Authors: Julia Heaberlin
“Did you hear me? I don’t think
I have anything of value to add. I
don’t
have anything to add.”
I’m stammering.
Benita offers a sympathetic smile that
pretty much says I’m doomed. Both she and Mr. Vega are here to review my
testimony. This is the first time they want to rehearse the gory details. They’ve
waited this long because Mr. Vega wants me to sound as spontaneous as possible. The
trial is less than two weeks away, so that’s pretty spontaneous.
“Tessie, I know this is hard,”
Mr. Vega says. “What we need to do is put the jury in that grave with you. Even if
you don’t remember
details about the killer, you add context.
You make it real. For instance, what did it smell like when you were lying
there?”
My gag reflex is so strong that even he, the
calloused prosecutor, reacts. I’m sure he did this on purpose, calibrating how
this melodrama would play to the jury. I still think he’s the good guy. I’ve
just changed my mind. I don’t want to testify for him. Cannot,
will not,
sit across from my monster.
“OK, we’ll come back to that.
Close your eyes. You’re in the grave. Turn your head to the left. What do you
see?”
I reluctantly turn my head, and there she
is. “Merry.”
“Is she dead?”
I open my eyes and cast them to the doctor
for help, but he’s busily tapping away on his computer at his desk.
Do I lie?
Or tell the prosecutor that dead Merry talked to me? Surely, that would hurt the
case.
If I testify. Which I won’t.
“I don’t know whether
she’s dead.”
The truth.
“Her lips are bluish gray … but
some girls wear blue lipstick. It’s Goth.” I don’t know why I said
that. Nothing about clarinet-playing, churchgoing Merry was Goth, except when she was
lying next to me in a grave like a prop for a horror movie.
“What else?”
“Her eyes are open.”
Things
were eating her, except when they weren’t.
“What do you smell?”
I swallow hard. “Something
spoiled.”
“Is it hard to breathe?”
“It’s like … breathing in
a port-a-potty.”
“Are you cold? Hot? As best you can,
narrative answers.”
“Sweating. My ankle hurts. I wonder if
he chopped off my foot. I want to look but every time I lift my head up, things kind of
explode in my head, you know? I’m scared I will faint.”
“Do you call out?”
“I can’t.
There’s dirt in my throat.”
“Keep your eyes closed. Turn your head
to the right. What do you see?”
It hurts to turn my head. But it’s
easier to breathe. “I see … bones. My Pink Lemonade Lip Smacker. The lid is
off. I don’t know where it is. A Snickers bar. A quarter. From 1978. Three
pennies.”
The photograph in my head suddenly animates.
Ants crawl in a delirious, sugar-fired frenzy on my lip gloss. A hand stretches out for
the Snickers bar. I know it’s my hand because it’s sprinkled with pink
freckles and the nails are short, trimmed, painted neatly blue with Hard Candy Sky
polish. The color almost matches Merry’s lips. I taste blood and dirt, peanut
butter and bile, when I rip open the wrapper with my teeth. The bones of the other
Susans chatter encouragement.
Keep up your strength. Stay strong.
“I remember eating the Snickers
bar,” I say. “I didn’t want to.”
But the Susans
insisted.
“I don’t remember you mentioning
some of this before. Are you recalling other details? Anything about him? His face? Hair
color? Anything?” I can’t tell by Mr. Vega’s voice if he thinks this
would be good or bad.
Why is this stuff coming back now? No one
tells me to, but I shut my eyes again. Turn my face up to the night sky, except there
are no stars. The sun is shining. I’m out of the grave. I’m somewhere else,
in a light-filled space with Merry and the Susans. Merry sleeps, while the others are
whispering, chattering excitedly, making a plan. One of them is bending over me. A ring
dangles off her skeleton finger, but the stone is missing. She takes the gold prongs and
carves a half-moon on my cheek, and it doesn’t hurt at all. There is no blood.
Get him,
she says.
Never forget
us.
I know this isn’t real, although the
lab found my blood type, not Merry’s, on the prongs of the ring locked on a
Susan’s finger bone. They figure, with utmost logic, that I fell on it when I was
dumped into the hole.
I have to stop this before
I tumble into that hole again and can’t ever climb out.
“I’m not testifying. Not for
you. Or them.”
Mr. Vega tilts his head, ready to fire his
next question.
“You heard Tessie.” The doctor
has raised his head from the desk. “This session is over.”
I watched until Jo vanished on the path and I
was sure she was not coming back. I jogged past the sleeping homeless man curled with
his back to the refrigerating wind. Fumbled my way into the Jeep. Locked it. Folded
myself forward against the steering wheel and stunned myself by bursting into tears.
Here’s what kindness and sympathy and an offer of partnership do to me.
I have driven to this office on autopilot,
the last place I would have pictured myself this morning. The room is small,
white-walled, and slightly chilly. A nervous woman in her thirties sits across from me,
eager to start a conversation as soon as I stop pretending to read this magazine and
finally make eye contact.
“It’s hard, isn’t it? When
your kid is hurting? My kid is in there right now.” The woman needs something from
me. I reluctantly lift my gaze and watch her take it all in. My eyes, red and swollen.
The scar. I nod with agreement and empathy, hope that will be it, and return to the
headline:
Is it wrong to pay kids to eat their veggies?
“Dr. Giles is terrific … if
you’re here for a first consult for your kid.” She’s not going to give
up. “Lily’s been going to her for six months. I highly recommend
her.”
I carefully close the magazine and tuck it
back into the neat arc of reading material on the coffee table. “I’m the
kid,” I say.
