A Constant Reminder (3 page)

“Roxanne.” Erika called out in a whisper.

Erika ducked into the backseat. Roxanne was balled up in the fetal position on the floor behind the passenger seat. Roxanne whimpered and didn’t respond to her name being called.

“Roxanne! Roxanne, look at me!” There was fear in the contours of Erika’s face. There was horror in the vibration of her tone. Roxanne held herself tighter.

“Roxanne, what happened? Can you hear me? What happened?” Erika called to her.

Erika reached over and touched Roxanne’s shoulder. Roxanne’s fear pushed her further into the back passenger door. Erika gently pulled away.

“No, no, no, no, no.” Roxanne muttered through her tears. She was unable to say NO when the monster was covering her mouth. But now it flowed repeatedly. She was unable to say STOP when the monster was covering her mouth.

“Oh God Roxanne. It’s me. It’s Erika. Look at me, Roxanne. Please look at me.”

Erika moved as close as possible without touching. Roxanne slowly looked up at Erika. There were mountains of tears running down Roxanne’s face. Her hair was a mess and her clothes looked extremely disheveled. Erika noticed Roxanne’s shirt had been ripped and that it was hanging on by a few small threads.

“Er-i-ka.” Roxanne choked out the name of her best friend.

“I’m here.” Erika reached down and pulled her friend off the car’s floor. They both took a seat in the backseat. Erika pulled Roxanne into an embrace. They held each other tight. Erika rubbed Roxanne’s hair from her face. Erika started crying. She had put the pieces together and she cursed herself for letting Roxanne go out at night alone.

“Erika I was--” Roxanne didn’t have the strength to say the words.

“What happened?” Erika asked although she knew exactly the trauma that Roxanne had suffered.

***

Tony Demarco’s minivan was cruising down the street. He was driving and Adam was sitting in the passenger seat. Adam was digging his hand into a woman’s purse. It was Roxanne’s brown and beige purse.

“Please tell me there’s some cash in the stupid bag.” Tony questioned as he gripped the steering wheel.

“Makeup, twenty-five dollars, a debit card that we don’t know the password too, a campus I.D., a driver’s license and a lot of junk.”

“Let me see.” Tony asked. Adam tossed the purse into Tony’s lap. Tony dug into the bag and removed a plastic card. “She is one fine piece.” Tony took his eyes off the road to stare down at Roxanne’s campus I.D. he had fished out of the purse. He smiled at the picture identification card and then at Adam. He eventually put his eyes back on the road.

“So what’s the plan?” Adam asked. He knew twenty-five dollars was a joke. They needed more cash to buy the premium rush they were looking for.

“I’m going to go inside that 7 Eleven on the corner and get us some cash.” Tony pulled into the parking space at the small strip mall. The mall housed the convenience store. “I need you to get in the driver’s seat.”

Tony reached under the seat and retrieved a plastic bag. He removed a black semiautomatic handgun for the plastic shopping bag.

“I will be back in a flash. Be ready to haul ass out of here.” He told Adam.

“I’ll be ready just get out and get us some cash.” Adam ordered.

Tony hopped out of the driver’s seat. He left the driver’s door open. Adam quickly got out of the passenger seat and jogged around to get into the driver’s seat.

Tony had already made his way up the sidewalk. He was at the 7 Eleven’s door in no time.

Adam knew his life was at rock bottom. The problem was he really didn’t care. He just wanted to get high. He wanted to forget the problems of the past and heroin was the best way to achieve that goal, the only way to achieve that goal.

This would be an easy little heist. Adam thought, a small little caper to make the local paper. There wasn’t anyone inside the store from what he could see. No big deal.

It only took a few minutes before Tony was running to the van with money stuffed in a plastic bag. He almost tripped over the cuff on his baggy jeans.

“Hurry, hurry.” Adam mumbled to himself as Tony came running from the store and to the minivan. Tony opened the passenger door and hopped in. Adam quickly put the van in reverse and hauled ass out of the space and out of the parking lot.

