Henry's Sisters (17 page)

He turned and ran, blood pooling onto his shirt.

I slammed my door, locked it, and picked up the phone with a bloody hand. I told the operator exactly what the guy was wearing, down to the type of designer shoe I recognised and the blood congealing on his shirt.

She kept having to interrupt, ‘Ma’am, I’m sorry, I can’t understand you…’

I had to spit blood out of my mouth. I tried again and tried to speak clearly. For some reason my tongue wasn’t working. I could feel blood dripping down my back.

I limped over to my french doors, fumbled them open, and leant over the balcony. At eleven floors up, it’d take that psychopath a minute to get down. My balcony overlooked the entrance.

I saw him run out. For a second he turned and stared up at me as I stared down at him, feeling sick, half-dead, petrified. He waved cheerily, blew me a kiss.

I heard a siren in the distance, and he started running. I watched him as far as I could, then gave the operator exact directions, twice, because she couldn’t understand me through my mouthful of blood.

I stumbled back into my loft and laid down on the floor because my legs gave out. The police officers announced themselves by yelling, ‘Police! Open the door!’ I heard them but my own dizziness was swirling my brain around like a yo-yo. I tried to open my mouth to speak, but I couldn’t. It was like my jaw had been hammered shut with railroad spikes.

Because I couldn’t speak and, I was later told, the only thing the dispatcher heard was silence, those policemen smashed my door down, exactly like the afternoon Momma was bleeding to death. The parallel was not lost on me.

Two officers came right for me, my blood rushing out of my head and various other places like a faucet. Three more came after that, guns drawn, as they went through my loft, not trusting he wasn’t still there.

Their radios squawked and I heard one of them from a far-off, distant land order the dispatcher to send the medics up
right now!

A police officer with a crew-cut knelt by me. ‘Hello, ma’am, I’m Lieutenant Sherm Walsh.’

I couldn’t speak. I thought I was dying.

‘What hurts?’ I could only groan. He and the other police officers around me were spinning in and out of focus, like ghosts dressed as policemen.

His next question undid me. ‘Who did this to you?’

Who did this to you?
I didn’t know.
I didn’t know his name
. The tears filled like lakes in my eyes. I didn’t know any of their names. I had never, ever wanted to know. I couldn’t have cared less if their names were Tom or Chad or Robot Man or Scotty Beam Me Up.

The policeman took out a handkerchief and held it to my head while he eyed my injuries. The policewoman on the other side of me patted my hand. The third policeman, holding my head still, leant over and said, ‘You’re gonna be OK, honey. You’re gonna be OK.’

I was not OK.

I did not believe, at that moment, that being OK was part of my future.

I had a ‘heck of a concussion,’ according to my doctor. I had severe bruising on my neck, stomach, and back, and my oesophagus had taken a beating. The back of my head was so swollen I figured I was growing another head, and my nose was broken. I had two cracked ribs and a cracked bone in my chin, not to mention a bruise the size of Texas on my shin and a whip mark cutting through my shoulder.

Later the nurses told me that approximately ten minutes after the police arrived at my loft, my attacker had been caught hiding in a Dumpster. Based on a fingerprint test, I had barely escaped a man who was wanted in three states for multiple rapes and one state for a rape and murder.

‘They said you got him good,’ a policewoman told me triumphantly, helpfully holding an ice pack to my face. ‘You brought that son of a bitch dooown. His dick is bruised and off at some weird angle and his balls are swelled up like bowling balls, that’s what I hear. He’s gonna be squeakin’ for life. Plus, he’s got a bad injury to his eye and they can’t find an eye doctor. Too bad. Hopefully he’ll go blind. Then he’ll never be able to identify his boyfriends in jail.’

Another policeman said, ‘You can testify against him, ma’am, make sure he pays for what he did to you. He’s going to jail forever, though. That guy’s gonna die there if the chair doesn’t get him first.’

‘I’ll testify,’ I said through my squished, bruised lips. Sure as hell I’d be there.

No woman deserved what had happened to me. None.

Even slutty head case women who had one-night stands like myself.

