Amy Efaw

by After (v5. 0) (epub)

  Devon drops her head back then, looks up at the ceiling, at the pattern its cracks make. Crisscrossed, like lines in a palm. The lines that hold a person’s destiny.

  “They’ll know that you went to a doctor when you were approximately five weeks pregnant. They’ll have heard that doctor’s testimony. They’ll know that he examined you, that he noticed you were wearing a sanitary napkin in your underwear, that you told him you had just started your period that very morning when you hadn’t. They’ll hear everything you told the doctor—about being fatigued, about your frequent urination problem, about being nauseous, how you threw up in the morning before you went to the appointment. By the way, all of these symptoms happen to be symptoms of pregnancy, and the jury will know that. The prosecution will have an expert testifying to make absolutely sure that the jury understands that. The jury will see the medical records, which state that you had a slight fever and high blood pressure. High blood pressure, by the way, is an indicator of extreme nervousness or stress. They’ll know that you panicked when the doctor wanted to ask you some personal questions relating to your sexual activity. The doctor will testify that you refused to give him a urine sample during your appointment and that you did not follow his instructions to return a sample to his office or schedule a follow-up visit.” Dom places her hands flat on the tabletop, pushes off her stool, and walks over to Devon, who still has her back to the wall. “So. How do you think that will play to the jury, Devon?”

  Devon drops her head, looks down at her feet. “I don’t know,” she whispers.

  “No? Well, let me help you out then.” Dom puts her index finger under Devon’s chin and raises her face so Devon is forced to look Dom directly in the eyes. “Those twelve people will draw the obvious conclusion. That you, Devon Sky Davenport, knew you were pregnant that morning—”

  “No, Dom!” Devon squeezes her eyes shut. “I didn’t—”

  “That you did absolutely everything you could think of to hide this information from the doctor—”

  “No! That’s not true!”

  “That you continued to hide this pregnancy for the next eight months—”

  “No!”

  “—and then, when the day finally came that you gave birth, you attempted to hide that evidence, too. You put that baby in a trash bag and tossed it in a garbage can and left it to die!”

  Devon is trembling. Even her teeth chatter. She tries to jerk her head away, but Dom’s finger is anchored there, too strong.

  “These are steps, Devon. When you have steps, you have a plan. When you have a plan, you have what’s called premeditation. Premeditation points to guilt. And guilt equals going to jail. For a long, long time.” Dom pulls her finger away from Devon’s chin and takes a step back. “That, right there, will be the prosecutor’s argument.” Dom crosses her arms. “And right now, even I’m buying it.”

  Devon’s head drops. She wraps her arms around herself tighter, trying to control her shaking. Her breaths come rapid and ragged. “I didn’t know any of that, Dom. I swear. I didn’t know I was pregnant.”

  Dom throws her hands up. “When, Devon? When didn’t you know you were pregnant? During the appointment? Because—”

  “Ever!”

  The word startles both Dom and Devon with its intensity. Dom takes another step back.

  Devon swallows. “Okay? I didn’t ever know I was pregnant, Dom. Not until . . . until That Night when . . . when . . . all that stuff happened.”

  “What ‘stuff,’ Devon? Huh? Quit hiding behind words.” Dom yanks off her warm-up top, tosses it onto the floor. Puts her hands on her hips.

  Devon says nothing. Just breathes. She feels something coming, something dark and ominous sneaking out of some cubby in her mind. She shakes her head, flinging it back and away. Back to its shadow, its hiding place.

  Dom takes in a deep breath, lets it out. She drops down onto the stool that Devon had just vacated. “So, you’re saying that you didn’t know you were pregnant until you gave birth. That’s your story?” She closes her eyes. “You know, Devon, I’m sorry, but I’m just not convinced. And if I’m not convinced, well . . . it’s pointless going over all that again.”

  Devon slides down the wall to the floor. She hugs herself into a tight little ball, her chin resting on her knees. “I think I was . . . afraid . . . that maybe . . . that I might be . . . pregnant,” Devon finally says, the words a whisper.

  “Okay,” Dom says, pausing for Devon to continue, but she doesn’t. “So, if you were afraid that you could be pregnant, Devon, that usually means sex was involved. Right?” Dom’s voice is gentle now, her words creeping across the room to where Devon sits. “You know—a boy, a girl, together. You’re a girl, so . . . can you tell me about this boy?”

