Rape (6 page)

Outside your mother's room you overhear one nurse asking another
That poor girl, the daughter. They didn't rape her, too, did they?

“Bethie? Something happened to us, I guess? But you're all right, honey? Are you?”

Momma is so anxious, you tell her
yesyes!

She sleeps so much. In the midst of watching TV her head droops, she's asleep. You want to snuggle beside her. You want the vigil never to end.

One day in reproach pinching your arm as if she's only just thought of this: “Bethie, you didn't fall off that porch, did you? Is that what this is all about? Some fireworks went off, you lost your balance and fell off that damn old porch?”

*   *   *

Momma is out of the room wheeled away and taken downstairs to another floor for a CAT scan. You'd had a CAT scan, too, but don't remember what it means: something to do with the skull, the brain.

Maybe the hemorrhages have ceased. Maybe the leaky blood has been reabsorbed by the brain. Maybe Momma will soon be well. You don't want to think beyond this, for now.

Another flower delivery is made for Teena Maguire. You will have it perched on her bedside tray when the nurses bring her back. Not a very big bouquet, one of the smaller, cheaper ones. But it's pretty: pink, red, white carnations and spiky green leaves. When Momma returns you show her the card, excited.

But Momma is squinting, can't see to read. And she's confused, suspicious. When you tell her the name is “Dromoor” she says she has no friend by that name. She says, her voice rising, “I don't want anybody's damn pity, Bethie.
Tell them that
.”

Two NFPD detectives come to the room. Promise not to stay long. Not to tire or upset the patient. Just a few questions to ask. A few pictures of “suspects” for her to look at.

By this time, arrests have been made. Charges filed. Bail has been set at $75,000 for each of eight young men in custody.

*   *   *

By her twelfth day in St. Mary's, Teena Maguire is beginning to remember something of what happened to her. You see the stricken look in her face sometimes, her mouth opening in a silent cry. She knows now that it wasn't a car crash. It wasn't an accident. She knows that you were involved but that you weren't hurt as badly as she was. She knows that it happened on the Fourth of July, in the park. She has heard the word
assault
. It's possible that, given the nature of her injuries, she is thinking
rape
. Yet her knowledge is vague. She is so hopeful, trusting. The detectives speak patiently with her as you might speak with a frightened child. “I don't knknow,” she murmurs, beginning to tremble. “I'm afraid
I just don't know
.” They have no luck showing her photographs of the suspects, for her bloodshot eyes fill so rapidly with tears, Teena is virtually blinded.

And so tired! In the midst of the interview with these awkward strangers, Teena Maguire falls asleep.

In the corridor your grandmother demands to know when
those animals
will be sent to prison.

The vigil at St. Mary's. The end of your childhood.

Naps. Meals on trays. Afternoon TV. Now that your mother can manage soft-solid foods, her appetite is returning. The gauze has been removed from her head, her scalp is tender, pinkish-pale, near-bald, but covered in soft,
fair down like the down of a fledgling bird. At last Momma is free of the damn bedpan she'd hated, makes her slow shaky determined way to the lavatory leaning heavily on you and pulling the IV gurney. She jokes about slipping out of the hospital like this, running away home.

Home!
What was Momma thinking?

Long days ebbing into dusk, and into night. The routines of a hospital. Routines of convalescence. Each night at 11:00
P.M
., you and your grandmother leave your mother's room, Momma is already asleep. Wave good night to the nurses on the floor who smile at you, think you are a brave girl as your mother is a brave woman, fighting for her life and fighting now to recover. You would not wish to think for a fraction of a second that anyone at St. Mary's—nursing staff, aides and attendants and custodians, gift shop salesclerks, cafeteria workers, the heavily made-up receptionist at the information desk—would not like you, would wish you harm.

Relatives of the suspects. Friends, neighbors.

Girlfriends.

That woman. What did she expect? Asking for it, the bitch
.

Dressed like a hooker. Her word against theirs
.

Who knows what was going on in that park in the middle of the night?!

You've seen the eyes. Drifting onto you and your grandmother Agnes Kevecki. You've seen, and looked quickly away.

Grandma doesn't seem to notice. Not Grandma! She's convinced that all of Niagara Falls is on her side, wanting
those animals
to be put away for a long time.

In the elevator the panic hits you, each night. Leaving your mother's room. The safety of that room. The vigil. Staring at the lighted numerals above the door moving swiftly from right to left flashing the floors as you descend to the ground floor. That sick-collapsing sensation in your stomach as the elevator door glides soundlessly open.

“Grandma. I'm so scared.”

Grandma doesn't hear you. Lost in her own thoughts.

The enemy. Waiting for you. When you leave the hospital, when you return to the house on Baltic Avenue. For of course they know where you live. They know where your mother Teena Maguire lives: the rented duplex on Ninth.

They know all about Teena Maguire. The Picks, the Haabers, the DeLuccas, the Rickerts. These are East Side families, with numerous relatives. There are more of them than there are Keveckis and Maguires. Many more.

The Family Services woman says please don't worry.

The detectives say trust us. Don't worry.

There is a hearing scheduled for next month. (Though it will be postponed. You will come to learn that anything connected with the court, the law, legal issues, lawyers will be postponed. And postponed.) A hearing is not a trial but the preparation for a trial. You will be required to answer questions in court though you have already answered these questions
many times. You have told, retold, and retold all that you can remember until you are sick with the telling as you are sick with the memory of what you must tell and retell to strangers who seem always to be doubting you, frowning and staring at you, assessing the validity of Bethel Maguire's testimony.

