by Jeff Vrolyks
Please don’t say such things, my heart can’t bear it.
Chapter 22
On the dining room table a Boggle game was being peered at by six Clark’en eyes. It was the unspoken tradition of Saturday afternoons. Her mom was brilliant at it; David not so much. Mae was impressing them both with how quickly she was becoming good. She’d still lose to her mom every time, but the day was coming when she’d win.
The doorbell rang. The timer was almost out of sand so they played on, frantically jotting down words at the last second. “Time,” Mae said. Excited, she exclaimed, “I got a six and seven letter word: ounces and pounces!”
“Nice, sweetheart! I didn’t get either of those,” David said. “Keep it up and you’ll pass up your mother some day as Boggle Queen.”
Rebecca hurried to the front door as David got the pitcher of iced tea out of the fridge. He topped off his and Mae’s glasses while offering corn chips or pretzels. She’d take some Doritos, thank you.
Entering the dining room was Rebecca and Lisa. “Lisa?” Mae gulped, “What are you doing here?” Not good. Not good. She palpitated, blood thundered in her ears.
“Just stopping by to see what you’re up to. I tried calling you; left a voicemail.”
Mae patted her pockets: no phone. “Left it in my bedroom, I guess.”
“Would you like to play some Boggle with us?” David asked, putting the first nail in the coffin.
Mae said no as Lisa said sure. “She’s just being nice,” Mae said. “Lisa hates Boggle.”
“I do?”
“Yes.” Mae scowled at her.
“Oh, Boggle. Yeah, I never cared for Boggle, or any word games for that matter.” Lisa sold it well, considering her late start.
Mae got up and said she was done, and that they’d be in her bedroom. She strode past her friend, gestured her to follow. When she entered her room, she anticipated Lisa being behind her, alone. That wasn’t the case. Her mom entered the room behind the two. “Can I help you?” Mae said defiantly.
“Yes. You can start by telling me what you’re hiding.”
“Nothing. Why do you always assume the worst in me?”
“Don’t play me for a fool, Mae. I was your age once too, you know. You get a six and seven letter word in Boggle and don’t stick around to see if you beat me? Start talking.”
“No! I didn’t do anything!”
Lisa was staring at Mae’s neck, squinted and stepped forward for a closer inspection. From her angle she had a direct view of the larger of two blotches of foundation. Unfortunately for Mae, her mother observed this and swooped in. Mae had guilt written all over her face. A panicked face.
“What is this?” Rebecca demanded.
“A baseball hit my neck yesterday. I put foundation on it.”
Rebecca wet her thumb and wiped the foundation away, then took a closer look. “Who gave you this?”
“Nobody. It’s no big deal. Can you please leave me alone now?”
She circled Mae, examining her neck along the way, and found another baseball injury. “I’ll be damned.” She lifted Mae’s hair and checked the back of her neck, then pulled back her shirt-collar to look down. Mae yanked the shirt out of her hand before she could see. “Don’t you ever!” Rebecca scorned. She grabbed a fistful of Mae’s collar again and looked down the front of her shirt. Mae grimaced in anticipation. Rebecca gasped so loudly that Mae felt the ambient air around her vacuum into her open mouth. She let go, took the shirt-hem in both hands and lifted it up. When Mae tried stopping her, she got her hand slapped away. The shirt went up, up, and over her head.
Mae wore a red bra, but the predominant color that her mom and Lisa were seeing wasn’t red at all. Big purple roses, some overlapping, some enormous, some curiously small.
Rebecca’s anger dispelled at once. Anguish replaced it. She covered her mouth and part of her nose with her hand. Her eyes welled up and spilled over. Lisa’s mouth hung open as if a doctor was checking her tonsils. In a small voice she asked her best friend what happened.
“I was in a fight,” Mae said.
“David! Come here!” Tears dripped off Rebecca’s jaw. “What happened, sweetie? Who did this to you?”
Mae lowered her head into her cupped hand, succumbed to despair. She knew she was in trouble, knew she wouldn’t be keeping her date with Trent tonight. Those truths hurt bad. But what hurt the most was seeing her mom’s heart shatter before her eyes. From angry to heartbroken in the glimpse of a bruised body.
