by Daleen Berry
The layover lasted all day. At first my curiosity got the best of me, and I walked through the airport, watching the sparkling blue sea from a window. Then I spent too much money in the gift shop. Finally, when I realized I was going to miss Annie, I grew frustrated. I wasn’t alone; everyone was frustrated. By the time we decided we were stranded, our flight was announced. Long since tired and bored, we boarded yet another big jet, which flew us nonstop to London.
I went from Heathrow International Airport to the hotel room Dad had reserved for me, fell into bed and woke with a start just a few hours later, returning to the airport. I slept during most of the flight home and was happy to see Bruce when the plane landed. He took me to the Amtrak station, so I could head home to Preston County. I had already called Eddie’s parents and Mrs. Leigh told me how much they had missed me. “You be careful now, Honey. We want you back in one piece,” she said warmly.
Jet-lagged and exhausted, I boarded a train and slept most of the way there, where Kim met me.
It felt so good to be home, and I was secretly happy that Eddie was working.
Two hours later, after telling them about my trip and handing out the gifts I had brought, I slid between the crisp sheets Eddie’s mom had put on his bed, insistent I sleep there to be more comfortable.
I was still asleep the next morning when I felt something moving on my breast. Bolting upright, I saw Eddie in bed beside me. A split second later I realized he was naked.
“What are you doing here?” I thought I must be dreaming, but his roving hands told me otherwise.
“Get out, now!” I spat at him. “Do you want your folks to come up here? They’ll kill us both!” I tried to pull the covers up as I pushed him away.
He stopped long enough to wrap his arms around me and look at me wickedly. “They would if they were here.”
I stared at him. “I don’t believe you. They wouldn’t leave us alone together. If you don’t leave this minute, I’ll scream!” I tried pushing at him, but he just laughed.
“Go ahead. They can’t hear you because they’re not here. Mom needed something from town, and made Dad take her.” His shrug was blasé.
Then his eyes darkened. “I couldn’t stand it without you. I’ve had to wait so long, and I can’t wait anymore.” He began kissing my neck and, taking my nightgown strap between his teeth, he pulled it off my shoulder, exposing the white skin beneath. “Oh God, you are so dark.” He buried his face in my neck.
“Please, I, I—” I couldn’t finish. I was already on fire. I couldn’t help it, but I didn’t want to feel that way. My body turned traitor as I felt the pressure build and a return of the tenseness I had tried to forget. I stiffened, willing myself not to give in, but within minutes I had. I lay there, feeling disgusted and dirty.
Eddie stared at me, a victorious look in his eyes. I tried to move as far away from him as I could, but he just pulled me closer. “Oh man, do you ever make love good. I worship you. I would do anything for you,” he said.
Yes, anything except not touch me.
I turned away, clenching my teeth to keep them from chattering. I squeezed my eyes shut so I wouldn’t be able to see him.
Please God, forgive me for sinning against you. Please, please help me to be stronger next time. Help me to not do anything to tease him, and help me to make Eddie behave himself.
But I knew God wouldn’t help me. He hadn’t helped me before, so why should he now? God knew I was a hypocrite.
Later that morning, after I bathed and tried to block out what had happened, Eddie’s parents came home. Suddenly I found myself questioning Eddie’s intentions—and his honesty. Chatting over tea, his mom told me that while I was gone, Vonna, a very pretty neighbor girl of thirteen, had visited them.
“I don’t know why she came over; she just kind of invited herself, but I’ll tell you, she won’t come again!” Mrs. Leigh said.
“Why not?”
“Well, because she propositioned Eddie, and left a note under his pillow.” Before leaving for work, Eddie apparently had torn it to shreds, tossing it into the trash. But Mrs. Leigh was putting some clean laundry on Eddie’s bed when she saw the shredded paper. Out of curiosity, she picked up one piece and then another, until she had taped them all back together, like a jigsaw puzzle.
Mrs. Leigh assured me that Vonna’s parents had been informed about their daughter’s conduct.
