“Mary? Girl, come on. It’s all right.” She reached for my hand. “Tell me.”
It was that contact—her hand gripping mine. I squeezed her hand back, hard. It gave me strength, helped me to speak the words aloud.
“I was raped, Loucilla.”
“Oh, Mary. No, no, no.”
Loucilla pulled me to her, hugged me tight, just like my mama had done, years back. Then I heard her growl. “Don’t tell me! Was it that goddamned sheriff? Owens?”
I pulled away, leaned back in my chair. “No, Loucilla, wasn’t him. Mick Owens was my boyfriend senior year. This was two years before.”
“Then who?”
My mind conjured the recollection, the image of his face. I wished I could block it out.
“A neighbor, a grown man. He was a tenant farmer living on the old Hood place. I can barely remember his name.”
Liar.
We were still grasping hands, hanging on with a death grip. Lou said, “You want to find him? I’ll help you.”
I shook my head. “That man’s long gone. Dead by now, maybe.” Privately, I’d wished him dead for decades. Sometimes I thought about forgiving him. Hadn’t gotten around to it yet. “I was cutting through his land on my way home from a friend’s house. He came out of his house and chased me down. Said he’d been watching me, that I looked all grown up. He acted like he was drunk, or high on something. Maybe he thought that was an excuse for it.”
“Did he go to prison for what he did to you?”
“No! No, nothing like that. He got off scot-free.”
My friend’s face was savage. “Your daddy should have killed him.”
“Loucilla, my daddy was already dead. Dropped of a heart attack in the pasture behind the barn, years before.”
We both fell silent for a minute. I needed something to dull the pain that flared from the recollection. I was thinking about a bottle of Tennessee whiskey I kept in one of my cabinets, behind the Heinz cider vinegar and a tub of Crisco. I wasn’t a regular drinker of hard liquor. It was there for emergencies. Like snakebite.
Loucilla had started wiping her eyes. Well. If Lou was crying, it qualified as an emergency. Lord help me, I needed a shot myself. I got up, reached behind the Crisco and grabbed the bottle. Set out a couple of juice glasses. The only barware I owned was a set of wineglasses. Didn’t seem right to drink whiskey from a wineglass.
I poured an inch of the whiskey into each glass. Carried them to the table, with the bottle. Loucilla knocked hers back in one swallow. Reached for the bottle and poured herself a refill.
Her eyes met mine. “I don’t get it. Why he wasn’t convicted.”
When I answered that, my voice cracked, like a kid who’s about to cry. “Problem was, I didn’t tell anybody. Not right away. I was so ashamed. It was my first time. A virgin.”
I shook my head as the rage rolled over me. I’d felt it before, many times.
And I recalled the other feelings from my youth. The helplessness, the shame, the fear of judgment. It’s no wonder that girls are afraid to talk about it. The world can be a hard, cold place.
“Did you get pregnant?” Loucilla was clutching the juice glass, blinking wet eyes at me.
“No. When my period started, I was so thankful, I took it as a sign. That I could just move on, not tell anybody. But Mama couldsense something was wrong. She kept after me. I finally broke down, told her what happened.”
“And then? Was he prosecuted?”
I sipped my whiskey before I answered. Grimaced when I felt the fire burn its way down to my belly. It made my shoulders twitch with an involuntary shiver. “There wasn’t any physical evidence. Too much time had passed—you know how it works. They didn’t do a rape kit. What could they find on a victim who was raped five weeks prior?”
“But your testimony—”
“Would have been all they had as evidence. The sheriff went out and talked to him. He denied it. Sheriff told my mama, it would have been a swearing match. My word against his.”
“You would have convinced a jury. Even at fifteen.”
