Sister of Silence

by Daleen Berry

  Driving a vehicle was equally common for preteens. A heavily agricultural state, much of the land is used for farming, and everyone in the family pitches in. Many of my friends also began driving as young as I did, but most of them learned in a cornfield on a tractor, not in a Pinto station wagon on a four-lane highway because their father was drunk.

  At the airport, teaching flight students, Dad was sober as could be. But any other time he had an open can of beer in his hand. One Saturday, he talked me into going with him to a Navy surplus sale at the Baltimore harbor. We were there all day and not long after we left, he steered the car into the parking lot of a beer joint.

  My heart sank as I recalled the words he and Mom had exchanged that morning. “All right Dale, she can go, but only if you promise not to drink and drive.”

  He had given my mother a patronizing smile. “Eileen, I won’t drink while Daleen’s with me. I promise.”

  So in the parking lot, with my father turning to me, I wondered what I should do to keep him from drinking. “Would you like to go inside and get something to eat?” Dad asked.

  I shook my head. “Can’t we eat when we get home?”

  “Aren’t you thirsty? I’m thirsty. Come on, let’s get a drink before we head home.” He was already opening his door.

  “But Mom said—”

  “I know what your mother said,” he said sternly, “and I’m saying we’re stopping here to eat. Now come on. You can’t stay in the car by yourself.”

  I had never defied my father, but as I followed him inside, it was with crossed arms and a sullen expression. A few minutes later, as I sat on the tall bar stool sipping a soda, the door opened and Bruce entered.

  I ran over, hugging him. “Uncle Bruce! What are you doing here?” He smiled and returned my hug, before shaking hands with Dad. “Hi there, Dale. How was the sale?” It dawned on me then they had arranged to meet in advance. I picked up the stack of quarters my father had left on the counter and walked over to the skee ball machine.

  “Dad, why don’t you play a game with me?” I asked, thinking maybe I could get him interested in something else, so he wouldn’t be tempted to drink as much.

  “In a few minutes, Honey,” he said. “Let me talk to Bruce first.”

  I played alone, until Bruce came over and put his hands on my shoulders. “Hey there, it looks like you’re having fun. Can I join you?” he asked.

  I beamed, but couldn’t help but notice my father, his back to us, ordering another beer. “Yeah,” I said, handing him a quarter for the machine. “Mom’s going to really be mad at him,” I muttered.

  He raised his eyebrows, and then smiled conspiratorially. “She sure is.”

  It was hours later when we finally told Bruce goodbye and left. I made sure I fastened my seatbelt, because Dad was really drunk. I was terrified we would wreck, and had visions of dying in some horrible accident. But we hadn’t been on the highway for long when my father pulled off the road.

  “Daleen, do you think you could drive? I’m having trouble seeing.”

  “What?” I had never driven before, but it suddenly made up for all the hours I’d been forced to spend in the bar.

  I get to drive! The idea was so exciting my anger evaporated.

  He was already out the door and staggering around the car when I scrambled over into his empty seat, which I slid forward until my feet rested against the gas pedal and brake. Then I put on my seatbelt and after a few minutes of instruction from him, I hesitantly pulled onto the highway. The drive home usually took about an hour, but with me at the wheel, it took much longer.

  Nervous exhilaration combined with an odd sense of being older than I really was, but I was also terrified I’d do something wrong. When we were two miles from home, I felt fresh exhilaration. We’re still alive! Dad had somehow managed to navigate me from the Beltway to a two-lane road, to the narrow country lane we took to reach our house. Together we managed to escape any major mishaps.

  But then he yelled at me.

  “Daleen, slow down!” Dad yelled. “You’re going to miss the bridge!”

  The bridge. A large, rusty, metal bridge. I braked too quickly, jerking us both, and the Pinto spun to a stop near the middle of the narrow road, just inches from the edge of the bridge and the steep embankment next to it. My heart was pounding so hard I thought it would burst and my palms were instantly wet from sweat.