But something didn’t sound right. I kept quiet, but at the back of my mind was a very nagging, persistent voice that questioned just how faultless Eddie could have been. I remembered when he promised he would never touch me again, but then he did. And the times I saw him look at other women, an odd expression on his face. I never said anything about it, but if he noticed my gaze, he seemed to change completely, almost as if he’d donned a mask. Each time, I chocked it up to my overactive imagination. Still unsettled about the whole matter, I went to see Kim.
“How did you find out?” she asked, looking surprised. “I was going to tell you, but I would have broken it a little easier. Look, all I know is what Eddie said, but I did see the note. It just said, ‘Maybe next time we can go a little farther,’ or something like that.”
“That little brat! I’d like to slap her!” I began. Then I stopped. “But what about Eddie, do you think he…” I left the question unfinished.
Kim looked uneasy. “Do I think he started it? I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me anything, except what Mom already told you. But if he did, well if I was you, I wouldn’t have anything else to do with him,” she said indignantly. “He’s my brother, but you’re my friend, and I don’t want to see him hurt you.”
I was upset and confused. I didn’t know what to think. Part of me wanted to believe Vonna had instigated everything, yet another part held back. That part of me knew Eddie was capable of having been the one who got the ball rolling, so to speak. By that night, I had mustered up enough courage to ask him directly.
“I don’t know. Nothing,” he said.
“You do know. After all, you’re the one Vonna wrote the note to,” I said angrily.
His face went blank when he heard my words. “Nothing happened. It wasn’t my fault, really. She just…” He laughed self-consciously and avoided my gaze, looking embarrassed. “Well, she threw herself at me. And I told her that I wasn’t interested in her. That’s all.”
“Are you sure, Eddie?” I wanted desperately to believe him.
He shook his head like he thought I was crazy. “Now look, I told you, nothing happened. If you don’t believe me, ask her and she’ll tell you.”
Disgusted by my distrust, he turned and walked away. “This is crazy!” he muttered.
I was so confused after talking to him I didn’t know what to believe. I was hurt and bitter for a long time afterward, and treated Eddie coolly whenever we were together. It was only a matter of time, though, before I began to come around, and eventually convinced myself it didn’t matter.
Whatever happened, it didn’t mean anything to Eddie. He still loves me. I told myself that at least a dozen times a day. But I never, ever forgot it, and stashed it away in a compartment of my mind where, as the years went by, where many similar memories would be stored for safekeeping.
Attending summer school permitted me to skip an entire grade, so in September I returned to West Preston High School as a senior. But it wasn’t the same. Where I had once earned straight As, taking great pride in my work and carefully doing my assignments, I no longer studied as much, nor researched like I had before. Instead, I threw my papers together at the last possible minute, and when report cards were handed out, I took home Bs and Cs. Because learning came naturally, though, my grades were okay. I knew my attitude had gradually changed, but I just didn’t care anymore.
The only exception came in my Journalism and English classes. In my Journalism class, students wrote and edited the school newspaper, and I was assigned to be the school correspondent for two local newspapers. In my English class, my teache
rs praised me for something they called my “lovely use of alliteration.” I didn’t really care what that was or how I did it, I just loved to write. Somehow I stayed focused enough to do so.
Then everything changed when Mom called in December, saying she and the girls were returning home. Because she was six months pregnant, I wondered if something was wrong, but she insisted it wasn’t. I had been enjoying living with Kathryn, who had become more like a beloved aunt than a family friend. She believed any girl younger than eighteen was too young to date, which had effectively kept Eddie almost entirely away from me—something that, deep down, I found I really liked—so I had mixed feelings about Mom’s return. Kathryn said it was for the best, since a teenager needs her mother. I knew she was right, because I had decided I needed to tell Mom the truth.
I’m going to tell her. Even if she thinks I’m a terrible human being. But maybe, just maybe, she’ll understand.
