Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee (11 page)

“Once I got tall, people said I should start playing basketball, so I did, but then after a few practices, people started saying I should maybe not play basketball. Somebody said I should join the chess club, so I did that, but chess is hard. You know?”

I stop the car and start it again.

“Anyway, high school is better. People still call me Mini Vinnie, but nobody tries to beat me up. I joined the choir. Want to hear me sing?” He doesn't wait for an answer, but launches into some song I've never heard before, something about the stars and the moon colliding. But his voice is actually good. I don't realize that I've completely stopped the car until it's over.

“That was really good,” I say.

“Thanks. I think I've found my calling. Something that doesn't require coordination.” We're both silent for a few seconds. It's getting dark outside. The library has closed and the couple final cars have left the parking lot. “Do you want to go home?” he asks.

“I don't know,” I say. I know my mom is worried about me. She will be going insane with worry. My dad will be angry, but he'll be doing something with it. He's probably talked to seven
lawyers already, trying to make sure I don't have to talk. It isn't right for me to be out here while they're upset for me. But I still don't want to go back.

Vinnie reaches over me and turns a rod next to the steering wheel. The car's lights come on, blasting the parking lot with their beams. “We don't have to go back,” he says. He puts a hand on my shoulder. He lets it sit there for a second, and then he gives my shoulder a little pat. He looks down at me with big blue eyes, all serious.

I squirm.

“I'm sorry,” he says. “I thought when someone was upset you were supposed to . . . I don't know.”

“It's okay,” I say. “It's not your fault.”

“You don't like people touching you,” he says. “I get it.”

“I'm sorry,” I say again. “Lee told me . . . she said you were asking her . . .”

“It's all right,” he says. “I'm an idiot.”

“I don't know why people like boys,” I say. “What boys and girls do.” I can't look at him, so I look out across the parking lot. All that space, and I could start the car again. I could go anywhere I want now, but in my mind, part of me is back in the cabin. Part of me is in the bathroom with Lola, and I am singing to her, and we're pretending there's nobody else there. We're pretending she came from nowhere, and there's no such thing as what boys and girls do at all.

Vinnie lifts a hand like he's going to try to pat my shoulder again, but then he doesn't. “Most boys aren't like that,” he says.

I know what he thinks. He thinks somebody raped me.
But nobody did. Nobody did it to me, so I don't have a right to feel this way. The worst things didn't happen to me; they happened to her, and I forgot. I forgot that she was what he did to her, and I blamed her for who she became. I don't have a right to even be sitting here in this car, learning how to drive with this boy who wants to be my friend. It should be her sitting here, not me. She deserved to be here.

“You know, lots of people have issues,” Vinnie says. “Maybe you can join a support group.”

“I don't know if it's the same,” I say. That's an understatement. Nobody can understand what's inside me. And they shouldn't. Because something inside me is wrong.

“Take me for example,” Vinnie says. “I go to a support group. It's for kids who don't know what's going on.”

I look at him out of the corner of my eye. His face is serious in a different way now, and his hands are in his lap.

“Like, don't know whether they like boys or girls,” he says.

“You don't know if you like girls?” I almost laugh. It seems like nonsense, after what Lee told me and the way he looked at me a minute ago.

“I think I like girls, but I also think I like boys,” he says. “It's confusing.” Before I can say anything, he rushes on. “It's in Portland, the support group. My mom takes me every other Saturday. She thinks I need to talk to people who understand because she doesn't.”

“Does it help?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Yeah. At least I know I'm not the only one. Like, there's nothing wrong with me. Or at least, not
that
wrong.”

I stare at the parking lot.

“Okay, I know it's not the same,” he says. “I'm sorry.”

“No,” I say. “Thank you.” There probably is a support group out there for girls who got raped. And if that was my problem, maybe it could actually make me feel better. But where's the group for girls who were silent while their best friend got raped? Who loved something that came out of it more than life? Who want something back . . . I close my eyes. I want to go there in my mind, but I can still feel the car and the parking lot and Vinnie sitting next to me and even my parents waiting at home. Vinnie does this to me somehow. He keeps me sitting at least partway in the present, and I don't know if I like it.

“Nobody at school knows,” he says. “Except Lee. You know, in this town . . .”

