Teenage Waistland (27 page)

“So Julius is a pedophile and a rapist?” East rages. “Is
that
Char’s story?”

I put my hand up to fend her off. “Wait—that came out wrong, East. Let me tell you a completely different story. About people you don’t even know. Okay?” East slowly eases back against the wall.

“Once upon a time, there were two little girls named Mary and Elizabeth. They’ve been best friends since they were babies because their mothers were best friends since high school. Mary has a big brother named John—and Elizabeth has a huge crush on him. Nothing unreasonable about that—Elizabeth and Mary grew up together, so Elizabeth has also spent a lot of time around John.”

“Group starts in three minutes.” East is looking at the floor now and tapping her foot.

“So we’ve got two best friends, one with a crush on the other’s brother,” I continue, my words racing to meet the deadline. “On the day Mary turns twelve, there’s a terrible tragedy in her family, and the world is turned upside down—for everybody, including her brother, who starts spending a lot of time in his room drinking beer and getting high. One night when Elizabeth gets up to go to the bathroom, she notices the light on in John’s room. His door is slightly open. She pokes her head in to see if he’s okay and they end up talking. She thinks she’s being good company, and to be nice, he tells her she can try his weed. No pressure at all. To be nice back. Of course she accepts—he’s treating her like someone his own age, not like the stupid-little-sister treatment she gets from her older sisters. The next time Elizabeth sleeps over, she gets up in the middle of the night and visits John again, and again, they smoke together. It’s fun, but remember—even though Elizabeth developed early and looks way older than she is, she still has no experience as far
as anything—drugs, boys, nothing!” I pause to take a breath. East is still with me—she’s even looking at me now and her foot tapping has stopped.

“So John and Elizabeth are in his room, high. They kiss, and she’s over the moon. He tells her it’s a mistake, but the next time she visits, they take it further, and soon they’re getting wasted and fooling around a little more every time Elizabeth spends the night. And even though John keeps saying, ‘No more, never again,’ it happens—again and again. And he’s really so nice to her, never pushing. Elizabeth thinks John is in love with her like she’s in love with him.

“One day soon after, though, John stops talking to Elizabeth. Stops cold. Won’t even look at her. Elizabeth is heartbroken. In her mind, John has stopped talking to her because she’s too young to go all the way. Obviously John stopped because he sobered up and realized that not only what he was doing with Elizabeth was wrong—it was
illegal
. He was eighteen and Elizabeth only twelve. That’s
statutory
rape.” I pause and quickly try to assess if my emphasis on
statutory
let
rape
slide in without ruffling East up too much. She’s still watching me intently, so I move on.

“Elizabeth is devastated and tries to visit John during her next sleepover with Mary, but his door is locked, and he doesn’t open it when she knocks. One night a few sleepovers later, though, his door isn’t locked, and Elizabeth enters and says she wants to be with him. She takes off her nightgown, and drunk, with Elizabeth standing there naked, John gives in.

“Fast-forward six weeks after this all began, and Elizabeth realizes she’s missed her period and she’s peeing all the time. She goes online and suspects she’s pregnant. So when Mary
and Elizabeth go shopping with Elizabeth’s mom, Elizabeth shoplifts a pregnancy test. And, lo and behold, she is pregnant. But before she has a chance to figure out what to do, her mom finds the positive pregnancy test wrapped in newspaper in the garbage in Elizabeth’s bedroom and goes
ballistic
—she’s got two daughters in college, but her
baby
is pregnant!”

East is crying, but her fist is pressed up against her mouth so that she doesn’t sob out loud. I move in closer and gently push the hair out of her eyes, and she doesn’t even flinch. It’s happening. I am getting to her.

“So Elizabeth’s mom whisks her away for an abortion. And as soon as they get back home her mom confronts Mary and John’s mom. She demands that John be kept away from Elizabeth or she’ll report him to the police—John would go to jail, not college. And by then, he has already been accepted into, er, Columbia University. Mary’s mom, sick with grief and with concern over little Mary and, of course, John’s sudden drinking, responds with ‘So keep your slutty daughter out of my house, then!’ and hangs up on her now former best friend.

