Sister of Silence (3 page)

In those days my well-endowed neighbor teased me because I was a virgin, my breasts were barely there, and I hadn’t gotten my period yet. It was true: I was a skinny thirteen-year-old with a flat chest and beanpole legs. I wasn’t tall, but people said I was because I looked like a pencil. My best feature was my hair, falling long and straight like a waterfall past my waist, where it pooled against the floor whenever I sat cross-legged. I knew Eddie Leigh, a family friend, liked my hair, too, because he was always touching it.

The rapes never would have happened had Dad been there. I think that’s why
I was such easy prey for Eddie. Our friendship began innocently, when I was just eight and he was fifteen. Eddie had been around since we first moved to West Virginia. Tall, all arms and legs, he walked so fast he looked like a moving cartwheel. Even though he wore a cocky attitude, I didn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been nice to me. Our families went on social outings together, and we often rode with Eddie’s family to Bible meetings. We’d play hide and seek in their backyard with other neighborhood children, and more than once I vaguely remember hiding in their dark barn with those black eyes staring at me from between the door’s wooden slats.

By the time I was eleven, Eddie began showing up at our house with a load of coal or firewood. Knowing Dad was gone and our finances were tight, he offered to drop some off. The first time, he took the gas money Mom gave him. But after that he always refused, gallantly telling Mom her fine cooking was payment enough. She really appreciated his help and was happy to let him join us for dinner
.

The first time it happened, I was two years older. Still an underdeveloped gangly girl of thirteen. At twenty, Eddie stood six-foot-two and towered over me, and anyone who knew him said he wasn’t happy unless he was tinkering under the roof of his beloved green Ford truck, which you could hear coming from a mile away. He wasn’t much of a talker, unless it was about that truck, or some model he was building. Mostly he just smiled and acted charming, making coy comments that left me blushing. It wasn’t so much what he said as how he said it. He might comment about the weather, then look at me and ask “Isn’t that right?” with that grin on his face. He nicknamed me “Legs,” wearing that same grin. Told me his friend Rick said I had legs like Angie Dickinson, clear up to my armpits. That was one of the times I caught him watching me with an odd expression. I turned away, embarrassed, as if I’d done something wrong, and scared to death my parents would find out. I suspected they wouldn’t like it, if they did.

Children’s lives should be a mixture of fun and freedom from the pressures of adult life. Little about my life was either, unless you count the first few times I stayed with Eddie’s sister, Kim. At nineteen, she was wild and daring, with a goofy, offbeat sense of humor. Though five years younger than Kim, it seemed okay since I had known her and Eddie since we began going to Bible meetings together years earlier.

Kim was always finding some mischief to get into, almost always without her parents’ knowledge. One of the things she really liked was driving fast. I remember her racing along narrow country lanes in Eddie’s
very first car, a blue Ford Falcon, her short black curls blowing across her face from the wind that whistled through the open windows.

“Kim, slow down!” I begged once, laughing.

“You just hold on there. We’re gonna’ see what this car really has,” Kim said with a grin, downshifting to take a sharp curve. “That Eddie thinks he can drive. Well, I’ll show him I can make this thing go too!”

I’d been a visitor in the Leigh home for years,
and stayed overnight as a youngster. When I turned thirteen, Kim would come pick me up in that little car, and we’d fly the seven miles from my house, barely slowing for the curves. I was tossed from side to side, clutching the door handle while Kim tore the gear shifter from one gear to another as fast as any guy could, I thought, and the little car sped ever faster. Being with her made me feel less like a gangly adolescent and more like a sophisticated grownup.

And that’s how we ended up together that terrible night in early spring 1977 when I was in eighth grade.

How easily Kim had been able to talk Mom into letting me go to a sleepover with a girl five years my senior. Maybe if Mom had overheard our phone call the day before, some alarm bells might have gone off in her head. Maybe.

"Yo
u'll never guess who likes you.”

Kim was right, I didn't guess.

“Eddie.”

No way. A twenty-year old guy liked me?

“He thinks you're really pretty.”

Did he say that? I had to know. Or was she just speculating?

Kim just laughed and said, “Come over tomorrow, I'll tell you more.”