The minute I saw Mom at the airport, I nearly blurted it out. But during dinner she told me Dad’s drinking was worse, so I kept quiet. After hearing he had thrown a beer can at her, I couldn’t burden Mom with my problem—she had too many of her own.
It was easier that way, since Eddie’s words kept running through my brain. “Don’t tell anyone. You know what will happen if you do,” he had said anxiously. “My parents will kill me and you’ll get in trouble, too.”
So it became far easier to keep our secret, than to ever try and tell anyone.
By then I knew several girls who were doing the same thing. There was Susie, who was having sex with a guy in his late twenties, and Patty, whose older brother’s friends would invariably end up in her bedroom after the lights went out. They were just two girls among many others.
As I thought about those girls—other girls like me, I believed—I wondered why so many of them were being picked up after school by much older boys, men even. The guys would hang out in their big, fancy trucks at the pizza parlor, parking next door to the school. And every day, girls would cross the invisible barrier that prevented their adult boyfriends from coming onto school property, but which never seemed to keep the girls from leaving it.
Little did I know then that by the time spring arrived, Eddie would join them in his big Ford. It all left me with even more questions about them, and myself, than I had before.
Once Mom returned to our house, there was plenty of work to do. Leaky faucets or water pipes that had frozen and burst needed fixed; the house needed a thorough cleaning, and we were again without wood and coal. Eddie made sure he was right there, doing anything we couldn’t do for ourselves.
Soon he began coming to the house straight from the coal mines, after his shift ended late at night. My bedroom was next door to Mom’s, but the small creek below our windows virtually cut off any sound between the two rooms. Just on the other side of the creek, the shrill whistles from the hourly trains would blow when they went roaring by, cutting through the black night.
Coal was still king when we first moved to Independence, (West Virginia), in the early 1970s when I was eight, and trains ran constantly on the three sets of train tracks beside our house. Every morning I would jump out of bed and run downstairs to find Dad already dressed in dungarees, his morning coffee in one hand and an ink pen in the other, poised above the daily crossword puzzle. Because Dad was having a hard time sleeping, they became his early morning gripe sessions. There at the kitchen table, he told Mom that because of “those blasted trains making all that noise,” he wasn’t sure the house had been a good investment after all.
Not only would the trains blow their whistles long and hard, but the tracks were so close to our house that its large, old windows would rattle all the while. Then just a child, the huge masses of steel were like toys to me, and I couldn’t understand my father’s anger. I would stand outside on the blackened railroad bridge that bordered our property and watch the fully-loaded locomotives lumber by, as car after car of coal passed by.
But all of us had long since gotten used to the large locomotives and slept peacefully through the commotion, making them a perfect accomplice for Eddie. He had to walk through my room to reach the spare bedroom where he sometimes stayed. He might wake me with a kiss, quietly pleading with me to come to his room. Or some sixth sense awoke me, as he stood over my bed watching. Sometimes, I had no warning until his skin touched mine, and I refused his request. But that only resulted in him returning to my bed later.
No matter how hard I tried to stay awake, so I could plead and beg, just when I thought he really wasn’t coming back, I fell asleep. And then he would return, as a train came roaring by. I would feel a touch somewhere on my body, and before I knew what was happening, he was on top of me. I tried to writhe out of his grasp silently, scared to death my mother would wake and find us. It was a thought I couldn’t bear, so most of the time I just lay there and prayed for it to end.
Sometimes when Eddie was lying on me, I thought I heard the sound of metal squeaking; the bedsprings on my bed were quite old, and sounded as loud to me as if someone had broken a plate glass window. My heart began racing and I told him to stop. All the while he was with me, he whispered in my ear continually, saying things I could never imagine myself hearing about. I wondered where his vast knowledge of sex came from, and I hated what I heard.
