"That" Girl

How in the world could somebody not know whether or not they’d been raped? Before you judge me, you should know who you’re talking to. I was never that girl. You know, the one who goes out with friends, laughs in the hallway, or gets all the teen gossip. I was the girl who hid her smile (when I had one) behind a book. I was the girl who never talked; the one whose voice was barely louder than a whisper; the ghost. I was the girl who was always overweight and never on-trend; the one who wore adult-sized clothes in middle school, and always looked like an old woman; the easy target. I was the one who never got a valentine, never went to prom, and never had an in-person relationship longer than two months. So, when it happened, my first thought was it isn’t possible. My second thought was, whatever happens next, it’s your own damn fault.

Junior year wasn’t terrible, but it certainly wasn’t easy. Although Jacksonville, NC was my home town, I would be the new girl at White Oak High. My family had just moved back home after two years in Havelock. Although I liked this school better, I hated starting over. For me, starting over was particularly hard. At Havelock, I’d tried to lay low and fade into the background, which isn’t easy when you’re over 200 lbs. Here, I wasn’t sure what my survival plan would be. I’d already been through two years of floating by, now I wanted some fun and excitement. Social anxiety didn’t make that easy, though. Heck, making friends was a miracle. I remember whining to my mom one night as I was cleaning the kitchen.

“Nobody ever asks me out,” I said.

It was Christmas break, and I was bored. Most of my peers were out buying last minute trinkets for their significant others, and I was sitting at home.

“You haven’t even been here a whole year yet,” Mama said. “Give it time.”

I gave the typical teenage sigh, the one that says, “Just because we’re not going to talk about this anymore, doesn’t mean I’m letting it go.”

I finished cleaning the kitchen and went to bed.

Twist of Fate

The next day, mom and I took the kids (my younger siblings) out to lunch at our favorite restaurant. Once we got settled, we noticed there was a cute new waiter there, and apparently, he had his eye on me.

“Psst,” Mama said, pulling my attention away from the chimichangas I’d been drooling over on the menu.

“Yes,” I said, in response.

“The waiter keeps looking at you. I think he thinks you’re pretty.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Whatever, Mama.”

“No, seriously,” she said. “Just make convo with him when he comes back.”

I wanted to take her advice, but I had no idea how. Meeting people was always awkward for me. The kind of awkward where they say “hi”, and I say something erroneous like, “thank you.”

He came back to the table to take our order, and I couldn’t have been farther from having something to say.

“So,” mama said, striking up the conversation for me. “How long have you been here?”

“Not too long,” he said.

“Hmm, you must not have many people to show you around town.”

Considering I was a Jacksonville native, I assumed that was my segue.

“I could show you around town,” I said in a squeaky voice.

“Yeah, that would be fun,” he said. “Maybe we can go see a movie some time.”

He wrote his number down on a piece of paper, and before dinner was over, I texted him mine.

“I Can’t…”

He texted me back almost immediately and wanted to see a movie that night. I begged Mama for a solid half hour to let me go.

“He has to come to the house first,” she said, finally giving in.

“Great!” I said, taking what I could get. I was on cloud nine; I couldn’t believe somebody had taken an interest in me. Somebody actually, finally saw me.

It couldn’t have been more than two hours after we left the restaurant that he showed up at my house to pick me up. Mama wanted to know what movie we were going to see, but I hadn’t thought to even see what was playing.

“Uh, we’ll see what’s playing when we get there,” he said.

“Okay,” I said, following his lead.

We got to the end of the road, and he took a right turn. The movie theater was straight, but I thought maybe he knew another way to get there.

“So, you smoke?” He asked.

“Nope.”

“You drink?”

“No.”

Damn it, girl, you better come up with something. Otherwise, y’all won’t have anything in common, and you’ll be back to spending Saturday nights watching Disney movies with the kids.

“I mean, I’m not opposed to it or anything.”

He pulled into his driveway, which I thought was odd, but again, I didn’t question him.

“Stay here for a second,” he said.

Which brought me immense relief, he must’ve just forgotten something, I thought.

When he came back to the car, he opened my door, and said we were going inside for a few minutes.

Walking into the home, there were about three other guys there, but none of them were speaking English. When we made it to his room, he turned on a television and told me to have a seat on the bed. Not exactly my idea of going to the movies, I thought, but a movie is a movie. The t.v. was angled diagonally, so I had to lean back to see it, and when I did, he immediately leaned over and kissed me. I had no thoughts of where this would go. Instead I wondered, am I doing this right?