“Bro, the cashier was scared shitless. That shit was fucking hilarious. I think he peed his pants when I pointed my gun at him.” Tony bragged. “I said bang bang and I swear he almost fainted.

They both laughed because things like this were funny to them. This life was a joke. Drugs altered their sense of reality. Their everyday actions were fueled with drugs and the means to get them. They lived where the lines were blurred.

***

Erika stared at Roxanne as she emerged from the bathroom of their dorm room wearing a bathrobe.

“Why did you take a shower?” You’re not supposed to do that? I thought you were just going to pee.”

Roxanne cut her eyes at Erika. “I don’t even want to talk about it.”

“You have to call the police and report what happened to you.”

“No.”

“Do you want me to call them?”

“No.” Roxanne snapped.

“Roxanne you have to call the police.”

“No, I don’t have to do anything.”

“You were raped.”

“Shut up! Don’t say that!” Roxanne’s fear had turned to anger.

“Roxanne please don’t yell at me. I’m only trying to help you.”

“I know. No. No one can know.”

“I’m your friend, your best friend.”

“Erika I don’t want to call the police and I’m not going to say it again.”

“Why not?”

“They can’t do anything. They will only ask me a lot of questions. Questions I can’t answer. The whole ordeal was sick and horrible. I don’t want to talk about it and I surely don’t want to relive it. It’s over. Thank God, I’m alive.”

“So how are they going to catch this guy?”

“I didn’t even see him. I can’t give a description. He attacked me from behind. I don’t even know anything.”

“Still if there is some guy lose on campus, people have to know.”

“I was drinking at that party and--”

Erika knew where Roxanne was headed with this. “It’s not your fault.”

“I know that but an interrogation would make me feel like it was my fault. I cannot go through that right now.” Roxanne walked over to her bed. She crawled up to the bed’s headboard. She pulled back the single blanket that covered the bed and climbed underneath pulling the blanket up to her shoulders.

Roxanne looked over at the door. “Lock the door.” She muttered. Erika quickly rose to do as her friend instructed, anything to make her friend feel better. “Put the chair under the doorknob.”

Erika rolled the chair from the desk over and wedged it underneath the doorknob. She turned to gage Roxanne’s mood but Roxanne had turned her body away from Erika. Maybe she would just let her rest. They could talk in the morning.

CHAPTER 3

Sunday morning Roxanne was still in bed when the sun rose over her dormitory building at Northern University. Erika had long been awake and she wondered if Roxanne had gotten any sleep. Roxanne had tossed and turned all night. She even screamed out a few times.

Erika knew Roxanne’s eyes were closed but she didn’t believe for one minute Roxanne had even got an entire hour of rest.

Erika had started her day early. She already washed two loads of clothes. She was sitting on the edge of Roxanne’s bed folding clean clothes from her laundry basket.

There was a sudden unexpected knock on the door. Erika bounced off the bed and headed straight to the door.

Roxanne jumped out of the bed and scurried into the little bathroom connected to their dorm room. She moved like a scared mouse. Erika’s heart sank.

Erika knew Roxanne probably didn’t want anyone to see her and she didn’t want to be seen. She had been right all along. Roxanne was pretending to be asleep. She looked through the peephole while the second series of knocks rang loud and clear. Erika unlocked and opened the door to Margaret Potts, Roxanne’s mother.

Margaret was an attractive older black woman. Erika wasn’t sure of her exact age but she put her somewhere around her middle forties. Erika wondered if Roxanne called her this morning while she was downstairs in the dormitory laundry room.

Margaret entered the dorm room with a smile and Erika’s question had been answered. There was no way Roxanne had told her. Erika closed the door behind Roxanne’s mother.

“Hi, Ms. Potts.” Erika tried to sound level even though the issue they faced last night was beyond anything she had ever dealt with.

“Hello Erika. You looked surprised to see me.”

