“I can’t give you your job back. I’ve tried everything I can think of, but the board isn’t willing to consider it.”
I had let myself imagine him saying this, but since I hadn’t believed he would, I guess I couldn’t really prepare myself for it. In spite of myself, I felt dirty, sickening. I couldn’t manage to form words and just sat there, staring at the man who had become like a father to me over the past several years, yet who now felt like a complete stranger.
“Brooke. I don’t want you to believe that we think you did anything. I know you didn’t. Sandra and Christina know you didn’t. None of us have any doubt. This was the board’s decision.”
I felt the tears start to fall.
“It’s just too public. It can’t be proven you did it. Which of course is because you didn’t.” He tried to smile at me, to show me he still believed in me. His smile only made his words worse. “Unfortunately, it also can’t be proven that you didn’t.”
I found my voice. “Lester! You know I would never do that. Not to my boys! Not to anyone!”
“I know. Brooke, really, I do.” His huge black hand reached out and covered mine.
My eyes drilled into his good eye, demanding the truth. “Do you really, Lester? Do you really believe me?”
He didn’t say anything. In response, he stood and pulled me into his arms. I always felt like Lester’s hugs were what being wrapped in God’s arms would feel like. He was so huge, dark, and warm. His left armenclosed my head between his bicep and his chest, and I wept. Sobs I hadn’t given in to for two weeks were now wracking my body. Lester pulled me tighter with every new convulsion.
I hadbeen on one of my overnight shifts two weeks previous. I had to do them one week a month. The boys would sleep, and every thirty minutes, I would do my rounds and check in each room to make sure everything was fine. During the overnight shift, there were usually less than ten other staff in the building. Typically, the most challenging aspect was simply trying to stay awake.
Around two in the morning, I was doing my normal bed checks. I had opened the door of Brandon and Jamal’s room. They were the only two who had shown enough safe behavior to have a roommate. Jamal wasn’t in bed. I turned on the light and found him in the corner of his room, slitting his forearms with a broken CD. I couldn’t tell how bad the cuts were, or how many there were, but his pajama sleeve was soaked with blood. Brandon was sitting beside him, watching.
I calmly tried to talk Jamal into giving me the CD pieces, but he didn’t acknowledge my presence. When I asked Brandon to go get someone to help, he only smiled at me and flipped me off. I had caught him in a lie earlier that week and taken away his TV time that weekend. I was willing to bet he had talked Jamal into cutting himself.
I should have gone and gotten help first, even if he was bleeding to death. Despite all my training and my years at the treatment center, I reacted without thinking—all thoughts consumed with keeping him safe, stopping the cutting. I went into one of the facility-approved restraints, wrapping Jamal’s arms tight around his chest and pinninghis legs with my own from behind. He thrashed around, his back arching and his head flying backward, trying to smash my face.
My right hand slipped on the slick blood on the boy’s skin, and he ripped his hand free and began slashing my right forearm with the serrated CD. In a bellow, I cursed and clawed at his hand again, squeezing it until he let out a whimper and dropped the CD shard onto the floor. He moaned something about me hurting him, and in response I tightened my grip and pulled his arms tighter around him, pushing my chest into his back, forcing his body forward, stealing some of his strength.
I yelled for help until Jessie, the boy in the adjoining room, woke up and ran to get the overnight supervisor.
Despite the amount of blood, the situation shouldn’t have been as bad as it was. Jamal wasn’t hurt that badly. He had a couple of shallow cuts on his wrist. The blood had been much worse than his wounds. While it was traumatic, it wasn’t unheard of. Things like that happened in residential. They just did. Everyone knew it was just part of the job. You did what you had to do.
Somehow, as much as I wanted to believe otherwise, I knew this time was not going to be typical.
