Asking for It (17 page)

‘But it just upsets you, Emma, and—’

‘I want my phone today.’

‘Fine,’ my mother says. ‘I’ll give it you after breakfast.’ She fills another glass with tap water and brings it to the table, placing it in front of me. She holds her cupped palm out, a green-and-cream striped pill and a small round white one in it. They are like pearls in a seashell, tiny, precious. Valuable. I put them in my mouth, washing them down with the water.

‘Still?’ she asks as the glass almost falls out of my trembling hand. ‘Maybe we should go back to Jimmy and ask him to adjust the dosage.’

‘Dr Manning.’

‘What?’

‘It’s Dr Manning now. You said Jimmy.’

‘Did I?’

She squeezes my right shoulder, a little too tight for comfort.

‘Tongue?’

I stick out my tongue. I have to show her my intent to get better, my promise not to be foolish again.

‘Good girl.’

The room is so silent, the noises from outside quietening when all the neighbours have gone to work and to school. Their lives continue as normal. Maybe I should tell her to turn the radio back on. We could sit here, listen to those strangers tell us where it is we went wrong.

– She should have known better.

– She was asking for it.

– What was she expecting?

– Not to get . . .

Not to get. Not to get
that word.

I listen to the rhythms that make up the morning, the tiny slurp as my mother drinks her coffee, the ping of the spoon hitting the china bowl, the patter of rain against the glass pane.

‘This weather,’ my mother says, staring out the window. ‘Goodness, do you remember . . .?’

She stops herself. Do you remember this time last year? is what she was about to say.

This time last year, it was sunny. This time last year we were in the middle of a heatwave, waiting for it to break.

‘What the . . .?’ She sniffs the air, her forehead creasing into a frown. She pushes her chair back and runs over to the oven, opening the door and waving at the black clouds of smoke that are wisping out of it.

‘My muffins,’ she wails as she rescues the tray, slamming it down on the hob.

I follow her into the kitchen area and we stand side by side, staring at the baking tray.

‘They’re not so bad,’ I say. ‘Just burned around the edges. It’s nothing.’

And it doesn’t matter anyway, I want to tell her.

‘Are you still going to the farmer’s market?’ I say. ‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘But—’

‘Are you going to come with me?’ she asks as she trims the blackened pieces off.

‘No.’

The word comes automatically.
No. No. No.
It’s all I say these days. It is as if I am making up for the time when I couldn’t say it. When I wasn’t given the chance to say it.

No.

My mother faces me, her hands in fists at her hips. ‘You haven’t gone outside in two weeks, Emma.’

‘I’ve gone to therapy.’

‘But besides that.’

It’s been a year, Emma. It’s time to get over it, Emma. Don’t you think it’d be best to just put it all behind you, Emma?

‘It will do you good to get outside, pet.’

I left this house by myself seven weeks ago. My mother lent me her car, asked me to get some messages for her in town. There was an awkward exchange with the girl on the till in Londis, neither of us knowing how to act. I felt as if I was playing a part, like I should burst into tears at any moment, as if a smile or a laugh might be used against me. When the boys had first been brought in for questioning, I tweeted about watching reruns of SpongeBob with Bryan.
Wait
, Sarah Swallows had replied.
You say you were ‘raped’ and then you tweet happy shit? #IDontGetIt #DumbBitch.
(It was retweeted fourteen times. Paul O’Brien retweeted it. So did Dylan Walsh.)

I thanked her as she gave me my change. Then, as I was leaving Londis, I saw Paul and two of his friends coming out of the bookies’ office, shoving betting slips into their pockets. I went to dart back into the shop, but he saw me and he knew I had seen him. He nudged one of his friends, whose face darkened when he caught sight of me. I could read his lips mouthing a word.
Slut.

There are certain words I can lip-read now. I know them so well.

Paul stayed where he was, calling out his food order as his friends crossed the road. He is supposed to stay away from me.
If any of them tries to harass you, intimidate you or assault you,
Sergeant Sutton told me in a bored tone,
contact the Garda station immediately
. A voice was screaming in my head to start walking, to get away from there as fast as I could, but I couldn’t move. (My body doesn’t belong to me any more.) ‘Whoops,’ one of his friends had said as he banged into me hard. My fingers released involuntarily and the plastic bag fell to the ground, a smash as a bottle hit the concrete. ‘Careful, Timmy, she’ll probably say you raped her too,’ the other guy said, and I could feel my breath warp into a desperate wheezing.

