In that deep sleep, in which my heart had barely continued to beat, at the very bottom of the marble coffin, I had been protected, safe. Almost I would think that Mr. Sandman’s arms had embraced me.
Vio-let Rue! Vio-let Rue!
You know, I love you.
He had never uttered these words to me, I was sure. Yet often I heard them, confused with voices at a distance. Muffled laughter.
“... what that terrible man did to you. Try to...”
But I did not remember. And Mr. Sandman was my friend. No one else was my friend.
Aunt Irma staring at me, disbelieving. Uncle Oscar, with repugnance.
For I would not testify against the abuser. My eyes were heavy-lidded, my voice was slow, slurred, insolent.
No. You can’t make me. I’ve said — I don’t remember.
There was a female police officer, questioning me. But I knew better than to make that mistake again.
A (female) gynecologist who would report no vaginal or anal penetration, no (physical) evidence of sexual abuse. A (female) therapist who would report probable extreme trauma, dissociation. Ms. Herne from the Children’s Protective Agency.
It would be held against me that I was uncooperative with authorities trying to establish a case of repeated and sustained sexual abuse against Mr. Sandman unless it might be argued that I was a victim, mentally ill, unable to testify against the teacher who’d drugged and abused me for a period of approximately seven months.
Mr. Sandman had been careful, fastidious. My clothes had been laundered — no DNA. (Except an incriminating trace would be discovered on my sneakers.)
If you don’t help to convict him he will hurt other girls, they told me. I thought — Other girls will be hurt whether Mr. Sandman is in prison or not. That is our punishment.
“Violet. No one is putting pressure on you...”
You are all putting pressure on me.
“... but you must tell us, you must take your time and tell us, all that you can remember. When did that man first...”
Ms. Herne was visibly upset. For (she believed) there’d been a special understanding between us, I’d known that I could trust her. And yet, I must not have trusted Ms. Herne for the abuse had been going on for months during which she’d met with me several times and there’d been no hint.
Of course, there’d been a hint. Plenty of hint. Ms. Herne had failed to detect, that was all.
And now with the (ugly, relentless) publicity in the local media it hardly looked as if Dolores Herne of the Port Oriskany Children’s Protective Agency had been very good at her job, one of her at-risk juvenile clients having been sexually abused, terrorized by a teacher, over a period of seven months and she had not noticed.
I’d thought — Not abuse but punishment. And not the worst punishment either.
10.
And what had happened to Arnold Sandman? He’d been in custody in the county jail. Wisely, he would not risk a trial. (The prosecutor was calling for a sentence of ninety-nine years.) Instead, Mr. Sandman would follow his attorney’s advice and plead no contest, and express contrition, and repentance, and shame for his crimes; and the presiding judge would sentence him to twenty-five to thirty years in the maximum-security prison at Attica.
A death sentence. Arnold Sandman would never survive Attica.
None of this was known to me, at the time. Though if I shut my eyes and began to drift in the rapid current that was always there, inside my eyelids, far below the Lock Street bridge, amid the churning writhing snakes of the hue of eggplant, there came Mr. Sandman to stoop over me, his face no longer jocular and mocking but contorted with grief.
Violet! You know, of all the girls I loved only you.
There came a timid knocking at a door. Aunt Irma asking please, could she speak with me?
Pulled the covers over my head. So that I could see Mr. Sandman more clearly. So that I could hear him more clearly.
At last the timid knocking ceased. Whoever was outside the door had gone away and left me alone with Mr. Sandman.
Brian Panowich
A Box of Hope
from One Story
Will sat on the front porch of the house, his feet tucked in close to his body. He’d been sitting in that spot, staring out into the yard, for at least a hundred years or so. He sat and watched both the ghost of his father and a younger version of himself playing tag football in the thick overgrown crabgrass. His old man purposely leaving himself wide open and slowing his movements to let his boy win. Will watched the figments of his imagination climb on the monkey bars that his father had spent a full two weeks yelling at while building piece by piece so many summers ago. The jungle gym started out as a huge flat cardboard box that a truck from K-Mart had dropped off in the driveway, but Will’s father slowly erected it into a steel fortress for them to climb and conquer together. Now it just looked like frail and rusted dinosaur bones — the carcass of some ancient dead thing that had chosen his front yard for its final resting place.
His father had died in his shop just behind the house — an aneurism in his brain. Will was fifteen and felt like he should have had a clear idea of what an aneurism was, but he didn’t, not really. He sat on those steps looking out at his memories and trying to ignore the fat man sitting next to him. The man’s mouth had been moving through every bit of the past hundred years Will had been out there, but his voice had shrunk to a hum that gave the ghosts a soundtrack of static. Will was almost thankful for it.
Almost.
He missed his father’s voice. He was beginning to believe he’d already forgotten the sound of it, and he considered that maybe this fat man’s words bouncing off the surface of his memories might just be saving him from breaking completely in half. He took his eyes off the ghosts and looked down at his brightly polished patent leather loafers. He traced the reflection the trees made in them with his finger. He thought about how he had never worn — or owned — a pair of shoes like this before. Why in the world would his mom spend what little money they had on these shoes, knowing full well he would never wear them again? She had been so adamant about it.
“You need to look respectful,” she’d told him in the middle of J. C. Penney while she’d pulled box after box of shoes off the rack, littering the aisle with tissue paper.
“How does a pair of shoes make you look respectful?” he’d said. How does a person “look respectful” in the first place? Will felt himself slipping into his own anger. He’d lost his dad two days before and was filled with just as much grief as his mother. At least he’d thought so at the time. These shoes felt so unimportant, but as he’d tried on a third pair — the pair he was wearing now — he noticed his mother fighting back her tears. She’d been hiding her own pain behind the shopping. That’s when Will loosened up and allowed her the small comfort those shoes seemed to bring her. “These are good, Mom.”
“Are you sure?” she said and wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. “Walk around some and make sure they fit.”
Will did and then sat back down on the little bench. He reached over to take her hand as she cleaned up the wads of tissue paper. “Mom, it’s going to be okay.”
She looked at him and answered him honestly for the first time without the facade of a protective mother. “No it isn’t, William. No it isn’t.” Then she broke down crying.