Antonia's Choice (34 page)

I left Ben with Yancy until morning, and for the second night in a row, I sat up until the sun rose. I couldn't have slept if I'd tried, and I couldn't just lie in the bed and let the visions of my own sister molesting my little boy run through my head, not yet.

So I stayed up and I tried. I talked to Jesus…no, I begged. I slammed my face into my pillow and wailed for help. I hugged my knees and rocked back and forth and gave voice to despair until I was hoarse. And then I cried.

At dawn I made tea from generic bags and sipped it from the mug Ben had painted for me for Mother's Day. Huh. Being a mother was not what anyone had told me it would be, certainly not what I'd imagined when I'd found myself pregnant. In fact, nothing about my life or Ben's was unfolding in a way anyone would have dared suggest. I—independent Antonia Kerrington Wells—would never have predicted this kind of loneliness for myself.

Suddenly, for the first time since I'd left Virginia, I longed for Chris's arms around me.

Not for his attorney's rationale explaining this all away. Not for his stubborn denial or his fear or his one-track desire to bring me back to our old, unhealthy way of life.

I just wanted his arms.

I called him at six to tell him about Wyndham's disclosure. There was no answer, so I left a message for him to call me. The fact that he wasn't home at that hour on a Sunday morning erased the desire to be held by him. I didn't dwell on where he could possibly be.

I met Yancy and crew at church and brought Ben home with me after the service. He was testy—wouldn't eat his lunch even though he himself had selected peanut butter and jelly and had specifically requested that it be cut into triangles. I knew it was probably because I'd left him so much over the weekend, but I didn't let that stop me from doing what I realized I had to do.

Around two o'clock he was playing relatively peacefully in his
room, tying a long string from every conceivable knob and hook to another until the place looked like a giant spiderweb. I made him sit down on the floor with me, my head bent beneath the string-web, and I told him listening to me for just a few minutes was in the box right now. It was only because there is God that he nodded and waited for me to speak.

“I'm so sorry about what's happened to you,” I said. “I know about Uncle Sid. I know about Aunt Bobbi. I know about Wyndham and all the things they did to you. I will do everything I can to make the hurt go away, and so will God. We can both imagine Jesus giving us big old hugs and telling us it's okay.”

His brown eyes grew round. He wanted to glaze them over, I could see that. I had to get it all out before I lost him.

“Please believe me, Ben—I will never ever hurt you. I will protect you, no matter what happens. I know I didn't before, but now I know things I didn't know then. Let me be the one to take care of it now. You don't have to anymore.”

He watched my face for a moment, the way a baby does before he decides whether to reward you with a smile or scream his head off.

“Is that all?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Can I go play now?”

“You can. But first tell me whether you understand everything I just said.”

Slowly, he nodded, the cowlick bobbing the way a little boys cowlick should bob.

“Okay?” I said.

And he answered, “Okay.”

The rest of the day, all night, and throughout the next afternoon—as I explained over and over to customers what civet of piglet was and stuffed the resulting tips into my apron pocket—I pondered what I'd said to Ben. I had to, because I had no idea where it had come from.

I knew
how
it had come—from staying up Saturday night and
putting everything aside but my responsibility to my son and pulling up whatever trust in God I could muster.

I thought at that point that I had already given up everything I could give up—a prestigious career, a palatial house, a luxurious car, a hefty stock portfolio, a lifestyle that required no manual labor. And in essence, I'd given up my own idea of myself. I'd sacrificed it all for Ben's healing.

And then suddenly there was more I had to throw away: my homicidal anger at Wyndham and Sid and Bobbi and Mama and Chris; my need to get revenge; my desire to turn my back on the whole thing and pretend it had never happened. Now I couldn't fantasize about lopping off Sid's privates or Bobbi's fingers. I couldn't spend hours venting to Reggie and Yancy about my mother's idiocy or Chris's ignorance. I could no longer give in to those urges because I had to focus even more on my child—who had experienced more abuse in just a few months of his young existence than most people do in an entire lifetime.

