Sadie's Mountain (5 page)

 I was walking into the kitchen in the morning to get some water when I heard a conversation taking place out on the porch. It was just two days after...after...I was raped. Yes, I can say the word rape. It’s taken me a long time to realize that’s what it was. I pay a fortune to Dr. Amy to deal with this mess. At least I can admit the truth to myself. It had been so confusing for so many reasons.

 “Reverend Sparks,” Dillon spoke in his coaxing voice, “We really should talk to the Sheriff so they can find the dirt bag that hurt Sadie.” There was venom in his voice when he said those last few words.

“Absolutely not!” my daddy snapped, abruptly cutting him off.

“But, sir...”

“I’ll not hear of it. The sin is a heavy burden in that one. Always has been—Just too strong-willed. I just need to pray harder, lay my hands on her and pray, whip it out a’ her agin if I have to. To bear witness to Jesus Christ, who is ‘the Way, the Truth, and the Life’.”

“She was attacked. There was blood runnin’ down her neck, sir. She was cut, bleedin’ everywhere, in shock when I found her. She didn’t ask for this.”

“She was dressed immorally. She weren’t raised that way. And, it ain’t right ta blame a man fer havin’ needs, son. Whoever it is, I’m sure he’s repentin’ as we speak, layin’ his sins at the Cross. It’s in God’s hands now to deal with him. I have ta think of that girl’s soul, not punishin’ the man she tempted.”

“Tempted?” he repeated as if to make that word fit in the scenario he saw. I heard Dillon’s heavy boots pace back and forth across the porch. I peeked out through the front window and he was pinching his forehead between his thumb and index finger. Daddy was sitting in his porch chair smoking his pipe.

“Can I take her, sir?” he begged, his voice shaking with fear, or need. “I’ll take care of her. If she needs time, ya know, before she’s ready to be man and wife in the Biblical sense, I’ll wait. I’ll marry her right now. I’m almost eighteen. It won’t cause no shame on ya since we’ll be married. If she’s in the family way, no one will know the difference.”

“A youngin’!” Daddy screamed. It was a guttural response.

“I don’t...Well, sir, it’s possible,” Dillon stated matter of factly.

“She’s stayin’ right here! If she’s with child then the Lord will have to deal with her, with her shame. Her consequence might be just that! Go, son. She ain’t goin with ya. She ain’t no good anyhow.”

“Please, sir, I love her. I need to see her. It’s killing me.”

“Go!” Daddy stated with the authority that comes from preaching to those even in the back pews.

I watched Dillon’s tall frame as he hunched his broad shoulders, turned on his heels and stomped down the front steps. He turned around again. I saw his face and he saw mine in the window. There were tears moving down over his cheeks. He looked relieved to see me. I closed the curtain and bit my thumbnail. That choking lump in my throat was still there. I rubbed it but felt the scabs on my neck instead and closed my eyes.

I’d never seen him like that, other than the time he broke his arm trying to catch me when my ankle got stuck in his bike chain and we wrecked his bike. I was almost unharmed, his arm took all the weight for both of us as we fell together. But, he cried then, too—a brave cry. The kind that comes even though you don’t want it to. That’s the only other time before then, and well, last night.

He came to me that same night. I wasn’t sleeping as he tapped on the window in my room. I got up slowly, trying not to wake up Missy in the bed next to mine, but also because of how sore I was.

All my muscles felt like deep bruises reminding me of how they were abused. My neck was just newly scabbed over. It was rough and itchy. I had crescent shaped fingernail marks on my face where Donnie’s hand had been when he was trying to keep me quiet. There were small cuts in little x patterns on my stomach from Donnie’s knife when he’d held me in place. Bothersome mosquito bites burned on my bottom and thighs. The stinging belt marks were swollen on my back, arms and legs, and it ached, like ripping paper, at the apex of my thighs.

I opened the window letting in a healthy breeze that pushed my hair away from my face. The air sounded of crickets and frogs.