  “Okay, now back up a little,” he said, not quite as loud.

  If you think you can do a better job, then you get behind the wheel, I wanted so badly to tell him. But after we got home and Mom found out—she always did—she told Dad unequivocally that if he ever pulled such a stunt again, she would return to our red brick home in Independence. Like a child caught doing something wrong, Dad looked suitably remorseful and made her yet another promise I knew he couldn’t keep.

  Some of my best Martinsburg memories came from my monthly flights accompanying my flight-instructor father as we flew to the orthodontist in Clarksburg, West Virginia. Pastel-blue skies punctuated by soft, cotton candy clouds made for a fairytale experience. To a twelve-year-old, climbing into a two-seat Cessna 152 and flying into the wild blue yonder was the most exciting thing ever.

  Dad taught me how to scan for other air traffic, and while I watched him skillfully handle the controls of an airplane, I found I actually enjoyed being with Dad because he was completely sober. Each flight, I pestered him to teach me to fly, much like I had years earlier about taking dance or piano lessons.

  One bright cloudless day during takeoff, adrenaline rushed through me as the little plane gathered speed on the tarmac. But I found fear joined the adrenaline’s coursing, too, so I prayed silently. We aren’t going to crash. Dad’s a great pilot and he’s always careful while flying. We aren’t going to crash.

  It worked—just like it did every time, allowing me to forget my fear while I learned to believe the mantra inside my mind.

  “Dad, when are you going to teach me to fly?” I asked him, excited. Maybe this time he’d have an answer for me.

  “When you’re older,” he said, smiling at me before returning his attention to the instrument panel.

  “But that’s what you said last year,” I whined.

  “How about when you’re fourteen? That’s not too much longer.”

  I groaned. Fourteen was more than a year away. “Please, Dad, I want to learn to fly.”

  “I’ll teach you when you’re older. The FAA won’t even issue you a pilot’s license until you’re sixteen,” Dad said.

  It was a major promise, another of the many my father could never keep, leading me to bottle up my feelings tightly inside, so no one would know how their words or failings hurt me.

  By the time the Martinsburg chapter of my life closed, I had succeeded in that effort—I was beginning to believe men couldn’t be trusted. And that they didn’t keep their word. While my trust was tainted, though, somewhere within me kept hoping for better—for more from them. It seemed I was destined to be an eternal optimist, someone who, despite seeing the flaws in others, refuses to give up on them. Maybe that’s because my mother never completely gave up on my father. Ever.

  But I did.

  I gave up on him forever, the first time I was raped. That’s because when I turned thirteen and all hell broke loose in my life, my father—the one person who could have protected me—was gone.

  One month after his promise to teach me to fly when I was fourteen, Dad didn’t come home from work. I wasn’t sure what happened, and Mom didn’t tell us. When she arrived late that night to pick us up from the friend’s house where we’d gone after school, nothing was said about why we went somewhere other than home on a school night.

  Then, when I got off the bus the next day and got home, Mom was packing our things.

  “Why do we have to move? I like it here.” I slammed my textbooks onto the table.

  “Because I said so, that’s why.” Mom sighed.

  “Whenever Dad say
s that, you tell him that’s not a real reason.” I glared at her.

  “Well it’s going to have to be reason enough this time.”

  “But I have a candy route now, and someone else will take it if I’m gone,” I moaned.

  By then I was a seventh grader at Musselman High School, and had begun making and selling old-fashioned stained glass candy the previous fall. It began as a fluke, after a family friend who knew how much I loved to bake gave me a book full of candy recipes.

  I made a batch of cinnamon candy and shared it with my classmates, and it was an immediate success. They began asking for more and before long, I had my own business venture. Suddenly, upper classmen I didn’t even know would stop me in the hallway, asking if I was “the blond chick who makes that hot candy.” I took their orders and spent every weekend making large quantities of peppermint and cinnamon candy. Sometimes, I would carry twenty bags or more to school. Students began to recognize me, and I had never been so popular.

