Once my mother was gone, I locked my door at night and spent as much time as I could away from the house, spending the night with friends, anything I could think of. I had no relatives anywhere else, and because my parents were married when my mom died, I was stuck with him.
And I didn’t tell anybody I was afraid of him, either. It seemed like I must be doing something wrong for him to treat me like that.
That first time, that’s what he said, that I was asking for it. It was summer and I was washing dishes in shorts and a T-shirt, sweating like a pig. I was alone, listening to the radio and dancing along a little, imagining the day I might have my own home, my own kitchen. I loved it when he went on the road, loved having my world to myself.
I wasn’t expecting him until the following day when he banged into the house, smelling of beer. I knew right away I was in big trouble. I dropped the dishrag in the water and headed for my room, where I had a chair I could latch under the door handle, but he caught me before I made it to the hallway. “If you wouldn’t dress like a slut,” he said, “I wouldn’t have to treat you like one.” He flung me on the floor. I fought him as hard as I could, kicking and biting and scrambling away twice, once after he got my shirt off and I was running for the door. He grabbed me by my hair and flung me back down on the carpet.
He raped me, and after, when I was crying so hard I had the hiccups, he hauled me to my feet and told me to go take a shower.
I didn’t tell anybody. Who was there to tell?
My life narrowed into a tiny circle of horror. I went to school and acted like a normal person. I had friends and I did homework, and if my grades were slipping, so what. I was only headed for the local diner or grocery store and everybody knew it. People like us didn’t get out of Thunder Bluff.
I ran away. The first time, he found me within a day, hitchhiking. He beat me so badly that I didn’t go to school for two weeks. The second time, one of his buddies picked me up in a town down the highway. The punishment that time was imaginative and painful and made it not worth another attempt. I feared if I told anyone, the retaliation would be even worse.
A person can get used to anything. After a while, I just let it happen, left my body while he used it and went mentally out to the garden I grew outside our tiny house. I grew vegetables and flowers and herbs, learning everything I could about all of them. Strawberries loved garlic, and cucumbers wanted to climb, and a tincture of rosemary could help memory problems.
I just had to get out of school and find a way out. I just bided my time.
And then I got pregnant.
Pregnant. As the scent of rosemary rises from the herbs beneath my fingers, I think of Maya’s baby. Who will be the blood grandchild of Augustus. Who might look like him, or be like him or have his big laugh. Standing knee deep in herbs I’ve grown, my heart lifts at the possibility, and I realize I’ve been thinking about this all wrong. For the first time in weeks, I feel something like hope.
In the morning, I’ve still barely slept, but I have to talk to Kara at Peaches and Pork to see where we are on the Thursday opening, and I’ve already left a message to find out about Augustus. They can’t keep him indefinitely.
First, I have an herbal blend of tea for pregnant women that I made for both of Rory’s pregnancies, and I’m taking some to Maya to show I support her decision to have the baby. I’ve also cut an armload of flowers from my kitchen garden as an offering for my ambivalence yesterday.
Two cars are in the driveway, and I don’t recognize the second one, a slightly battered Mercedes. For a moment outside my car, I hesitate, wondering if I should come back another time. But Norah’s probably here, too, and therefore I won’t be intruding. Buoyed by good intentions, I carry my gifts to the back door. Voices float out the french doors to the patio, more than two, I think, and I cross the grass to go in that way, singing out, “Hello! Is anybody home?”
“Meadow!” Maya says, coming out the door. She’s wearing a little green T-shirt dress that shows off the tan on her legs and arms and clings to her still-too-thin body. “What are you doing here?”
“That particular phrase makes me feel very unwelcome,” I say with a jokey tone. “I’m not staying. I just brought you a couple of things.”
Behind her in the kitchen are the doctor from down the road and the impossible Norah, wearing shorts that make her legs look a hundred miles long. She raises a hand toward me, and I have no idea how to respond. “Flowers from my garden,” I say to Maya, who takes them and bends her head to smell them. “Some artichokes I saw at a farm stand on the way down here and”—I hold up a baggie—“some tea for your special problem.”