Conspiracy of Silence

by Gledé Browne Kabongo

  “Cassie is a daddy’s girl through and through. She insisted that he loves us and wouldn’t hurt his own daughter.”

  “What was your reponse?”

  “I corrected her.”

  “How?”

  “He loves Cassie, not me.”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “Resentful.”

  “A little jealous?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “It’s perfectly normal to crave parental love. Most children receive it freely, but yours came with conditions. Resentment is a natural reaction.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Tell me about your relationship with Cassie.”

  “She’s my sister and I love her, but we don’t have much in common.”

  “What is she like?”

  “She’s young, impressionable, reckless.”

  “Why do you think that is?”

  “He spoils her. She dropped out of college, makes excuses as to why she hasn’t returned to complete her degree, has no ambition other than shopping for designer clothes and partying, all at his expense.”

  “She’s your opposite.”

  “I don’t want her to be my clone. She needs to be the best Cassie she can be. There’s an eight-year age difference between us, so our perspectives on life are quite different.”

  “Are you afraid you’ll lose her now that you’ve disclosed the abuse to her?”

  “I don’t care. She had both her parents to protect her from life. I had no one to protect me from him.”

  Dr. Issler shook her head, either in agreement or pride that her patient had a mini-breakthrough. Nina had come to the conclusion, with great difficulty that self-preservation had to be the cornerstone of her healing process. If she started thinking about how disclosing the abuse would impact others, the distraction would set her back years and slowly break down her resolve. She couldn’t allow that to happen. The guilty party never thought about it, so why should she?

  “Most victims have a difficult time getting to that point.”

  “I hate that word.”

  “You do?”

  “It’s dehumanizing.”

  Dr. Issler was intrigued. “Tell me why.”

  “It trivializes the human experience. Humans are complex creatures with complex relationships, beliefs, emotions and dreams. When someone is labeled a victim, the totality of their life experiences is overshadowed by their trauma. With that one label, it’s as if everything else about that person is null and void.”

  A silence fell between them, each woman lost in her own thoughts. Dr. Issler cleared her throat and flipped through her notes, breaking the stillness.

  “Last time our session ended before we could delve into this topic, but I’d like to bring it up again. You said you blamed your looks for the abuse?”

  “I’ve had a complicated relationship with my looks, but we’ve come to accept each other.”

  “Why did you blame the abuse on your looks?”

  “I got teased a lot growing up because I stuck out like a Go-Go dancer at a ballet recital. My mother kept telling me the other kids were jealous and I was going to turn into a great beauty one day.”

  “Do you think she was right?”

  “I guess so. He certainly took notice.”

  “You mean your father?”

  “I knew my looks had something to do with his behavior because he wouldn’t shut up about it. I guess I latched on to that theory because I needed something that would explain why it was happening to me. There had to be a reason for the abuse. My looks were a natural scapegoat. It could also explain his insane bouts of jealousy.”

  “Jealous of whom?”

  “Boys paid attention as I got older.”

  “As an adult, how have your feelings about your appearance changed?”

  “In college it didn’t matter much. Once I entered the corporate world, I quickly learned that beautiful women could get by on their looks. But I made sure anybody who had a pulse knew I was highly capable. My performance had to be outstanding at all times.”

  “That’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself.”

  “It was necessary.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  On Thursday evening, Nina was home alone with pizza and a movie for company. When Marc was away, she took extra care to bolt every door and triple-checked to make sure the alarm was armed. They lived in a neighborhood where the crime statistics barely registered with the police department, but psychopaths didn’t care what zip code you lived in.

  She threw on her favorite cotton nightie, grabbed a plate of pizza, popped the disc in the DVD player and settled in for a quiet evening of entertainment. The opening credits were still rolling when the doorbell rang. She paused the movie and charged towards the front door like a raging bull.

  “Who is it?” she shouted.

  “Nina, open the door. It’s me.”

  She froze for a split second, wondering what on earth he was doing at her home this late. She made it clear how she felt about him and couldn’t imagine what was so important that he would show up unannounced. But then again, that seemed to be his favorite MO where she was concerned. She opened the door grudgingly. Phillip stood at the entrance with a silly grin on his face.

  “You’re crossing the line as always. This is my home. It’s after nine o’clock at night.”

  “I have good news.”

  “There’s this invention called the telephone. Use it.”

  “Are you going to let me in or would you prefer to have your neighbors call the cops because there’s a suspicious looking black man standing at the door and no one’s letting him in?”

  “You weren’t too concerned about the neighbors when you stole my diary,” Nina griped, as she led him to the living room. “Or did you have someone else do your dirty work?”

  “Goodness, Nina. Can’t you let that go? I told you I don’t have anything that belongs to you.”

  Nina offered a mirthless laugh. “What do you want?”

  “Geraldine came back. I don’t know what you said to her, but it worked.”

  “Is there a full moon out tonight?”

  “She said the two of you met and you helped her see things in a new light.”

  “Did the light suck the grey matter from her brain?”

  He sat down on the sofa and gestured for her to sit next to him. “I have something to give you.”