“Yes, I’ll
tell Mom I’ll finish my homework before I go to bed.” Mom's one condition in letting me go with Kim. And of course Mom said I could go.

The air outside was warm and fragrant from the scent of new vegetation that surrounded their little house, making it seem like it sat in the middle of a large forest. The Leigh home reminded me a little of the witch’s cottage in “Hansel and Gretel,” minus the candy decorations and gingerbread trim. Eddie and his parents had bedrooms downstairs, but Kim slept in the attic. To get there, we had to walk right by Eddie’s bedroom. He wasn’t home from work yet but the door was open, and as I looked inside and saw everything neatly in its place, I couldn’t help but think:
Eddie likes me!

In the privacy of Kim's room we laughed like innocent teenagers. She joked about her parents and mimicked their voices, making me roll on the bed clutching my stomach. We shared secrets, like the one she'd whispered over the phone.

Whenever I heard the sound of an occasional passing car through the open window screens I grew distrac
ted, wondering if the next one would be Eddie’s. Then suddenly, the crunch of tires against gravel—I just knew it was him.

True to my promise to Mom,
I’d left Kim in her attic room and had gone downstairs to do homework. Cross-legged in the spare room the Leighs had converted into an office, twirling my pencil, I tried to concentrate. But it was hard because now Eddie was home from work. Within minutes, The Beach Boys blasted from the stereo in his bedroom. He was just a few feet away on the other side of that wall . . .

He thinks you're pretty
, Kim’s voice whispered again inside my head.
He really likes you.

How could someone as worldly as Eddie be interested in a wallflower like me, a mere kid of thirteen? He had a real job; he paid his own way in the world, made his own decisions, and didn’t seem to have to account to his parents like Kim always did. He was an Adult
.

I
continued trying to focus on math, not Eddie, when I heard Kim bound down the stairs, then burst into the room, interrupting my thoughts. She urged me with an impish grin to follow her. I jumped off the chair and ran after her. She wandered into the room next door,
Eddie's room
, and plopped down on her brother’s bed.

Eddie sat on the floor, working on one of his many model cars. I stood, not sure what to do, until Kim patted the bed, indicating I should sit beside her. She started talking to Eddie, trying to say things that would get his attention and make him look up. I watched while he glued together the plastic model of a classic ‘64 Mustang he’d probably spent hours working on, bantering with Kim or softly singing along to the music.

Then, just as quickly as she’d breezed in, Kim breezed out again, leaving us alone together. I started to follow her but Eddie stopped me.

That grin again. His voice, soft and teasing. “What’s your rush?”

I sat down on the bed again, and after wiping the glue off his fingers, he stood and then sat next to me.

I struggled to say something, anything, before blurting out the first words that came to mind: “Do you know anything about algebra?”

I felt awkward and frozen, sitting on the edge of the bed like I might bolt at any moment, while trying to hide my nervousness. The question really wasn’t so odd, I told myself. I’d been turning to him more and more, in response to the questions he’d started asking me about my parents, how I was doing in my classes, and what I liked doing in my spare time. I admired him, and now, standing there remembering what Kim had said yesterday, I just knew I was falling in love with him. And I was certain he loved me. Why else would he show me so much attention?

I don’t recall his answer because leaned
toward me and kissed me. I was so surprised I didn’t know what to do. Only one other boy had kissed me before, and it had been more like a quick peck than a real kiss.

“Well, what do you think?” He seemed amused.

“I don’t know,” a voice I didn’t recognize responded in a strained whisper. My head went down and I just stared at the floor.

“You can come to my room later tonight if you want, and we’ll talk. Would you like that?”

I didn’t say anything, and continued staring at the swirls in the dark green carpet.

“We’ll just talk, that’s all,” he said.

I hesitated. Being in his bedroom when everyone else was sound asleep didn’t feel right to me, and I knew his parents wouldn’t approve. I must have said something, but I can’t remember what, and quickly rushed out to find Kim.

It was just before bedtime a few hours later, and Kim and I were sitting at the old metal and Formica table playing cards while Mrs. Leigh finished cleaning the kitchen.

