The Briers

by V.J. Goll

  Ten

  Present Day:

  "An explanation not to hate," it was titled. Ravi blinked. He felt his heart pound a little. He might have found it. He had expected her to be angry over the events.

  He never expected her to forgive. She choose to forgive.

  "Many individuals with special needs experience discrimination in their lifetimes, but in some forms of the discrimination, there is an unseen crisis that is often overlooked. This crisis hints itself in the handling of events by some "discriminatory" individuals in resolving conflicts. It reads of the symptoms of someone who was abused a child.

  These individuals will show traits such as "gas lighting" and use emotional abuse when under stress towards individuals with special needs and colleagues. In no way, I write this to paint the individuals in question as innocent. I write this to show that there is additive cycle that may influence and effect the actions of such individuals."

  Sequestration:

  I felt sick. My throat felt like there was a river of fluid running down it. My left ear throbbed and hurt as I rose out of bed that morning. I couldn't afford to be sick. There was so much for me to do as in school and COATS work. I needed to keep moving. I rinsed myself off with a hot shower which eased the tension of the fluid in my head. It changed it viscosity so it ran down wherever my sinuses drained. It was relieving. Yet, I still felt tired more than I ever could be.

  I got dressed with a pair of blue jeans, some shirt, and thick jacket. I slid on my shoes and tied them as I looked at the living space around me. This place did not feel welcoming anymore.

  I didn't belong here. It didn't matter if I spent ten more years here. It didn't matter if I changed my syntax of speech. It didn't matter if my disabilities just went away. I did not belong here. D's hostility, Bad Wizard, and Mrs. K, the schools, and everything, I knew it was all speaking to me. People will try to justify a broom closet education as appropriate, but nothing makes a student of special needs feel inferior to hide them away in a windowless room. I felt inferior because societal oppression spoke to me to hide and not to be member of society. It spoke to me not to inconvenience others with what I cannot do. I was at fault for being this way.

  It was this moment that I understood why some people with hearing loss were on social security disability in this place. It was this moment I understood why the state or the federal government would pay some members of the special needs community to hide. It is not us. We weren't the problem. It is society. Society is the problem. In that moment of sadness, I felt angry.

  I am ranting. I know that. You have to remember that I am irate teenager. I probably have ways to go. I just sat on the couch trying to move. The vertigo came back.

  "You got to go to class," she said to me. I was exhausted. I wanted to go to class. With what little strength that I had, I pulled myself up. My brain burned from all the sensations it was feeling. I was unsteady.

  "I can't," I said to her. I got up running my hands against the wall. I just walked back into the room and piled back into the bed, wishing the sensation would go away. I fell asleep in that sea of madness.

  "How do you feel?" she asked me later as I laid in bed.

  "Like everything is moving," I said to her. I didn't feel well. It was dark. She had a lamp light on.

  "Sometimes," she said, "things move on me, too, when I am on beds."

  "Is that way you sleep on the couch?" I asked her.

  She rubbed her eyes sleepily and nodded. It worried me that she was not sleeping. I somehow found a comfortable position of things not moving on me.

  I sighed. "Would it help if we put our beds together and that I sleep next to you?" I asked her, "that way you can touch me and know it is not real." I recognized that she had PTSD. Beds were triggering her.

  "Are you sure you are okay with this?" she asked me. I got up tiredly and yanked my mattress off my bed. I climbed back into it. I didn't like the sudden movement, but I didn't care enough. I nodded tiredly climbing under my blanket on my side. She pulled her mattress down a bit more gently. She laid it beside mine. She laid down on her side curling up looking at me. I could tell that she was afraid.

  "Good night, Mara," I said to her.

  "Good night, Ally," she said. I fell into a deep sleep again.

  I didn't necessarily dream well. I was taken back to the farmhouse again. Water was pouring through the roof. I didn't have a bowl to catch it with me. Yet, I held out my hands feeling the water. It was warm. It was clean water. It started to fall upon me, cleansing me of whatever it was that I was needing to be cleansed. The tall Shadow figure looked at me. I looked at him. I wasn't afraid anymore. I knew his name. I knew what I saw. I saw the future. I closed my eyes as the water flushed over me like I was taking a shower. I felt something healing in my head. I didn't know what it was.

  When I awoke, the world wasn't moving anymore. I was less stressed. I felt as if someone had set me free. I was free. I knew this was the center of the eye of the storm. I knew that things were about to start falling apart. I knew that it was coming, the torrential downfall and destruction that was going to shatter both of our lives. It was going to set us both free.

  I knew I couldn't leave what was bothering me alone. I had to talk to someone.