To block out the squeaking and what was causing it, in my mind I returned to my childhood days, where I could breathe deeply of both the train’s diesel fumes and the creosote from the bridge, which turned warm and gooey when the sun’s rays touched it. I climbed onto the lowest rail, while leaning over the top one, looking into the creek bed below. Then I took my fingernail and scraped the soft stuff that had turned to oozing black tar, and which bubbled up between the boards. I squeezed it into shapes between my fingers until it left dark stains against my pale flesh.
Or I tried to count the empty cars that flew furiously by, and when one with an open door neared, in my fantasy I began running alongside it, grabbing the edge and flinging myself up into the car, so the train would carry me far, far away.
After Eddie left my bed, I tried to cry tears that refused to come. I thought I loved him, but wondered how I could when I felt so dirty. I wanted to get up and shower, to turn the water on as hot as it would go and scald every touch and kiss away, but I knew that would only wake Mom. All I could do was lie there, hating myself and tell myself I loved him, as the aftermath of his antics mocked me.
One weekend night I became so churlish that first Mom, then Eddie, went to bed, leaving me alone downstairs. I wanted to be free of Eddie’s torture as long as possible so I lay down on the living room floor beside the heat register. I hoped it would warm the coldness deep within me while I peered into my mother’s well-worn poetry book, searching for an answer to the lies and hypocrisy I was living.
What’s wrong with me? Why do I feel so alone? I hate myself. I hate you, Eddie! Please God help me! I prayed to God, over and over again.
I think it was the rebel—that part of me still needing to be exorcised, and which had lain dormant for too long—that made me do what happened next. I went into the kitchen, reached into the cabinet for Dad’s homemade wine and poured myself a glass, drinking it in one long gulp. Then a second, and a third, glass.
I knew better, but I didn’t care. I returned to my tiny corner next to the heat register and tried to figure out what I should do about my life, which I felt powerless to change. By the time I was becoming drowsy, I remembered I still had to bring in the coal for Mom to refill the heating stove in the morning.
To reach the coal bin, we had to cross the length of the yard behind the house. The wood was stacked right against the house, making it closer, but also requiring several trips outside.
Since the roof leaked, the black stuff inside the coal bin was wet, shiny and frozen solid. Using the pick, I finally broke it apart and found some dry coal below, which I shoveled into two five-gallon buckets. I felt lethargic by the time they were full, so when I tried
to pick them up, I only made it a few feet across the yard. I stood there, dizzy, before dropping the buckets and collapsing onto my back in a bed of snow. The sky overhead was filled with tiny, sparkling gems that winked at me. I didn’t want to move, but the dampness from the snow began seeping through my clothes, and I vaguely recognized that I should get up.
I could just lie here and go to sleep. It would so peaceful and painless. They’ll find me tomorrow, when it’s too late.
I don’t remember making it back inside. Nor do I recall dropping my coat, boots and gloves to form a path that led Mom straight to me. All I remember is someone holding my hair back from my face while I threw up in the toilet, asking the same question over and over again, “Daleen, what’s wrong with you?”
Even without the alcohol numbing my brain, I knew I couldn’t answer her question. Ever.
Winter soon left and spring arrived, and on a warm day near the end of March, Mom went into labor. I stayed at her bedside at the hospital, feeding her ice chips and rubbing her back when the contractions grew strong. I had gone to all her Lamaze childbirth classes, so I basically knew how it happened, but nothing prepared me for the raw, natural beauty of childbirth, or the intensity with which it can engulf a woman. After several hours, my brother Michael was born, letting out a lusty yell as he entered the world.
A nurse gave him to Mom to hold, and after taking him and cooing softly at him, she placed him at her breast to nurse. I watched, amazed, and then went to call my father overseas, leaving a message for him to call Mom at the hospital. I made sure she was all right, and after holding my baby brother myself, I went to school, like it was just another day.
One morning not long after Michael was born, I woke up and ran to the bathroom, where I threw up in the toilet. The virus lasted for days—until a terrible thought came to me. I stared into the toilet bowl, gripping the rim tightly with both hands as waves of nausea hit me along with the next thought that reverberated in my brain.