“At this point, Elizabeth’s mom has no choice. She forbids Elizabeth to set foot in Mary’s house again or have anything to do with her entire family. Elizabeth goes insane and it takes her mother hours to calm her down and get her to rest. Later, when Elizabeth’s mom hears a thud from upstairs and runs up to check on her daughter, she spots a bottle of painkillers. Unable to rouse Elizabeth she calls an ambulance just in—”

East starts shaking her head violently and making like she’s about to take off. “Enough, Marcie, enough! I can’t be late for group.”

“Please, East,” I plead. “Group can wait a couple of minutes. I’ll hurry up and finish.”

East relents, shrugging like I’m free to knock myself out if I feel like it. I hightail it to the finish line.

“While Elizabeth’s in with the doctors having her stomach pumped, her mom completely loses it and calls Mary’s mother, screaming that Elizabeth just attempted to kill herself.

“But a few days after Elizabeth and her parents get home from the hospital, her mom and Mary’s mom meet at the corner to talk things out. Everyone’s calmer now and the moms both agree that Mary and Elizabeth really need each other—now more than ever, and that to forbid them from being together would be too damaging to them both. Mary’s mom promises Elizabeth’s that John will finish the last half of his senior year at a boarding school hundreds of miles away and that she’ll ensure he never sees Elizabeth again.” I take a deep breath and close in for the kill. “You see how tragic this situation was for Char too, don’t you, East? How everyone just wanted to protect you?”

But East’s suddenly holding her hands over her ears and my mind races to remember other points I had planned to make. She cuts me off before I can formulate something else.

“Stop!” she cries. “I get the stuff that happened three years ago. But what about all the lies Char’s fed me just in the past week? How about all the lies to everyone? Explain that!” East abruptly takes off down the hall and I dash off after her and grab her arm.

“Char wanted to tell you everything! The real story! From day one! The mothers made a pact to never tell you any of this, and they forced Char to swear to it—it was what
your
mother wanted. She said you had already been through too much. Don’t you see, East? In order to protect
you
, she sent Julius away. It was almost like a choice—between you and your brother. And she chose you!”

East’s eyes are brimming again, but she yanks herself free and breaks into a run. I take off again after her, but we both freeze as we round the corner. Abby is talking to Bitsy in the hallway in front of Teenage Waistland. They both spot us at the same time and watch as we approach. Mom’s eyes are red.

“What? What?” I screech, breaking into a run again. My voice is shaking in panic, my mind racing with all the possible reasons why she’d be here. It’s not Dad—we spoke just a couple of hours ago. And then, a vision of Jen standing alone in the middle of the city in the middle of the night crying for help pops into my head, and in the pit of my stomach, I just know.… Even before Mom wraps me tightly in her arms and murmurs, “Oh baby, thank God I got to you first.”

Jen’s plot is on a quiet hillside overlooking a mist-filled valley. There are only a few gravestones nearby. Inscribed on one is
JANE REDDING, 1915–2005
, and then below that,
LOST NOW, LOVED FOREVER
. The stone next to it reads
SAMUEL REDDING, 1919–2003, CHERISHED HUSBAND, FATHER, SON, GRANDFATHER
.

My dad isn’t buried near anyone we know. No trees or hillsides or valleys, just long rows of graves stacked tightly together as far as you can see. That’s about all I can remember of his final resting place—Mom never went to visit him and I was always too afraid to ask her to take me. I can barely even remember the funeral. Except how I traveled to the cemetery in the backseat of Crystal’s car with my head on Char’s lap the whole way. The hearse wouldn’t start in the funeral parlor parking lot, and my mom and Julius were inside waiting for someone to find jumper cables. I didn’t want to be by myself in the family limo parked behind my father’s coffin, so I got into Char’s parents’ car and stayed.

Char and I are standing under her big black umbrella at the second burial we’ve ever been to. The sheets of rain that pounded Abby’s Land Rover throughout our four-hour drive have stopped, but there’s a cold, light drizzle and water is running off the metal points of the umbrella onto my shoes—I’m fixating on the droplets that are wobbling around like liquid mercury balls on top of the black patent leather. Char’s wearing sandals, and there are globs of cut grass sticking to her heels and unpolished toes. We’re both struggling to keep our balance as our heels sink into the soft muddy ground.

