Asking for It (26 page)

I take the patchwork quilt from the back of the sofa and shake it out, tucking it around my mother’s body and up as far as her chin, and she curls into it like a child. I make myself walk away from her.

‘What are you doing?’ I say on the landing. Bryan is closing the door of my room, a laptop stuffed under his armpit. ‘What were you doing in my room?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You’re not supposed to go in there if I’m not there,’ I say. ‘I’m entitled to some privacy.’ Even if the lock has gone from my door, removed after the last time . . . after the last time. ‘Is that mine?’ I ask him, pointing at the laptop.

‘Sorry.’ His jaw is moving back and forward as if he’s grinding his teeth. ‘I had to . . .’ He breaks off. ‘Well, I had to, and you weren’t there.’

‘Is that mine?’ I repeat myself.

‘Yes,’ he squeaks, and he coughs to clear his throat. ‘And, eh, I was wondering if I could borrow your laptop?’

I need it. I need it to block out the argument with Mam and all the other images and those photos and the comments, and
no, no, no
. I need it.

‘Well,’ I try to be calm but I can feel the panic climbing up my throat, ‘I can’t sleep and I was thinking of watching—’

‘No,’ he yells, and I back away from him. ‘You’re not even supposed to have it anyway, are you?’

‘What’s
wrong
with you?’

‘I just need to borrow your laptop.’

‘But you have your own laptop.’

‘Yeah, I know. But, it’s, eh, it’s, eh . . .’

‘It’s what?’

‘Broken. It’s broken.’ He swallows hard. ‘And I need to do research for a project.’

‘A project?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What type of project?’

‘What do you mean, what type of project?’

‘Well, what’s it about? What subject is it for? Are you working in a group or are—’

‘It’s just a project, OK?’ he snaps. ‘Just a project for college. End of.’

‘OK.’ I don’t like it when Bryan gets angry with me. ‘Just take it. You can sign in as a guest. I’m not giving you my password.’

Closing my bedroom door behind me, I go to the vanity table and fumble around in the top drawer. There’s a pile of diaries there, cheap hardback copybooks that my mother buys for me. The therapist says that I should try and use the journals as a way of processing this experience. As a way of remembering. They all want me to remember. (I don’t want to remember.)

The phone is hidden beneath the diaries. My mother forgot to take it from me, again. I sit on the ground with my back pressed against the door in case Bryan decides he needs to come back in.

I have thirty new emails, and as I scroll through them ([email protected], [email protected], [email protected]) I only recognize two names – so I delete the rest. (How did they find my new address?) One is from Conor,

Emmie,

I was thinking about you today. I saw you getting out of your car on Friday evening. I wasn’t going to say anything . . . I don’t know why I am saying anything. It was nice to see your face. I miss you. x

I read the email three times before making myself delete it. The other email is from Maggie.

Hey hunnie,

Listen, I just wanted to tell you to ignore all that crap on Facebook, people are so pathetic. It’s this stupid town, they have nothing else to do with their time, you know? Please phone me. I really want to see you and make sure you’re doing OK. I need to talk to you about something too.

Love you. xxx

I shut down my email, and I click into the Facebook app. There are about one hundred new private messages, but I don’t look at them. I know what darkness they will hold.
Kill yourself. Run away. Leave here forever. Everybody hates you. Slut, liar, skank, bitch, whore.
I promised my parents that I would shut down all my accounts, but I can’t. I would be erased. It would be as if I never existed. (Isn’t that what I want?) I’m tagged in ten new photos.

I am afraid every time I open my computer or look at my phone.

I know I shouldn’t look. Of course I shouldn’t look. I am afraid of looking but I am afraid not to look too. (I am afraid all the time.)

In each of the photos there are girls, loads of them, each picture with a different group, all of them wearing plain white T-shirts. I know most of them. There’s Sarah Swallows and Julie Clancy, surrounded by six or seven other girls from my year. In another there’s Susan Twomey, and a few of her friends, and I can barely make out the rest, my eyes blurring. Scrawled on the T-shirts in black marker are the words #TeamPaul, #TeamDylan and #TeamSean, one or two have #TeamFitzy, but not as many. I look at the comments underneath.