“Is it like this everywhere?” Rebecca wondered. She unbuttoned her daughters jeans. Mae no longer resisted. The white flag was being waved. Pants fell, puddled around her ankles. More bruises. None too horrific, but each had a story to tell. Rebecca pulled back the elastic band of her panties and inspected: no bruises. She stepped around her and repeated the process. Another gasp. She lowered her panties to just below her cheeks. “David! Get your butt—”
“I’m here, I’m here. Wh…” He seized. In no more than a whisper he asked who did it to her. The idea that nobody was responsible for this other than Mae never entered their minds. She was a victim. She was even crying like a victim.
“Come here and look at this.”
Lisa was affected by the tears and the evident abuse of her friend, and wept herself. She wanted to leave. Badly. From how her friend reacted to her unannounced visit, she knew she’d be implicated in this mess. Without a word she left the room. Rebecca was fully on her game and roared, “Get back here, Lisa!” Lisa plodded back with her tail between her legs.
David was behind Mae and staring at the finger imprints painted in sickly purple on his daughter’s bottom. He moaned ruefully. Rebecca zipped around to face Mae. “Take your bra off.” Mae shook her head inside her hand. “Mae, I’m not asking.” Rebecca asked David to step outside the room for a moment, and he did. Mae wasn’t removing her bra, so her mother did it for her. The worst bruises on her body were now unveiled. A few streaks of milky white skin remained amongst a graveyard of brutalized blood vessels; a cadaverous purple chest with swirls of saffron discolorations not quite the color of pus, but close enough to fuel the imagination.
Rebecca dropped to her knees and clung to Mae’s leg with a wet cheek against her thigh. Lisa was so distraught that she unthinkingly wedged herself between Rebecca and Mae and hugged her, apologized to her. Mae hugged her back, sought comfort in her presence.
Rebecca called for David. The door opened. He couldn’t see Mae’s bruised chest with Lisa hugging her, but didn’t need to. The scene painted the picture well, and the color of paint would be purple.
“Call the police,” she demanded.
“No!” Mae cried. “Don’t call them!”
“Lisa, maybe you should go home,” David said awkwardly.
Lisa released Mae and took flight. David glimpsed the wreckage of his daughter’s bosom and couldn’t look away fast enough.
“No,” Rebecca countered. “Lisa stays here. Get your butt in here, Lisa. Mae, unless you can give us a damned good reason not to call the police, we’re calling them.”
“Because it’s my fault.” She put her bra back on (gingerly) and redressed.
“Explain.” Before Mae could, Rebecca changed her mind. “Wait. Don’t say a word. Lisa, what do you know about this?”
“Nothing. I swear.”
“I’m pretty sure that Mae didn’t have these bruises yesterday. She spends the night at your house and now this? What did you guys do?”
“I, we went to the park and played baseball.”
“She got all of these bruises playing baseball? Bullshit.”
“Mae got in a fight with another girl. Melanie. I guess that’s how she got bruised.”
“Remember a few months ago when I caught you sharing a bottle of schnapps with Mae that you’d stolen from your parents?” Lisa knew where this was headed. Blackmail. “I could have and should have told your parents, but I remember what it’s like being your age and understand that things h
appen. I said that I would never tell them so long as you never brought alcohol into this house again. Do you see where I’m going with this, Lisa?” She nodded. “Good. Then tell me the truth or I’ll take you home and have a talk with your parents.”
“It’s okay, Lisa,” Mae said dejectedly. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.” Beside you, Breuer, if you’re here. “I’m not going to let you get in trouble. Lisa has no idea what happened. I wasn’t at her house last night. Can she go now?”
“Yes. Go on.”
Lisa rushed out of the bedroom and the front door thudded shut seconds later.
The dining table was just off the kitchen in a shallow alcove. It had borne witness to many family meetings. Many punishments were doled out from that damned table, and sure as shit there would be one doled out from it today. David cleared the paper and pens and game off the table. They took the same seats as they had during the game. The idea that they had played Boggle contentedly only a moment—so recently that the ice cubes in their iced teas were still shapely—seemed like a vulgar joke now. To her parents, that is. To Mae the idea of contentedness seemed like heaven. Anything but this discussion.
Mae crossed her arms on the table and hid her head in the made-nook. She remembered how that made-nook used to be her refuge from a belt’s wrath. Now it was a place to hide her shame. She felt so much older then. How could that be? She leaked onto the glossy walnut wood that was precisely her hair’s shade when wet.
