Chapter Forty-Eight
Lex
After not properly crying for more than twenty years, tonight is a true education.
I have learnt that some sobs come from your gut and that they take a piece of it with them as they claw up your throat and out of your mouth.
I have learnt that bawling isn’t a useless verb; it’s a very real action that contorts your face and involves sweat and snot and more tears than I thought my body could make.
I have learnt that crying takes immense energy and effort, leaving the body depleted and mind drained.
And I have learnt that when you are so diminished from all the sobbing and bawling and crying, then sometimes all that’s left is silence and stillness as tears continue to slip down your face.
That’s the stage I’m at now as I lie in bed in Roos’ arms and with Mari’s body curled around my back.
We have showered together. Mari has applied aloe vera to my thighs and stomach, and Roos has made me drink two bottles of water.
I’m dressed in just a pair of underpants, while Roos and Mari each have robes on, and the softness of the towelling material is more comforting than I can put into words.
We have barely spoken since we entered the aftercare room, and I am grateful for that, but I know it needs to happen. That awareness has kept me on edge since the scene ended, and so even though my body aches to fall asleep, my muscles heavy and my eyes half-closed already, I resist. I stay awake.
And eventually I start to talk.
“The first time was on my sixth birthday,” I say, my voice croaky and thick with tears, but I don’t care, and that feels like a slice of freedom in and of itself.
“He came into my room as Mum and Grandma were tidying up from a party we’d had.
I’d already been put to bed, but I was wide awake thanks to all the excitement of the day and far too much sugar.
He sat on my bed at first and talked to me, and I liked that.
That wasn’t unusual, and I liked our chats.
“Mum worked a lot, so she wasn’t always available for long one-on-one talks, and my grandmother was left to pick up the pieces at home, and with three boys all playing at least two sports each, there was always washing to do and belongings to pick up and tidy away.
My grandfather was different. He took time to talk to me.
He asked me about my day. He wanted to know who I was friends with at school.
He was the one who bought me my first set of colouring pens.
Felt-tips. I can remember exactly what the set looked like.
I felt so grown-up carrying them around in their plastic case that I’m pretty sure anyone else would have thrown away.
“Anyway. That night, my sixth birthday.” I pull in a breath, aware of how still and quiet Mari and Roos are.
It’s a strange thing to say, but I can feel them listening.
“He pulled the covers off me. He said it was hot in my room. It wasn’t.
When he put his hand on my leg, just above my knee, I didn’t think anything of it.
When he then moved it up, I didn’t really notice because we were still talking.
When he flattened his palm against the front of my…
of my genitals, over my My Little Pony knickers, I remember thinking, That’s strange, but I didn’t move and I didn’t say anything. ”
“Then he asked me to lift up my pyjama top. It was my favourite set. He-Man pyjamas covered in the cartoons of the characters. They used to belong to Bart. I didn’t want to, so I didn’t.
I told him I was tired and tried to pull the covers back over my body.
He yanked them out of my hand, and that’s when everything changed. ”
I pause, noticing an increase in my tears. My arms yearn to reach out and hold six-year-old me, to grab xem and take xem away from that bedroom. To stop the horror before it started. But I can’t do that.
Roos’ hold on me tightens, and Mari tucks their head into the crook of my neck. Still, they don’t say anything. They know this story is far from over.
“He didn’t rape me that night, but he may as well have.”
Mari sucks in a sharp breath. Roos sniffs and squeezes me to her.
“It was the perfect moment, to be honest. I was old enough to have some sense of free will, of my own mind, but I was too young to know I could be in complete control of that. I was still at an age when I thought all adults knew better than me. I was still looking to them for guidance with most things in life, and even after what he did to me that night, I still looked to my grandfather to tell me how to deal with it. Of course he told me not to tell anyone. He said my brothers would be jealous that we had such a special friendship. Friendship. That’s what he called it.
So I thought, okay, this must be friendship.
“He told me not to tell my mum because she wouldn’t understand, and my mum was so busy already.