Slut, liar, skank, bitch, whore. Slut, liar, skank, bitch, whore. Slut, liar, skank, bitch, whore. Slut, liar, skank, bitch, whore.

Over and over and over.

She was asking for it.

What did she expect?

I see legs splayed. I see pink flesh, delicate. Bruised. Ripped apart.

Any #TeamEmma T-shirts?
someone had written, and Julie Clancy replied,
Bitch, please.

I blink, and I can see Jen Casey, her face paler than I remember, fingers pointing at the #TeamSean across her chest.

‘I wish you would get together with Sean,’ Jennifer said to me. It must have been two years ago. She and I were watching TV, waiting for Bryan to come home after football training. Her mother had come off her meds without telling anyone again. She began showing up at school in her pyjamas, she started bulk-buying tinned tomatoes until their garden shed was full of hundreds of cans. She had gone back to hospital for a ‘rest’, and Mam insisted that Jen come and have dinner with us as often as she wanted. ‘I would, you know I would, Jen,’ I told her. ‘But Ali really likes him, and I wouldn’t do that to a friend.’ The truth was, I would do that to a friend, and I
had
done that to a friend. But not for someone like Sean, someone whom no one else wanted.

If this was a movie I would start crying now. Wouldn’t that be the normal reaction?

My eyes are dry. They are burned out.

(I wish I could cry.)

All I have now is a feeling of falling, like you do in a dream, where you are falling and falling and falling into a pit of nothingness, and you keep waiting to wake up before you hit the bottom, before your brain splats all over the concrete floor of your nightmare. But I don’t wake up. I’m falling, falling forever, always waiting for the ground to meet me.

Monday

My dreams are heavy, bloated things. My crusted eyelids peel apart as I wake, my mind a-shimmer with the haze of disintegrating images. It’s always the same these days, the world turning sideways, oily black ink spilling down the walls and flooding the square box that I’m trapped in, pooling around my ankles, then my knees, then my chest, until it’s over my head and I can’t breathe.

There you are. There’s a good girl. You like that, don’t you? Don’t you?

‘Emma? Are you awake?’ It’s my mother, the door opening just a crack, a strip of light opening into the room. I remember what happened last night. I remember her face and her words. And remembering feels like gathering pieces of broken glass in my hands.

I wonder if she can smell it, if the darkness has its own particular scent, or if my room smells the way it always did in the morning, of stale breath, vanilla candles and traces of perfume. People always asked me what perfume I used. I would refuse to tell them. I wanted to be unique, to stand out. I wanted to be different.

Now all I want is to fade away.

I slow my breathing down, making my inhale catch in a whistle at the back of my throat. Does she know I’m pretending to be asleep? Is she pretending to believe me? Is it easier that way? The door closes with a gentle click behind her. I curl up underneath the duvet, holding my knees into my chest, rubbing my belly. The therapist says it’s important to
process the memories, it’s important to feel your feelings, Emma
, but if I don’t even know what I actually remember, what are real memories, what are
mine
, and what’s been implanted inside there by the Easy Emma page, and Ms McCarthy, and the guards, and Bryan, and Ali and Maggie, and my parents, and the newspapers, and the outraged callers to
The Ned O’Dwyer Show
. What if I
am
just making it all up, like Paul claims? Veronica Horan wrote about the increase in false accusations, how women were claiming that they had repressed memories of sexual abuse, when in fact it was all in their imagination. Fathers thrown in jail. Mothers devastated. More lives ruined.

‘The intransigence of memory’, that article had been called. I read it ten times.

I think of my mother last night, her voice with that edge in it, somewhere between a sob and a scream. I think of how she looked at me. I know that this memory is real, this one is mine, and it feels like desperation standing before me, whittled skinny and hungry for me.

What will the trial be like? The book they gave me at the Rape Crisis Centre said it could be a ‘traumatic experience for the victim’. What does that even mean? My therapist uses the word ‘trauma’ to explain away everything that is happening to me.

I can’t eat.
That’s because of the trauma.

I can’t sleep.
That’s because of the trauma.

I can’t breathe.
That’s because of the trauma.

What sorts of questions will they ask in court?

How much did you drink that night? Did you take drugs? Witnesses say they saw you leading Paul O’Brien into the bedroom, do you admit that? Do you admit that you consented to have sex with him? How many other people have you had sex with? Would you say that you’re promiscuous?