Rebecca and David exchanged stares. Being a parent isn’t easy, it said. No it isn’t. Nobody prepared you for this conversation, did they? Dealing with family tragedy seems to elude the curriculum time and time again, but damned if they didn’t hammer the Pythagorean theorem into your head semester after semester. You never know when your daughter might get raped by a mathematical formula, but if she does you’ll be quick to structure the unknown variables into something more tangible and find comfort in your understanding.
David got up and went to the fridge, took three bottles of Miller Lite out and returned to the table. Rebecca gave him a Please tell me you’re joking expression. David mouthed the words, trust me, babe, to her. She looked at her daughter, sighed, and nodded. David opened all three and handed one to his wife, and nudged Mae’s elbow with a cold bottle. She peeked and wore the same confounded expression as her mother had.
“We’re having a beer,” David said. “All of us.”
She stared undecidedly at him.
“It’s not a trick. We’re going to talk; three adults, no kids. It will help calm your nerves, trust me.” He took a seat and a pull off his beer. Mae wiped her eyes, clutched hold of the beer. Last night it was in silvery cans and kept calling her a lightweight. She looked at the two faces to see if either would say, I knew it! You rotten little kid, you were actually going to drink it! David winked wanly at her and sipped his beer. Mae took a sip, checked back with her parents, then a longer drink.
Her parents gazed down at the table under the tremendous gravity of the situation. And just what was the situation? Rape? They thought it was. The bruising was in intimate areas and she didn’t have a boyfriend. Bathing suit areas. Good touches, bad touches: these were touches of the worst kind. Mae had problems enough before this; how would she rebound from this one? Who would she create out of thin air to cope with this unknown trauma? Somber faces, deep inhalations still not finding enough air. An ominous presence so thick that it might never wash off the surrounding walls, but stick around like an ugly coat of purple paint to remind them of where they went wrong in their parenting.
Mae took another drink. David and Rebecca had a hell of a lot more on their minds than underaged drinking. Mae sat the empty bottle down. It clanked the sad tune of an empty bottle. Her stomach was mostly empty; she felt the beer already.
“Another?” David asked.
“No.” Mae saw no evidence of anger in his eyes. Or hers. Only compassion and pain. More pain than compassion. “Thank you, Dad. That was a cool thing of you to do.”
“We don’t want to make this any harder than it has to be,” he said. “I’m sure you understand why this scares the hell out of us. I just can’t grasp that only minutes ago we were sitting here playing games like everything was fine and dandy, as those bruises were covering your body. It frightens me to think that it almost went by unnoticed.”
“Were you raped?” her mom asked evenly. She asked as if she already knew the answer and wanted Mae to confirm it.
The second-hand on the kitchen clock paused for a response.
Mae shook her head, which had the affect of a shaken snow globe—the snow flurries were golden and tasted like Miller Lite.
“If not rape, what?”
“I’m afraid how mad you’ll be at me.” She burped silently.
“I know, honey,” David consoled, “but you have to tell us.”
“Do you have to call me honey? And I know. I’ll tell you. I met a guy.”
“When?” Rebecca asked.
“Please, let her tell the story.”
“Thanks, Dad. Doesn’t matter when we met. It wasn’t long ago. His name is Trent. I like him. I like him a lot. I called him my boyfriend and he said I’m his girlfriend. I lied about going to Lisa’s yesterday so I could go see Trent play baseball. He hit a homerun. He’s really good. I think you guys would like him. We went out to dinner after the game. Then we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean. He said he’d take me home after the movie. Trent drives. I explained that I couldn’t go home because you weren’t expecting me home until today. He offered to let me stay with him and I wanted to. I wanted to stay with Trent more than anything. Live Life Like You Were Dying. He treats me like an adult. He called me a woman. The first time a human has called me a woman. I’m not a kid to him. You don’t understand how good it feels to not be a kid. I’m tired of being treated like a little girl; of opening my mouth to prove that I’m a big girl and can swallow my pill all on my own; of being driven to school because I can’t be trusted to drink a glass of juice and not throw it up on my walk there; of unwrapping presents to find clothing with unicorns and glittery rainbows; of being accused of having an imaginary friend, who’s not as imaginary as you might think. I’m tired of being fourteen, only three weeks from fifteen, and still being tucked into bed and kissed on the forehead every night, after being reminded to brush my teeth and put my pajamas on. I stopped feeling like a kid when the people who kidnapped me beat me for behaving like one. The best thing that’s ever happened to me was them dying; the worst thing is that I experienced adulthood before childhood. The kid-Mae was beat out of me, so I moved on out of necessity, adapted by becoming some passable version of an adult. Because I had no choice. They got what they deserved and I was lucky enough to be reunited with two loving caring parents, and just like that I’m a kid again. Only I’m treated like the Mae who was at the mall on Christmas eve all those years ago. To you guys I’m still that little girl, and you’ve been raising me accordingly. Well I don’t feel like a damned kid anymore! I’m a woman! Trent sees that; why are he and I the only two who see that?”