He looked so relieved to see me as he stood slightly below the edge of the window. It took him a moment to remember to breathe. I knew I was standing there but I felt like an empty vessel. He smiled at me but I didn’t smile back. He looked worried again and swallowed.

“You look better,” he said as if I was a wounded animal about to bolt. I didn’t respond. “Will you come outside and talk to me, Sadie?”

“What for?” I said, my voice drone-like.

“I just want to help you, darlin’,” he said, softly, but his face looked pained.

“You can’t help now.” My voiced sounded foreign like it belonged to another person I didn’t know.

“I can take you away from here. When I go to college you’ll come, too. Or I’ll get a job right now and buy us a little house.”

“That can’t happen.”

“You’re angry at me,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“No.” I shook my head.

“This is all my fault,” he said, putting his hand over his stomach in physical pain.

“No,” was all I could say in protest. “Mine,” I said under my breath. I don’t think he heard.

“I’m sorry I touched you, baby.” He put both his hands on the windowsill. “I hadn’t even realized what I did. It was just so natural.”

I know.

“I’m not mad about that, now,” I said. He reached toward me through the window as if he was going to soothe me somehow. I flinched and he stopped.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized again, his eyes wider than I’d ever seen them. I didn’t like to see him that way so I just looked down at the dirt instead.

“Nothin’s changed about how I feel for you. You know that. You’re still my girl, right?” He sounded like he was begging.

“I’m no one’s,” I said. Maybe I meant to say
I’m no one. 

“Who did this to you?” His voice was hot lava.

“You should go,” I said as I rubbed the lump in my throat and felt the scabs on my neck again. He looked wounded and I felt sad for him through my numbness. This wasn’t his fault. All I kept thinking of were Donnie’s words, “
I’ll kill him too
.” I needed to let him go, to free him of this obligation he had to the girl I used to be two days before.

“I’m not the girl you loved anymore, not the same at all. She’s gone now.” I looked away from him as if I was looking for where that girl might have gone.

“I’ll wait. Forever if I have to. You’ll get better. I can help.”

“I don’t want you to.”  He deserved better was all I could think. He was so perfect and I was so dirty now. I disgusted myself. “Look, I won’t see you again, Dillon. Just go and live a happy life.”

“I won’t force you, Sadie.” His voice sounded louder now, his fists clenched, with the pain right at the surface. “You’re my best friend. I’ll never love anyone but you!”

His volume caused me to turn and check on Missy. She wiggled from her back onto her side but was still asleep.

I looked back out the window and just shook my head at him. “You shouldn’t say that.” He would move on someday. He would be okay. This was protecting him, too, like throwing rocks at a dog so it wouldn’t come with you and get hurt. He had no idea.

“I have to go,” I said, as I started to close the window. He put his hand out to me but stopped at an imaginary line between us.

“Please, don’t shut me out.”  He was panicked now, his voice like red silk waving in a wind storm. I couldn’t look at him anymore. I had to let him go.

“Goodbye, Dillon,” I said and I slowly shut the window on him. He stood there for a long while, stunned. I was behind the curtain but it was see-through enough so I could watch him illuminated by the moonlight. I wondered if it went both ways if the lights were on in here and it was dark out there.

Suddenly, his knees buckled under him and I heard him cry out as he punched the ground with his fist. The sound made its way through my cloud of emptiness and echoed around like a lone wolf howling in a low holler. That sound will never leave me.

I watched his hunched-over shape silently writhing in pain. His dream of me, of the girl I was and the wife I could have been to him, must have died right then. He was mourning that girl, the one who went into that shed, not the one who came out twenty minutes later.

He could never love her. No one could. No man ever has.

Chapter Four—Goldenseal Roots

Before I take the slight turn at Kanawha Avenue, I stop at the little corner store with a name entirely made of initials and the word grocery. I know I’m just stalling but I go in anyway. The clerk behind the counter speaks with a heavy accent that summons mine whenever I hear it. I ask for the restroom with a native twang and she obliges.