  I hated to leave since the candy business helped me feel less shy than I usually did.

  “Please Mom, I don’t want to go back to Independence. I have new friends here now,” I told her.

  “I’m sorry Daleen, we just can’t stay here anymore. You’ll get used to being home again with your friends there. Besides, you can take up your Grit route, too. I’m sure your customers will love having you back.”

  I ran into my bedroom and plopped down on my bed, staring up at the ceiling. Why can’t I just stay with Dad?

  But I knew that wouldn’t work. Living with Mom made more sense because I was the oldest.

  She’ll need my help with the girls.

  It was several months before I learned the real reason we’d left. Dad had called Mom from jail that night he hadn’t come home, whining about being arrested for driving drunk.

  We only saw Dad on weekends after that, and by the time I turned thirteen, my parents lived in separate houses, in towns 200 miles apart.

  Over the next few years our visits became less frequent, and Dad never did teach me to fly. When he went to work overseas, the visits stopped all together, leaving me vulnerable and destined to become a pawn in someone else’s plans.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Back then, I understood nothing—and thought I knew everything. From thirteen to sixteen, when most girls experience shopping trips and teenage angst through many quickly broken puppy love relationships, I experienced a combination of forcible rapes, and rapes without force when I was silently compliant, which only enhanced my feelings of guilt and shame.

  Eddie was always taking Kim and me places, and in plain sight he was a gentleman. The kissing and fondling began when no one was looking.

  “Knock it off!” I scowled at him. In return, he smiled and tousled my hair like a big brother.

  I had fallen asleep on the Leigh’s sofa one night, when I awoke to find Eddie standing over me. “Can I have a goodnight kiss?”

  “No,” I murmured, half asleep.

  He reached under the covers but I grabbed his hand and smacked it. “Don’t ever do that again!” I hissed the words.

  “All right, if that’s what you want.” He stood up slowly and turned away. Only when I heard his bedroom door close did I allow myself to exhale. Though relieved he had gone, I was also sad. For what, I didn’t know.

  In spite of my resolve and his promises, it kept happening. I longed for someone to show me attention. Eddie did that, talking to me as if I was his own age. I told myself I trusted and loved him, and convinced myself he wouldn’t do anything to break my trust. But he always did.

  My shame cut long and deep on the first day of high school, as I wondered if anyone noticed the change in me. I felt like the scarlet letter “A” was branded onto my chest.

  I was excited to be a freshman, but I also felt different.

  You are different. The voice in my head always reminded me.

  Living among the mountains, the coal mines, and the cornfields, I knew most girls my age were still virgins. They might have experienced petting, but that was about it. Living in God-fearing homes, they knew sex was only for married people. Otherwise, they risked the wrath of their father’s belt.

  But the sexually active girls made no bones about it. Labeled “loose,” their actions were chalked up to having a bad home life. It explained—but didn’t excuse—their promiscuity, and they talked openly about sex.

  In gym class all I could do was listen silently. “We were just necking in his truck and before you knew it,” a big-bosomed girl named Cathy said, “he unfastened my bra!”

  Cathy’s cohort Paula joined her friend’s raucous laughter. They snickered loudly until the physical education teacher, Mrs. Niles, glared at them.

  “You two want to do laps, or do you think you can finish warming up like everyone else?” she demanded.

  “No ma’am,” they replied.

  I looked far above the bleachers to a window where light had somehow found its way through the grime, and wondered how Mrs. Niles had missed it. Concentrating on tiny details inside the gymnasium kept me from hearing things I longed to know about, but which simultaneously repelled me, as I tried to figure out why their experiences were so different from mine.

  They even seemed to enjoy sex. For me, every time Eddie touched me, I wanted to die.

  Maybe it’s me. There’s something wrong with me, or else I would like it, too.

  But they couldn’t know I really was one of them, that I wasn’t a virgin. I didn’t want anyone to know. My friends would think I was a slut—like the girls who had sex with every guy they dated.