“Being different is a crime,” I say. I think about how Dee was different, how she was bubbly and too talkative and always wanted to be a part of everything, and for some reason, that made her weird. But she never stopped trying to be a part of things, even so. She was the resilient one then. She was the one I would have thought would survive. Tears leak from my face. She cried when they excluded her. She was weak in that way. I should have realized that she was weak, and I should have been strong. I should have found a way to make him turn to me, but instead, I hoped he wouldn't. I prayed he wouldn't. I prayed he would never do it to me.

“Hey, you don't have to cry,” Vinnie says. “I still like girls, too. You still have a chance with all this.”

That was the most inappropriate joke ever. I keep crying, but part of me is laughing. I shake my head.

“Do you want to break things? I've got some recycling in the trunk. We can throw my dad's beer bottles against the library wall.”

“I want to be different,” I say.

Vinnie doesn't answer. I don't look at him. I know that when he stops talking, it's serious. If he isn't talking, then I'll talk. And I want to. I want to talk about Stacie, and about my babies, and about every single thing that happened. About who I was when I was Chelsea and what I did and what I didn't do. Who I should have been, what I should have done.

“I want to be a good person,” I begin. I can feel it coming, but I can't stop it. “I want to be the one who protects. The one who's stronger. The one who stops the bad person from . . .”

Vinnie waits.

“I want to want . . .”

“What?” he asks.

“To be the one who died,” I say. “But I don't want that. I didn't want it. I didn't want it.” I collapse into sobs, and Vinnie puts his hand on my shoulder again, and I don't shake it off. I lean on the steering wheel and close my eyes and just sob.

A GOOD PERSON,
a good friend, a good cousin, would have wanted to trade places. A good person would have wished she could be the one lying on the ground, her face still, her hair bloody. But would a good person have wanted to leave those children with a mother who was broken, a mother who was no mother at all? There was no way to be a good cousin and a good mother. There is a part of me that knows that, that knows it wasn't wrong of me to love those children, that it will never be wrong for me to love them. But there is another part of me that knows that loving those children was a betrayal of the worst kind.

You wanted them,
I hear her screaming.
You wanted them.
But I didn't. I didn't want them any more than she did. I just had the capacity to love them. Dee's heart, which was so big before and so forgiving and so open, got closed up. I think it started before he raped her. It even happened before she was Stacie. The moment Kyle touched Dee, when he grabbed her
by the arm that day at the river, that was when she stopped talking. She lost her voice, and after that, everything followed.

•   •   •

We had been in the cabin for about six months when I figured it out. Stacie didn't figure it out herself. When she didn't get her period, she was glad. She had never wanted it, and she thought it had magically gone away. If Kyle noticed, he didn't say anything. This was before he ever let us leave the cabin to go down to the river, so we were all there in the little room with the doors locked from the inside and the key around Kyle's neck. He had his dolls lined up on the table, Barbie and Lola and Chelsea and Stacie all together with some others.

“Barbie, you are looking beautiful today,” Kyle said. “Why, thank you, Kyle,” Kyle said in a small, breathy voice. “It is so nice and warm inside now that you have finished bringing the wood in for the stove. I want the very best for you, dear one.” Kyle made the Barbie doll walk across the table, like she was heading for the woodstove.

Stacie hadn't had her period in two months, and she wasn't feeling good, either. She didn't say anything, but I noticed she was eating slower and sleeping longer. We sat on the bed doing nothing, just watching Kyle with his dolls.

“Stacie,” I said.

She didn't really look at me.

“Once you get it, it isn't supposed to stop,” I whispered.

“Yes it is,” she said.

“No, it isn't.”

“It wasn't supposed to start.”

“I love you, Barbie,” Kyle whispered to the one wearing the nurse's outfit. He ran a hand down her little plastic body. “You are my favorite Barbie of all.” He whispered back. “And I love you.”

“Stacie doesn't get hers,” Stacie said. She stared at the doll Stacie, which Kyle was holding in his other hand now.

I leaned my head in as close to her ear as I could. “Dee,” I whispered, barely making any sound.

Kyle's little head snapped up. He smashed the nurse Barbie to the table.

“You're pregnant,” I said, louder than I meant to. I stared at Kyle as he got up from his chair, still holding the Stacie doll. His eyes changed from childlike to angry as he walked toward us; they glowed hard as his steps tensed.

I held up my hand to protect myself, but his shadow leaned over me. He didn't strike.

“Is it true, Stacie?” he asked. “Stacie, is it true?” Now he was talking to the doll.