  Devon buries her face into her knees. Please don’t make me. She’s cold suddenly. The floor, the wall, is too cool. Her skin is moist, she realizes then. She’s been sweating.

  Dom stands, moves toward Devon, sits on the floor beside her. All very slow and cautious, like approaching a bird with a broken wing. “Was it rape, Devon?”

  Devon shakes her head vigorously no.

  Dom rests her head on the wall, looks up at the ceiling. “Okay. Then, it was . . . consensual?”

  Devon starts to cry. Little sniffles, muffled by her knees.

  Dom touches Devon’s back, rubs it gently, little circular motions.

  Finally, Devon raises her head, turns to look at Dom sitting beside her. “I think”—Devon’s voice catches—“I’m ready. To tell you . . . about”—she sighs deeply—“about him.”

  “Then I’m ready to listen.”

  Devon rests her forehead on her knees and stays like that for a long time. When she finally starts, she’s speaking to her lap. “So, last summer. I babysat these two little kids. Twins—a boy and a girl.”

  Dom waits. Then, “How old?”

  “Three. I would take them down to the Tacoma Swim Club every morning to go swimming if the weather was nice. It wasn’t far from their house, so we would walk down there. They’d always pick flowers out of people’s yards even though I told them not to.” Devon makes a small laugh. “They were—are—really cute kids.”

  Devon hears Dom take a long breath and let it out slowly. “Go on.”

  “Anyway, they’d swim and play around in the toddler pool, and I’d hang out on one of the lounge chairs and read and watch them. Sometimes I had to break up their fights. They fought a lot. Not bad fights or anything, just normal little-kid fights. Sometimes I played in the water with them. It just depended. We’d stay there until it was lunchtime, and then we’d go home.”

  Devon can sense Dom’s growing impatience, feels her body restless beside her. “Good. Keep going.”

  “Well, one day,” Devon says, “this guy was there. He was swimming laps in the big pool. They have lap swimming there before nine every day, and then they pull the lane lines out and have open swim for the kids. Anyway, his towel and stuff were on the chair next to mine, and when he came over to dry off, he saw the book I was reading—The Kite Runner by that Afghani guy. He told me he had read that book, too, for school; he thought it was awesome. But when they watched the movie in class afterward, he didn’t think the director did the book justice. And then we started talking about all this other stuff, like for the entire time I was there. We really connected for some reason. But then I had to go because I needed to take the kids back home for lunch and their naps.”

  His eyes. Green with hazel flecks. Beautiful. Those too long lashes, wasted on a boy. His eyes had said more to Devon than any words his lips ever spoke.

  Devon and Dom sit there in the quiet of the room for a moment. Then Dom clears her throat. “And this is the boy, Devon?”

  Devon, her forehead still on her knees, nods yes.

  “And how old is—or was—he?”

  “A little older than me.” Devon pauses. “He was going to be a junior. In high school.” He could drive. But Devon doesn’t add this.
<
br />   “Okay, and can you tell me his name?”

  “Do I have to?” Devon whispers.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Devon feels Dom’s body grow tense beside her. “Because I’m your attorney, Devon. I have to know everything. Every single little thing.”

  “But he doesn’t even live here. So why does it matter—”

  Devon feels Dom looking at her. “What do you mean he doesn’t live here?”

  Devon hesitates, turns her face from her knees to look at Dom. Should she be saying any of this? What if Dom finds him, figures out where he is, and tells him? Devon doesn’t think she’d survive that happening, having him know what happened. The trouble she’s in. “I mean, he doesn’t live in Tacoma. He lives in . . . in another state.” Colorado, she thinks. Denver, specifically. But Devon doesn’t say this. “He only comes here to visit his dad in the summers.”

  Dom nods slowly, narrows her eyes.

  Devon can see something going on behind Dom’s eyes, see her putting things together. Devon turns back to her knees, stares at the tops of them. At the outline of her kneecaps against the orange fabric of her jumpsuit, the sharp flatness of them.

  “So when was the last time you saw him?”