“Would you girls like some tea?” she asked, her arm poised above the teakettle.

“No, thank you,” I said.

“Nah,” Kim added.

“I know something you girls will like,” Mrs. Leigh said, her smile bright. With that—as if she’d just announced dinner was ready—she opened one of the kitchen cabinets and took out a glass liquor bottle filled with a lovely red liquid. I watched while she mixed it with Coca-Cola, mesmerized by the movement inside the glass as the colors swirled together. Then she put two glasses before us.

“There you go,” she said, “a sloe gin fizz.”

It looked like the Shirley Temple my parents had ordered for my sister and me on the rare occasions we dined out. I took a sip and my throat burned a little at first, though the next sip was better and I decided I liked it. It tasted nothing like the 7UP and cherry juice that came in a Shirley Temple. I’d never had anything other than a thimbleful of wine with an occasional meal at home, so the idea of drinking something more “grown-up,” especially something that Mrs. Leigh herself really liked, made me feel important.

The drink
was accompanied with a teasing warning to not tell my mother. I promised, because I didn’t want Mrs. Leigh to get mad at me. Besides, I didn’t see what harm could come from such a delicious drink.

When the moon came up later that night and Kim went downstairs to the bathroom, I trailed along. We giggled and whispered as we opened the door at the bottom of the attic stairs
. I could hear her father snoring from the master bedroom off the kitchen and saw that Eddie’s door was open. We poked our heads around the door frame of his room to see him lying in his bed, one arm propped up under his head.

I felt him watching us as we
scampered off to the bathroom.

After relieving ourselves, w
e were just opening the door to return to Kim’s attic bedroom when Eddie said, “Daleen, aren’t you coming in?”

I remembered what he’d said after he’d kissed me.

I looked at Kim, desperately wanting her to tell me to follow her upstairs. She just shrugged her shoulders and quickly started back up the steps, leaving me with my decision.

“Oh come on, I won’t bite you,” he teased
.

I took a few steps
back and stood in the open doorway of Eddie’s room; he was patting the bed with one hand. By then, I realized he was without a shirt, his other hand holding a magazine that featured the latest models in sports cars. I tentatively walked just inside, nervous about going into a man’s bedroom. He was an Adult, after all.

I stood there, feeling like a deaf-mute and far more awkward than ever before. I wanted to turn and run but a fear he would think I was a child and wouldn’t like me anymore, that he would laugh at me, or even worse—ignore
me—glued my feet to the floor.

Then I wa
lked across the room toward him as he put the magazine on the nightstand.

The hard vinyl floor was cold, so cold it made my toes curl up tight as I hesitantly took each step.
Then I perched on the edge of the bed and tried to talk intelligently, but my thoughts were jumbled. He told me how pretty I was, and how much he liked my hair. Though clad in a long nightgown, I began shivering, and gooseflesh covered my arms and legs.

“Why don’t you get under the covers, just to keep warm?” he asked in a sweet voice.

I bit my lip. My entire life had been one of strict religious upbringing: I knew what morals were, what good girls didn’t do, and getting into bed with a grown man was on that list.

“Come on, I promise I won’t touch you. Nothing will happen.” He smiled
as he scooted the covers away to open up a spot on the bed beside him

I hesitated, feeling stupid and childish while he waited for me to do something. In one motion I quickly crawled onto the bed
, lying down beside him with the bunched up blankets between us, ignoring the screaming inside my brain.

This is wrong. Leave, now! Get out quickly!

For what seemed like a very long time, nothing happened. He didn’t even touch me. Then he leaned over and kissed me gently, and I began to feel warm as my body flushed at his touch. He smelled like fresh soap and deodorant, and I believed he was big enough to protect me from anything. He already had, by keeping an eye out for me at the basketball games I sometimes attended, scaring away any boys who tried to talk to me or teased me.

Though warmer
just lying near him and feeling his body heat, my shivers would not stop, and I clamped my teeth together to end their continuous chattering. Just then, he reached over me and pulled the chain on the nightstand lamp, casting the room into darkness and deep shadows. He scooted closer and pulled me toward him with a gentle hand on my shoulder. I couldn’t move a single muscle. My tongue felt paralyzed, as though I’d never speak again.