She took the Kleenex that her dad had put on the table and blew her nose. The golden snow flurries were stirred up again. She thought she’d hear from her parents but didn’t. Shock, maybe. She was free to continue.
“Last night I wasn’t a kid, that’s for sure. I was a woman and was free to do whatever this woman wanted.” She thought that was the beer talking. “And what I wanted to do was Trent, so I did.” Definitely the beer. “He didn’t force me to, didn’t ask me to. He even offered me a way out of doing it after I said that I would.” She tried to drink more of her Miller Lite but it was still empty. David, probably reacting on some primordial level, slid his mostly full beer to Mae without taking his eyes off the maple wood. “Thanks.” She took a long drink from it, nearly finished it and set it down. She glanced at her mom, who looked like she’d been hypnotized and was waiting for a command.
“I didn’t want a way o
ut of it. I called him my boyfriend and he was happy with that. He knew someone who could buy beer and he bought us a whole bunch of it. We went to Trent’s and drank it, but I only had a couple because it turns out I’m what they call a light-weight. We kissed. One thing led to another, just as I knew it would, like I expected it would, like I hoped it would, and the next thing I knew we were in his bed. Making bruises. I didn’t know it at the time, believe-you-me, or I would’ve put the kibosh on that shit. Stuff. On that stuff. Sorry. Maybe it was the beer that spared me pain, and the beer that made him as rough as he was with me. It was nothing more than him holding on extra tight, squeezing a little maybe. I had nothing to compare it to so for all I knew that’s the way it was supposed to be. But after looking in the mirror, I know that it wasn’t done by the book.
“So that’s it,” Mae said conclusively. Another silent burp. There was a blizzard in her head. “There was no rape. No violence, unless you consider rough sex violent, which I don’t. And no regrets. Well, I regret having bruises and definitely regret being caught. But I don’t regret going home with Trent and sleeping with him. No sirree, McGee. And I don’t regret that I called him my boyfriend and he called me his girlfriend. No way, Jose. That was one of the evening’s highlights, actually. And you know what else I don’t regret?—this is a good one…” There was a maniacal enthusiasm in her voice. A foreshadowing of a nastiness that had already dropped from the Enola Gay and was due in Hiroshima any second. She looked at her mother. “Mom?” Then her dad. “Dad? Any guesses?”
She drank the last of the Miller Lite so they could come up with a guess. She burped (loudly this time) then checked back with the folks. They stared at her as if she were the twenty-fourth hour watched of a Jerry Lewis Marathon, comatose.
“I don’t regret not using a condom! Ta-da!” Their eyes blinked back to life. “Why is that, you ask?” Nobody had asked. “I’ll tell you why. Because Mom here put me on birth control. Woo-hoo! All those spermies inside me and nowhere for them to go because my eggs have been scrambled by Mom’s birth-control pills. And to think that I was apprehensive in taking those pills at first. Turns out they were the deciding factor in whether or not we should use a rubber. I owe it all to you, Mom. You could’ve just as easily lied to me and told me they were something else, so I wouldn’t have been under the impression that I had a green light to have unprotected sex. Mid-cycle is when we ovulate, too, right Mom? We’re pro-life, right?” She wiped her forehead and said, “Whew. I know birth control pills only have a ninety-nine-percent chance of success, but I’ll take those odds any day over sprinkling fertilizer on the lady-garden—three times in one night, too—during ovulation.” Mae smacked her lips and felt strange. Without warning she vomited on the table. Nothing came out but beer, tea, and a few soggy Doritos.