At that moment when I sat down on the floor with Ben and let unplanned words pour out of me, I knew an old Toni had died—and God had created a new one.

I finally knew what it meant to be born again.

The second it hit me—as I was headed for Table 7 to greet my next set of diners—I turned over that new life to a God I knew was real. Real in the person of Jesus Christ. It was as natural as breathing.

That could have been why I didn't drop my order pad as well as my teeth when I saw who my customers at Table 7 were. I would have known that bald head anywhere—and the set of health-club shoulders across from it.

“Mr. Faustman, Mr. Marshall. Welcome to La Belle Meuniere.”

I took great delight in the fumbling and sputtering that went on as Jeffrey Faustman and Charles R. Marshall looked up in bewilderment from their menus. I wasn't sure whether it was the fact that I was their server or that they didn't understand a word they were reading that had rendered them speechless, quipless, and suaveless. Didn't matter. I simply smiled and said, “May I recommend the civet of piglet?”

They blinked at me as if they had no idea who I was. In truth—they didn't.

None of that meant I didn't grieve during those two days. My sadness for Ben came in waves, most of which knocked me completely down. So I decided that since Wyndham seemed to be doing well with journaling about her feelings, I should try it, too. While Ben was in his session with Doc Opie that afternoon, I took myself to the Dollar Store and bought a couple of blank books. They had garish covers, but I figured Yancy could help me come up with some amazing way to re-cover them so they looked more like me.

Just buying them gave me a momentary and uncanny peace, and I still had it going on when I returned to Doc's office to pick up Ben. It only lasted until Alice said Doc Opie wanted to talk to me when he was finished with Ben. The anxiety slammed right into me again, and it only got worse when Opie brought Ben out. The doctors face was so pale, his freckles looked three-dimensional.

Ben didn't look at me when he said hi, and he hurled himself straight for the toy box.

“Can you hang out with Alice for a few minutes?” Opie said to him.

“Uh-huh,” Ben said.

“You tell her if you need something.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why would he need something?” I said to Doc Opie as the door closed behind us. “What's going on?”

He didn't even wait for me to sit down. He propped himself against the wall, still standing.

“Ben disclosed two very vivid memories to me today,” he said. “Unsolicited by me—and he related them verbally. Just, bam, he wanted to talk.”

“You can't tell me exactly what he said.”

“I can. He gave me permission. That's a really good sign in terms of his relationship with you.”

“Then why do you look like somebody just died?”

“Because no matter how sure I've been that a child has been abused, when he tells me himself, I always feel like I've just been kicked in the gut.”

Doc Opie did indeed look like a kid who had just emerged the loser from a schoolyard brawl.

“Do I want to hear this?” I said. “I didn't have a chance to tell you what my niece disclosed over the weekend.”

“About her mother?”

I felt myself go cold. “Then it
is
true.”

Opie nodded sadly. “Two molesters—two different kinds. From what I could gather from Ben, the uncle was violent and threatening. The aunt was gentle.”

“Gentle molestation. Isn't that an oxymoron?”

“It's as disturbing as the violence because even though she was behaving in a gentle manner, the sexual contact was still abusive. She viewed her wants as more significant than the child's needs. She acted as if what she was doing were a nice thing, but he knew it wasn't, so he has confusion thrown in there with the shame and the guilt and the anger and the self-hatred.”

“Did he tell you the whole story? Does he really remember?” I was shaking my head, willing his answer to be no. The thought of Ben recalling this hideous nightmare was appalling—given the fact that I couldn't even stand to think about it, and it hadn't even happened to me.

“What he remembers is very clear,” Doc Opie said. “There is no doubt that he's telling the truth. In fact, it's very rare for a child to make up a story about something like this, especially a child as young as he is. Children are more likely to minimize than to exaggerate, because they're ashamed. And, of course, his aunt was supposedly a caring, affectionate adult who assured him that it was okay. So he's had to wrestle with why he feels so bad if nothing bad happened to him—and why it had to be kept a secret.” He touched my elbow. “You okay?”