  After gym, we filed past Mrs. Niles toward the showers. For all her gruffness, she had a heart of gold. She treated her students with respect and expected excellence in return. I admired her and sometimes envied the close relationship she had with her basketball players, girls whose athleticism—unlike my own—wasn’t confined to volleyball and swimming. I knew they confided in her, for after class they often lingered at her office door.

  Maybe I could talk to her. She’ll know what to do. Or, I could talk to Mom. Couldn’t I?

  Always reserved, Mom wasn’t easy to talk to, especially about sex. The very topic seemed to make her uncomfortable. Besides, it took all the time she had to care for my sisters, along with now cooking for the two boarders we had taken in.

  I longed to confide in her, yet I knew I never would. I was too ashamed. I hated myself for allowing the sex to continue, feeling totally responsible.

  Instead, I buried myself in my books so I wouldn’t think about it. If I wasn’t studying, I was reading. But where I once read mystery novels or dime store romances, I now read harder, grittier pieces like Helter Skelter, which led to terrifying nightmares. And quite often, I woke up thinking I was the pregnant Sharon Tate, about to be murdered.

  Winter arrived with a vengeance when a heavy snow began falling in January, and didn’t stop until the mountains were buried beneath a twenty-inch blanket. During the month-long school closure, Neal, an older boy who drove the kind of van most fathers feared their daughters going anywhere near, began flirting with me.

  Not long before, Eddie had lost his job and went to Tennessee to find work. He didn’t even tell me goodbye. In defiance, I responded to Neal’s flirtation. He invited me to a sled-riding party not far from my house, but when Mom said I couldn’t go, I climbed out my bedroom window and jumped into the deep snow below.

  Walking up the hill, I knew my mother might find out, but I didn’t care. As I drew closer to my destination, I could see a bright glow and I heard the sound of muffled chatter. Rounding a corner, I saw a rough-looking crowd gathered around a big bonfire.

  “Hey Daleen.” Neal grinned at me.

  “Hey.” I waved, feeling awkward beside his friends.

  Someone offered me a bottle of beer, which I turned down, and what I thought was a cigarette. I didn’t want them to think I thought I was too good for them, so I took few drags, inhaling deeply like my father
always did. The nicotine from the cigarette seemed to open my brain, causing everything around me to become exaggerated. Then I realized it was marijuana.

  “So you wanna ride?” Neal moved beside me, and I suddenly felt very liberated from my restrictive mother.

  “Sure.” I shrugged nonchalantly.

  “You can sit here.” Neal motioned to the empty spot on the wooden flyer in front of him. As I sat between his legs and wedged my feet against the sled’s metal steering bar, he pulled me even closer.

  “How’s that? You ready?” Neal’s beer breath warmed my ear.

  I nodded, acutely aware my derriere was smack up against him. Pushing off, we went flying down the hill. Part of me hoped he would kiss me, another part feared he might. Neal stood up when the runners ground to a stop.

  “Here you go,” he said as he extended his arm. I let him pull me up, until our faces were just inches apart, when a loud voice intruded.

  “That was some ride, huh?” Neal’s friend Jackson and a few other teens pulled up next to our sled. “Makes me want another beer.”

  The moment was lost, and Neal grabbed our sled. We headed back up the hill as the runners from other sleds cut through the snow, swishing by in a blur. Back at the top, I warmed my hands before the fire, and tried to figure out how or where I fit in. I knew Neal’s friends lived to party, which was why the booze flowed freely, and Jackson had even had a brush with the law. No doubt, before the evening was over, the alcohol would be ditched for something stronger. What that was, I didn’t know.

  And I didn’t want to find out. Nor did I want to become one of those girls—the ones who got pregnant. Since I had gotten my period, I knew that was definitely possible. A baby was the last thing I wanted.

  Try as I might, I couldn’t sustain my initial excitement, for it wasn’t my type of fun. If I chose to become one of them, all I could see was a future with nothing in it. That wasn’t what I wanted for myself.