  “No thanks. You’ve given me plenty. I still carry the scars.”

  “Nina, please. I know I haven’t always been the best father. I wasn’t there for you as much as I should have. But I wanted to say thank you. You gave me my wife back and I wanted to express my gratitude,” he said, removing a small black box from his jacket pocket.

  It didn’t make sense to Nina. After her conversation with Geraldine, she was positive there was no way she would stay with Phillip. Something must have happened to change her mind, something huge. Why would she go back to him? What was keeping her? Nina was sure she wouldn’t like the answer. She of all people knew how Phillip operated and how persuasive he could be. Maybe he worked his particular brand of black magic on his wife. What a shame.

  Nina took the box from him and moved to the far end of the sofa and opened it. Inside was a stunning cross, encrusted with dozens of small diamonds with a large birthstone, her birthstone in the center. Based on the brilliance of the stones, Nina estimated the gift to be worth tens of thousands of dollars. She was speechless.

  “I know how important your faith is to you,” he said.

  “Then you should familiarize yourself with Leviticus Chapter 18. The gift is very generous, but I can’t accept it.” She returned the cross to the box and placed it in his hands.

  He took her refusal as an affront. “You’re my daughter. Why can’t you accept a gift from your own father? I had this made especially for you. There’s even an inscription.”

  He seemed genuinely baffled by her response. How odd. What did he expect? That she
would jump into his arms, give him a big hug and tell him how much she loved it and he was the best dad ever? Well, that scenario already played out when she was a kid and it ended badly. She wasn’t falling for that trick again.

  “You know why I can’t accept it.”

  “Don’t do this, Nina. You said I was a sociopath who hated women, including you. That’s the most painful thing anyone has ever said to me and it hurt even more because it came from my own daughter.”

  “Oh, sorry. I didn’t know you had feelings. You should have told me sooner.”

  “This is funny to you?” he asked softly. “You think how I feel about you is funny?”

  Her mood transformed from playful sarcasm to a dangerous place she had trained herself to avoid entirely. “That’s the problem, Phillip. I don’t know how you feel about me. I could only interpret your actions. Based on our history, I came to the painful realization that you weren’t capable of giving me what I wanted: a father who wouldn’t take advantage of a little girl’s desire to be loved and accepted by her dad without conditions. I promise you, I’m fine with it. You don’t have to pretend. Most kids take their parents’ love for granted. I had to learn that I couldn’t have what other kids had in that regard.”

  It was a jaded view she had spent years cultivating, another survival mechanism. It only hurt if she talked about it and she never had until now. She could feel the tightness rising in her chest and prayed to God she wouldn’t start bawling right then and there.

  “That’s not how it is, Nina,” he said, desperate for her to believe him. “I’ve always loved you. You have no idea how much. That will never change. You don’t see it because you don’t want to. You prefer to dwell on bitterness and negativity.”

  “It might be easy for you to dismiss what you obviously refuse to acknowledge and that way, you don’t have to take responsibility. I never had that luxury. You took away who I was supposed to be, the woman I would have become, so I had to work like a dog to create a new me from scratch. Do you know how hard it is to create a new person from the damaged scraps that existed before?”

  They both fell silent. When he reached over to hold her hand, she brushed it away.

  “You were lost to me for eighteen years, Nina. A parent never stops being a parent.”

  “Don’t talk to me about parenthood. Add that to the long list of things you took from me.”

  “I know you believe I was responsible for your miscarriage but you don’t know the whole story.”

  “Enlighten me, then. You knew I was in trouble but delayed calling for help. Every second counted and the outcome could have been different if you weren’t trying to be a control freak who wanted to teach me a lesson.”

  His expression was deeply melancholic, as if she had just twisted a sword in his chest. “That baby was my first grandchild. It took the ambulance at least fifteen minutes to get there. Everything happened quickly, from the time you said something was wrong to the time you passed out, it was a few short minutes. After the paramedics showed up, I stayed behind to clean up the blood on the floor the best way I could before I left for the hospital. The doctors said he was gone before the ambulance got there, all they could do was treat you.”

  Nina struggled to control the tears she could feel prickling at the corners of her eyes. The pain of losing her son came back with a rawness she hadn’t experienced since the miscarriage. It didn’t matter whether or not Phillip was telling the truth. She wouldn’t have been in a situation that required her to put her body through grueling and highly invasive medical procedures in an effort to conceive, if he hadn’t destroyed her ability to have children naturally.

  She was about to fall apart. She wouldn’t do it in front of him so she asked him to leave. He must have sensed she was on the edge because he didn’t argue. He simply did what she asked.

  After Phillip left, Nina wandered from room to room, pondering what it would have been like had her little boy lived. She could see his bouncer in the middle of the family room, his bottles lined up in the sterilizer on the kitchen counter. He would hold on to furniture as he cruised before he could walk. At feeding time, his high chair would be a mess and he would have food all over his face and head. She felt an intense longing inside. She would never get over the loss of her child. But maybe now that Phillip told her the whole story of that terrible day, she could put it in perspective. She stubbornly refused to believe Phillip might not be all bad, but she was appreciative of the fact that he told her the whole story. She had so few good memories of her childhood with him.