A
nd then his hand left my shoulder and I felt the blankets come over me at the same instant he moved even closer and pressed his body up against mine. I was afraid to move, even more afraid to breathe. My heart thumped so wildly inside my chest I knew he could hear it.

I’m in bed with Kim’s brother
…I’m in bed with Kim’s brother . . .

The words kept vibrating inside my head, reminding me what I was doing was wrong, even as
another part of me pushed them far, far away. I knew his parents were sleeping, just as I knew they’d be mortified if they awoke and realized I was in bed with their son. They would think I was terrible!

“I have—have to g-g-go upstairs—to Kim. Now.” My teeth chattered with each word, and in spite of the warmth seeping from his body into my own, I felt like I would never get warm.

“It’s okay. Everyone’s asleep,” he whispered into the darkness. “We aren’t doing anything wrong.”

I could make out his face just inches from my own
as my eyes adjusted to the darkness and I grappled with my thoughts, feeling confused by the battle between my common sense and my body. Then his lips found mine.

His kisses became more persistent, and at first I enjoyed them. Still, I was confused by the feelings they seemed to be awaking in me. But those kisses soon became sloppy, and I tried to wipe away their wetness in a way he wouldn’t notice. But he was in a hurry and
I soon realized he was blind to anything I said or did.

“No, stop it.” I managed to push the words out in a whisper as I
turned my head away to get his tongue out of my mouth.

Fear filled me and I swung my legs to the floor, trying to raise my torso at the same time. He grabbed me and
pushed me down and suddenly I was trapped beneath him, unable to move. He reached down and pulled up my nightgown and then, tugging at my panties, began trying to grope between my legs. I tried to press them tight together, but he used his knee to pry them apart, moving his legs between mine.

I just
lay there, not moving. Part of me knew what was happening, yet the biggest part of me didn’t want to, couldn’t possibly believe it was happening. That’s when a voice inside my head began speaking to me.

Oh God no!

I was forced back to reality by his movements. With one hand cupping my chin, he kissed me. At the same time I sensed he was using his other hand to do something beneath the covers.

He’s taking off his shorts!

“Here, give me your hand.” Now his breath was hot against my ear, and I couldn’t stand to feel it. The smell of sweat reached my nose—its dampness clung to me and suddenly I felt like I was going to vomit. But I knew, had seen, how hot-headed he could be, and at that moment I was more afraid of angering him by saying no again, so I slowly moved my hand, just a little. He guided it to the part of a man’s body I’d never seen before, let alone touched. When I felt the hard thing there, I flinched and jerked my hand away. Seconds later, it was hurting me as he tried to push it into the small space down there. All the while, he kept telling me everything would be all right.

“I won’t hurt you, I promise. I’ll be careful, and it will feel so good, it really will. You’ll see.”

But it does hurt.

I stared at the ceiling, using an imaginary pencil to trace every single outline in the white tiles. Moonlight shining through the bedroom window illuminated them, and I tried not to miss one tiny squiggle.

Up and down, over and around, through a loop and crossed in the center. Up and down, over and around, through a loop and crossed in the center.

I
imagined I was floating up near the ceiling and traced the tiles at least a hundred times, paying no attention to whatever was happening with the strangers on the bed below.

But the pain became too real, ripping my mind away from the tiles.

“No, this is … this is wrong. We can’t do this. Please don’t!”

I wasn’t sure if I spoke the words out loud, or said them inside my head.

“Did I hurt you? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

It was over in what seemed like mere seconds. Still sore from what had just occurred, I didn’t, couldn’t move. My eyes wildly searched the tiles again.

Up and down, over and around, through a loop and crossed in the center. Up and down, over and around, through a loop and crossed in the center.

Then I felt a dead, suffocating weight on top on me.

I can’t breathe. Help me. Please. I’m going to die.

“Eddie? Eddie!” My whisper was urgent. I couldn’t stand to feel him there
. I had to get away, before I died!

“What
…what is it?” he mumbled. Then, as if he was waking up from a deep sleep, his eyes opened and he kissed me again, just the faintest touch against my swollen lips. I turned my head, wanting only to be out of that room, away from him and that horrible, pungent smell and everything that had taken place.