“I need to sit down.”

Things were threatening to go black. Doc Opie got me to the papasan chair and brought me a glass of water. I wanted to splash it
in my face, wake myself up from the dream. But it was all too real, and I was all too wide awake.

“This explains a lot of things,” Doc Opie said. “Things that can really help us in Ben's recovery.”

“Do tell. I could use some good news.”

“One of Ben's issues has been his fear of letting you out of his sight. We now know that was because he was afraid the uncle might get him. He was counting on you to protect him.”

“I was so good at that,” I said dryly.

“But he was also angry at you because you were the one who took him over there in the first place. Then you have still another piece of it, which was that he was afraid for you to even touch him because moms abuse kids. And then…”

“There's more?”

“Because so much abuse happened in one place, he's afraid for you to leave him anywhere because every place he goes is a possible threat for more abuse. You've noticed improvement in his behavior since you moved—the other house you lived in was big and upscale, like the aunt and uncle's house. Your new place must seem more inherently safe. Anyway, the poor kid is angry with the uncle, angry with the aunt, angry with the cousin, angry with you and his father, and angry with himself—because kids always think they're intrinsic to everything that happens to them.”

I closed my eyes. They burned against my eyelids. “So does this mean—since he's started to talk—that some of that anger is going to go away?”

“Eventually. For a while things may get a little worse. Talking about this stuff produces a lot of anxiety, and we're still working on his being able to manage that.”

“Wonderful.” And then I shook my head. “I can handle that. We've got the team—we've got God—we'll be okay.”

Doc Opie was grinning at me. “I can see you and Dominica have been hard at it.”

“So, I take him home and—do what?”

“Do all the same things. Just be ready for him to talk when he wants to talk. He may not want to discuss it with you yet, so don't
push it. It's really important that you don't put any words in his mouth. Let him call the shots on this.”

“Okay, I can do that.”

I started to haul myself out of the bowl of a chair, but the look on Opie's face stopped me.

“What?” I said.

“We have the legal side of this still to deal with. Your sister wasn't charged by the FBI with involvement in the pornography ring. The state hasn't charged her with endangerment, which still blows me away. But this is a whole different scene. We now have two children who say she, on her own, has molested two little boys. By law, I have to report this.”

“Then do it. Do what you have to do.”

“How about you?”

“Me?”

My head felt like porridge as I looked at him. It wasn't sinking in yet.

“Are you going to press charges against this woman who molested your son?” Doc Opie said.

The porridge drained out. In its place was the clear answer.

“Of course I am,” I said. “I have no choice.”

D
OC
O
PIE AND
F
AITH
A
NNE
N
EWLIN
took me through the legal steps involved in pressing charges against Bobbi. I had visions of her being arrested moments after I made my statement to the police, but those visions were quickly replaced by the realities of the legal system. Basically, it moves at the speed of a slug.

In the first place, it required more people than it takes to stage a coup. There was the sergeant with the Criminal Investigation Department of the Davidson County Sheriff's Department. The intake social worker for the state Human Services agency. The case coordinator with the state consulting Child Protection Team. The pediatrician working under contract with the Child Protection Team. The Assistant State Attorney.

All of that was made more complicated by the fact that the crime had been committed in Virginia, and we, of course, were in Tennessee, so a representative from the District Attorneys office in Richmond was sent down to make sure that the entire entourage of professionals was doing its job.

Doc Opie stayed with me through all the initial interviews, until it was finally decided that only one person—a qualified individual trained in working with victims of child sexual abuse—would interview Ben and that that interview would be videotaped for everyone else's use. I was instructed not to question Ben at all on my own, or to discuss the abuse with him unless he brought it up, and then only to let him talk. They wanted to be certain that none of my words would be coming out of Ben's mouth. Anything that sounded too sophisticated for a child would create doubt and perhaps even prevent the prosecution of the case. They even warned me not to let him overhear any of my phone conversations about the subject. Like I was going to call everyone I knew and tell them.