I was repeatedly asked by the police and hospital staff which family members and friends should be contacted. I repeatedly told them not to contact anyone. I felt like dying when I thought of the pain I would cause my family, the tears dripping over my bruises and bumps and dried blood and puddling in that little hollow in my neck where the life had almost been strangled right out of me.

Two Portland police detectives knocked and came into my hospital room, smiling gently. I felt like a mummy. My head was wrapped, my ribs were wrapped. I had bandages all over my face.

There was also a doctor and a nurse and a rep from the rape crisis centre whom I’d met when I was still spitting up blood. She was African-American, about fifty, and wore a colourful turban on her head. I have never seen such compassionate, warm eyes in my entire life. I wanted to pull myself into a ball and climb into them.

The doctor stood next to me with a hand on my shoulder. She was from India and wore her black hair in a ponytail. Her gold bangles jingled when she moved.

The nurse stood next to her. She was Russian, weighed about 250 pounds, and had the face of a wrinkled man.

One of the police officers was Asian and seemed barely old enough to be out of high school. I was taller than him. Later, he would tell me that he was twenty-four and had a black belt. The night before he’d persuaded a meth addict out of committing suicide with a .45 on a boat in the Willamette River.

The police officer who questioned me was African-American, about six feet, six inches tall, with a military-type haircut.

We were a regular United Nations Group.

‘I’m Detective Walter Carrington. I’m from the Portland Police Department.’

I tried to nod. Tried to swallow, too. The nurses had been feeding me through a straw.

‘First, I would like to say that I’m sorry this happened to you, Ms Bommarito.’ He reached out and cradled my hand. I wanted this man to come home with me so I could feel safe forever.

The doctor patted my shoulder, and the rep for the rape group massaged my leg gently.

Oh no. Kindness. More tears were coming.

The tears came in earnest, the sobs followed, the moaning and hiccupping later. I was patted and hugged.

God, I was a mess.

We started again after forty-five minutes. No one seemed to be in a hurry here. The detective’s questions were direct but compassionate.

I felt like dying. I did.

‘Ms Bommarito, how do you know Russ Bington?’ Detective Carrington asked.

I didn’t even want to answer the question. I knew what they would think of me when I did.

He asked it again, patting my hand.

I couldn’t answer. I was decimated, humiliated.

‘Can you tell me where you met?’

I swallowed, but swallowing didn’t feel normal because part of my throat was zigzagging in the wrong direction. ‘We met at Hal’s. Downtown.’

He nodded. ‘Was that the first time you met?’

‘Yes.’ My voice was scratchy from my near-strangulation.

He paused. ‘Ms Bommarito, was it a one-night stand?’

I caught a sob.

The detective gave me a delicate way out. ‘Ms Bommarito, we’ve all made mistakes. Not a person in this room is free of them.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ashamed. So ashamed. ‘It was supposed to be a one-night stand.’

Should I also admit I had one-night stands to forget that I had one-night stands and to tease my depression, and I had had them since I was a teenager, after the incident with the rakes, because I felt like nothing, and had no dad, and each time I lost a little more of myself even though I always searched for something more but the ‘more’ was invisible and I never found it?

‘This is not your fault,’ the detective told me. ‘
Not
your fault, young lady.’

I let the tears flow.

I telephoned Janie on her cell to tell her I would not be back until Wednesday or Thursday. I figured I’d be able to hobble about by then, if my shin stopped splitting like a matchstick.

‘Thank God it’s you, Isabelle!’ Janie gushed. ‘Cecilia’s not here. Last night she woke up and her whole body was throbbing – especially her jaw and her shin – and she was having trouble breathing. Her nose bled! She called me, and I drove right over and told her we should go to the hospital, but she refused to go
because it was you causing it
.’ I heard her panting, her nerves jangled and jittering. ‘You! It’s the twin thing again!’

I put my hand to my bandaged head and the tears rolled out, blinding me.
Oh
,
Cecilia
,
I’m so sorry
. ‘How is she now? How is she?’
I made my own twin hurt. She couldn’t breathe
.

