“Juanita Flood was admitted to Howard County General this morning. She has been beaten. And she says that she was raped by Davey Robinson last night.”
“Raped, beaten-no sir!-”
“Don’t speak any further, AJ. A lawyer is going to meet you at headquarters. I have advised Bash’s and Noel’s parents to bring attorneys as well, if possible. But they, at least, can sit in on their sons’ interviews. I have to recuse myself from yours. This is all-this is very complicated. You may go get dressed now.”
“Sir?”
“Yes?”
“Just now, when you talked to me-were you speaking as my father or the state’s attorney?”
AJ had hit on the same question I had, even if I hadn’t been able to articulate it. What was our father’s role in this? What was AJ’s role? Would his story help or hurt Davey? I didn’t know because I wasn’t sure what rape was. Something bad, but how bad?
“I am always your father, AJ. Always. If this goes forward-I’m not sure how it will work. My deputy will be there, monitoring all the interviews. Just tell the truth, tell them what you told me. Don’t lie. Don’t try to outthink this. Tell the truth and everyone will be fine.”
AJ left our father’s room. Quicker than I thought possible, my father entered my room through the hallway. He looked at me thoughtfully. I was sitting on my bed, but it had not occurred to me to pick up a book or make myself look busy. I probably looked as suspicious as any nine-year-old ever had, sitting on her freshly made bed, hands folded in her lap.
“I have to go out, Lu. AJ and I-we have to go out.”
“Okay,” I said, then wanted to kick myself. I should have said “Where?” or asked to accompany them. My ready acquiescence was even more suspicious. But my father didn’t seem to notice.
“I really shouldn’t leave you here alone, but-you’re big enough, I think. You’ll be ten in less than two months.” He seemed to be trying to think of the single most important warning he could give me. “Stay inside, don’t open the door to strangers. Don’t touch the stove.”
“I’ve been making my own hot dogs and soup since I was in second grade,” I reminded him.
“Not today,” he said. “There’s still plenty of leftovers. Eat those if you get hungry.”
“Even pie?” I asked. I always liked to spell out all the terms. “With Reddi-wip and ice cream if I want?”
“Sure.”
He called upstairs to AJ: “What’s taking you so long?”
“Ariel and I were supposed to meet to rehearse our duet for madrigals. I just wanted her to know I couldn’t make it.”
“Well, get a move on.”
I assumed they would be gone for maybe an hour at the most. After all, the conversation in my father’s room had taken very little time. But it would be almost 5 P.M. before they returned.
As soon as they left the house, I climbed the stairs to AJ’s room and looked up the word rape in the dictionary on his desk. It was defined as an assault. I looked up assault, which was defined as an attack. Stymied by the circular nature of these definitions, I headed to our father’s room, where he kept a big, old-fashioned dictionary on a stand. This was a marvelous book, with full-color plates that I loved to study-butterflies, flowers, the internal organs of the human body-but I ignored those today. I had only one thing on my mind: rape.
The act of seizing and carrying off by force. That was the first definition.
But Nita Flood had not been seized or carried off. This made no sense. She had been taken home after she drank too much.
It was the second definition that specified: To force a woman to have sexual intercourse.
But how could you force someone to do that? I honestly could not fathom this. I went into the bathroom and examined my own private parts. It seemed impossible to me that they could be accessed without my cooperation. Was that why she had bruises? Because someone had tried to force her body to have sex? My mind reeled. Soap operas, hours of The Big Valley-nothing had prepared me for this. A body would close itself to such an attack. It would have to.
Dinner was a silent meal that night, although not in an unhappy way. If anything, my brother and father seemed relieved, as if they had faced down something difficult and put it behind them. My father even opened a bottle of red wine and offered small glasses to AJ and me. I thought it would taste velvety and rich, like a deeper, sweeter grape juice. But it was vile and I ran to the sink, spitting out my mouthful. AJ didn’t like it much more, I could tell, but he swallowed his sip by sip, as if it were medicine.
“I don’t really care for alcohol that much,” he said.
“Yet you drink, sometimes,” our father said. “Why is that?”
“I-I don’t know.”
“Don’t be a sheep, AJ. Don’t do things just because others do them.”
“I’m not. I don’t.”
“Good.”
Davey was at school Monday morning. Nita Flood was not. No charges were filed. There probably would not have been a grand jury hearing if not for my father’s insistence. He wrestled with this decision. Given that he was sure of the outcome, he worried it was unkind to Nita Flood to make her tell her story again-and to be exposed, again, as a liar. But his son’s best friend had been accused, his son was a witness. He wanted to be as transparent as possible, to avoid any accusations of favoritism. He recused himself from the case, asking his deputy to convene the grand jury, which listened to the boys who were there, the ER attendants, Nita Flood herself. Ultimately, they no-billed Davey Robinson on the charge of rape. Because it was a matter for the grand jury, it remained private. Besides, the accuser and accused were minors, deserving of protection even in open court. Not a word about the case appeared in newspapers.
Of course, those records are available to a state’s attorney, so I have read them. The testimony of Davey, AJ, Bash, and Noel is consistent. They were having a party. Nita Flood came by, uninvited. She quarreled with Davey, but they made up, apparently having sex in Davey’s room. She insisted on playing a drinking game with them, a version of Monopoly in which people could choose to pay fines or drink, although the amount of the drink was relative to the size of the fine. AJ had told our father it was the game of Life, but I guess he realized later he misspoke, as he and the other boys all agreed it was Monopoly. Nita became woozy, they took her home. No one hit her. They were, according to them, exceedingly gentle with her. Their only failure, as gentlemen, was to leave her on the doorstep, terrified to come face-to-face with the fearsome Mr. Flood.
Nita’s testimony is, of course, different. She says she hitched to Davey’s house, bumming a ride from another mall worker whose name she didn’t know. She said she had not been drinking before she arrived. Yes, she went upstairs with Davey but she had told him she would never have sex with him again if he didn’t treat her like a girlfriend. He held her down-those were the bruises on both her shoulders-and forced her to have sex.
“Did you scream?” she was asked by the assistant state’s attorney, the closest thing she had to an advocate in the court.
No, she was too embarrassed. If she screamed, the other boys might come upstairs and she was naked below the waist. She wouldn’t want anyone to see that. But that’s why she began drinking, during the board game. Because she was embarrassed and she just wanted to forget what had happened. She remembered drinking-then waking up on her own front steps, vomit crusted on her top, in the corners of her mouth.
“What about the bruises on your face?”
“I guess they happened while I was passed out.”
“You think Davey-or the other boys-beat you for fun while you were unconscious?”