Stacie burst into tears. She couldn't talk. All she could do was cry.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “It's not true. I take it back.” I hugged her, but she didn't hug me. She just cried.

•   •   •

Stacie's stomach got bigger, but the rest of her didn't grow. She didn't get taller or stronger. The baby didn't give her anything. All it did was take away. First she couldn't eat without wanting to toss everything back up, and when that passed, she had trouble walking because of the extra weight and the way it
all sat in her belly and made her off balance. It kept her from sleeping, and she would lie on her side in the big bed with her eyes open. Kyle started sleeping on the side toward the wall because Stacie would have to get up and pee during the night. She would roll off the bed and stumble as she tried to walk, and she would make her way slowly past my cot and into the bathroom, and she would stay there for a long time.

After a while, the baby started moving around in there. The first time it happened, Kyle was away. He had driven into town to get us supplies, and so we were locked inside the cabin. I had already done all the chores I was supposed to do, so I was sitting next to Stacie on the big bed, reading
Hawaii
by James Michener for the third time. We didn't have much entertainment—no video games or iPad or computer. For books, we had the King James Bible, three novels by Louis L'Amour about cowboys, and
Hawaii
. I think they were all in the cabin before Kyle got there, because I never saw him pick one up. Over the years I read them all about a thousand times. When Stacie was first pregnant, I could already have recited by heart how the Hawaiian Islands formed out of volcanoes in the ocean and how the people came across the ocean in little boats. It was nice to imagine myself as one of them, out there in the water with all that space, not confined in a single room. Stacie was curled in a ball with her feet almost touching me. Suddenly, she sat up. She was wearing a pink velour sweatsuit, already four sizes bigger than she'd been before.

“What happened?” I asked.

She clutched her stomach. “It moved.”

“Oh.” I wasn't sure what to say.

Her face twisted.

“Again?” I asked.

“It's kicking me.”

“That's what they do,” I said. “Jay kicked my mom, and she laughed.” I remembered her sitting in the big chair in the living room. It was just a flash, like a photograph in my head. My mom sitting there holding her stomach, laughing.
He's a rowdy one, Amy,
she said.
Amy. Amy.
The name flipped through my brain. I held on to the picture. I was looking up at my mom from below. Her belly was so big, and there was a ring on the hand over her belly. And the old afghan that our grandma made, lying over her lap. It was as clear as if I were looking right at her now.

“I don't want it.” Stacie scooted off the edge of the bed. “I don't want it.”

“It's okay,” I said. “It's normal.”

Tears exploded from Stacie's face. “I don't want it. I don't want it.” She stumbled against my cot and pushed it aside. It rolled over, and its frame clanged against the hardwood floor.

I stood up. “It will come out,” I said. “It will come out and everything will be fine.”

“I want it out now.” She kicked the overturned cot out of the way and stomped toward the little kitchen. “What will hurt it?” She opened a cupboard and slammed it shut again, then opened the next one. “Cereal. Soup. Pasta.” She slammed the cupboard and bent down beneath the sink. “This.” She pulled a gallon of bleach out and slammed it on the counter. “This.”
She pulled out a container of dishwashing soap. “This.” She pulled out a spray bottle of cleaning fluid. She turned back toward me. “One of these things will do it.”

“They'll kill
you
,” I said. I reached for the spray bottle, but she slapped my hand. “Stacie, come on.”

She pushed me in the chest. I fell back into a counter. She ripped the cap off the bleach.

“No!” I grabbed it from her, and bleach flew out of the top. It got all over her pink sweatsuit and my purple nightgown.

She grabbed for it, but I threw it away. It landed on the floor next to my overturned cot, the liquid flying with the bottle. Where it landed, the bleach spilled out and the smell overwhelmed the room. Stacie picked up the dishwashing soap.

I reached for it, but she was quicker. She kicked my leg and ran past me, opening the cap as she went. I hobbled after her, and with her big belly, she was slower. I caught her just as she rounded the corner toward the bathroom. As I grabbed for the bottle, she put it to her mouth and took a long gulp. I smashed it away from her, and it fell on the floor, too.

Bubbles frothed around her mouth, and she grinned at me. “It's going to die,” she said.

“You need to throw up.” I pushed her toward the bathroom.

“No.” She pushed back against me, and this time, her belly helped her. I pushed, and she shoved me, and I couldn't move her an inch.