The next day, Brandon talked to his parents on the phone. As horrible as it sounds, it was almost always worse when the birth parents were involved. The caliber of our clientele was some of the lowest of humanity. Brandon’s parents’ level of white trash made my mother look like Audrey Hepburn. To this day, I don’t know if it was Brandon who thought up the scheme or his parents. I also am not sure if they thought of it after the situation that night or if it had been the plan the entire time.
His parents called the media that evening. They told them I had come into their child and his roommate’s room and exposed myself to them, and demanded that Jamal perform oral sex. Their story went that Brandon had tried to defend Jamal by breaking a CD. He managed to cut me, but I got it away from him and ended up cutting Jamal, still trying to force myself on him, but then restrained him to make it look like I had legitimate reasons for being in their room.
While hearing the story made me angry, I tried to not give it much thought. Their story was ludicrous. It didn’t even make sense. How would anyone think they could get away with raping and cutting a kid?
Doing my best to ignore the fear gnawing at my guts, I didn’t let it affect me much when I was asked to leave without pay, at least at first. Accusations were typical, and I knew the protocol. I knew they would give me restitution when I returned to work.
What wasn’t protocol was the media coverage. Since most of the parents weren’t involved, nearly all of the accusations were handled in-house.
This was different. It was my word against two boys. It was my word against a family threatening to sue if I wasn’t fired. It was my word, a gay man’s word, against the voices of two “innocent” boys. It didn’t matter that I had worked there for so many years and had the highest recommendations from all my bosses. It didn’t matter that I had been married to the same man for years and that I had never cheated on him. It didn’t matter. In the eyes of the media and the public, I was just another sicko wanting toprey on their children. Blood sells, sex sells, child and sexual abuse sells. And here was a story with all three. Gold mine!
Brandon’s family, and ultimately Jamal’s, settled for several thousands of dollars, undoubtedly knowing they wouldn’t get anything if they had to go to court. I should have known what Lester was going to say before I went in. Jed had tried to prepare me for it, but I refused to consider that truth wouldn’t win. The media coverage, both on the news and in the paper, had been constant in the short time since the incident. There are no words to describe what it is like to see your face in the newspaper with the words “sexual perpetrator” underneath. My eyes skipped the preceding “alleged,” just like everyone else’s did. When they reached a settlement, it only proclaimed my guilt to all those keeping up with the story—which was everyone.
Only a few weeks had gone by since the last time I saw Lester, the scabs having just given way to shiny red scars on my right arm, when I received the call from Donnie saying my mom had had a stroke. I was only too ready to leave the town that had once been an emblem of freedom but had become darker and more oppressive than any tomb.
Thirty-Three
Aftera while, I slowed down. I hadn’t realized I was actually heading somewhere. I thought I was just getting away from the church. As soon as I stopped to catch my breath, I realized I was going to Mom’s house. Although across town from each other, it was less than two miles to get from the church to my mother’s. It seemed I had unintentionally been aware enough to use the side streets. If I had run down Main Street, Donnie would have seen me. I was sure he was out driving his truck around looking for me. I should probably feel bad for leaving both him and Tyler that way and making them worry, but I didn’t. Maybe my running away was a form of admittance of guilt to them. Maybe Donnie wasn’t looking for me. Maybe he was sitting in Tyler’s office, shocked at what his cousin had done.
I’m not sure what my intention was in going to see Rose. Possibly the realization I thought I had come to the night before hadn’t really cemented in my brain. If that were true, I wasn’t aware that I wanted to curl up in my mother’s lap and cry all my pain away. On the other hand, maybe I wanted to be somewhere where the outside world never crept in unannounced and attempted to once again ruin my life.
I was tempted to stop by the cemetery on my way. Winter was always my favorite time to be in the cemetery. The snow and leafless trees added to the deathly desolation in a peculiarly beautiful way. I resisted the urge and continued the last few yards to my mother’s house.
She raised her eyebrows when I walked through her door. I must have looked a sight. Red swollen eyes, wet and ruddy from both sweat and snow. “I didn’t hear the car.”
