Sister of Silence

by Daleen Berry

  My toes turned numb as I sat there for what seemed like hours before my parents came into the living room, looking like they were at someone’s funeral. Both were sad and silent as they sat on the couch together, Daddy’s arm around my mother as he tried to comfort her.

  My sobs had stopped, but in their place, a few hiccups remained, and I guess that’s what caused Mom to turn in my direction.

  “Daleen, what are you doing out of bed? It’s freezing in here and you’re going to be ill!” Rising, she hurried up to me, and the next thing I knew, I was clinging to her as she carried me back down the stairs.

  “I want you to divorce him,” I said as my tears began flowing again. “I don’t want him to hurt you anymore.”

  “Shh, there, it’s all right,” she cooed. “Your father didn’t hurt me. I’m fine.”

  By then we were on the couch and I was on her lap. When she whispered my words to my father, he tried to put his arm around me but I pulled away and clung even tighter to Mom. He leaned back heavily.

  “I’m so sorry, Neelad,” he whispered, using the pet name he had given me.

  “There now, it’s all right. Everything’s fine now,” Mom said.

  I glanced his way. In the pale living room light, he did seem different. He no longer looked mean and frightening, like he had when I first woke up. He even smiled.

  “I’m sorry if I scared you, Honey. I didn’t mean to.” His words were quiet and I could smell his horrible beer breath.

  I buried my face against Mom again.

  “Will you be all right now? We’re coming to bed, and everything’ll be fine, I promise.” As she spoke, she brushed the hair back from my eyes. I nodded and looked into her flushed face, her own stormy blue eyes rimmed with red.

  “I’m taking her back to bed, Dale,” she told my father, who rose onto unsteady feet to follow us. Upstairs, Mom tucked me in with a kiss against my forehead. “Remember, God will protect us,” she whispered against my ear.

  A few minutes later I heard them get into bed. Everything grew quiet, but I lay there praying in the dark, “Please God,” over and over again, "let her divorce him.”

  Dad went to work in Washington, DC, soon afterward: I think he was ashamed of what he’d done that night. Maybe he was also afraid his drinking might lead to a repeat performance. I was happy when he left, knowing he wouldn’t hurt my mother anymore.

  My prayer had been answered.

  But I was nine and blissfully ignorant of how Dad’s void would be filled by someone else in my own life just four years later, a force that would change me forever.

  Four years after Dad left us, I entered junior high, surrounded by unfamiliar faces now that school consolidation was becoming a national trend. Shy and subdued, I excelled academically and somehow found my place during the most difficult phase of adolescence. In my West Virginia History class, I was selected to enter the statewide Golden Horseshoe Contest. In English, I received regular praise for my essays and short stories. I was proud of my accomplishments, but not wanting to be noticed, I pretended they were no big deal.

  Even though I tried not to draw attention to myself, sometimes I just couldn’t help it. The following year, more than anything else, I wanted to win the county spelling bee. As the winner for my school, I would compete against students from several other schools. I grilled myself over and over again. With my parents and two sisters in the audience one spring night, I was the only student standing when the last word was given out. I spelled it correctly—becoming the county winner, taking home a $50 savings bond, and having my photo in the local newspaper.

  I felt a huge sense of achievement, and realized that with hard work and enough time, anything was possible. Because it was important to me, and I had been willing to give up my free time to get it, I won.

  My parents were very proud of me, but I think Dad, who drove three hours from work to be there, was the proudest. He had always corrected our misspelled words and improper grammar, he’d taught us to play Scrabble, and he’d helped instill in his daughters that nothing was impossible.

  “You can succeed if you want something badly enough, and you can be whatever you want to be,” Dad told me. “Even though you’re a girl.”

  Dad was exceptional in countless ways, in spite of his many other failures—one being his drinking. It had always been the great divide between my parents, making him unreliable when it came time to send support money home. So after he moved to Martinsburg, West Virginia, an hour from his new job in Washington, DC, Mom found a job as a waitress to make ends meet. We still saw Dad, but only during a weekend here or there.

