In Plain Sight

by Sherryl Hancock

  “It’s okay, Cassidy, it’s me,” Celeste said softly.

  She looked over her shoulder at her sister, so different from her, with her brown hair and brown eyes. She looked like their father. She remembered their father vaguely now. He had been such a nice man; she didn’t understand why he hadn’t wanted them.

  Celeste touched a wet cloth to her head and she hissed in pain.

  “I’m sorry, Cassie,” Celeste whispered. “But you just have to stop saying what you say about the prophet. You know she’s going to hurt you when you do. Why can’t you just not say those things?”

  “I don’t want to marry him,” she said again, hoping that someone would finally listen to her.

  “You know you don’t have a choice, so why fight it?”Celeste said. “At least if you marry him you get to live in the big house and don’t have to work all the time.”

  “Yes, but then he sticks his thing in me… I’d rather work all day and night long than that.”

  “It’s just part of what we have to do,” Celeste said.

  “We?” she said sarcastically.

  “I work all day long, Cassidy. Look at my hands.” Celeste held them out; they were red and cut in a number of places.

  “Cest!” she exclaimed, taking her sister’s hands and kissing them, trying to make them not hurt as much. “If I marry him, maybe I can get him to let you do some of the easier stuff,” she said, her voice hopeful.

  “Maybe,” Celeste said, still dabbing at her head.

  Three days later, she knew that wasn’t going to be enough to convince her. She’d been working in the kitchen when he’d come in. She hadn’t heard him; she was concentrating on not breaking any of the glasses she was washing. Breaking things got her punished, and she was still hurting from the last time her mother had punished her.

  Suddenly he was on her, pushing her up against the sink and lifting her dress. The glasses crashed into the sink, sending shards everywhere. He rammed himself into her so roughly that she cried out. He didn’t seem to care. She heard his ragged breathing behind her. She braced herself on the sink, biting her lips till they bled to keep from crying out again. She was afraid someone would come in. If that someone was a man, this wouldn’t end as quickly. Finally he gave a shout and shoved himself deeper inside her. The tears flowing down her cheeks fell into the sink.

  When he pulled himself out of her, he leaned down, his mouth next to her ear.

  “When you are my wife, you will never leave my bed. I may even just tie you up so you can’t go anywhere. Such a sweet, sweet thing,” he said, patting her on the ass.

  He left the room then, and she knew she needed to get away from him no matter what it took.

  Two days later she got her opportunity. She’d been sent to the office to get the books for the accountants. In her haste, she’d accidentally dropped one. When she picked it up, papers fluttered everywhere. She rushed to pick them up, glancing at what was written on them. One had numbers on it—bank account numbers. Looking around surreptitiously, she shoved that piece of paper into her dress pocket and then picked up the rest.

  That afternoon they visited a dairy that the prophet was looking to buy. She’d been wading in the water by the cows when suddenly she realized that the man who usually watched her had wandered off. Looking around, she saw an opening in the fence twenty feet away. She made a run for it, and once through the fence she kept running until it felt like her legs wouldn’t carry her anymore, and then she started walking. She never looked back, her hand clenched around the paper in her dress pocket.

  The next month of the tour wore on everyone. It was punctuated for Kieran by Memphis’ nightmares, which seemed to be getting worse. One night Memphis literally screamed so loud it scared half the people on the bus. Once she’d calmed Memphis down, Kieran saw Remington walk by, nodding her head toward the front of the bus. When Memphis was asleep again, Kieran carefully climbed off the bunk and walked up front, pulling on her jacket. Remington, Wynter, Xandy, and Quinn were sitting at the table.

  “She’s getting worse,” Remington said, her expression concerned.

  “I know,” Kieran said. She felt sick with worry.

  “Has she told you anything?” Quinn asked.

  “Not really.”

  Remington shook her head. “Do we even know where she’s from yet?”

  “Wait! Yes!” Kieran said. “She told me she was born in Rocky Bend, Texas.”

