chapter 16 | house no. 7

August, 1993

John has been gone for eight days. As much as I would like to cower, hide, and wallow in self-pity, there is no time for my pain. Today has not been an exception to the drudgery of life. Wash, clean, play nurse, work, moderate sibling rivalry, repeat. I now sit on the sofa, some soft piano music in the background, and stare at the wall. I’m drained.

The phone rings.

Why didn’t I unplug it? Stupid, stupid, stupid. I hate the phone, hate it with a passion but I can’t let it ring, or it will wake up the kids. I stand there, heart racing, staring at it across the room.

Ring. Ring.

Please, please, please let it be John. I jump for the phone before it can ring again. “Hello?” I say, trying to keep that tinge of fear from my voice.

“Ellen? Is everything okay?” It’s Jennifer, my friend. Relief rushes through me. Just Jennifer.

“Jennifer! So good to hear from you,” I say, my held breath rushing outwards as I speak.

“Sam told me that John’s been gone on a training flight for a few weeks. He said there was some trouble at the beginning, and they’ve been re-tasked en route. So I thought I’d call and see how you’re doing. . . . Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine—I just had to run to get the phone. I was in the bathroom,” I lie.

She giggles, an honest, sweet sound. “Oops, sorry about that.”

“No problem! I was just washing my hands anyway.”

“Oh. Well, I was wondering if you’d like to come over for coffee tomorrow. You could bring the kids if you want, it won’t be anything fancy. Just you and me.”

It’s like a lifeline to a drowning woman on her last gulp of air.

“Sure! You don’t know how much I’d love that. I’ll try to get a sitter if I can.” I need to get away from the chaos of my house. I love the kids dearly—really I do—but I so need a break.

“Around two tomorrow afternoon? Sam is home, and he’s planning to take Josie for a walk to the park after her nap.”

Josie is Sam and Jennifer’s two year old. Oh how I miss the napping days!

“Two sounds perfect.”

“Okay, well, just come, you hear? Don’t bring anything but yourself and your kids if they’re coming.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I joke.

“Good . . .” she pauses for a minute. “Are you sure you’re okay, Ellen?”

“I’m surviving, Jennifer. The best I can be after more than a week on my own.” I fail miserably at keeping the despair from my voice. I hope she doesn’t hear it.

“Chin up, girl,” she says. “He’ll be home before you know it.”

“I hope so.”

We say our goodbyes, and I go back to staring at the wall, not bothering to hide the tears on my face.

No one will see them anyway.

I manage to secure our babysitter for the afternoon, and decide to walk rather than drive over to Jennifer’s. It’s a sunny, hot summer day, and the birds are singing as I walk down the crumbling sidewalk toward her street. The military powers that be (or rather were) lacked imagination when setting up the quarters here. John and I live on Tenth, and Jennifer and Sam live on Eighth; no flowery street names, just the bare essentials. Weeds grow between the cracks in the sidewalk, but in spite of its neglected look, life blooms everywhere in our little corner of the world. Kids bike, dogs bark, and birds sing. I meet Sam on the street with Josie in the stroller. He smiles kindly and Josie mouths her sippy cup.

“Go on in. Jennifer’s waiting,” he says, but doesn’t stop.

I knock, and Jennifer opens the door mid swing as I go to knock again.

“Ellen,” she says, without a trace of high-pitched fakery, “I’m so glad you could come.” She looks nice, but not perfect. Her nails aren’t done, her hair is pulled back in a common-sense ponytail, and her clothes, though brand-name, are loose and comfortable. It’s such a soothing relief from so many posing, magazine-model, rank-conscious wives I know.

“I’ve got coffee on, and I managed to whip something up really quick for a treat.” She points at the counter where sits a very obviously store bought coffee cake.

I laugh, “You shouldn’t have!”

“I know, I slaved all day.” She wipes her brow in exaggerated exhaustion. “Those little walnuts are a bugger to dig out of their shells. And I nearly burnt the caramel sauce! Coffee?”

“Please.”

We take our coffee and cake out to the back patio, which consists of a few patio stones thrown half-heartedly over grass. Laundry blows from her line, a few scrabbly flowers poke from the tired dirt, and a baby pool lies within arm’s reach of the table. An asphalt walking path separates the back of her yard from the one across from it. It’s all so . . . normal. Relaxing. Like I walked into my own back yard. I want to hug her.