  Which is how our baby sister was born in 1976. I was twelve, Carla nine, when Jackie arrived. She was adorable and I loved her dearly, especially when she began to coo and smile at me. Carla happily gave up her position as the youngest to dote on the new baby. I helped care for little Jackie when I had to, but I didn’t spend all my free time playing with her like Carla did. I thought a baby was just a necessary nuisance, the last thing on my busy mind. I couldn’t foresee having any babies of my own for a very long time—if ever.

  Sometimes after Carla and I got home from school, Mom would take us all with her on the thirty-minute drive to the restaurant. While Mom worked, we would wander around the mall, pushing Jackie in her stroller. Most of the time, unless a diaper needed changing, all I had to do was oversee my siblings.

  When the mall closed and Mom was busy cleaning her section in the restaurant, she’d bring us dessert and we’d eat at one of the tables, waiting until her shift ended. Those were some of my favorite times with my mother. Sure, her job interfered with our social life and school studies, but we did what we had to do. Carla, who excelled socially but not academically, didn’t mind running around the mall playing with Jackie and meeting up with friends while I did homework. I knew that, as the oldest, I had an obligation to make sure my mom could earn the income she desperately needed to pay the bills.

  In those days my well-endowed neighbor teased me because I was a virgin, my breasts were barely there, and I hadn’t gotten my period yet. It was true: I was a skinny thirteen-year-old with a flat chest and beanpole legs. I wasn’t tall, but people said I was because I looked like a pencil. My best feature was my hair, falling long and straight like a waterfall past my waist, where it pooled against the floor whenever I sat cross-legged. I knew Eddie Leigh, a family friend, liked my hair, too, because he was always touching it.

  The rapes never would have happened had Dad been there. I think that’s why I was such easy prey for Eddie. Our friendship began innocently, when I was just eight and he was fifteen. Eddie had been around since we first moved to West Virginia. Tall, all arms and legs, he walked so fast he looked like a moving cartwheel. Even though he wore a cocky attitude, I didn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been nice to me. Our families went on social outings together, and we often rode with Eddie’s family to Bible meetings. We’d play hide and seek in their backyard with other neighborhood children, and more than once I vaguely remember hiding in their dark barn with those black eyes staring at me from between the door’s wooden slats.

  By the time I was eleven, Eddie began showing up at our house with a load of coal or firewood. Knowing Dad was gone and our finances were tight, he offered to drop some off. The first time, he took the gas money Mom gave him. But after that he always refused, gallantly telling Mom her fine cooking was payment enough. She really appreciated his help and was happy to let him join us for dinner.

  The first time it happened, I was two years older. Still an underdeveloped gangly girl of thirteen. At twenty, Eddie stood six-foot-two and towered over me, and anyone who knew him said he wasn’t happy unless he was tinkering under the roof of his beloved green Ford truck, which you could hear coming from a mile away. He wasn’t much of a talker, unless it was about that truck, or some model he was building. Mostly he just smiled and acted charming, making coy comments that left me blushing. It wasn’t so much what he said as how h
e said it. He might comment about the weather, then look at me and ask “Isn’t that right?” with that grin on his face. He nicknamed me “Legs,” wearing that same grin. Told me his friend Rick said I had legs like Angie Dickinson, clear up to my armpits. That was one of the times I caught him watching me with an odd expression. I turned away, embarrassed, as if I’d done something wrong, and scared to death my parents would find out. I suspected they wouldn’t like it, if they did.

  Children’s lives should be a mixture of fun and freedom from the pressures of adult life. Little about my life was either, unless you count the first few times I stayed with Eddie’s sister, Kim. At nineteen, she was wild and daring, with a goofy, offbeat sense of humor. Though five years younger than Kim, it seemed okay since I had known her and Eddie since we began going to Bible meetings together years earlier.