  Devon shrugs. As if she’s trying to remember, to conjure up the answer. But it’s there, the memory is right there, vivid and real.

  The silent drive back, Devon looking out the passenger window, her forehead pressed against its cool glass. The geography they pass in the darkness—the shimmery water of the Sound, the moon shrouded with wispy clouds, the succession of glowing ovals slanted across the asphalt from the streetlamps. The shadows from the Japanese maples and rhododendrons stretching across the yards in front of cedar-shingled houses. They’d sat in the parking lot of her apartment complex when he’d stopped, both staring out into the night, he straight through the windshield and she through the passenger-side window. Each absorbed into their individual thoughts, the car idling.

  “Do you want me to walk you up to your door?” he’d asked finally. These were the first words between them since she’d dressed back at his dad’s condo, and he’d said them now with an awkward politeness.

  Devon had shaken her head no, didn’t look over at him. Then she slowly reached for the door handle, quietly opened the door, and stepped out into the night, filling her lungs with the cool air. Closed the door behind her and moved away from the car. She’d heard the sound of a window rolling down then, the passenger-side window, the window that still held the steamy imprint of her forehead.

  “Devon.”

  She stopped then, looked back over her shoulder toward his voice. He was leaning forward across the front seat, looking at her through the open window. His eyes were shimmery, like the Sound reflecting moonlight, concerned and confused, his eyebrows crimped over them.

  “Are you . . . okay?”

  Devon dropped her head, looked at the gravel under her feet, swallowed down the ache in her throat, and shrugged. Then she faced forward again, her eyes focused on the stairwell, the stairwell that would take her to her apartment, to her empty apartment on the second floor and then to her room. She moved quickly—left foot, then right, then left. When she’d reached the first step, she heard the tires of his car crunch over the gravel, pulling away from her.

  She looked back over her shoulder again, saw his right turn signal flashing. And then he was gone.

  Devon feels the heaviness pressing into her now, the same heaviness she’d felt that last night with him. The feeling a mixture of disappointment, regret, dread, and a stubborn determination. And sadness. His eyes, bright with his own tears, the open pleading there. His voice holding the heaviness she’d felt.

  “Was he there with you on the night of the birth?”

  Dom. Another question. Always more questions.

  “No,” Devon says slowly. An image breaks free—lights too bright, her bathroom floor, the clutter and blood—streaks through her mind. She shoves it away. “No!” She swallows, then says softer, “No, he wasn’t with me. I . . . I was alone. He’d gone back to . . . about a week later, he went back home because summer was over.”

  Dom frowns, puzzled. “A week later?”

  Devon rubs at her eyes. “Yeah. A week later, after we’d . . . you know . . . ” Her voice trails off. She squeezes her eyes shut to close off the new pictures in her head. How he’d held her, kissed her. The things he’d whispered as he touched her.

  “Had sex,” Dom finishes.

  The words are a shock to hear, give Devon a jolt. So blunt and crude. Devon resists the urge to cover her ears.

  “Quit hiding behind words.” Dom’s words, Dom’s voice, stern and annoyed and in her head. So Devon nods yes. Because isn’t that what they did, after all—“had sex”? Two words: a verb tied to its object.

  “So, how many times did you—the two of you—have sex, Devon?”

  “Just that once,” Devon says softly. “After that, he called and left messages, texted me, but I never answered them.”

  Devon sees herself then. Remembers sitting on her bed, her cell phone on her lap, staring at the caller ID—his caller ID—as it rang. Counting each successive ring, all five of them. Waiting through the pause as her voice message picked up, imagining the silly one Kait had left on it once and Devon had kept: “This is Devon’s celly! It’s time to leave your telly!” (Kait’s girly giggle, then click). Then listening for her cell to make its obnoxious jingle—the indication that she’d just received a voice message—before finally putting it to her ear and hearing his recorded voice: “Devon? It’s me again. Hey, we don’t have to do anything, okay? I just want to see you. Please. I’m going back home in a couple days . . . Don’t leave it like this.” (His voice cracks.) “Call me? Please?”

  Her hand, it could have grabbed the phone. Her thumb, it could have pressed the green Talk button. Her mouth, it could have formed the words to explain. Or say good-bye, to at least do that. But she just sat there, in her room, the blinds pulled tight. And her cell rang and rang, unanswered. The text messages came, one by one. And Devon never responded. Felt nothing.