We sit down on the simple patio chairs in the shade of the house. It’s really hot back here, so hot that I slip my long-sleeved over-shirt off and hang it from the chair, enjoying the breeze on my limited bare skin. Jennifer has brought out a pitcher of ice water. I relax into the chair, and close my eyes.

“So, Ellen, . . . how are you?” she asks.

“I’m fine,” I say, opening my eyes again and trying to look like someone who hasn’t been raped in the past week.

She frowns. I’ve been doing this routine for what, ten years? And a friend who’s spent barely twenty-four hours with me in total can see through my façade. Not good.

“Really? ‘I’m fine’ is something someone says when they don’t want to talk about something.”

Maybe I don’t, I think. What I say is: “Really, everything’s as good as it can be with John away and three wonderful, but emotionally-draining, children to look after.” There. That sounds realistic.

I sip my coffee slowly and try for a smile.

“Yes, that would do it for most people,” she says, and I hope I’ve fooled her.

“How about you? How are things with Josie? Sam must be busy at work, with a whole crew gone for almost a month.”

“Yeah, this is the first weekend this summer he’s had off. And he’s still carrying the pager. We were hoping to go camping or something with Josie, but no luck. She’s pretty good, but she still gets up during the night. It’s exhausting.”

I’ve sidetracked her for the time being. Like every mom with kids at home, she loves to talk about her children. And like every military wife, she likes to compare spousal horror stories. We don’t try to outdo each other, we share to let the others know they aren’t alone. The true, realness of the moment relaxes me more than anything else could. I’m myself, just for a moment, coffee and ice water and conversation acting as medicine for a tired, broken soul.

After two cups of coffee, my bladder is so full, I feel like I’m going to burst. I excuse myself and head to the washroom. As I stand up, the breeze catches my tank top, flapping it against my back. I must wince as I move toward the door.

“Ellen?” Jennifer says, stopping me before I get there.

I turn to see what’s up.

“Ellen, what happened to your shoulder?”

My heart rate explodes. Surely there’s nothing on my shoulder. Surely.

I turn to look, but of course I can’t see my own back.

“My shoulder?” I ask.

“Yeah, there’s a huge black bruise.”

I twist again, pretending to look for what she’s talking about. I feel sick. There can’t be a bruise. Why in the hell did I take off my shirt?

She walks toward me, and touches me gently on my shoulder blade, just where it peeks out from my tank. I can’t help but wince. It hurts.

Damn.

The look on her face terrifies me.

“I . . . I must have hit it on the door frame,” I say, trying to cover up the fear that is ballooning under my diaphragm. No one can know!

But to my never-ending relief, she buys it. Or at least, I think she does. She looks at me funny, but says nothing else.

“Oh, I do that all the time,” she says. God bless her. “And the kitchen counter. I always have a bruise right here from whacking that.” She points to the bone on the front of her hip. Some nursing student part of me mentally spews out the name—anterior superior iliac spine.

“Oh, me too,” I say.

The shock of Jennifer’s comments coming on the heels of my over-full bladder is not a good combination. I really have to go, and I say so. I hope she takes the desperation in my voice as bladder tension, not cover-up.

“Oh, yeah,” she says with a half-hearted tone, but she’s still looking at the bruise. “You know where the bathroom is.” Our houses are mirror images of each other. Every house in this block of quarters has the same basic layout.

I laugh, a strangled, fake sort of laugh, and nod. “Be right back,” I say, and escape to the safety of her house.

I practically run to the bathroom, and when I’ve done what I needed to, I twist myself around so I can just see my back in the mirror. Sure enough, a brilliantly colored bruise peeks from beneath my flimsy tank top and stretches diagonally upward to the corner of my shoulder blade. The edges of the bruise are bright red and scabbed, where the force of his belt dug into my skin. With even more horror, I also see marks I hadn’t even known were there. On the backs of both of my arms are four small, oval bruises.

Fingerprints. Very obvious fingerprints. His fingerprints. On my skin.

Oh God. And Jennifer has seen them.

What must she be thinking? Does she think that John put those marks on me? She must because how could she know about him?

It’s cool in the bathroom, but I am covered in sweat, standing here gawking at my own arms like they belong to an alien.

“Ellen?” Jennifer says from the kitchen, and I jump. “Would you like some fresh coffee?” she asks, her voice sounding just the slightest bit forced.

