I FELT like I was going to an AA meeting, not a support group for survivors of violent crime. The flyer had been deceptively welcoming; I remembered the softness of Dr. Wagner’s voice when she told me about it, gently insinuating that going to a group is a viable substitute for medication—I’d be able to talk about my experiences with people who understood, she said. It was a good intermediary, she said. I’d be able to share more often than at the few meetings I’d been able to schedule with her.
My mother was a huge supporter of the idea from the moment she saw the flyer. I went along with it to appease her.
The activity room of the retirement home smelled musty, that cloying smell of dead skin, sickness, and lotion that clings to the elderly. It was the space rented out for AA meetings and NA meetings and anything else with “anonymous” in the acronym. It was a den of anonymity, with the occasional resident staring blankly with rheumy eyes as they passed the doorway, left open for any stragglers. Nurses kept their distance. Sometimes a confused Alzheimer’s sufferer would join in, the coordinator told me quietly. Sometimes their stories were the best of the night.
I was early, the first to arrive, and had to sit next to the coordinator to not seem rude. I sipped at burned coffee from a Styrofoam cup while she explained to me how this usually went. Her name was Beatrice, and she’d been mugged ten years ago in a Walmart parking lot. She had developed agoraphobia after the incident, scared to step foot out her door, until her over-the-phone psychiatrist convinced her to come to a meeting—and she’d been hooked.
“I’ve been a volunteer for almost five years now,” she told me proudly after telling me her story. “We usually get five or six people on Thursdays, but sometimes as many as a dozen.”
A timid man entered the room, pushing his sleeves up to his elbows and rubbing the insides of his wrists as he approached us. His glasses were sliding down his long nose, but he seemed not to notice. “Oh, hello, Liam!” Beatrice boomed. I winced; so much for anonymity.
“Neal,” the man corrected, and from his voice I surmised it wasn’t the first time the mistake had been made. He didn’t push up his glasses, but instead removed them and gave them a quick polish on his sleeve.
“Right, of course.” Beatrice turned to me, all white teeth and dimpled cheeks. “Liam, this is Corey.” I was surprised she’d gotten my name right.
“Nice to meet you, Neal,” I said, offering my hand for him to shake, as I’d done for Beatrice. He declined the handshake but seemed pleased I said his name correctly. He took a seat on Beatrice’s other side. There were four empty chairs, completing an intimate circle.
I quietly sipped my coffee while others filtered in. Within minutes there were three more of us: a girl with black hair down to her waist and a cast on her wrist, a man who walked with a limp but refused to be helped to his seat, and a woman with a bad blonde dye job who kept picking at her fingernails.
The man with the limp sat next to me, and I anxiously tugged down my skirt—a dark tweed one borrowed from my mother that still felt too short, even with nylons on. I felt like a child playing dress-up, but she had insisted I looked nice. Everyone else was wearing jeans, except Beatrice.
After another woman took the last place in the circle, Beatrice seemed to decide that it was time to start. We went around the circle and said our names. “Hi I’m Corey” was met with a chorus of “Welcome, Corey” and so it went. Beatrice asked how everyone was feeling, and again we went in a circle: “I’m doing okay” and “Just gettin’ by” type answers from everyone.
I watched the clock as everyone took turns talking about their days, sometimes mentioning the event that they’d survived but sometimes not. The girl with the cast, Paige, was probably a little younger than me and talked quietly about being assaulted at a high school party; she was the target of bullying, had been for a while, and it had finally escalated to physical violence.
“I can’t see an invite to an event on Facebook without thinking about it,” she said, rubbing her cast. “I keep thinking about—about being tied to the tree and—and I get these panic attacks, y’know?”
“We’ve all been there,” Beatrice said, and there was a murmur of agreement.
“I just keep thinking that I’m still tied up, that I was never found, and I feel claustrophobic, like my lungs are closing up, and I’m still trapped,” Paige continued, wiping at her eyes, and I felt a wave of sympathy for her. “I just keep thinking that I’m never going to feel safe again, not with them still out there.”
“They weren’t arrested?” I asked, and Paige shook her head.
“Three days’ suspension,” she said, then laughed. “I get a broken wrist, and they get a fucking vacation.” No one told her to watch her language. Everyone just nodded, understanding her frustration. It was rather refreshing.
Paige dug through her purse for a tissue and then blew her nose loudly. Beatrice took that as an opening to address me.
“There’s no pressure, Corey, for you to tell us what brought you here today,” she started, and I immediately felt the opposite. Everyone’s eyes were on me, the newcomer. “But this is a safe space, and the first step on the road to recovery is to share what happened to you. So, if you’re comfortable, why don’t you tell us a little about yourself, and see if maybe we can work up to that.”
I put down my Styrofoam cup and tucked it behind the leg of my orange plastic chair so that I wouldn’t crush it if I got angry again. “My name is Corey,” I said and then stopped, flushing with embarrassment. The group did the automatic reply of “Welcome, Corey,” although we’d already done introductions. “And I’m a freshman at McMinn. I skipped a grade,” I added when some of the adults looked surprised.
I lowered my eyes, examining everybody’s shoes. Neal wore white tennis shoes, polished clean. Paige had on a pair of black ballet flats. Dawn, the mother of two with the badly dyed hair, and Beatrice both sported black, heeled boots at the end of their legs, crossed at the ankles. The other woman, Lillian, wore Doc Martens, and the limping man, Dan, wore muddy cowboy boots.
How could I describe what brought me to this place that smelled of dying people and mashed potatoes? I closed my eyes and considered it. What I decided on was: “I witnessed a multiple homicide… the murder of my girlfriend, our two best friends, and a bystander,” a sentence that seemed to convey the severity of my experience without getting into details. I heard someone gasp a little, probably Paige. She blew her nose again as I continued. “They were shot by my girlfriend’s brother, and I have to testify at the trial.”
When I opened my eyes, a pair of gladiator sandals had joined the circle. Pink toenails, delicate ankles, bare feet despite the nip in the air. Who wears sandals in November? I hadn’t heard her come in, but I kept my eyes down, pretending not to notice as she dragged a chair into the circle. “So, um, that’s why I’m here. I have nightmares about—about checking my girlfriend’s pulse afterward, and being covered in their blood. I was hiding in the bathroom when it happened, so I guess I have survivor’s guilt.”
Gladiator sandals inserted herself between Neal and Paige. I looked up and locked eyes with her—familiar, startled green eyes in a round, pink face framed by a dark bob of brown hair. A spark of panic ignited under my collarbone, a little point of fire between my lungs.
“That’s awful,” Paige said. “I’m so sorry for your loss.” The rest of the group parroted the sentiment. Gladiator sandals murmured the words “Sorry for your loss,” her eyes wider than usual, the shock of recognition reflected in her delicate features.
“Valerie, welcome,” Beatrice said. “As always, better late than never.” She turned to me with the soft eyes of a mother and touched my shoulder delicately. I glanced between Beatrice and Valerie, the girl with the gladiator sandals.
“Valerie, welcome,” I said, feeling like an idiot. She nodded in acknowledgment of the mutual recognition. I know you and you know me, I thought. So much for anonymity.