  “So, yeah.” Devon stretches her legs out in front of her. “And then he went back home, I guess. And that was that. I never saw him again.”

  “So, you only had sex one time?” Dom asks.

  “Yep.” Devon takes in a long breath, blows it out. “The one and only time, ever, in my whole entire life.”

  Dom doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then, “And that was . . . when?” Dom counts on her fingers, back from April. “July?”

  The summer air, Devon remembers how its warmth had felt on her skin that night. Watching the late sunset over Commencement Bay from the balcony of his dad’s loft apartment—like fire spread across the water—and the stars’ brightness poking through the darkening sky.

  “The beginning of August, actually,” Devon whispers. She remembers the date exactly—August eighth. But she doesn’t tell Dom this.

  “And did you—the two of you—use any kind of protection? A condom? Or—”

  Devon turns to look at Dom, sharply. “No!”

  “He didn’t offer—”

  “No! It wasn’t like that. It just . . . happened. We didn’t plan, we . . .” Devon looks back down at her knees, hugs herself. “I just don’t . . . want to talk about it anymore.”

  Dom and Devon, they sit side by side, saying nothing for a while. Then Dom says, “So, you were the one who ended the relationship. Not him.” She’s silent again, thoughtful. “Why didn’t you want to talk to him, Devon? See him again.”

  Devon swallows. “I couldn’t. I wanted to forget I ever knew him, forget that anything ever happened.”

  “Why? Did he hurt you?”

  “No! Because!” Devon jumps up, crosses the room, leans against the wall there, her back to Dom. “Because I made a promise.”

  “To whom, Devon?”

  Devon’s body starts to shake again. She feels the
tears in the corners of her eyes, the achy lump in her throat swell. She drops her forehead to the wall, closes her eyes. “Myself.” Her voice squeaks, her shoulders tremble.

  “It’s okay, Devon,” Dom says. “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not! Because I promised myself every single day of my life. I promised myself, that I’d never end up like my mom. And when I . . . when I did it . . . with him . . . when I let it happen . . .” Devon’s voice is thick, she feels it grating against the lump in her throat. “Oh, God! I was just like her.”

  Pictures churn in her brain, a jumble of morphing images. His arms. His muscles strong and safe, his hands gentle. His lips touching her face, her lips touching his. She lies back, pulls him over her. Their eyes, so much there. Their hearts beating, their breaths matching, only fabric between them. Her hands. Stroking his hair, his cheek, his back. Her eyes close then, her mind turns off. She lets herself fall away. Lets her body take over.

  Devon bites the collar of her orange jumpsuit, feels it rough between her teeth. “Exactly like her.” Her tears are rolling now, down her cheeks. She brushes her eyes against her shoulder, the motion quick and rough, leaving a wet spot there. “I hate her!”

  There, she’d said it. The relief she feels saying those three words, it’s there in her chest, opening a small space around her heart. Devon hates her mom for leaving her all those nights alone, lying tiny and afraid under her blankets, straining her ears for the sound of a key turning in the lock. Hates her mom for the times when that sound never came, when Devon was left to those solitary mornings, left to dress with clothes she’d pulled from the dirty clothes pile, left to pour Cap’n Crunch and skim milk into a bowl, then lock the door on the empty apartment. Left to walk to the bus stop alone so she wouldn’t be late for school. Hates her mom for the times when Devon had tiptoed down the hall, needing her mommy to hug away a bad dream or a scary night sound and finding some man lying there, beside her mom in the bed, the sheets rising and falling with his breathing. Hates her mom for the crappy apartments, the police sirens waking her as they passed through the streets late at night, the eviction notices and shut-off utilities, the cigarette smoke that permeated everything, the frozen TV dinners and ramen noodles. Hates her mom for pushing Brian—the one good guy she ever dated—out of their lives. The man who’d read Devon stories and took her to the library. Who’d watched her soccer games and created that glow-in-the-dark solar system on her ceiling and came to the holiday program at school to hear her sing her one-line solo in Winter Wonderland. Hates her for having to be the person her mom wasn’t, for her middle name “Sky.”