In the mirror, I stare at the woman before me. She’s not much different than the girl who lived in Ansted, West Virginia. I’m still about 5’5”, my hair, still long but a darker reddish blonde, more managed, more sleek. I smooth my fitted denim pants tucked into suede boots, and straighten my white linen blouse, cinched with a belt around my slim waist. I have my grey scarf on today—the vintage Schiaparelli silk in three shades of grey. It covers my scars nicely.

I look like an author—a person who has it together. There’s a glow coming from my skin that comes from good makeup and the reality of financial security. But the eyes—my eyes are dull. I’ve stood in front of the mirror I don’t know how many times and tried to make my moss-green eyes look alive again.

To compensate, I practice smiling by taking my natural grim expression and forcing the corners of my mouth up making my cheeks look like little apples. It’s amazing how a smile fools everyone—even me. I wash my hands, smile at the clerk, and make my way back to the car.

I know I’m close to home as Gauley Mountain comes into view. The road tilts dramatically upward. My ears pop, and I feel my back press into the seat. I drive right by the Mystical Gravity Tunnel, a new spooky attraction made of rusty shards of metal with a plastic wolf guarding the entrance. This place ‘defies the laws of gravity,’ it says. Then the road abruptly straightens and I’m here. I’m in Ansted, my town with my people. I unexpectedly feel delight glowing from my pores.

The town looks different, foreign. It’s as if it’s dressed for an occasion. The buildings have new paint and there are new stores. It’s a tourist town now. Missy told me, but I hadn’t imagined it right.

There’s a new auto dealership, and Tudor’s Biscuit World Restaurant looks spiffy and dignified. From the light posts hang green signs with little red birds on them that welcome one and all.

I hold my breath out of habit as I make my way over New River Gorge Bridge. I’m nearly home.

 A left at the bent tree. A right up the rocky hill. I don’t need the GPS voice that I’ve set on British mode to tell me how to get here. My tires crumble the rocks as they climb up my childhood driveway.

That’s it. The house looks nice. But smaller, I think.
Wait, it’s brown. I thought it was beige. Maybe it just wanted to be brighter in my mind.

Before I can think too much about it, I kill the engine and open the car door. The familiar scent of the trees, the dirt, and the clean mountain air fills my lungs. The long grass gets pulled to the side by the wind. It stirs something in me. An emotion I can’t deal with is right on the edge of my perception. I push it away like swallowing a big hard pill stuck in my throat as I walk slowly, timidly up the steps to the porch.

I realize that it has felt like this place really didn’t exist until right this moment. Maybe as a coping mechanism, I’d turned my house into a figment of my imagination. But, here it is. It’s real, just like all the rest of the things in my head I wish weren’t.

Before I can knock, Missy opens the door and squeals. She pulls me into her long, slender arms and hugs me like nobody’s business.

“You look great!” she croons. “So fancy!”

“You, too!” She’s wearing a pretty, loose dress over her thin frame. Her light hair is shorter now. It’s cute on her. As she smiles, there are fine lines around her eyes that didn’t used to be there.

She stands back and looks at me. “You’re too skinny,” she decides. “I’m gonna have to fatten you up while you’re here.”

“Well, I’m only going to be here just today and tomorrow. I don’t know how much fattening you can do in that amount of time,” I say dryly.

Her mouth goes into a thin line. “Sadie Jane! You are not tellin’ me you are a’ leavin’ tomorrow. Your momma’s been waiting on you. She’s dying, Sadie. You have to stay ‘til she does and that’s that.”

“I can’t possibly...”

“Why not?”

“I can’t just drop my life.”

“What? You too busy to be here when your only momma dies!”

I stand here like an errant child as I kick the back of my left boot with my right toe. She’s right. I can’t let my fears over Dillon or his devil-spawn brother disturb me so. She’s my momma, after all.

“No. You’re right, Missy,” I say with my head down. “I’ll stay, until the end.”