as I got in the car.
“You’re not even playing first,” Carrie said, louder than she needed to. She looked like she wanted to kick him out of the car.
“Howdy, folks,” I said.
“You know, Lyle, if you had to be there so early you could have found someone else to drive you,” Carrie said. “I’m not the only person in Reston with a car.”
“But you’re my girlfriend,” Lyle said.
I saw Mike as soon as we turned into the parking lot. He was sitting on the curb near the lane that was for school buses during the week. He stood up as soon as he caught sight of us and jogged the short distance to where we were parking. Carrie beeped her horn and waved, but Mike kept his arms at his sides. His expression reminded me of the one he wore when he couldn’t figure something out on the guitar.
“He’s pissed that I’m late,” Lyle said. “Shit.”
“You’re a slut,” Mike said as soon as I got out of the car.
I looked around to see if anyone had heard him. We were late by Lyle’s standards but early by audience standards. Except for Carrie and Lyle, everyone was out of earshot.
“I know you fucked Brendan Davis,” he said.
I stepped around him, and Mike grabb
ed my arm. Carrie and Lyle stood off to the side, watching.
“That’s not what happened,” I said.
Mike held up my missing headband. “I’ve been trying to call you all week,” he said. “Look what I found on the couch in my basement.”
I felt the blood rush to my face. “That’s not what happened,” I said again. I was dimly aware of a group of people getting out of a car across the parking lot, turning off the radio, laughing, slamming doors.
Mike let go of my arm. “You’re a slut,” he said. “You were with Brendan in my house.”
“He raped me,” I said. I turned around and pulled on the passenger door handle of the car. It was locked. Carrie hurried forward, her keys in her hand.
“He raped you?”
I could tell he didn’t believe me. Carrie got the door open and I sat down. Mike grabbed the door before I could shut it.
“Brendan raped you?”
Lyle put his hand on Mike’s shoulder. “Mike man, leave her alone.”
Mike shook Lyle off and kept staring at me. I’d never seen him this angry. I thought he might actually hit me, but then all at once his face sagged and his expression turned desperate. He let go of the door and I slammed it shut.
“Both of you just get out of here.” Carrie’s words were muffled through the door. Mike and Lyle started off toward the school and Carrie went around to the driver’s side of the car and got in. I pushed the car lighter in.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.
“I don’t know. It’s not exactly something I was dying to talk about.”
“You should have told me, though.”