Vengeance(11)

“I can’t,” I replied. “It’s too much to deal with. But . . .”

“But what?”

“I was thinking about writing my grandmother a letter, letting her know that I’m alive but that I need space. I need to think all this through. As for them, it’s all their words against mine. No one is going to believe me. No one is going to believe that any of those boys would even want to be with me, rather less take it from me.”

Even at fifteen, I was aware that most rapes went unreported for a reason. Growing up, I had seen females who accused men of raping them end up being shunned and ridiculed, mostly by other women. I had seen celebrity men on the news get away with mistreating women like they were nothing. I had seen the most beautiful women destroyed after making such statements. And then there was me: a young, poor, deformed girl who had been fucked over her entire life. What was a gang rape or two added into the mix?

Hannah kissed me on the forehead. “Just think about it, but the letter to your grandmother sounds like a good idea. I have some stamps, so let me know. And please consider going back to school.”

“You can’t even register me for school, remember?” I stood up. “Not that I want to go back. I’ll figure out something.”

I wanted to go take a shower and try to calm down. I was still upset about the entire scene with Sebastian. I paused at the doorway to the bathroom. “Why couldn’t Sebastian call the police?”

Hannah had stood and was clearing away wineglasses and snack dishes. “Huh?”

“Why did Nigel say that it was common sense that Sebastian couldn’t call the police over here?”

“Oh . . .” She glanced at me. “Sebastian isn’t exactly walking on the right side of the law.”

“How so?”

“He’s a big-time drug addict.”

“Sebastian?” I couldn’t fathom it.

“Yes, Sebastian. You won’t see him offering to suck dick on the corner for a vial of crack or anything, but he is a serious cokehead. He’s a functional addict. Works full-time in his dad’s construction office and helps himself to extra cash out of the safe to feed his habit. Nigel probably knew Sebastian had some drugs on him tonight. That’s why he said calling the police was foolish. Popping one can of worms generally leads to popping several. Know what I mean?”

I nodded. “I guess you never know about people. He seems normal to me.”

“There’s no such thing as normal today. It’s the eighties, not the twenties. There is a sense of normalcy that people have accepted but nothing and no one is actually normal in the true definition of the word.”

I didn’t respond. I went into the bathroom, turned on the shower so the hot water could start making its slow trek up the pipes from the hot water heater in the basement of our dilapidated building, and stripped down to nothingness.

I gazed into the mirror covering the medicine cabinet and whispered, “I’m that chick,” even though I didn’t believe that.

After I was in the shower, I thought about what Hannah had said about nothing being normal but there only being each individual’s sense of normalcy. That was so true because all I had ever known was madness in my life. I was quite sure that most other children didn’t have to endure my pain. Then again, I was also sure that some had likely endured much worse. Some were no longer alive, taken away from here by one sick maniac after another.

Since arriving in New York, I had definitely seen and witnessed my share of “questionable things.” I hadn’t seen all the murders, rapes, arsons, and assaults that Hannah had referred to, but I had seen the hookers lining the corners beside the drug dealers, selling sex and crack or a combination if it was the order of the day. Some of the girls selling pussy looked even younger than me, and that truly made me sad. I understood them, though. They felt like what they were doing was better than the alternative—at least the ones who were not being forced into doing it. I couldn’t do anything to save them. Hell, I couldn’t do anything to save myself.

The Bronx had gone through a “white flight” phase where most of the white people in the area moved out once things turned ugly. That happened in a lot of cities. But Hannah was white and still there and her family was still somewhere around. I smirked as the water cascaded down my back and into the crack of my ass. Hannah wanted me to contact my grandmother but she refused to contact her own mother. I planned to challenge her: if she would contact her mother, I would contact my grandmother. Fair was fair.

By the time I got finished bathing, Hannah was knocked out over her bed—likely from a combination of wine, laboring in the kitchen, and being emotionally drained by her friends and me. I was exhausted as well so I made my little pallet on the sofa and entered my dream state of the same nightmares that I had endured since I was very young.