  Kim was always finding some mischief to get into, almost always without her parents’ knowledge. One of the things she really liked was driving fast. I remember her racing along narrow country lanes in Eddie’s very first car, a blue Ford Falcon, her short black curls blowing across her face from the wind that whistled through the open windows.

  “Kim, slow down!” I begged once, laughing.

  “You just hold on there. We’re gonna’ see what this car really has,” Kim said with a grin, downshifting to take a sharp curve. “That Eddie thinks he can drive. Well, I’ll show him I can make this thing go too!”

  I’d been a visitor in the Leigh home for years, and stayed overnight as a youngster. When I turned thirteen, Kim would come pick me up in that little car, and we’d fly the seven miles from my house, barely slowing for the curves. I was tossed from side to side, clutching the door handle while Kim tore the gear shifter from one gear to another as fast as any guy could, I thought, and the little car sped ever faster. Being with her made me feel less like a gangly adolescent and more like a sophisticated grownup.

  And that’s how we ended up together that terrible night in early spring 1977 when I was in eighth grade.

  How easily Kim had been able to talk Mom into letting me go to a sleepover with a girl five years my senior. Maybe if Mom had overheard our phone call the day before, some alarm bells might have gone off in her head. Maybe.

  "You'll never guess who likes you.”

  Kim was right, I didn't guess.

  “Eddie.”

  No way. A twenty-year old guy liked me?

  “He thinks you're really pretty.”

  Did he say that? I had to know. Or was she just speculating?

  Kim just laughed and said, “Come over tomorrow, I'll tell you more.”

  “Yes, I’ll tell Mom I’ll finish my homework before I go to bed.” Mom's one condition in letting me go with Kim. And of course Mom said I could go.

  The air outside was warm and fragrant from the scent of new vegetation that surrounded their little house, making it seem like it sat in the middle of a large forest. The Leigh home reminded me a little of the witch’s cottage in “Hansel and Gretel,” minus the candy decorations and gingerbread trim. Eddie and his parents had bedrooms downstairs, but Kim slept in the attic. To get there, we had to walk right by Eddie’s bedroom. He wasn’t home from work yet but the door was open, and as I looked inside and saw everything neatly in its place, I couldn’t help but think: Eddie likes me!

  In the privacy of Kim's room we laughed like innocent teenagers. She joked about her parents and mimicked their voices, making me roll on the bed clutching my stomach. We shared secrets, like the one she'd whispered over the phone.

  Whenever I heard the sound of an occasional passing car through the open window screens I grew distracted, wondering if the next one would be Eddie’s. Then suddenly, the crunch of tires against gravel—I just knew it was him.

  True to my promise to Mom, I’d left Kim in her attic room and had gone downstairs to do homework. Cross-legged in the spare room the Leighs had converted into an office, twirling my pencil, I tried to concentrate. But it was hard because now Eddie was home from work. Within minutes, The Beach Boys blasted from the stereo in his bedroom. He was just a few feet away on the other side of that wall . . .

  He thinks you're pretty, Kim’s voice whispered again inside my head. He really likes you.

  How could someone as worldly as Eddie be interested in a wallflower like me, a mere kid of thirteen? He had a real job; he paid his own way in the world, made his own decisions, and didn’t seem to have to account to his parents like Kim always did. He was an Adult.

  I continued trying to focus on math, not Eddie, when I heard Kim bound down the stairs, then burst into the room, interrupting my thoughts. She urged me with an impish grin to follow her. I jumped off the chair and ran after her. She wandered into the room next door, Eddie's room, and plopped down on her brother’s bed.

  Eddie sat on the floor, working on one of his many model cars. I stood, not sure what to do, until Kim patted the bed, indicating I should sit beside her. She started talking to Eddie, trying to say things that would get his attention and make him look up. I watched while he glued together the plastic model of a classic ‘64 Mustang he’d probably spent hours working on, bantering with Kim or softly singing along to the music.

  Then, just as quickly as she’d breezed in, Kim breezed out again, leaving us alone together. I started to follow her but Eddie stopped me.