  "Ally," he said to me, "I can tell there is a great strain upon you. How are you handling your caseloads? How are you and Mara doing?" I had started talking to Ravi more than I expected to. He was patient with me which was something that I appreciated. I wasn't really allowed to express my thoughts when I was around other people.

  I looked at him. I was hurting. "I know," I said sadly, "I don't want to be doing this."

  “So,” Ravi said to me, “what are you going to do about this?”

  "I don't know," I said.

  "What about your relationship with your mom?" he asked me.

  I shook my head sadly. It was strained. We were fighting about how I was helping the COATS program more than I helped her. I didn't know how to help her. I couldn't get a job with the prejudice here with hearing loss.

  "Then, what do you want?" he asked me.

  "I want to be in control of my own dreams and life," I said to him being upset, "I don't want to have to take evaluations or have to do what I do to go to college. I just want to be a normal person." I felt the hurt in my voice. I hated that people didn't have to go through the hoops that I did.

  "Then, how can you find that control?" he asked me.

  "By leaving here," I said, "by cutting ties and defining my own future."

  "Exactly," said Ravi to me, "I think it would be beneficial for you to leave with Mara. You both have similar circumstances. It would be good for you."

  "It will be hard," I said to him.

  "Yet, it will be the best," he said to me. I knew he was right. I was too tangled. I needed to detangle.

  Yet, I was still bitter. I said, "all of this is shit. Everything about this is a horrible situation."

  Ravi stopped walking to look at me. I stopped walking to be angry. He raised one finger, just one, and no more. Then, he pointed downward to say, “right now, you are standing on thousands of years' worth of waste and poop.” He paused a little. “Look at how much nature flourishes from a pile of shit that has happened over these years.”

  I stared at him. He got me. ”I am sorry,” I said, “I just meant that I don’t know what to do.”

  “Don’t apologize,” he said to me, “yes, this is a shitty situation, but you are working through it well for someone being your age.”

  "I know," I said, "but everyone expects so much from me. This is hurting me."

  "But, how is this effecting you?" he asked me. I ignored the question and kept walking.

  "Ally," he said to me louder, "how is this effecting you?" I didn't want to answer the question because it was technically a strike against me.

  "My anxiety erodes me," I said to him. My hands were shaking. Ravi's eyes got wide. He knew that was bad. I knew it was bad. It was why
my brain made me sick all the time.

  "You hid it well," he said to me sadly.

  "I am doing the best that I can," I said to him, "this is not easy, working a job, juggling the COATS, and going to school. I am exhausted and feeling like I am on the verge of failing something."

  He nodded silently. "I do have one question for you," he said to me, "when you go with Mara, is she another case to you or a friend?"

  "I don't know," I said to him.

  "You are pretty good at talking to people in emotional distress," he said to me, "I worry about you because you can't be taking care of people all the time."

  I looked at him with a look of despair. "For some odd reason," I said, "I am vulnerable finding company in the vulnerable. It is the only place with people that I find refuge."

  "But, you also grew up with brain injury," he said to me, "you didn't have a lot of independent functions that most people would have as a child. You were vulnerable, and people hurt you there."

  "Why do you say that?" I asked him. I didn't like being pried into.

  "You have a hard time letting other people help you, Ally," he said, "you do sometimes need help. I don't want you to close the door on it."

  "Are you asking me to talk to you more?" I asked him.

  "If that helps you, then, maybe," he said to me, "but, I want to see you taking care of yourself." I nodded. I understood his point. I did start talking to Ravi a little bit more at the end of my semester. The morning chat with him helped eased my mind a little. He was always listening to me silently and letting me tell stories. I wasn't sure about him at first so I told a little bit of fiction, but I told the truth later on. He didn't judge. He just let me pace myself.

  "Ally!" said Mara excitedly as she sat at the dining hall table, "there is a literature lecture that I am required to attend for extra credit. Do you want to come with me?"

  I looked at her for a moment judging how I felt about it. "Sure," I said. The winter was over and the ground was defrosted. We were in the beginning of spring now. We both were happier with the changes that we made. The warmth was welcomed by all of us who were ready for nature to start turning up the thermostat. The change of classes just advanced to the next levels of most. I had the second course of chemistry as long as with Mara.

  The school didn't expect people to be quite eager with the political seminar so it was held in a small classroom. I was pretty much lost in thought when Dr. W's voice drew me out of it.

  "Fiction gives the liberty to tell the truth, the complete truth, under the guise of lies," said Dr. W, "without holding fears of the consequences. Man cannot hold you accountable for a story, but he can hold you accountable for what you say it the truth. In fact, a famous person named Jesus used this method to commit satire on his society and culture. It enraged them, but they couldn't touch him because he just told a simple story that he knew that only a few would understand. Satire is a way of speaking. It is a way of enlightenment." He was pretty much what I would imagine as a literature professor, just missing a monocle. He wore a suit and talked about the effects of literature on the human thought process and society. This is probably not the most adept summary, but I heard what I needed to hear.

