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Walking into the Humane Society, I feel all eyes on me. I go from the reception desk, past the infirmary, out to the kennels and Beauty—always my first stop of the day. She stands on her hind legs, sticking her white-trimmed nose through the chain-link fence, wagging her tail frantically.
“Hi, Beauty. Hi, girl,” I say, opening the gate to her kennel and walking inside. She runs in close circles around my legs. I kneel down and pet her, laughing.
“You’ve missed me, huh? Has anyone exercised you this week?”
She licks my face, not seeming to notice my lack of hair. I attach her leash and walk her out into the alleyway, where we go for a brisk walk. I used to have to urge her on, she would tire so easily. Now it’s as if Beauty has the stamina to walk forever. She sets the pace and I lag.
We walk past a trash barrel that has a crusty old jar of mustard sitting on top of other trash. Joey’s house, the table, the helplessness, Joey’s intrusion into my body, all brought back to me, in a flash, by a discarded mustard jar. I stop, leaning against a cement block wall. Beauty looks at me, confused by my sudden halt, then strains at the leash.
“In a minute,” I say, and she stands on her hind legs, her front paws on my upper thighs. She looks at me, wagging her tail, then gets back on all fours, again pulling at the leash.
“Okay, okay,” I say, starting off in a jog back to the Humane Society.
Sinclair walks past Beauty’s kennel as I’m putting her back. He stops.
“My God, girl. I didn’t even recognize you at first,” he says. “Love your hair . . .” He starts in a joking manner but his smile fades quickly. “Are you okay?” he asks.
I nod my head yes.
“When your mom called to say you wouldn’t be in last week she said you weren’t feeling well.”
“The flu,” I explain.
I see that Sinclair is looking me over carefully, the way he might a new animal who isn’t quite right, but no one knows exactly what’s wrong.
“Beauty’s looking good,” I say, anxious to direct attention away from me.
“I wouldn’t have given a nickel for her life when Antoinette first brought her in—you’ve done a great job with her.”
We both stand looking at the healthy dog who only a month ago couldn’t even hold her head up. Couldn’t or wouldn’t. Now she stands strong and alert, ears perked, tail wagging tentatively, hoping for another walk.
“I’ve got to get back to work. The volunteers’ schedule is a mess—glad you’re back.”
“Me, too,” I say, then walk back to the infirmary to see what’s needed for the health team today.
Dr. Franz does a double take when she sees me. “New groomer?” she laughs.
“Yeah,” I say, smiling.
She turns me around, checks out the back of my hair, then says, “It makes sense to me . . . let’s get to work.”
The time goes quickly—three cats spayed, four dogs inoculated, information recorded on charts, cages disinfected—it’s good to be busy.
At the end of the day when I go to Sinclair’s office to sign out he tells me he’s been waiting for me. He holds a set of electric clippers, the kind we use to clip the dogs with.
“Sterilized and everything,” he says. “Here, sit here.” He motions
to the high desk chair that sits in front of the computer.
At first I have no idea what he’s getting at, but when he drapes a towel around my neck it becomes obvious that he has plans for my hair.
“Let me just even this up a bit. I’m good with the scissors and shears.”
He takes the mirror out of the parrot’s cage and hands it to me. “You can watch,” he says.
“I don’t think so,” I tell him.
“Have I ever steered you wrong?” he says, pretending to be hurt.
I look at the raggedy lengths of my hair, and suddenly, real as anything. I see Joey’s image in the mirror, my hair long again, his hand wrapped in it, pulling.
“Well, have I?” Sinclair says.
“What?”
“C’mon, girl, stay with me here. Have I ever steered you wrong?”
“No.”
“Well, then, let me straighten the peaks and valleys of what was once your shining glory.”
What can it hurt? I don’t care, anyway.
“Okay,” I tell him, setting the mirror down on the table.
Sinclair runs his hands through my hair. “What happened to you?”
“I was tired of long hair.”
“So you just hacked away at it?”
“Exactly.”
Sinclair looks at me for a minute, puzzled, then he turns on the clippers. I close my eyes, hearing the buzz, like a swarm of mosquitoes around my ears.
“Better, huh?” Sinclair says, holding the mirror up in front of me.
“I guess.”
“No. Look! It is!”
He gets some hair gel from his bottom drawer and rubs some through my hair, making it stand on end. It’s no longer than Dr. Franz’s now.
“A fashion statement! I like it!”
I smile, not caring about a fashion statement but knowing
Sinclair is trying to help.
“Color would help,” he says. “Either total blond, or something bright, maybe a pink or chartreuse.”
“Right,” I say, taking off the towel and getting my backpack from my locker.
“Think about color!” Sinclair calls after me as I walk out the door and to the front parking lot where my mom is waiting.
––––––––
After dinner we’re all still sitting around the table when the phone rings.
“Erica, it’s Jenny, from the Rape Crisis Center,” Mom says.
I shake my head no, but Mom just keeps holding the phone out to me, so finally I take it.
“How’re you doing?” Jenny asks.
“Okay,” I say.
“How about if I come get you—take you out for a bite to eat or something?”
“I just ate,” I tell her.
“Well . . . I’d like to talk with you. When would be a good time?”
I pause, not wanting to commit myself but not knowing how to get out of it.
“Maybe tomorrow?”
“How about later this evening? Maybe around eight? It won’t take long.”
“Okay,” I say, not knowing what else to say.