  “Okay,” Remington said, pulling out her phone. “I’m gonna text Devin and Harley and get them looking into that.”

  “I got something,” Quinn said, scrolling through her phone. “I mean, it’s a small town, it looks like… They don’t even have a website for it, but it says the population is like five thousand.”

  “Wow,” Remington said. “That’s small. Okay, message sent to them. What else do we know?”

  “She hates religion,” Kieran said.

  “What do you mean?” Remington asked.

  “She has a tattoo of the atheist symbol, and one that says ‘Gods don’t kill people, people with gods kill people.’ When I asked her about not believing in God, she said that she didn’t believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny either.”

  “That’s pretty definite then,” Quinn said, looking contemplative. “Maybe why she reacted the way she did in Texas when that church guy tried to grab her.”

  “Might be because he was a guy, too,” Wynter said, looking at Remington. “Didn’t you say she reacted fairly strongly to the idea of sparring with one of the guys at the gym?”

  “Oh yeah,” Remington said.

  “She was really leery around Sebastian that night at the bar too,” Xandy said.

  “I don’t know if this matters…” Kieran started to say, but then hesitated.

  “What?” Remington asked.

  Kieran grimaced. “I don’t know if I should say anything—it’s pretty private.”

  Quinn reached out, touching Kieran on the hand. “Kieran, we need to figure out what’s going on with her, before she really loses it. We won’t tell her you told us anything, okay? I promise.”

  Kieran looked pensive for a long minute, glancing toward the bunk and then back at the group.

  “She doesn’t like any kind of penetration during sex,” she said.

  Remington and Quinn exchanged a look; Quinn shrugged. “There are a lot of lesbians who don’t like penetration.”

  “Yeah, but she really tensed up, like it was almost traumatic to her.”

  Remington considered that. “Could mean she was abused sexually. Cody and Dakota are convinced of it.”

  “Did she tell Cody anything?” Quinn asked. She knew Remington had encouraged Cody to try and draw Memphis out.

  “Not really,” Remington said. “But she did pointedly avoid the ‘Where did you grow up?’ question.”

  “So maybe some answers lie in Rocky Bend,” Quinn said.

  Remington nodded. “Maybe.”

  Kieran sighed. “I hope so.” She shook her head sadly. “She told me in New York she’s never let anyone as close to her as she has me… and honestly, I don’t feel like she’s let me that close.”

  The group looked saddened by that admission.

  “Just keep being there for her, Kieran. She really needs you,” Remington said.

  “Oh, I plan to, whether she likes it or not,” Kieran said, smiling softly.

  “I’ve heard enough sounds coming from that bunk to know she likes it,” Quinn said, winking at Kieran roguishly.

  “Oh my God!” Kieran exclaimed softly, looking mortified as she put her hand in front of her face.

  The group laughed at that. It was rare that she and Memphis would do anything sexual on the bus, but there’d been a few occasions after a show when Memphis was on a high that had translated to desire. When Memphis wanted her, Kieran could never resist, and never did no matter where they were.

  The next day, as the bus pulled into Medford, Oregon, Remington motioned to Kieran to wai
t when Memphis got off.

  “We’ll be right there,” Remington told Memphis. “Gotta check some arena security stuff with Kieran here.”

  Memphis nodded and continued on her way. Quinn, Xandy, Wynter, and Remington waited until she was out of sight.

  “Okay, I heard back from Harley and Devin. The only thing they could find of any interest was this.” Remington held out her phone; there was a “Missing” poster on it.

  The girl depicted on the poster was blond with big blue eyes. It read that the child was five years old; her name was Cassidy Lassiter. She was last seen on October 12 almost twenty years prior. It also stated that it was a suspected parental abduction, and that Cassidy’s older sister, Celeste, was missing as well.

  “Do you think that’s Memphis?” Kieran said.

  “I don’t know,” Remington said, shaking her head. “I mean, it could be, right?”

  “Her hair is a lot lighter than that,” Wynter said.

  “Hair sometimes gets lighter with age,” Xandy pointed out. “Mine did.”

