“Fuck you!” she cried. She hunched herself onto her knees so she could stand. But a foot in her back knocked her down again.
Joe said, “Fuck us? How ‘bout fuck you?”
“Yeah! Good idea!” said Ricky.
Joe rolled Tony over onto her back. She kicked out with her feet and clawed at his face but Ricky kicked her in the head and her vision was shattered for a few moments. It flew away like pieces of a broken window blowing apart in a tornado. She blinked, squinted, tried to see, but all she could do was feel.
Feel one of the boys unzipping her jeans and tugging them down around her ankles. Feel the other snatching her hands and holding them up over her head, pressing them roughly to the pier and sitting on them with all his weight.
She bucked, but the boy on top of her jammed his knee into her gut and drove her breath out again. She tried to order him off but the words would not come.
“Show you who’s boss!” cried the boy over her, it sounded like Joe. “Cut my leg? I’ll show you. I got a big ole poker to stab you with! What’d you say, Ricky, yours may be sharper but mine’s longer! That was a good one.”
Tony bucked. Another blow to her stomach and vomit raced up into her mouth. She gagged and spit. Her legs were thrust apart then, and someone climbed between them. There was laughing and panting, and fingers strumming her cunt, her clitoris, and then jabbing up into her core.
She screamed and drew her legs together but another fist went into her gut yet again, and again remnants of her last meal rocketed into her mouth, vile and sour.
“Here you go!” Something hard, hard, and fleshy now, wider than fingers, poking at her opening, and then jabbing inside, tearing, hot and persistent. Again and again.
“Me, next!” came the voice from above.
“No!” she cried. “Fuckers!” A sob, a scream.
But it went on. And on.
38
Sponge Bob was over. Angry Beavers was on, the critters chattering and arguing over what they would have for dinner, wood-chip beef on toast or cellulose casserole, whatever cellulose was. Mistie had turned onto her other side when the new show came on. At home in the trailer, Daddy would come and change the channel when Angry Beavers started, so this was the first time Mistie got to see the whole thing. If this was a Saturday, Princess Silverlace would have been on but it wasn’t a Saturday Mistie didn’t think.
The teacher had gone in the bathroom with the girl a long time ago. The girl had come out and had left but the teacher was still in the bathroom. There was water running in the bathroom. Mistie knew not to go into the bathroom with a grownup had the water running even if the door was open. One time Mistie had gone in the bathroom when the water was running and Daddy and Mama were in there and although Mistie didn’t know what they were doing, they were really mad and chased her out. She got a spanking later that night from Daddy. Her bottom had burned like fire until after Mama went out and then Daddy kissed it to make it better.
Mistie had to go to the bathroom, but not too bad, she could wait a little longer. Maybe the teacher was almost through with her shower.
A commercial came on the television. Pizza Hut, the Edge. Mistie remembered eating at Pizza Hut in Kentucky when Valerie was still alive. There wasn’t a Pizza Hut in Pippins, though. She liked Pizza Hut because the waitress was nice and the cups the root beer came in were plastic with children’s faces on it, and Valerie and Mistie had gotten to take them home. They cracked later and had to throw them away.
The commercial ended, and another came on about some car that could drive really fast in the desert. It ended, too, and the Beavers were back. Mistie scratched her nose with her bound hands, and then rubbed herself. Daddy rubbed her when Mama wasn’t home. It was the only time he didn’t yell at her, when he was rubbing her.
The water in the shower kept on running.
39
She remembered.
A cold Christmas. Their first Christmas in Pippins.
Kate, Donald, and Donnie had moved to the brick manor house in September, two weeks after Kate had finished her final master’s of education course at Georgetown University and had presented her thesis, “A Study on an Apparent Relationship Between Certain Religious Persuasions and Developmental Delay.” The title had scared the shit out of some of the university administration and had brought a chuckle from Donald. The paper explored a connection between off-shoot fundamentalist denominations and the higher rate of children in the public school programs who showed symptoms of developmental delay and the emotionally disturbance. Kate had been discrete and careful; her intent was to get her degree and be done with it, not stir up any major academic dust. She concluded that it was more the home life and the economic status of the children in these single-church denominations as opposed to the religious teachings. Kate didn’t believe that was the total truth but a politically correct paper was more in line with what she needed to have to get her degree, and she did win the degree. Signed, sealed, delivered. Put into a nice, oak frame. Now, Donald would look at her and see two degrees instead of one. Something she could look at and feel a little pride.
Christmas at the McDolen estate was celebrated with a holly wreath on the door, white candles in every window of the sixteen-room house, a small Douglas fir with white lights in the living room with a porcelain nativity scene beneath, and a large blue spruce in the family room. The holly wreath, white candles, Douglas fir and nativity were there because that was the way Donald’s mother had always done it. The citizens of Southampton County expected to see that wreath and those lights as they drove up and down Route 58 on their merry holiday ways. The spruce in the family room was multi-colored, more of jumble than show piece, covered in lights that twinkled and some that didn’t, expensive glass balls, plastic Disney figures, and strands of painted popcorn that Donnie had sewn together when he was four. That was the way Kate had always done it. She was determined to keep something of her own in that blasted house.
It was during this festive season that Kate was introduced to the wealthier citizens of Southampton County. Donald and Kate hosted a “Winter Banquet” to which a select many flocked — Donald’s new business friends, old money who had socialized with the McDolens since the 1920s, assorted local politicians and state legislators. It was pleasant enough, but Kate was tired with it after the first two hours. Cocktails and small talk were interesting for only so long, and soon she found herself wanting to retire to the family room to watch the blinking and unblinking rainbow of lights on the spruce tree and curl up under a blanket. Donnie had already disappeared from the scene in his sport coat and tie, up to his room to listen to his CDs.
Kate and Donald had had elegant parties back in Richmond and Alexandria, but nothing to the scale of this bash. At one given time Kate counted seventy-two guests. There were scads of new names for Kate to remember, family connections to digest, gossip to promise to keep secret, private little Southampton in-jokes she tucked away mentally to ask for an explanation of Donald later on.
As Kate tried to keep attention on a one woman’s rambling, White Shoulders-scented discourse on the history of her father’s tobacco growing endeavors in Southampton, she found her thoughts wandering to Alice and Bill, up in Canada with their pets and their children, in their hippie shirts and hippie beads and myriad causes. For the first time in years, she missed them greatly.