Mom looks at me questioningly.
“She wants to talk to me,” I say.
Mom follows me back to my room.
“I’m glad Jenny called,” Mom says. I sit down in my desk chair and Mom stands behind me, rubbing my back like she used to do when I was little.
“I think it’s probably a good idea for you to talk with her . . .” She stops rubbing my back. “What happened to the picture of you and Danny you always had here on your desk?”
“I put it away.”
“Erica, I’m sorry. Honey, I know we’ve been through this all before and you don’t really want to talk more about it, but . . . Danny . . . he wasn’t involved in any way, was he, in the, you know, what Joey did to you?”
“No.”
“Well, what . . .”
“I can’t be with Danny anymore,” I say. And then, before I can get away from myself, lift out of my body and watch, a wave of sadness comes over me, body and soul, and tears pour down my cheeks.
Mom steps in front of me and pulls my head against her chest, petting my short, short hair.
“I’m so sorry this happened to you,” she whispers. “So. so, sorry.”
“He didn’t help me, Mom. I thought we loved each other. I thought we would always be there for each other, and he was so drunk he didn’t even know what was happening.”
Mom reaches over to my bedside table and hands me a bunch of tissue.
“I’ve thought about it a lot—it was just a pretend love.”
“What do you mean?”
“If someone loves you, they help you when you need help, right?”
“Right,” Mom says, rubbing my back again.
“Well, Danny was just like—he didn’t have a clue. I tried so hard to help him with his mom’s death and all, and then, when I needed him most of all, he wasn’t there . . .”
I gasp, trying to catch my breath, wanting to stop crying but not knowing how.
––––––––
Jenny arrives at exactly 8:00. She’s driving an old Volkswagen— beetle style. She takes me to the Tasty Grinder and orders an espresso. I just get a glass of water. We sit at a back table.
“I want to encourage you to start meeting with the group I lead at the YWCA,” Jenny tells me.
“Why?”
“You’ve been through a very traumatic experience. It helps to talk about things with other women who’ve been in similar situations.”
“You mean everyone in the group has been raped?”
“Well, or abused one way or another.”
“I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to forget it.”
“And how’s that going? Are you forgetting?”
“Most of the time,” I say.
“Those other times are the pits though, aren’t they?”
“Sort of.”
“Look, Erica. You’ll get past this more quickly if you work through some things in a group. Just give it a try. If you don’t like it, you can always quit.”
Jenny hands me a card with the times and places for group meetings.
I thank her for the card, even though I don’t plan on attending any meetings. Why keep talking about something that’s been done, that can never be undone? There’ll be plenty of time for that at the trial. If it comes to a trial.
––––––––
After I stay home from school for a week, my mom and dad have one of those long, insistent talks with me. What it boils down to is I either start getting myself to school or they’ll drag me.
April picks me up in the car her dad got her for Christmas. Any other time I’d be at least a little jealous—like I used to be over April’s very own state-of-the-art home entertainment system, and her very own telephone and answering machine. But now—nothing much touches me right now.
Everybody makes a big deal about my hair. That’s okay. Maybe it keeps them from seeing inside me. Maybe they won’t see the girl who’s been raped if they mainly notice my hair.
“Welcome back,” Ms. Lee tells me as I take my seat in English. “Did you get your hair cut?” she asks.
The whole class laughs but I think it’s a sincere question coming from her. She’s so involved in literature she barely notices real life. Maybe she’s got the right idea. Real life doesn’t seem so great to me right now.
“Come see me after class and I’ll tell you about make-up assignments.”
By the end of fourth period. I’ve got three pages of make-up
assignments to do.
Walking back from gym to Peer Counseling, someone down the hall yells “FAGGOT!” First, I freeze. Then the tears start. Without a plan, without a thought, I step into a narrow space between two temporary buildings. The tardy bell has rung, the halls are quiet, and I’m still standing there, sobbing, trying to catch my breath, while “FAGGOT” echoes in my head.
“What’s up?”
I jump at the voice of the campus supervisor.
“You’re a mess.” he tells me, and then makes a call on his Walkie-Talkie thing. “Joyce, can you meet me near the fence, between B-l and B-2?”
When Joyce arrives, the other guy leaves saying, “I bet this is a girl thing.”
Joyce walks me to the restroom and hands me some damp paper towels for my face.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“Nothing,” I tell her.
“Just out there watering the lawn with your tears, were you?”
“That’s it,” I say, all sarcastic.
“Come on. I’ll walk with you to the counselor’s office.”
“I’m okay now. I’ll just go to class.”
“Nope. You have to check in with a counselor first.”
Ms. Security walks me to the office, talks with Ms. Wong for a minute, then motions me inside.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Ms. Wong says. “I’ve been planning to call you in anyway.”
I suppose she means my slipping grades, or my recent absence, I don’t know.
“Tell me about your hair,” she says, looking me over carefully.
“There’s nothing to tell. I just decided it was too long . . . Can I go back to class now?”
She smiles. “Then tell me what brought you to tears this afternoon.”
It’s not that I don’t like Ms. Wong. It’s just that, right now, I’d rather keep my problems to myself. I wish there were somewhere I could go, a cave or something, where no one would know where I was, and no one would be asking, “What happened to your hair?” or “Are you okay?” or any of that well-meaning stuff that I don’t know how to answer.
“Erica? You were crying?”
“I can’t exactly explain it,” I say. And that’s the truth.