  Everyone looked pensive.

  “We could try contacting the police in Rocky Bend,” Wynter said.

  “Yeah.” Remington nodded. “Yeah, I’ll have Harley do that. She has the badge to be asking questions like that.”

  “Good plan,” Quinn said.

  “We better get in there before she starts to wonder where we’re all at,” Xandy said.

  Their next break, the following day, was taken at the next city on the tour—San Francisco, California. Quinn, Xandy, Remington, Wynter, Memphis, and Kieran rented a house for their three-day break, so they could all stay together. No one mentioned to Memphis that it was because they were becoming more and more worried about her state of mind. There’d been a few times when Memphis had seemed so far away that no one could reach her. She regularly looked haunted. They were all worried about her; even Billy was being extra nice to her at this point. Everyone was being really careful with her.

  The house was just down from the gay section of San Francisco, an area called the Castro. Their first night there, they all walked down the street, feeling very much at home.

  “This is gay mecca,” Memphis told Kieran with a grin.

  They had dinner in a local restaurant and went for drinks at the Wild Side West bar. Its Western décor was definitely interesting. It was a nice evening, and they all got pleasantly buzzed then walked back to the house.

  The next day they visited the Embarcadero and Wharf. Kieran had never been to San Francisco, so the girls were determined to show her everything. Xandy and Wynter made a point of wearing sunglasses, so hopefully fewer people would recognize them. It worked for the most part, but a lot of people ended up recognizing Remington and Quinn. Both women had such distinctive looks—Quinn with her short red hair and tattoos, even one on her neck, and Remington’s cornrows—and they stood out. Fortunately, most people were respectful.

  At Pier 39, inside the Hard Rock Café, however, things got a bit dicey. The group was sitting in the corner, trying to stay out of the way. A group of men came in and stood at the bar, drinking and singing and making a general nuisance of themselves.

  When Memphis went to the bathroom, the men saw her walk by; her look directed their way was one of extremely thinly veiled disgust. There was a discussion amongst the men after she’d passed them as to what her problem was.

  “She’s a fuckin’ dyke,” said one. “There’s lots of ’em here!”

  “Well, yeah, but don’t they keep, like, contained or somethin’?” another guy asked, his voice raised slightly in his intoxication.

  “Ya know their problem, right?” another of the men said, leering. “They ain’t never gotten it good—that’s always the problem.”

  Further discussion ensued, and by the time Memphis returned from the bathroom the unanimous drunken decision was that this little dyke just needed a real man. One man had been elected to show her.

  As she passed the bar, Memphis noted the pointed looks she was getting. She was just about to say something when one of the men put his hand out to touch her shoulder, intent on turning her around to face him.

  He got more than he bargained for. Memphis wheeled on him hotly, her blue eyes blazing.

  “Don’t fucking touch me,” she growled.

  “Easy now, sweet thing,” he said.

  He never knew what hit him. Memphis leveled a jab right at his face and he dropped like a rock.

  “What the fuck!” one of the other men exclaimed, grabbing Memphis’ arm.

  “Get off me!” Memphis yelled, using her other hand to punch the guy in the mouth, twice.

  He weighed a good two hundred and fifty pounds and yanked her off her feet easily.

  “Remi!” Memphis screamed, kicking the guy in the groin to make him release her.

  “Whoa!” Remington yelled as another man made a grab for Memphis.

  Memphis was backing away from the man so fast she ran right into Remington, who grabbed her around the waist and swung her to the side, then yanked her behind her.

  One of the men advanced on Remington, and that’s when he got a face full of angry Irishwoman.

  “Back the fuck off!” Quinn yelled, her green eyes blazing.

  “Hey, she fucking decked our friend,” the man said, hesitating because Quinn looked really dangerous and he’d suddenly recognized Remington.

  “Maybe your friend should have kept his fucking hands off me!” Memphis yelled from Remington’s side as she lunged forward again.

  Remington’s arm looped around her tiny waist and held her fast.