  That grin again. His voice, soft and teasing. “What’s your rush?”

  I sat down on the bed again, and after wiping the glue off his fingers, he stood and then sat next to me.

  I struggled to say something, anything, before blurting out the first words that came to mind: “Do you know anything about algebra?”

  I felt awkward and frozen, sitting on the edge of the bed like I might bolt at any moment, while trying to hide my nervousness. The question really wasn’t so odd, I told myself. I’d been turning to him more and more, in response to the questions he’d started asking me about my parents, how I was doing in my classes, and what I liked doing in my spare time. I admired him, and now, standing there remembering what Kim had said yesterday, I just knew I was falling in love with him. And I was certain he loved me. Why else would he show me so much attention?

  I don’t recall his answer because leaned toward me and kissed me. I was so surprised I didn’t know what to do. Only one other boy had kissed me before, and it had been more like a quick peck than a real kiss.

  “Well, what do you think?” He seemed amused.

  “I don’t know,” a voice I didn’t recognize responded in a strained whisper. My head went down and I just stared at the floor.

  “You can come to my room later tonight if you want, and we’ll talk. Would you like that?”

  I didn’t say anything, and continued staring at the swirls in the dark green carpet.

  “We’ll just talk, that’s all,” he said.

  I hesitated. Being in his bedroom when everyone else was sound asleep didn’t feel right to me, and I knew his parents wouldn’t approve. I must have said something, but I can’t remember what, and quickly rushed out to find Kim.

  It was just before bedtime a few hours later, and Kim and I were sitting at the old metal and Formica table playing cards while Mrs. Leigh finished cleaning the kitchen.

  “Would you girls like some tea?” she asked, her arm poised above the teakettle.

  “No, thank you,” I said.

  “Nah,” Kim added.

  “I know something you girls will like,” Mrs. Leigh said, her smile bright. With that—as if she’d just announced dinner was ready—she opened one of the kitchen cabinets and took out a glass liquor bottle filled with a lovely red liquid. I watched while she mixed it with Coca-Cola, mesmerized by the movement inside the glass as the colors swirled together. Then she put two glasses before us.

  “There you go,” she said, “a sloe gin fizz.”

  It looked like the Shirley Temple my parents had ordered for my sister and me on the rare occasions we dined out. I took a sip and my thro
at burned a little at first, though the next sip was better and I decided I liked it. It tasted nothing like the 7UP and cherry juice that came in a Shirley Temple. I’d never had anything other than a thimbleful of wine with an occasional meal at home, so the idea of drinking something more “grown-up,” especially something that Mrs. Leigh herself really liked, made me feel important.

  The drink was accompanied with a teasing warning to not tell my mother. I promised, because I didn’t want Mrs. Leigh to get mad at me. Besides, I didn’t see what harm could come from such a delicious drink.

  CHAPTER TWO

  When the moon came up later that night and Kim went downstairs to the bathroom, I trailed along. We giggled and whispered as we opened the door at the bottom of the attic stairs. I could hear her father snoring from the master bedroom off the kitchen and saw that Eddie’s door was open. We poked our heads around the door frame of his room to see him lying in his bed, one arm propped up under his head.

  I felt him watching us as we scampered off to the bathroom.

  After relieving ourselves, we were just opening the door to return to Kim’s attic bedroom when Eddie said, “Daleen, aren’t you coming in?”

  I remembered what he’d said after he’d kissed me.

  I looked at Kim, desperately wanting her to tell me to follow her upstairs. She just shrugged her shoulders and quickly started back up the steps, leaving me with my decision.

  “Oh come on, I won’t bite you,” he teased.

  I took a few steps back and stood in the open doorway of Eddie’s room; he was patting the bed with one hand. By then, I realized he was without a shirt, his other hand holding a magazine that featured the latest models in sports cars. I tentatively walked just inside, nervous about going into a man’s bedroom. He was an Adult, after all.