If Teena Maguire is well enough, she will be required to answer questions at the hearing. Your mother's testimony is more crucial than yours, the detectives have told you. Without her testimony, the case against the suspects will be circumstantial, weak.

You don't know why. You don't understand why this is so. They hurt your mother so badly, beat her and tore her insides and left her to bleed to death on the boathouse floor.

Yes but this has to be proven. In a court of law.

Not enough that it happened. That Teena Maguire almost died. It has to be proven, too.

“Grandma, I'm scared. . . .”

“Of what, honey? The parking garage? My car is parked right where we can see it. We got here so early.”

Grandma loves you, but Grandma can't protect you. For how can Grandma protect you? She lives alone, an aging woman not in the very best of health herself, in her red-brick house on Baltic Avenue, a five-minute drive from the Twelfth Street/Huron Avenue neighborhood where the suspects and their families live. The “suspects”—as they are called—have been warned by police not to approach either your grandmother's house or your mother's house and not to approach anyone in your family at any time nor to attempt to contact anyone in your family and yet: they are the
enemy, they are free on bail, they would wish to silence you. You know what they are. You remember them from the attack. Rushing at you, jeering and laughing. A wild-dog pack. Glistening eyes, teeth.
Fuck we should've killed them both, those cunts. When we had the fucking chance
.

The plan is that, when your mother is discharged from St. Mary's, she will come to live with Grandma, where you are living now. She will hire a nurse's aide to help with Momma for as long as necessary. And a physical therapist will come to the house several times a week, to help Momma walk again. Grandma has been a widow for twelve years and she has learned to cope with what she calls the inescapable facts of life and so she does not foresee trouble:
those animals
are guilty,
justice will be done
, they will tried, convicted, sentenced to prison
for a long time
. Grandma has uttered these words so frequently and so vehemently, to so many people, for her they have the ring of prophecy.

When you're with Grandma, you try to believe.

Insult

R
AY CASEY WAS DRINKING
. Dropping by taverns on Huron Avenue. It would be said the poor bastard had gone looking for a fight.

Since
what-happened-to-Teena
, Casey had been having a hard time. Hard to tell Teena he loved her, hard to be in the same room with Teena. If he touched her he'd hurt her. He knew she wanted to be comforted, and he wanted to comfort her. But it scared him to touch her, not knowing if she'd wince, or try not to wince, smile at him this forced stiff smile so he knew he was hurting her, so clumsy. He'd bought her bright pretty silk scarfs for her poor baldy head Teena called it she didn't want to show, till her hair grew out better. Bought her a fruit basket, flowers. But Casey had his own family down in Corning. Telephone calls! Had to deal with his kids' crazy mother. Had to deal with three kids going through teenage crises of their own. His sixteen-year-old daughter cutting herself, threatening to kill herself. Had to pay fucking bills. Had to deal with his fucking boss. Had to deal with people in the neighborhood looking at him. At Ray Casey whose woman friend Teena Maguire had been gang-raped in Rocky Point Park.

Hard to know what to do. Every fucking waking moment of Ray Casey's life trying to know what to do.

So he went drinking on Huron Avenue. By himself. Mack's Tavern, where the Picks and their friends hung out. Got into a fight one Friday day night not with either of the Picks, not with any of the suspects but with a guy named Thurles, cousin of the Picks, Casey swung at him first and broke his nose and there was a fistfight raw and clumsy and both men were bleeding within seconds and somebody calls the cops, and these two uniforms break it up and everybody at the bar reports it was Casey who started the fight, came into Mack's already drunk and looking for trouble. In the patrol car, the younger cop asks Casey is this about Teena Maguire and Casey can't answer at first. Casey is wiping his bloodied mouth on some wadded tissue the cops have given him. The younger cop asks again very carefully enunciating
Teen-a Ma-guire
and Casey says yeah maybe. Maybe it is about her. And the younger cop says, “You don't want to do this. This is a mistaken thing you are doing. Where there's witnesses.” The older cop is sympathetic with Casey, too, but says they have to bring him in anyway. The younger cop says, “Why?”

“Why”

O
NE DAY SHE KNEW
. One hour.

Must've been a window open. And something flew in, frenzied wings beating at her face.

She remembered then. Not all of it, but enough.

Through the walls of several rooms in Grandma's house you heard her cry out as if she'd been hit another time.

The week following the discharge from the hospital. A few days after Casey showed up, face swollen like raw meat and trying to make a joke of it, he'd walked into a fucking door. And the fat-girl therapist acting weird with Teena, not friendly like you would expect, not like the nurses at St. Mary's but strangely sullen, and hurting Teena massaging her atrophied muscles as if Teena deserved to be punished, letting herself go.

You ran into the room. There was Momma who'd been walking with her cane, now sitting on the edge of a chair rocking slowly back and forth pressing her fists into her eyes. You saw now clearly that Teena Maguire was no longer a woman whom other women envied, or glanced at in interest and admiration out on the street. You saw that she did not want you to come near her, to touch her.

“Why? Why would they want to hurt
me?
”

“Bitch You Better”

BITCH YOU BETTER BE SAYING YOUR PRAYS WHOR BETTER BE ON YOUR KNEES NOT SUCKING COCKS

This scrawled message in tarry black letters on a piece of dirty cardboard Teena Maguire found propped against the side door of her mother's house on Baltic Avenue, three days before the hearing.

Since the rape, Teena's vision wasn't always reliable. In good light she could see about as well as before but if the light was hazy or occluded or if, as in this instance, she was taken by surprise, her eyes swam with tears. She stared at the message, read and reread it and tried to comprehend it. The hatred emanating from it.