“You have to get it out!” I was crying now, too. “Stacie, you drank soap!” I didn't know what drinking soap did. All I knew was she had to get it out of her. I didn't care about the
baby then. I never knew it was going to be Lola. I just didn't want Stacie to die.

“No.” She shoved me harder. “No no no no.” Then she shuddered and leaned forward and threw up all over the floor. “No!” She fell to her knees, screaming. “No! No! No! No!” She threw up again. “No.” She put her head in her hands and sobbed. Her belly heaved. The smell of the bleach we'd spilled filled the whole cabin. All the windows were closed and locked, too, so there was no air coming in at all. I knew that was bad.

“Come on,” I said. “Let's go in the bathroom.”

But Stacie wouldn't move. I brought her water, and then I cleaned up the vomit and the bleach and the dish soap, and all she could do was sit there and sob.

•   •   •

I am sobbing into the steering wheel for so long that Vinnie calls my parents' house. He tells them that we're having a good time and I'm doing fine and we decided to go out for some ice cream. He says that I got a lot of books at the library and I need my own library card. He says, “No, she's just worried you're still mad at her. Okay, I'll tell her. Don't worry, Mr. MacArthur, we'll be home before too long.” Then he pats me on the back again. He pats me the way you hit somebody who is choking, only softer. And by that time, I've cried so much that I don't think there are any more tears in me. I sit up, and my eyes are a fog.

“You want some water?” Vinnie asks. “When I cry, I get thirsty.”

“You cry?” I ask. My voice comes out hoarse. I guess I am thirsty.

“Sure. Guys cry. I try not to do it in front of people, though. Gotta keep up appearances. I'm Big Vinnie now. That's what my mom says.”

I try to laugh and start coughing instead.

“Let's go to Dairy Queen,” he says. “We can get you some water and also, if we get ice cream, I didn't just tell your dad a big fat lie.”

We trade places in the car, and then we're on our way, speeding and careening around corners. We go to the drive-through and order two large Blizzards. I get mine with M&Ms just like I used to do when I was a kid. But as Vinnie digs in, I let mine sit there. I already had ice cream once, with Lee. It was okay then, even though Dee wasn't there to share it. And it didn't make me a bad person, and it isn't going to hurt me. Slowly, I stick my spoon in the cup and raise it to my mouth. Just like the chocolate ice cream was still good, the Blizzard is still good, too.

“You wanted them.”

I don't answer her. I can't say it isn't true, not with them only a few feet away.

“You wanted them.”

“I may not know what happened,” Vinnie says, “but I know you guys didn't kidnap yourselves. That means whatever happened wasn't your fault.”

Kyle slams the door in my face. I am out in the night, and they are inside.

“I'm glad it wasn't you who died.”

I swallow my bite of ice cream and turn to look at Vinnie. Even though he's pushed the driver's seat back as far as it will go, he still looks awkwardly scrunched. He fiddles with his spoon, digging a hole in his ice cream. “Thanks,” I say.

“Your parents will be, too,” he says.

“But not Aunt Hannah,” I say. “Not Lee.”

“They'll understand,” he says. “They deserve to know the truth.”

I take another bite of ice cream, but the taste is gone. “It's not just about her,” I say.

“What do you mean?” He slurps the ice cream off his spoon.

Don't say it, Chelsea,
I think.
Don't say it.
But I have to tell someone. They're in my heart and my head and now they're in my throat, bursting out. They're too strong and too big to keep inside me. “Dee had two kids,” I say. “They're still there, with him. If I tell anyone anything, he'll kill them. That's what he said he'd do, and I believe it. If you knew him, you would, too.” My voice shakes as I say it, and then something snaps inside me. I take another bite of ice cream without tasting it. I am looking in on this scene from outside the car. I am watching calmly. A boy in the car almost chokes on a bite of ice cream. He spits it back into his cup. The girl takes another bite.

•   •   •

When Lola was first born, before she was old enough to be a person, Kyle mostly treated her like she was his precious doll. He didn't get angry with her often, not when she cried
all night and kept us all awake or stunk up our whole tiny cabin, or needed feeding and bathing and watching. Kyle would hold her and coo to her and change her diaper. It was like he was Lola's father and, even though I was only eleven, I was her mother. When he wasn't hitting me or throwing my food away, there were times when I could almost forget. Times when for a few minutes or an hour or even a day, I could believe we were a family. It was one of those times he told me about his.