  I started to lose myself in thought at this point. His voice quieted under the loudness of my thoughts. Could this be answer? I wondered. Would this be the solution to changing all of this? To altering the stories and the outcomes by calling people out on the truth without telling the truth? Could it change all of this? I didn't know, but in the tired weary soul of a youthful advocate I was, I pondered these thoughts. I somehow ended up in auto-drive when Mara's voice snapped me from my thinking.

  "So, what did you think of it?" she said. Her voice gained a lightness to it. Her expressions danced with excitement.

  "It was very thought provoking," I said being the one being tired now, "it is amazing that people could use simple stories to drive political change." We walked a little bit in a silence. We both were thinking, but we were okay with it. I never noticed how close Mara walked to me till I looked at her when she asked me a question. I looked up at the night sky. I don’t know why, but I could see some red stars hiding among the bright white ones.

  "Do you hear people singing?" she asked me. I couldn’t really hear them singing. The wind was pushing into the microphone in my hearing aids.

  "Maybe," I said to her.

  "Let's go see," she said to me. She reminded me of a cat at this moment. We both started walking in the direction of the lights and singing. I could feel that the air felt oddly still. I knew they were singing some form of hymnals. I didn't want to walk near them. I was exhausted.

  Then, we walked right into it. It was a Christian revival with a bunch of tents. I think it was a southern Baptist thing. I saw some people look at us. I saw her father and fear immediately struck me. We had to get out of here. I knew it. She froze. I froze. Keep moving, said that voice in my head. The anxiety hit me. I knew I panicked. Pastor B saw his daughter. I heard him yell over the crowds. It was a huge crowd. People were even lined in the sidewalk.

  "Please pray for my daughter, for she has been seized by the reprobate!" he said it from the podium and pointed at her. He was in a dark suit. "Pray that she turns from her sexual ways!" He screeched. He raped her, repeatedly. He was raping her now with words. He was using his authority to strip her of control. He knew he could do it. He was a man of stature, who was going to think that he did the wrong?

  I don't know why. Something in me, it moved. I threw my jacket over Mara and covered her head. I started pushing her through the crowd without saying a word. They I could tell some of them wanted to reach Mara. I stayed close to her. I covered her. I yelled at them to move. My voice changed. They picked up that I wasn't going to be messed with. I removed my jacket. I pulled up the hood of her jacket. She was still frozen, but I kept us walking. I vanished us into the forest grove that people would not be able to find their way through, but I knew because it led to the Churchhouse. I had taken a short cut through this thicket of woods for so long. I knew where I was walking. I used my phone’s flashlight carefully.

  “Watch for snakes,” said Mara to me. I looked at her and shine the light into the wood piles. I saw it. She had saw it. I looked at the snake, and it fled. I couldn’t tell what type it was. I looked over to see some wild boars chewing on the vegetation. Their eyes gleamed in the light. Something was protecting us. I moved again leading her down the path. I knew the boars were there to make noise to cover us. Sometimes, God does work in weird ways.

  In my defense, I knew a lot of things. I know the father had not outright spoken that he sexually abused her. Her body reacted to sexual abuse. She avoided men that reminded her of her dad, and she couldn't sleep on beds. The way he looked at her at the pizza parlor was literally the smoking gun. Yet, this is the tricky part of my field. You can't draw assumptions based on things that aren't in evidence. I had never seen him do it. I have just seen the consequences. This fact is why I choose to never go to the police, but I choose to get her independent from her father. This is an important distinction. Kindness and compassion is sometimes worth more than witch hunting. It is more important to sometimes help the victim than to focus on the perpetrator. Especially, if the one in the wrong is in a powerful position, you are not going to win. I knew the state was contracted by someone at the schools. I knew people overlooked it. I wasn't here to make things right. I was here to get her on the right path. I started to understand that. I started to understand the feeling that compelled me to stay in this. I didn't like it, but I understood it. I looked up into that clear night sky knowing that person above us definitely had a hand in this. It was just up to us to make the choice to do what is right.

  By the time that I got her to the Churchhouse, and we sat on the pews. She actually laid down on them while I sat up. Her body was already responding again. I could tell she was trying to fight the PTSD. She had her eyes closed, trying to be perfectly still.

  "Whe
n did it start?" I asked her quietly. I was angry, but I knew I needed to confirm the hunches.