He didn’t seem to mind.

He was soon lying on top of me, hands reaching up my shirt, with no finesse. He simply grabbed my breasts as though they were his to grab. He took my shirt and bra off in a matter of mere seconds, and finally the warning bells went off.

“I can’t,” I said.

“You can’t what?” He asked. He paused momentarily before he resumed kissing my neck. “hmm?”

I froze.

As his hands roamed down abdomen, my inner voice screamed, “Stop this! Why aren’t you stopping this What the hell is wrong with you, girl?”

“I can’t.”

“Shh, it’s okay,” he said. “You’re okay.”

By now, all barriers of clothing had been removed and I began to panic. My thoughts ran wild. What is Mama going to say about this? What about your purity vows? How can you go to church after this? What if you get pregnant? You are the product of a teen pregnancy; don’t make the same mistake. Think of everyone you’re letting down. Stop this! Stop this right now! You have to stop this! Just get up.

“I’ve never done this,” I said, my voice barely more than a whisper. “I can’t.”

“Don’t worry. It’ll be okay, I promise.”

Is this what you wanted? I asked myself. You won’t be the invisible girl anymore, just a slut.

I felt his skin brush against my stomach.

“Uh, my phone,” I said. “I-I think I heard my phone.”

He glanced to his left, where my phone lay on the nightstand. “There’s nothing wrong with your phone.”

He kissed me again, and then I felt it:

The worst pain I’d ever felt in my entire life.

I pulled my legs toward me in some sort of effort to get them underneath him and push him away. It only caused more pain, and finally, I just laid there until he was done.

What Now?

I was still frozen solid when he finally rolled off me.

“Hey,” he said, noting my demeanor, “smile.”

How the hell am I supposed to smile, I thought, on the brink of tears. He handed me my earring, which I hadn’t noticed was gone, and I finally moved to get dressed.

“You know what I love the most about you?” he asked, staring at me as I put my clothes back on. “Your ass.”

He smacked my ass then, and I avoided his gaze as I finished getting dressed.

He took me back home, and we rode in silence the entire way. What was I supposed to say? I leaned away from him and into the cold, hard car door. What the hell are you going to do, I thought. How are you going to tell Mama? Are you going to tell Mama? Maybe you don’t have to. Maybe you can just pretend like everything is okay, and then it will be. Maybe this was an accident; he was overzealous, sure, but does that make him a monster? Could this even be considered rape? You didn’t do anything except lie there. You weren’t raped. What are you going to do? When we finally pulled into the driveway, I expected him to (and hoped that he would) just put the car in park and let me out. Instead, he made sure to walk me to the door, like he was suddenly some gentleman.

“So, how was the movie?” Mama after he left.

“Um,” I said, still battling whether or not to tell the truth. “We didn’t go to the movies.”

She looked at me inquisitively, and I searched for a snack in the fridge to dodge her gaze.

“We went to the mall,” I said, hoping to get out of the hot seat.

“Oh, okay,” she said. “So, what happened?”

“Well,” I said, slowly biting into the apple I’d grabbed from the fridge. “We just sort of walked around. He held my hand, and we talked about what we’re both into.”

She looked at me pensively and I wanted to either blurt it out or run out of the room.

“Holding hands?” she said. “That seems a little quick.”

You don’t know the half of it, I thought.

“It wasn’t long,” I replied. “I want to go take a shower and then maybe we can watch Teen Mom?”

“Okay,” she said.

A Conscious Decision

The second I turned on the water, I placed my thick bath towel over my face, and I broke down. You can tell someone, I thought. Just say it. I sat on the side of the tub as I contemplated what to do. I just wanted a place to cry, a place that would cover the sound my sobs, but I knew the second I got into that shower, I was making a choice to keep my mouth shut forever.

I got in.

You’ll be okay, I told myself. You’ll just act fine and soon you will be. And maybe he’ll call and actually take you out. This was just a mistake; you’re a human. All humans make mistakes. Besides, everybody’s doing it.

As the days went on, I found it harder and harder to pull of my façade. I couldn’t sleep; I always dreamed of him and what happened. And any second I had alone I cried, which meant I had to hurry up and clean myself up, because I couldn’t get caught. It’s funny how we trick ourselves into believing our own lies. I’d told myself that this was all just some misunderstanding; we’d lost control and made a mistake. Surely, he’d call, and we’d be able to start over. This time I’d be more assertive; I wouldn’t give in. It’d be like this little incident never happened.