You’re not dying
, the therapist told me,
or having a heart attack. They’re just panic attacks. They’re very common. You need to learn to manage them, to calm your breathing enough to withstand the attack.

It feels as if I might die. (I wish, I wish, I wish.)

The two of them walked past me into the shop, ordering chicken-fillet rolls and spicy wedges, flirting with the girl on the till as they paid. Paul rested against the window of Molly’s Bar, sucking on a cigarette, blowing smoke rings out of his mouth, his eyes never leaving me for a second. He had gained weight, but that was the only difference I could see. He stood and watched me, the girl who ruined his life, and he waited for his friends to come back. The three of them started walking up Main Street, and he turned around, walking backwards, and smiled at me. It was as if he had won already, and we both knew it.

‘Where’s the wine?’ my mother had asked when I got home. ‘I told you to get a bottle of that Shiraz that was on special offer.’

I wanted to tell her. But I couldn’t.
What happened?
she would demand.
What did you say? I hope you didn’t react, I hope you remained dignified, I hope you didn’t show him you were upset. I hope you didn’t give him the soot of it.
Then she would remember herself, what a mother was supposed to do, how the therapist had told her she needed to behave. She would wrap an arm around me, cover my head with soft, meaningless words that were supposed to comfort me, and I would want to ask her,
Do you believe I didn’t want this, do you believe it wasn’t my fault?
But I couldn’t ask her that. I was afraid of what the answer might be. So I lied. ‘I forgot,’ I told her. ‘I’m sorry. I just forgot the wine.’

‘No,’ I say again, more firmly. ‘I’m not going out.’

My world has become smaller and smaller in the past year, shrinking to fit the parameters of this house.

My mother’s mouth tightens. ‘Well, it’s either the market with me, or school. Which would you prefer?’

*

‘Can’t we get any closer than this?’ I say as my mother indicates into the cathedral car park, waiting for an old lady in a tweed skirt to hobble past us on the zebra crossing.

‘It’s market day,’ my mother replies. She reverses into a space and switches the ignition off. ‘We won’t get parking anywhere else. It’s always chock-a-block in town.’

The journey had been quiet, my mother clearly not daring to turn on the radio. ‘Allegedly . . . she claims . . . the Ballinatoom Girl has been making headlines all over the world . . . trending on Twitter . . .’
I don’t understand why there’s so much fuss about this particular case
, I overheard her saying to my father a few weeks ago, the hiss of the iron as it released steam. I muted the TV so I could eavesdrop.
People get . . . These things happen all the time.
My father didn’t reply. I went upstairs, opened the diary that my therapist, a woman Hannah had recommended because she had
experience with this type of thing
, insisted I buy, and I made a list.

Reasons why people are interested in the Ballinatoom Case:

1. Four boys, one girl.

2. The effect of social media on young people today.

3. When will young people learn the value of privacy?

4. Should the photos of the Ballinatoom Case be admitted as evidence?

5. The Americanization of Irish culture.

6. Does ‘jock culture’ support rape culture?

7. Does ‘rape culture’ even exist?

8. One in three reported rapes happens when the victim has been drinking.

9. We need to talk about consent.

These are just titles of editorials in newspapers. There have been so many. I have them bookmarked on my laptop so that I can find them easily whenever I want to read them again. My therapist thinks this is a bad idea.