Coffee. She’s asking me about coffee, not rape. There’s no way she could know.

“Oh, sure!” I say. “I’ll be right out!”

She can’t know. She can’t.

I flush the toilet and wash my hands, splashing some water on my face as well. I’ll just act normally, and she won’t ask anything. I’ll put my shirt back over my tank. I’ll smile and chat and go home.

I nod at my own instructions and open the door.

When I get to the patio, I put on the famous military-
happy-happy smile and act as if the world is a lovely place. Jennifer doesn’t even look at me, she’s watching the kids on the other side of the path. They are blowing bubbles with dish soap, running and catching them. Their younger sister is slathering suds on her bare belly.

“The coffee will just be a minute.” She says without looking. We sit there and quietly watch the neighbor’s kids. A normal day in a normal backyard. I quietly slip my arms into my shirt, even though the temperature has gone up about five degrees already.

When the kids run around the corner of their house, Jennifer turns to me, her face serious. The noise of the children fades away. Even the crickets are silent.

“It wasn’t John, was it?” she says. It’s more of a statement than a question.

I try to look like I don’t know what she’s talking about.

“The marks. On your back and arms. They aren’t from the door frame, Ellen.”

Tears burn my eyes, and I will them not to fall. Her gaze is strong, but kind, it’s killing me, digging into that deep part of my being that I’ve been fighting so hard to hide. The part that knows I should have fought back. The part that knows I’m a coward.

“Jennifer, please . . .” I whisper.

She doesn’t look away, doesn’t give up.

“There’s more aren’t there? More marks? More bruises?”

I say nothing. I don’t nod. If I acknowledge the pain is real, it will hurt even worse.

“Whoever did that to you should be stopped. Was it John?”

No, not John. Kind, loving John. I shake my head quickly. Several tears fall from my eyelids and slide down my face.

“I didn’t think so.”

I sniff. I want to leave, escape. It hurts too much to even think about how those marks got there. I can never tell anyone. I need to go.

“I have to go,” I say quickly. I stand up and look toward the door.

She reaches out and grabs my hand. “Ellen, no. Don’t go. Please . . . I want to help.”

I pull my hand away. “You can’t help. No one can help. I have to go.”

“But . . .” she reaches out again, but I’ve moved out of her reach.

I think, just for a moment, about how good it would be to tell someone, to get this hideous, awful secret off of my chest. But even telling someone wouldn’t free me of the guilt, the self-disgust, and the pent-up emotion seething deep in my bones. If I tell her, she’ll look at me with pity—pity I don’t want; pity I don’t deserve.

“Jennifer, you can’t tell anyone,” I whisper, looking frantically around for eavesdroppers. “If you’re my friend at all, you’ll keep this quiet. Not even Sam can know!” I hiss.

“But, Ellen!”

“Not. Even. Sam.”

She nods. “I won’t tell Sam, I promise. Just tell me what I can do. Are you in danger? Is . . . is he here, on base?” She automatically assumes that it’s a guy that has done this to me, that no woman would be so cruel.

I shake my head. “No,” I say, “he’s gone. Not here.” I sniff again, and wipe away the tears on my cheeks.

This satisfies her for a moment and I take another step backward. “Look,” I say, “he’s not here, and . . . I don’t . . .”

I want to tell her. I want to open my heart and let it all out. Get this awful, hideous, debilitating secret off my chest. Maybe if I told her I could catch him. She could help me. I could make him hurt like he hurt me. We could stop him—make him pay.

“Ellen, you can tell me anything,” she says. “Stay. I’ll listen.” She reaches out and grabs my hand again before I can go any further. I let her.

“It wasn’t John. John would never . . . It wasn’t . . . ” I look around us. There are open windows everywhere, listening ears and people that could hear.

“Come into the house,” she says, sensing my discomfort. “You can tell me there. No one will hear. I promise.”

What if Sam comes back?

No, this is a burden I must deal with on my own.

I shake my head. “No, Jenn. I have to go.”

She smiles then, a sad, still smile that barely reaches her eyes.

“It’s okay, Ellen,” she says. “I’m here, though. If he comes back . . . let me know okay?”

She means it, I can tell. And I know right now that if he did come back, I would tell her . . . and she would listen.

“I will,” I say, but I turn away from the first lifeline I’ve seen in ten years.