I imagine my parents, my father looking at me with those new eyes of his, faded, listless. I want to climb up his body like I did as a child, feel his arms around me as he carries me. I want to hear him call me his princess, just once more. When was the last time he said it to me? Another thing I can’t remember.

I’ll have to go to Dublin. ‘Rape (don’t say
that word
, don’t use
that word
about me) and aggravated sexual assault are tried in the Central Criminal Court,’ Aidan Heffernan told me. ‘The court case could last up to two weeks at least,’ he said. But they do not know how long it will take this time, with all ‘the photos, and the media attention, and the complex nature of the case’. ‘There is no precedent,’ the reporter will say on TV, small boys in tracksuits jumping up and down in the background, making grotesque faces and waving at their mams watching.

I have to stand up and be counted.

I have to set a good example. I have to be brave for other victims.

#IBelieveBallinatoomGirl

I don’t want to be their champion. I don’t want to be brave. I don’t want to be a hero.

I’ll have to dress respectably, make sure I look like a good girl.
You’re not wearing that, are you, Emma?
I wonder if the barrister that the State provides will bring up that I tried to swallow death or the time I scored lines into my wrists. Will that count in my favour? (The pain pulsing in me, begging to be let out, needing something sharp to help it escape. The dribble of blood. Then gushing, faster and faster.) Or will they say it was a sign of a guilty conscience? Guilt over ruining lives. What will my friends have said in their witness statements? She was drunk, she was high, she was asking for it, she wanted it, she wanted it. And I did want it, didn’t I? I took Paul into that room, I knew what I was doing.

Didn’t I?

And you phoned the accused on the following Monday, did you not? You left voice messages, friendly voice messages. Why would you have done that if they had, as you claim, raped you?

I see myself standing in a witness box, and it’s the exact same one as on
Law and Order: SVU
, my lips mouthing words, but I’m not making any sound.

And you went to see a doctor the day after, a Dr Fitzpatrick, the father of one of the boys you accuse. Why would you have gone to him, if his son had been involved, as you claim, in a brutal gang rape?

Fitzy didn’t do anything. But he saw. He watched.

He has seen my splayed legs showing pink flesh.

(So has everyone else.
Everyone
.)

And after the alleged rape took place I see you sat your summer exams and your grades were excellent. Nothing below seventy-five per cent, and all higher-level subjects. If you had just endured something as traumatic as you claim, surely you wouldn’t be able to concentrate on your studies?

School corridors, people parting like the Red Sea, shoulders banging into mine and then the whispers, whispers, whispers,
slut, liar, skank, bitch, whore.
Screenshots of those photos printed out and stuffed into my locker. Ali, Maggie and Jamie not talking to me, it was early days then, the guards hadn’t approached them for their witness statements yet, they didn’t know what I was claiming, what I was
alleging
. They didn’t know about
that word
yet so I was still just a disloyal slut. Lunch eaten in a toilet cubicle, forcing it down my throat. New graffiti on the wall. (About me. It’s always about me.)

And your social life continued unabated, wouldn’t you say? You met friends for drinks, you went to nightclubs. We have statements from a number of different men saying that you slept with them after the alleged ‘rape’. You even went to a party in Dylan Walsh’s home, one of the men that you accuse of assaulting you. Does that sound like the behaviour of someone who was violated in the most horrific way?

Dizziness, my knees sliding on the damp floor of the club toilets, falling in a slump over the cistern, a fist banging on the door, someone saying, ‘Hurry up, for fuck’s sake. Who’s in there? Would you hurry up?’ The silence when I open the door and they see it’s me. My smeared face in the bathroom’s mirrors. Cold air outside, a wind cutting through me, arms linked with some faceless man, ignoring my phone ringing and ringing and ringing in my bag, because they were my friends again, they knew what had happened (that word) so there were awkward hugs, and good-listener faces, and
you can talk to me, I’m here for you, I’m here for you.
The beeps of texts.
Where are you Emma, where are you?
On my knees again, the concrete cold and hard. I try to reclaim that night. I try to make new memories to replace the ones that were stolen from me. I try to make it my choice, my decision.