“I have to go! Please, let me up!” I told him. He rolled off and away from me. Then he reached down and pulled up my panties. I froze at the touch of his hands on my skin again. I wanted to run, but my limbs refused to cooperate. Instead, I slowly got out of the bed, tiptoeing to the door.

“Thank you,” he said from where he was lying.

Thank you? He was thanking me? For what?

Then he anxiously added, “You won’t say anything to anyone about this, will you?”

I shook my head, unwittingly becoming a co-conspirator in the secrecy that would shroud my life for the next several years.

“That’s good, because we’d both be in a lot of trouble.” The sickening sound of his voice came from somewhere behind me. It seemed to reverberate from the walls, bouncing throughout my brain.

We’d both be in a lot of trouble
…we’d both be in a lot of trouble…we’d both be in . . .

I left his bedroom without looking back, closing the door as I did so. Going into the bathroom, I gingerly wiped myself with toilet paper, hating the feel of the wetness down there. I was horrified at the red stain on the paper, and I stared at it dumbly.

The redness stayed there, but it made no sense.

Instead, I saw red roses and a red house. The roses were at the bottom of four stone steps, hidden between two large Catawba trees and some shrubs at the edge of our property. I ran down the steps into the yard and lingered to touch the scarlet roses, the delicious fragrance wafting up into my nose and clinging there. I broke off some of the silky buds, bent to keep the low-hanging branches from smacking me across the face and emerged into the clearing of our yard with a small handful. I looked up to see our beautiful red brick house, bordered by my mother’s beloved lavender lilac bushes on one side, dark green rhododendrons on the other, and the row of wispy ferns that grew from a thick blanket of moss that bordered the creek far below.

I looked down at the roses in my hand, thinking I would carry them inside for my mother, who would smile and place them in a Mason jar, when I realized they were bleeding. I looked at the roses again and saw bloody paper instead, and I closed my eyes tightly to keep from seeing it. Some part of me felt swollen and sore, but I couldn’t figure out where it was.

Then I remembered. And realized how bad I was, to let it happen.

What have I done?

Tiptoeing up the stairs, I moved slowly so it wouldn’t hurt so much. Easing myself into the twin bed beside Kim’s, I turned toward the wall, curled up in a ball and wrapped my arms around myself.

I’m not a virgin anymore.

I saw myself on stage at the spelling bee, where I’d been standing a few weeks ago. I stepped up to the microphone.

“Virgin. Your word is ‘virgin,’ not that you would know it,”
a voice said.

I hesitated, wrapping a strand of hair around my finger
. “V-i-r-g-i-n. Virgin,”
I said solemnly, staring at the judges before me.

“Intercourse. Your word is ‘intercourse,’”
the same voice said.

“Could I please have the definition?”
I whispered.

The voice was sharp.
“You have had sexual ‘intercourse.’ Now no one will ever want you.”

I felt tears welling up behind my eyes and angrily wiped them away.
“Intercourse. I-n-t-e-r-c-o-u-r-s-e,”
I choked out.

In reality, I’d taken
first prize that night, but now the words tormented me, the imaginary judges passing judgment on me in a bizarre contest I couldn’t win no matter what I did.

Hours later, after staring at the darkness, willing myself to block out the images floating around in my mind, of bodies and letters and stern, unsmiling faces, I finally fell asleep.

The next morning I woke up and looked around the room, feeling like I was going to be smothered by the big purple flowers on the walls. Memories from the previous night came flooding back, sweeping over me in one great, endless wave. I buried my face in my pillow, willing myself to smell nothing but the clean laundry scent of it.

Then the recollection was gone, and instead I was tracing the ceiling tile. But the memories became twisted and merged with my counting repetitions, and it happened again and again. Over and over. I tore myself away from the thoughts and closed my eyes in anguish.

I had given myself to a man whom I loved, but it had been wrong, because we weren’t married. I felt soiled, dirty and disgusting.

I wanted to take a hot shower to wash his touch away, to rid myself of his scent that still clung to me like a spider clings tenaciously to its web.