‘We dialled your cell phone a million times but you didn’t answer. She’s almost hysterical worried about you. At one point I thought she was dying. She kept holding her ribs and her head. You’re OK, right?’

I heard her burst into tears and I turned the phone so she wouldn’t hear my smothered sobs.

‘I had to embroider for hours with Vivaldi!’

‘How is Cecilia?’
I did that to her. I did that to my sister
.

‘She’s in bed and she’s in a panic about you and the back of her head is pounding and she can’t move her jaw right and her shoulder is burning. Her nose bled again. How are you?’

‘I’m fine.’
I felt so guilty I wanted to die
.

‘What’s wrong with your voice?’ she shrieked.

‘I’ll tell you later.’
Could guilt kill a person?

‘What’s wrong? I know something’s wrong!’

‘Nothing.’
Except I will never forgive myself for what I did to my family last night
.

‘You’re making me nervous, Isabelle,’ she squeaked.

‘Janie, I love you and I’ll tell you later.’
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
I choked on my grief.
Cecilia
,
I’m sorry.

‘No, tell me now. I don’t like when you say you’ll tell me something later. I know you’re alive, but are you hurt? You’re hurt, aren’t you? Cecilia’s right!’ She started a round of heavy breathing. ‘You’re hurt!’

My heart hurt the most.
How would sweet Henry react? Not well
,
I knew it.
‘I’m OK, Janie. I’ll see you soon.’

‘Are you bleeding? Was it a multi-car accident on a bridge? A freak explosion? A fire started by an iron? Did someone else hurt you? Oh nooooo.’

I collapsed into my guilt. She had it, I knew she did.

‘You had a one-night stand, didn’t you?’ Her voice pitched to a high operatic note. ‘I have told you not to do those things. How many times have I told you that, Isabelle? He hurt you, didn’t he? I’m coming to Portland. I’ll be at your loft in an hour.’

‘I’m not at my loft.’
I’m in hell
.

She screeched. ‘Whose house are you at? Where are you? Oh my God. You’re at the hospital, aren’t you?’

‘Oh, sheesh.’ You can’t hide anything from Janie.

‘Which hospital?’

‘Janie, stay in Trillium River—’
I can’t stand to see your pain when you see mine
.

‘Let’s see.’ She paused and I knew she was thinking. ‘You’re either at the University or Saint Eileen’s. I’ll bet it’s Saint Eileen’s. You have insurance. We’re coming right now, oh, Is, I love you. I love you so much. We’re coming!’ She hung up.

I turned off my cell phone.

I had hurt my sisters. I had hurt my family
.

I curled into a ball, curled into my misery.

Cecilia and Janie arrived shortly.

It wasn’t pretty. They took one horrified look at what had been my face and dissolved. Janie started keening and crying at the same time, hands waving periodically in the air.

Cecilia hit the wall, then decided it needed to be kicked. Janie moaned. Cecilia raged. Janie counted.

We’re a mess, all three of us. We have no idea how to rein in emotions and when something bad happens to one of us, we’re all the messier.

We hugged and our tears melded our hot faces together until we didn’t know whose tears were whose.

Several days later, as Cecilia drove me along the highway next to the Columbia River, the wind so strong our car swerved a couple of times and my whole body still aching as I dealt with a monstrous amount of lingering terror, I had a sweet blaze of clarity. I knew with every single swimming cell in my wracked body that that was the end of my one-night stands.

The sex had destroyed my soul and almost killed me.

Worse, I had hurt Cecilia and Janie. This would hurt Henry and Grandma and Momma. This would hurt the girls.

Forever and ever, I was done.

I had told Cecilia and Janie that I shouldn’t go back to Trillium River, that I should stay at a hotel in Portland so that my new face and mummy wrap would not upset Henry and Grandma, but they wouldn’t hear of it. They had all sorts of reasons: I needed medical attention, they wanted to care for me, what if this guy was let out of jail, and so on.

‘I’ve got two guns,’ Cecilia told me. ‘Momma has three. I’ll move one pistol to your top dresser drawer, Isabelle, and the other to the pink box in the hall closet on the top shelf.’