  April 12, 1989

  I couldn’t believe it. After this morning’s disaster of a driving lesson, Dad and I didn’t kill each other. I just got my learner’s permit last week, which was majorly cool, but Dad insisted that I learn how to drive stick. That’s so ancient. Everyone at school is learning to drive on an automatic. Tara Gibson’s dad got her an automatic Ford Mustang convertible the minute she got her permit but Dad said he’s not Tara’s dad. I have no idea why he wants me to drive a stick shift. You think he would have changed his mind since I rolled down the hill earlier this morning and almost smashed into a tree. I thought for sure he was going to start yelling at me or call me stupid or something, but he didn’t. He was calm and understanding. Someone must have put a chill pill in his coffee this morning.

  After the driving lesson, I was all shaken up about it but Dad put his arms around me and told me it was okay, we all make mistakes and I was doing great for someone who only had three driving lessons. He said we should have some fun because it was such a nice day out. I thought he had to work but he said he’d rather spend the day with me, so he called the office and said he wouldn’t be in. Maybe I’m wrong about Dad. Maybe he’s not such a bad guy after all. If I don’t think about the trouble he brings to my room at night, he’s not so terrible.

  Anyway, we ended up going to an amusement park and I’ve never seen Dad so relaxed or have so much fun. He wasn’t scared to go on the rollercoasters with me, not even the Death Monster, the scariest rollercoaster ever. I felt really special, like I had the coolest dad in the world. We ate tons of ice cream, cotton candy and hotdogs, stuff Theresa wouldn’t let me eat because she’s a health nut. Dad even won me a stuffed giraffe. I like this dad better, the one who smiles, goes on scary rollercoasters and lets me eat treats. On the ride home, we made up stories about drivers on the road, based on the kinds of cars they were driving. It was a good day.

  * * *

  SHE DIDN’T RECALL EXACTLY WHEN it was decided or how. It had always been a possibility, swimming around in her head. It was discussed with Marc and her mother who said from the very beginning that this had to be done but the final decision would be hers. Something inside her said it was time. She felt terror like she’d never experienced before when she, the lone decider, moved forward.

  Nina gripped the steering wheel tightly and sat perfectly still, hoping the bile forming in her mouth would dissipate and prevent her from having to sit in a cesspool of her own vomit. The two-hour police interrogation shook her to the core. It took her back to the mass grave of her childhood, and the ghosts lurking there. Every time she had to recall her father touching her, she died over and over again. Each time he hit her, there was another body to add to the count.

  She opened the car door and spat. By sheer force of will, she calmed her insides long enough to call Marc. He picked up on the first ring.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’ll live.”

  “It was that bad?”

  “Brutal.”

  “Did they believe you?”

  “They said I make a ‘credible’ witness.”

  “That’s good news.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “We haven’t seen the worst of it. I have to relive everything I just told them on the witness stand. Only this time, his lawyer will be relentless in an attempt to break me and get him exonerated. It’s a huge risk we’re taking.�
��

  “Don’t doubt yourself now. You’ll do great.”

  “You have no idea the things they were asking me. Obscene things.”

  “You should have let me come with you.”

  “I endured it alone. I have to end it alone.”

  “We should plan a long trip after it’s all over. For a couple of months or so.”

  “Can we leave now? I can pack quickly,” she joked weakly.

  “Soon, Cherie. Soon.”

  * * *

  “OH MY GOD, NINA, YOU have to do something.”

  A hysterical Cassie was on the other end of the line. “Westwood Police questioned Dad about you. They showed up at his office and asked to speak to him. All the office staff saw it and they’re gossiping about it. It was a bad scene, Nina. It was really bad. You have to tell them he didn’t do anything. It was all a misunderstanding.”

  “He hasn’t been arrested or charged with anything. Yet.”

  “This is all on you, Nina. Are you prepared to send our father to prison?”

  “The Commonwealth will file charges based on their findings in the investigation. It’s out of my hands.”

  “How could you be so evil?” she said hoarsely. “Don’t you care about him at all?”

  “As much as he cares about me.”

  “You’ll go to hell for this.”

  “He took me there almost every day for eight years.”

  “You’re not my sister. We’re done, Nina.”

  “As you wish.”

  * * *

  THURSDAY MORNING DAWNED WITH A bitter chill for Phillip Copeland, even though it was late August. He sat in his study downing a stiff drink. He didn’t give a damn that it was too early in the day to be drinking. He needed it. He needed to take the edge off. He couldn’t believe she was going through with it. He couldn’t believe what was happening to him. When the Police hauled him in for questioning, it was surreal, like a bad B movie with no end in sight. He told them he wouldn’t speak without an attorney. Luckily, Melinda Bosch, one of the city’s toughest criminal defense lawyers with a reputation for aggressive cross-examination of prosecution witnesses, and a zero loss record to boot was available and agreed to represent him. She assured him this would never go to trial.