  “Your friend put his hands on her?” Remington asked, her tone dangerously low.

  “He was just trying to be friendly,” the man said, smiling to try and make things all better.

  “Maybe she’s not interested in his kind of friendly,” Quinn growled.

  “She didn’t need to slug him,” he said, already backing down.

  “Or kick me in the fucking balls!” the other man groaned.

  “You put your hands on something that doesn’t belong to you, that’s the risk you take,” Remington said, her tone brooking no argument.

  “Fucking dyke bitch,” said a fourth man from the group, moving toward Memphis.

  “Fucking piece of shit, man,” she snapped.

  “I’ll show you a man…” he said, stepping closer.

  Remington’s chin went up even as Quinn stepped back toward her.

  “Take her,” Remington said.

  Quinn grinned evilly as she gently took Memphis’ arm and tugged her over to her. “Come here, little one. Remi’s ’bout to go to work.”

  “You wanna show me a man?” Remington said, taking off her jacket and handing it to Wynter, who’d walked up with Xandy and Kieran beside her.

  “You fucking think I can’t take you, dyke?” the man said, looking really confident.

  He was a big guy, taller than Remington by at least half a foot, and wider as well.

  Remington dropped a booted foot behind her in a fighting stance. “Come show me,” she said simply, motioning to him with her fingers.

  The man foolishly rushed forward. Remington put him down with one well-placed, very powerful punch. His friends all yelled various versions of “Damn!”

  Remington pulled out her wallet, drew out a couple hundred-dollar bills, and stepped over to the bar, noting that the other men moved quickly out of her way. She dropped the bills on the bar, then glanced at the men around her.

  “This round’s on me,” she said, then went over to Wynter, put her arm around her, and walked out.

  Outside in the sunlight, Memphis sat down, breathing heavily.

  “You okay?” Remington said as she shrugged back into her jacket.

  Memphis held up her hand and nodded as she worked on catching her breath and not throwing up her lunch.

  That night she had the worst nightmare to date, literally backing off the bed in her terror. She ended up on the floor, but not befor
e smacking her head on the nightstand.

  “Memphis!” Kieran exclaimed, scrambling off the bed to move to Memphis’ side, even as Remington opened the door.

  “What the hell happened?” Remington said, seeing that Memphis was on the floor and that her head was bleeding.

  Walking around the bed, Remington knelt down, scooped Memphis up, and set her on the bed, with her back to her so she could look at her head. Memphis yanked her head away, breathing so heavily Kieran was afraid she’d pass out. Kieran climbed onto the bed on her knees, facing Memphis.

  “Honey, it’s okay. It’s okay,” she said soothingly. “Remi just needs to make sure you’re okay and you don’t need to go to the hospital.”

  “No hospitals,” Memphis said between gasps for air.

  “Okay, okay…” Kieran said softly. “Just concentrate on slowing your breathing, honey. It’s okay.”

  “No… hospitals…” Memphis gritted out.

  “Okay, no hospitals,” Kieran said as she glanced up at Remington, who nodded and mouthed, ‘She’s okay.’ “No hospitals, honey, you’re okay.”

  It took two hours and a few shots to get Memphis back to sleep. The group got together in the kitchen after that.

  “That incident today stepped it up, didn’t it?” Quinn said.

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure, and we know for sure now that she really does not like men touching her.” Wynter said.

  “Maybe her dad molested her,” Xandy said, “and that’s why her mother took her and her sister away from him.”

  “Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be rare,” Remington said.

  Kieran shook her head sadly. “Whatever happened to her, it was very traumatic.”

  “You can say that again,” Quinn said humorlessly.

  That night a new team was reporting on the concert and talking about the fundraiser BJ was holding in LA the last night of the tour. The fundraiser was for the Los Angeles LGBT Center and also for AIDS research. Memphis was completely unaware of the reporters out front when she went outside to have a cigarette after sound check. As she walked out, she saw the cameras and immediately turned to walk to the side of the building, where she lit her cigarette.