I wouldn’t want to make her angry, would I?
And he told me that my grandmother would call me silly and stupid for not wanting to have this special friendship with him.
For an evil fucker, he was also very smart.
My mum was working two jobs at that point, and the occasional shift at the pub down the road.
She was tired and grumpy most evenings. There was no way I wanted to add to that.
And my grandma, she always teased me for being ‘Pops’ Little Lady’.
She would always talk about how I could get him to agree to anything – extra sugar on my porridge, an ice cream when the van showed up at the park, cutting my hair short when he took me to the hairdressers.
I could practically hear her telling me off if I told her that his hands in my underwear didn’t make me feel good. ”
A little sob hiccups out of Roos, and Mari’s hand reaches over me and grabs her forearm. I don’t know if it’s a touch of reassurance or a warning to be quiet and not stop me talking, but I can’t seem to stop the words now I’ve started.
“It wasn’t every night, but it was every week.
It wasn’t always painful or long, but there was always something.
Some touch that hurt me. Some words that made me feel sick.
Some promise I didn’t know if I was supposed to love or hate.
I was so confused. That’s the worst part; he made me so deeply confused, and when that happened, I just sort of froze, mentally.
I didn’t think about it, even when it was happening.
I would escape into my own head. I would imagine the things I wanted to draw or colour in.
I could see them in my mind’s eye. Dragons and knights and castles and mountains and unicorns.
And then, as I grew older, zombies and vampires and monsters and ghosts.
Often, after he was finished, I was too wired to sleep, so I would put my light on and draw all the things I’d imagined.
I think that’s where my insomnia started.
” I nudge my head against Mari’s. “And it’s definitely where I started to lean on art as a crutch. Art became the escape I so craved.”
Mari hums a soft, acknowledging noise, and Roos kisses the top of my head.
“By the time I was finishing primary school, I had gotten so good at escaping into my own head that I forgot to fight back. I just switched off. I just left my body and became safe inside my mind. And then, when I had pages and pages of sketches, each one technically better than the last, I almost felt proud of myself. Not only was I keeping everything a secret like he told me to – even though there had been so many times when I’d wanted to scream the truth at my mother, my grandmother, or one of my brothers – I had stayed quiet and I had turned the torrid experience into something good.
I was good at art. I knew it then, and that was another potential escape route.
Even at eleven or twelve, I was thinking ahead to when I could leave home and be free of his knobbly-knuckled hands and his tobacco breath. ”
“Fuck,” Mari hisses, and Roos sniffs again. I know she’s crying, and I itch to stop talking so her tears stop, but I know that’s not what she wants.
“When I got to secondary school and met you, Mari, more things changed. Firstly, my body started to change. I was never going to be tall, but I filled out. Got tits, curves, and hair started growing everywhere. He didn’t like that.
He told me to shave – even bought me a packet of crappy supermarket disposable razors.
You know, I looked at the blade in those razors for a long, long time the night he left them on my bedside table.
I wondered how I could pry one of them out and see what damage they could do.
But I didn’t because the next day I had a double period of art, and I was halfway through this really cool clay sculpture that I wanted to finish. ”
Mari huffs out a soft laugh, and I find myself smiling with them.
“Anyway, he didn’t come into my room as often in those years, and my God, that felt good.
I got breathing space for the first time in five or more years.
I didn’t get into bed on high alert every night.
And I felt confident enough to ask people for sleepovers.
It feels na?ve now, stupid, even, but I never thought he’d touch one of my friends.
I think I still believed his special friendship lies, which I guess makes me the idiot. ”
“No,” Roos says firmly. “Never.”
“Do you remember that first sleepover we had, Mari?”
They nod. “I do.”
“We were like thirteen or something. We made a bed for you on the floor next to my single bed, and we talked nearly all night. Or rather, I did. I was talking and talking and didn’t realise you fell asleep.
I know now I was doing it to wait and see if he came in.
I stayed awake all night to make sure he didn’t.
Do you remember I fell asleep in geography the next day and got a detention? ”