‘I brought my knives. Fourteen of them,’ Janie said. ‘We’ll hide them all over the house…’

Cecilia and I gaped at her.
Fourteen knives?

‘And my collection of brass knuckles and whips. I have my noose, too.’

We gaped again.

‘If you need a rope, let me know. I brought two.’

Whoa.

When we got home, Grandma’s and Henry’s unbridled anguish about brought me to my knees.

Grandma whipped off her goggles, grabbed my upper arms, and said, her voice wobbling, ‘You’ve had a crash landing! A crash landing!’ She hugged me for about five minutes, then zipped off and got a pink piece of paper and told me to go to the hospital right away. She had drawn a sad face on the paper. I thanked her and she hugged me again, then went behind the couch, crouched down, and sobbed.

Henry burst through the door after volunteering at the animal shelter, came to an abrupt halt, and started wailing, ‘What happen Is? What happen Is?’ He held his arms way out to hug me, his face flushed and scrunched in pain, but Cecilia and Janie had to hold him tight so he wouldn’t squeeze me in a vicelike hug, possibly undoing what little was holding my ribs together.

‘A bad guy get you? I get him!’ he yelled. ‘I get him!’ He tried to get away from Cecilia and Janie, but they held him tight, his inherited Bommarito rage growing rapidly.

‘Henry, calm down!’ Cecilia yelled, but it didn’t reach him, the tears dripping down his red face.

‘I get him, Is! I get him!’ He pretended he was punching someone.

Grandma popped up over the couch and started shouting, ‘SOS! SOS!’ through her tears.

Velvet ran into the room and, though momentarily startled by my face, instantly went to help Henry, who had started howling, the sobs coming from his scared, dear soul.

‘SOS! SOS!’ Grandma said, voice hoarse, before pulling into her tight ball again.

‘Oh, Is!’ Henry yelled, collapsing to the floor. ‘Oh, Is! My sister!’

I went to hug him.

‘Easy, Henry, be gentle,’ Cecilia said.

‘Soft hug, Henry,’ I said.

‘I know, I know. Soft Henry hug,’ he croaked out.

I got down on the floor and he reached for me, Cecilia and Janie and Velvet ready to jump in if he couldn’t resist a tight hug.

But Henry was gentle, so gentle, his sweet face next to mine as he melted down into his meltdown.

Janie ran to Grandma.

‘SOS! SOS!’ she yelled. ‘Help us, help us!’

Being naked after a beating is not a pretty sight. Janie and Cecilia both lost it when they saw me. For once there was no anger from Cecilia, no swearing, but I could feel her misery choking me. ‘Cecilia,’ I whispered.

‘Don’t…say…anything…’ Cecilia sobbed. ‘Nothing…I can’t handle…anymore…’

Janie’s hot tears fell on my shoulders, her fingers cool, as she helped me with my clothes. I could hear her chanting to herself as she lightly touched my wounds and cuts and bruises.

When I was in a pink flannel nightdress and lying in bed, my sisters crawled in with me and we emotionally unravelled together, holding hands.

I had done this.

I had brought this grief to my sisters.

I brought their hands up to my mouth and kissed them.

Under a moonbeam slanting through my window, my guilt converged from all corners of my body into my stomach and became a writhing, burning mass.

I had done this.

Oh, how I hated myself.

The next few days did not go well in the Bommarito house. Henry refused to leave for any of his volunteer responsibilities at the church, the animal shelter, Cecilia’s school, or the senior centre. He refused to go to the bakery. He would not let me out of his sight.

When I took a nap in my bedroom, he stayed with me and quietly played with his marbles or his stamp collection, or he read his comic books.

I would wake up with him anxiously examining my face for any signs of life from about five inches away.

‘You OK, Is?’ As soon as I said I was, he’d burst into tears and I’d have to hug him and pat his back until his tears stopped running down my neck. ‘Your face! Your face! That bad man! I get him!’ He pounded the air. ‘I get him!’