“Yeah, no, yeah.” Erika stuttered.

“I just stopped by to see if I could take you girls out to a late breakfast.” Margaret glanced over at her daughter’s unmade bed. There was only one blanket but the sheet was missing. Did she sleep over at some young man’s place? As a mother she didn’t even want to think about that. “Where’s my Roxy?”

“She’s here but I don’t think she feels well.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“I think she needs to go to a doctor.” Erika pointed to the closed bathroom door. “She’s in there.”

Margaret breathed a sigh of relief. Roxanne wasn’t laid up with some guy. Margaret noticed the laundry basket on the bed. “Well if she is doing her laundry here, instead of at home she must be sick.”

Roxanne washed her face while in the bathroom. She heard her mother’s loud voice coming from the other room. Margaret always talked loud to Erika. Roxanne’s mother never trusted or particularly liked Erika. She thought Erika was sneaky. She always told Roxanne to watch that light skinned chick, which was odd because her mother was also a light skinned chick. Roxanne took her mother’s words under consideration but Erika was a loyal and true friend to her since freshman year. She loved Erika like a sister although they had different personalities.

As if on queue Roxanne sauntered out of the bathroom. She stood near the open doorway.

“Hey Roxy. Is that how you greet your mother?”

Roxanne’s face was swollen. She was only wearing a bathrobe. Her mother was visibly concerned. Roxanne’s eyes were watery and her lips began to quiver as one tear ran down her cheek.

Margaret’s smile quickly turned into a scowl. She dashed over to her daughter.

“Roxy what’s wrong? What’s the matter?” Margaret not only could see something was up. She could feel it.

“Roxy, what happened?” She feared the worse but she wasn’t even sure what the worse could be. Roxanne was always a good, independent, smart kid. She had never been in any trouble.

Roxanne was silent. She couldn’t find the words to answer her mother. Margaret turned and looked at Erika for a response.

“Erika what’s going on?” Margaret pressed.

“Roxanne would you please tell your mother. I don’t know what to say. Say something?”

Roxanne broke out into a frenzy of uncontrollable tears. Seeing her mother broke her into a million pieces. Her mind flashed to the image of her mother looking down at her dead body in the ivory casket.

She didn’t want to have to tell her mother what happened to her. She thought she would get a chance to get herself together first. But her mother was here and she didn’t have a choice. She wondered how she could speak the words out loud. When she hadn’t even come to terms with the horrid thing that happened to her.

Roxanne gathered all the strength she could muster to speak the dreadful agonizing words. “Mom, I need a hug.” That wasn’t what she planned to say. But that was what hailed from her lips. It was a complete sentence. It made her feel like she didn’t want to lie down and die. She felt that way all night long while she lay awake in her bed last night.

Margaret reached out and grabbed Roxanne, pulling her into a tight embrace. She should have grabbed her as soon as she saw the tears but it scared her too much. Roxanne was never a crier. She was tough even as a kid. Margaret didn’t really know what to make of this.

“Erika, Roxy, someone tell me something. You are scaring me to death.” Margaret pulled back to look her daughter in her teary eyes.

It took a few minutes for Margaret to get the entire story but once she heard it she cried and held her daughter in her arms.

This was worse than she could have imagined. She didn’t know what she thought Roxy would say but this never crossed her mind. The campus seemed like a safe place even though Margaret had lived long enough to know that no such place existed.

Convincing Roxanne to go to the police was a lost cause. She understood her daughter’s reservations and she truly agreed with them. Roxanne always thought things through. If Roxanne didn’t see any benefits in reporting the rape, she had no option but to respect her daughter’s wishes.

The chance that a rapist would be caught and convicted was slim. Margaret was happy her daughter wasn’t murdered. She took comfort in that fact above all others. If anything ever happened to Roxy she would not be able to survive it. Roxanne was her only child and she was everything to Margaret. They were close, more like sisters than mother and daughter.