People huddle closer around the graveside as Jen’s coffin is lowered into the ground. In this cold dense fog, it’s hard to make out Jen’s family and Marcie and her family in the swarm of raincoats. But it’s easy to hear them, even above the sixty or so people crying out from under their umbrellas, and the rabbi’s prayer that other mourners softly join. Jen’s mom is screaming, “My baby, oh my poor baby,” over and over again, and Marcie’s bent over heaving as if she’s throwing up. Abby and Liselle are clutching her, one on each side, and Marcie’s dad is holding her up from behind.

“Marcie looks terrible. So horrible.” Char sniffles.

“I know,” I say. I can’t stop sobbing. The balled-up used tissues I’m clutching are so soggy they’re falling apart, and I can’t find any more in my pockets.

“Here,” Char offers, ripping the last one in her pack in half. Suddenly the collective crying grows even louder. Jen’s dad throws a shovelful of soil into the grave and hands the spade to Jen’s mom, who just stands holding it limply until Jen’s dad puts his arm around her like he’s teaching
her to golf and guides the shovel into the dirt and then the dirt onto the coffin. Next, other relatives do the same, and then Marcie and her family. One by one, people silently step forward, slice into the mound of dirt next to the grave, and empty it. The sound of rocks and pebbles hitting wood fades as the grave gets filled. Char and I approach to take our turns with the shovel and Marcie, her face swollen and devastated, smiles weakly at us and mouths,
Thank you
. Then Char and I step carefully as we make our way back.

“That was so frightening,” I whisper. “Not just seeing the coffin get put in the ground like that, but filling the grave ourselves.”

“It’s a Jewish custom,” Char says in a hushed tone. “Liselle warned me that we might find it upsetting—that it’s
supposed
to be. The wisdom behind it, she said, is that when the mourners fill the grave themselves, it forces them to confront the reality of their loss head-on. It’s more painful at the moment, but it starts the acceptance, which starts the healing.”

I shrug. I confronted my father’s body dangling at the end of rope, but the only healing I’ve experienced took place in my incisions.

The burial is over and people are making their way down the hill to their cars when Char touches my arm. “What I did after your dad died was terrible, East,” she says. “I never meant to hurt you. Never. I hate myself. I was stu—”

“Please, Char. Not here.”

“Yes here!” she says, and stops walking. “
We
need to bury this! It was such a terrible tragedy, and I made it worse! I’m so sor—”

“Please! When you called to ask if I wanted to come along to Jen’s funeral to comfort Marcie, I told you that I didn’t want to talk about any of this. And then I told you the same thing in the car on the way up here. Now I’m saying it again. It’s done. I understand and I forgive you. Okay? Can we just let it lie?” I turn to head down the hill, but Char grabs my arm.

“It’s so not done, East! I know Marcie spoke to you, but how can you and I ever get past this if
we
don’t talk it out? I’m not trying to blame—”

I snatch my arm out of Char’s grip. “Blame who? Julius? Fine. Here’s what you get to blame Julius for, Char. You can blame him for bad judgment. It was the worst period of his life, he was drunk or high practically all the time, and he should have known better. If he wasn’t drunk, I’m sure he would have used better judgment. So stop apologizing.” Something moving on the hill behind Char catches my eye—it’s Marcie crouching by Jen’s grave. She’s all alone—everyone else is grouped in clusters on the hill or heading for the parking lot. Char turns and watches her with me.

“At least we still have each other,” Char murmurs, but I act like I don’t hear. I’m about to suggest we go up to be with Marcie when we spot Liselle making her way toward us.

“Are you girls okay?” she asks. We nod and Liselle nods back as she continues up the hill toward Marcie. “Oh—we’re going to stop briefly at Jen’s family’s house for a shivah call, and then it’ll just be the four of us driving back—Marcie’s spending the week with her dad.” She smiles tightly and walks on.

“I’m glad that Marcie has Liselle now,” I say softly. Char’s
eyes suddenly brim with tears, making them bluer and shinier than ever. The odd thing is, I just don’t recognize them. “I’m going back down,” I throw in.

“Shroud. P-please,” Char stammers. “Please just talk to me.” I don’t turn around. Suddenly, Char crashes into me from behind and grabs at my arm for support, but not before her knees have hit the ground. She starts crying.

“C’mon, Char, get up. You’re not hurt,” I say. I yank on her arm to help pull her up but she refuses to budge.