During the day when I rested on the porch, he sat next to me and we read his animal magazines together. When I limped around the property, he came with me. We talked about animals and our favourites: favourite colour (green), favourite state (Florida), favourite ice cream (chocolate mint).

At night I would pretend to go to sleep as he sang me songs. When he thought I was asleep, he would go to bed, but only after making sure that Cecilia or Janie was with me.

‘I love you, my sister, Is,’ he told me a thousand times, his chin quivering.

‘I love you, my brother, Henry.’

This was pure Henry: the man simply loved. He loved people wholly, innocently, sweetly. There were no strings, no manipulations, no qualifiers, no arguing, no games, no competitiveness. It was pure, it was everlasting.

He was complaining more about his stomach hurting and I knew it was because he was upset.

I had done that to him. I had done that to my brother.

Grandma’s natural courage and pluck and fury boiled over the third day. ‘I’m going to kill the motherfucker with my plane!’ she shouted at me on a regular basis. ‘Yes, I am!’

She handed me sheets of pink paper about five times a day. ‘This is the knife I’m going to use!’

There was an extremely unhappy face on it.

‘Thank you, Amelia.’

‘This is the gun!’

Another unhappy face.

‘He deserves to die!’ she yelled. ‘The motherfucker. He made you crash-land!’

For a millisecond, her expression sometimes changed, and her old self shone through. ‘I love you. I love you. I love you.’ She lightly cupped my pounded face with her hands. ‘I love you.’

I hugged her, her little body so tiny in my arms.

‘I must go now!’ she announced. ‘I’m taking off at first light to find the motherfucker!’ She ran up to the tower.

I drank a glass of Velvet’s lemonade, which she regularly brought me.

‘Remember, it’s my mother’s recipe, sugar peach. When she was poor they sometimes had to eat possum and they always had to have lemonade with it, family tradition. Strong stuff, but it’d hide the possum taste.’

Once again, Velvet’s lemonade had enough tart in it to blow the ears off a peacock.

The bone-chilling nightmares came at night and during my naps. I even had bone-chilling nightmares when I was awake. Russ Bington was chasing me, giggling, laughing. He put his belt around my neck and pulled. A bat flew out of my mouth and a snake slithered in.

He giggled.

In my dreams I couldn’t breathe. He grabbed the mermaid table that Cassandra gave me before she’d jumped off the building downtown and he smashed it on my head. The mermaids tried to protect me, but he still bit me on the neck.

When I felt myself dying, I would wake up, sweating, paralysed, yelling.

Janie slept with me at night, after she embroidered for about an hour. My yelling woke her up and she’d start yelling, which woke up Grandma, who would start to bellow, ‘My engine’s on fire! My engine’s on fire!’ and Henry, who would babble, ‘Momma, Momma, Momma,’ then hide in the closet.

Velvet would sprint into my bedroom, her flannel nightgown flying behind her. ‘Gracious me…gracious me…’

We’d stumble to Grandma’s and Henry’s room and comfort them. A few times one or both of them wet the bed in fear, so we’d have to change the sheets, clean them up, put new sheets down and, with Henry, start his goodnight routine again, which consisted of milk, a story, a back rub, a hug, and bed.

We were all exhausted.

One morning I found Henry tucked in bed beside me, an orange juice glass on the nightstand, his hand clutching mine. Henry never drank orange juice. That he would even touch a glass with orange juice in it was a first in twenty years.

Henry had good reason for never drinking orange juice. The last time he’d had orange juice he’d been drugged up to his eyeballs and had ended up hiding in a tree from two juvenile delinquents.

I stared at his sweet face, his brown lashes curling on his cheeks. I brushed my fingers through his brown curls.

He had survived many, many traumas. He had learnt to laugh again, to be joyful, to trust, to live with gusto and courage.

Would I?

I ran my hands through his curls again.

Would I?

She was dressed like a nun.

Kayla held her head high as she reverently touched the giant wooden cross laying flat on her chest. She had on a black, long-sleeved shirt and ankle-length black skirt and had somehow created a black veil with a white band across her forehead. When the bells on the bakery door jingled and she, Riley, and Cecilia noisily entered, I had to do a double take.