  She grimaced. "When I was a teenager," she said to me. I nodded. I knew this had to go on for a while.

  "I am sorry," I said to her, "I shouldn't pry into you like that. I am just so angry because I understand what happened."

  "It's okay," she said to me, "I know you are a good person." Her voice had pain into it. It was weird to hear the words, but I would never consider myself a good person.

  I looked up at the red curtain that hide what was behind the podium. For some odd reason, I felt like pulling it back. I felt like there was something significant. I got up slowly and walked towards the back of the podium. I stepped over the small stairs as I reached the circular mound it had. My hand reached for the curtain and pulled it back. I could understand why now someone had covered it up. There were indentions in the wall where the cross and man used to be. This place did used to be a church.

  "You know," I said to her, "I know I have a hard way to explaining how I feel, but this thought comes to mind. Please hear me out." I said the words slowly, trying to draw into what drew me into this. She was silent.

  "Do people love Christ?" I asked her, "do they love the broken man that collapse when he couldn't carry his own cross, moaned for God, and bled out everywhere. Do they not love the Christ that suffered? The Christ whose hands and feet were pierced by nails? The gore?"

  "They can," she said. I noticed she adjusted her volume so I could hear.

  "Then, if people can love the ugliness that bore upon Christ," I said to her, "why cannot I accept and love the parts of you that are ugly, that are broken, that are like Christ, not perfect in the eyes of mankind and ugly?"

  She looked at me with wide eyes. She was realizing what I was saying. "But," she said to me softly, "I am afraid that I show you the ugly parts of me. You will run away." She was sitting up looking at me.

  "I won't," I said to her, "I can't help you unless you learn to trust me. I mean." I paused struggling for words. "I mean that I may not understand all of your circumstances, but I am doing the best that I can do to understand."

  She nodded. I could feel sadness with her.

  "Then, tell me whatever you want to tell me," I said to her, "it doesn't have to be the complete truth. I do give you permission to lie till you are ready to talk about something."

  She nodded. "No one has really listened to me," she said with her voice being hoarse.

  "I will listen," I said to her. It hurt to hear that.

  She told me everything. She told me how her mother left her father. He branded her a cheater because she fled the house. The townsfolk believed it because she was found with another man a year later, but her father had the judge in his pocket. She wasn't able to get custody of Mara.

  She told me of the showers with her father. She told me how he began to groom her. It was innocent at first, but she slowly realized that something was wrong. The other children at school didn't do the same thing. Her father told her that it was the Lord's will and to keep it secret. She did. She once slipped up, and the father passed it off as it just being a young child who didn't know what she was doing.

  It progressed. She grew up around A, who fell under her father's sights. They both started going to church and studying the Bible together. A eventually got her trust. She admitted to the abuse. A sold her to the father. It progressed and worsen. The father fed A some lies to make her believe that Mara gained things from her mother. It didn't help that in high school that she slept with a boy she trusted to try to make the pain go away. It just protected the father further because the blame fell on him. He dropped from Mara's life due to the pressure.

  I just listened. I was careful to keep my face neutral, but I understood it. I understood why A was so interested in Mara. I understood it all. The father was passing himself as a caring preaching man. Yet, he was evil behind closed doors.

  "I don't think this world is a forgiving or compassionate place," I said to her, "there are no protagonists or antagonists in this life, but what happened to you is wrong. It shouldn't have stayed wrong." I sighed. These words were hard for me to speak. "You screamed," I said, "you screamed in every possible way that you could do so, and people were so wrapped up on judging you, praying and espousing Bible verses at you. They not once thought to help you."

  She looked at me sadly. "It's like my whole world being infected," she said to me, "when I try to stay still, my body remembers everything. He has constantly been everywhere in my life. I feel like sometimes that I just turn a corner. I will never escape, but God, something, just keeps driving me onward."

  "Why do you still believe in a God?" I asked her in disbelief.

  She was silent for a moment. "Can I give you an honest answer?" she asked me. I knew it wasn't a good answer.

  I nodded.

  "When I was a teenager," she said to me, "I took my father's gun and put it to my head. I asked God to tell me it was going to get better. I begged him to tell me that it was going to get better."

  "Did he?" I asked after she got quiet.

  "No, he didn't" she said looking up at the cross, "I can say one thing about God and it is this: "he has never lied to me, not once." I am glad he didn't tell me it was going to get better because it did get worst, but I had the peace to know how to go through the worst. It helped." She paused.

  I was silent weighing everything she said.

  "Then," she said to me, "you came along. I knew God was finally going to help me. I just had to be patient."

  I realized she wasn't a case to me. She was my friend. I wasn't helping someone. I cared about someone. My actions were caring.