I tried so hard to act normal, but my parents quickly caught on that I wasn’t okay. One night, as I was coming downstairs to get some water, my dad caught me off guard as he came around the corner.

“Oh my God!” I screamed, clutching my chest.

“What?” he said. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said, trying to catch my breath. “You just scared me.”

“Well, you’re scaring me,” he said. “You’ve been walking around for the past week looking like a zombie. What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I just got overwhelmed.”

He stared at me, not buying my story for a second.

“Dee said something about a major math exam coming up and I’m worried about it. That’s all.”

“If you need to take the ADHD medication, Shelly,” he began.

“I know. I know,” I said, cutting him off. “I’ll just study with Dee after break and if that doesn’t work, I’ll try the Adderall again.”

Even though this had nothing to do with managing my ADHD, I would have taken anything, done anything, to make the situation go away.

Too Heavy to Hold

My sisters had a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese’s, almost right next door to the restaurant I met hi at, and not too far from his house. I wanted to stay in my bed that day, but I knew that wouldn’t fit my façade. My parents left that morning to run some last-minute errands, and the second they did I went around closing any blinds that were open; I wanted to be alone and locked into a small, quiet space where no one could get to me. The birthday party started in the evening, and all morning I felt sick. I wanted to puke, but I couldn’t. I began to feel this pressure, like my world would collapse at any second.

I called John, one of the few friends I’d made at white oak.

“I feel crazy since that date I went on,” I told him. “Something happened and I need to tell somebody before I combust.”

“What’s up?” he said. “Tell me anything.”

“I think I was raped,” I said. “I don’t know, though. I didn’t fight. All I did was lay there and say, ‘I can’t.’”

“You have to tell your parents,” he said.

“I can’t,” I sobbed. “This is terrible. Dad just got home, and he has to leave again. How am I going to tell them this now? He’ll just be mad at me.”

“No, he won’t,” John said. “It’s not even your fault. You have to tell them, so they can help you. You can do it, just text me when you do, and I’ll encourage you.”

“Okay.”

Later, after the party, I found my mom folding laundry in her room. Creeping inside, I quietly asked her, “Mom, can I talk to you for a second?”

“Yeah,” she said, placing some folded towels in a basket.

I went and laid at the bottom of her bed, as I had so many times before.

“I feel like you’re mad at me,” I said, tentatively.

“No, I’m not mad at you,” she said, “but I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me.”

I’d left my cell in my bedroom, so there was no texting John for moral support; I took a deep breath instead.

“If I tell you, do you promise not to get mad?” I asked.

“Okay,” she said.

“We didn’t go to the mall,” I said, quietly. “We went to his house, and, um.” By this time, the tears wouldn’t be held back.

“Things went too far, Mom,” I said.

“Why didn’t you call me?” She asked. “I would’ve come and picked you up.”

“I don’t know,” I sobbed.

Epiphany

After the night that I told my mom what happened, it was a long road to any semblance of normalcy. A week later, dad went back to the war, and I had to go back to school. I never went to counseling, and I didn’t tell anybody except my close friends. After a few years, I quit trying to make sense of it, quit asking myself questions, quit judging myself, and just ignored it. My junior year of college I decided to take a sexual psychology class; I needed an elective and I figured that understanding the brain might help me write some more intriguing characters. To my dismay, the class was more like sex ed for college students with a psychological twist. But there was one good thing that I got from it: answers.

In the final unit of the class we reviewed sexual assault and the various ways that it can happen. For eight years I had been telling myself that I wasn’t raped because I didn’t fight this man off of me. Or, because I wasn’t fervent or assertive enough. I told myself that “I can’t” didn’t count as no. This class challenged that, and I could no longer ignore what had happened to me. I had to accept that I had been raped. A huge wave of contradictory emotions washed over me. I felt relieved. I didn’t have to berate myself any longer. I wasn’t some floosy who had no modicum of self-control. I wasn’t some passive little weakling who was too afraid to stand up for herself. I had stood up for myself. I said no, and it wasn’t my fault that he didn’t listen. As I began to accept that I had done no wrong in this situation, I also had to accept that I had been violated. I didn’t even know where to start.

Me Too

When I was raped, I assumed that I’d have to keep my mouth shut. Back then there was no such thing as the Me Too movement. When the movement began, I wondered what had prompted the women to come forward? Did they find healing or closure from sharing their experiences? For me, sharing this experience in such a public way has made me once again long for that small, empty room to lock myself into. This time, however, instead of faking a smile I glean strength from the thousands of others who have come forward with their stories, and I am encouraged to find my healing.