‘I want you to draw me a picture,’ she said in our last session, the two of us holed up in a box-like room above a supermarket in Kilgavan, a town about fifteen miles from Ballinatoom. The walls are painted a cheerful yellow, two blue armchairs too close together, a box of tissues placed at the foot of my chair. There are framed posters on the wall, pictures of snow-capped mountains and horses galloping on beaches, inspirational quotes like ‘Never give up!’ and ‘Don’t let your wounds transform you into something you’re not’ typed in block letters across them. There are a couple of certificates as well, which my father had demanded to look at during our first, and only, family session. Once he had seen them he was satisfied. This woman was qualified. She would fix me. He could leave us to it. ‘Draw me a picture of where you are in relation to your body,’ she said, and she handed me a blank piece of paper and some crayons. ‘Why do you have these anyway?’ I asked her. ‘For my younger clients.’ She pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘I have a degree in play therapy as well.’ I wondered what these younger clients came there for. Were they being bullied? Had a parent died? Were they being sexually abused? Did they find the therapy useful? Did it cure any of them? The therapist pointed at the paper and cleared her throat so I began to draw. I drew the body that was to blame for all this. (I want to erase it. I want to make it disappear.) ‘And where are you?’ the therapist asked. ‘Where are you, Emma?’ I drew a tiny dot at the other end of the page, as far away as I could possibly make it, and the therapist shook her head. She spoke of the importance of getting back in touch with my body, of being present, of feeling connected. She recommended yoga and acupuncture and massage. I said I would think about it.

That was another lie. I tell her so many. (
This will only work if we’re completely honest with one another, Emma
.)

I don’t want to be ‘in my body’. I am like a shadow, still attached to the thing that people called Emma, following it around wherever it wants to go, but I am lighter now without all the
stuff
that body had, the memories, the attention it attracted. I feel less substantial.

‘Oh, Father Michael, how are you?’ My mother uses her best phone voice as we take two large Tupperware containers full of cakes and scones and muffins and bread from the boot of the car. ‘Miserable day, isn’t it?’

The priest closes the side door into the vestry behind him. He’s a small, neat man, three thin strands of oily hair combed over his bald head, flaking age spots on his cheeks and forehead. He looks at the sky. ‘Only a bit of soft rain, Nora. Thank God.’

‘Yes, that’s true,’ my mother agrees, resting the heavy Tupperware container back into the boot. ‘Will you have a muffin? They’re fresh out of the oven.’

‘I won’t, Nora.’ He looks at me, and I know what he’s thinking, he has seen the photos. Pink flesh. Legs spread apart. (I thought you were a good girl, Emma.)

I cannot remember, so those photos and those comments have become my memories.

The priest rests a hand on his concave stomach. ‘Gluttony is a deadly sin, and all that. God bless now,’ he says, walking away.

Father Michael used to say that my mother’s baking was so good she should open up her own cafe, that she’d put the Cake Shack out of business in no time. We watch him scurry away, stopping to talk to an elderly couple by the cathedral gates.

‘Come on,’ my mother snaps. ‘Will you hurry up for pity’s sake? Why do you always have to be so bloody slow?’ She pauses, takes a deep breath and tries again. ‘Sorry, Emma. I didn’t mean to snap, I . . .’

We carry the boxes through the small wrought-iron gate in the cathedral wall. My mother walks ahead of me by a few paces. I follow her up Main Street, tucking my head into my chin to shield my face.

There she is
(whispers, an elbow to the ribs),
there’s that girl who says she was
. . .
you know.

I’ll always be ‘That Girl’ now.

‘Hey. Hey, you!’

A red Toyota, shiny with rain and newness, slows down beside me, a male voice calling out. I tense, my breath catching in my throat, and hurry to catch up to my mother.

‘You. The girl in the navy sweater. Hello? Can you hear me?’

It’s going to be a group of boys leering at me. They will be holding their fingers up in a V around their lips and sticking their tongue out, asking how much I charge, telling me that they’d heard I was good for it, that I liked it rough, that I liked it hard. They will be laughing at me. But it’s not, it’s only a young couple, one of them holding a map out. I forget myself for a minute and smile. Who uses maps any more?

‘Hello, we are looking for the Sheep’s Head,’ the man says, his girlfriend or wife bringing the car to a standstill. They sound German, fair and tanned in matching navy anoraks.

‘I don’t know.’ My voice is barely a whisper, and the man frowns at me and asks me to speak up, but I can’t. I leave them there, calling after me.

‘What was that about?’ my mother asks when I catch up to her.

‘Just a German couple looking for directions to the Sheep’s Head.’

‘Well, I hope you helped them. It’s very important to be friendly to the foreigners. We don’t want them going home to their countries and saying that the Irish weren’t nice to them. We could do with all the tourism we can get.’