The woman’s face
twists in confusion.
The girl who must be Lily pops out of the
closed door, wearing a dizzying array of crayon-esque colors. The right side of her head
is attached to a giant sparkly bow. Even with all the effort at distraction, I am drawn
to the plain brown innocent eyes.
And the smile. I know that smile because
I’ve worn it, the one that pulls at thirteen muscles and strikes a match for all
the other smiles in the room and makes you appear perfectly normal and happy. Except I
know Lily’s terrified.
Dr. Giles isn’t far behind Lily and,
to her credit, does not act the slightest bit surprised to see me.
“Give me just a second, Tessa, OK?
I’ll have about twenty minutes before my next appointment.”
“Yes. Certainly.” I feel the
flush of heat in my face. This isn’t like me, to burst in on people, busy people,
without warning. I remind myself that I have not yet paid her a cent.
Dr. Giles reaches out a hand to Lily’s
mother. “Mrs. Tanger, we had an especially good morning. And, Lily, you’re
going to draw me a picture for next time?” The little girl nods solemnly, and the
doctor’s eyes meet her mother’s in a silent exchange. It’s like
watching my father’s face all over again.
Hope, worry, hope, worry, hope,
worry.
Dr. Giles ushers me into the warm jungle of
her office. I drop into one of her cushy chairs. I haven’t rehearsed what
I’m going to say. I think that seeing Lily has sucked the selfish, hot anger out
of me, but I’m wrong. My hands are suddenly shaking.
“I want closure.” Each word,
staccato. A demand, as if Dr. Giles is somehow to blame.
“Closure doesn’t exist,”
she responds smoothly. “Just … awareness. That you can’t ever go back.
That you know a truth about life’s randomness that most other people
don’t.”
She leans forward in her chair. “Maybe
you still need to forgive him. I’m sure you’ve heard this before.
Forgiveness is not for him. It is for you.” She might as well be raking her nails
on the chalkboard
behind her. It’s bugging me, the faint ghost
of a stick figure still lingering there, half-erased. The happy sun. The flower with a
center eye.
“I can’t ever imagine forgiving
him.” My eyes are still glued to the flower on the chalkboard. I want to take the
eraser and scrub away until everything is black. Make it clean.
“Then let’s say that there is a
way for you to get closure. How do you see that happening? What if he … what do
you call him?”
“My monster.” My voice is so
low, ashamed, that I wonder if she can hear me.
What grown-up, not-crazy woman still
talks about monsters?
“OK. What if your monster opened the
door right now and walked right in? Sat down. Confessed everything. You could see his
face. Know his name, where he grew up, if his mother loved him, if his dad beat him,
whether he was popular in high school, whether he loved his dog or killed his dog.
Imagine he sat in that chair right over there, three feet away, and answered
every
single one of your questions.
Would it really make any difference? Is there any
answer that could satisfy you? Make you feel better?”
I stare at the chair.
The gun feels like a steel cookie cutter
against my skin. I itch to fire it dead center into the fabric. Watch the white stuffing
explode.
I don’t want to have a conversation
with my monster. I just want him dead.
“I’m nervous.”
Benita’s voice is vibrating.
This is an
emergency
session.
They’ve sent Benita in alone to do the dirty work. It’s been less than
twenty-four hours since I announced that I would not be testifying.
She’s wearing no eye makeup, which is
a sure sign something is very wrong. She’s just as pretty, but now she looks like
the hot girl in middle school instead of the hot girl in high school. All I know is, I
don’t want to be the thing that makes Benita scared. She’s been nothing but
sweet and kind to me. Like, even her name means
blessed.
Benita halts abruptly by the window.
“I’m supposed to convince you to testify. Mr. Vega and your doctor think we
have some sort of young female bond. To be honest, I’m not sure what you should
do. I’m thinking about going into my uncle’s cabinet-making
business.”
Wow.
What a backfire.
“They want me to ask you what your
worst fear is.” She plops in the doctor’s chair and meets my eyes for the
first time. “They told me to sit
here.
Then I’m supposed to
convince you that you will never live to regret testifying no matter how hard it is. So
if you can tell me what you are most afraid of by going to court, that would be great.
So they at least think I tried.”
Tears are brimming in her
soft eyes. I’m thinking it’s not the first time she’s cried this
morning. I want to get up and hug her but that might break another ethical code and
she’s already smashed a few in this room.
“I hear that this defense attorney
rips into people until there is nothing left but scraps.” I speak slowly.
“That’s a quote my friend Lydia read about Richard Lincoln in the paper. And
she overheard her dad tell her mom that everybody calls him Dick the Dick. He might get
the jury to think I deserved this. Or that I’m making stuff up.”
“The defense attorney is an
asshole,” Benita agrees. She is holding a finger horizontally under each eye, so
the tears don’t spill.
Without looking at the box, I grab a Kleenex
and hand it over. The box is always waiting for me on the little table by my elbow,
never an inch out of place. “And I don’t want to be in the room with …
the guy who did this,” I continue. “With him staring at me the whole time. I
can’t imagine anything worse. I don’t want him to feel any power over me
ever again.”
She dabs at her eyes. “Neither would
I. It seems terrifying.”
“My dad will be there. I don’t
want to lay out all the details, you know? Thinking about it,
talking
about it,
makes me want to throw up. Like, I can see myself throwing up in the witness
chair.”
She takes a deep breath. “I worked on
this terrible case during an internship last year. A twelve-year-old girl had been
molested by a sixty-five-year-old aunt who couldn’t get out of a wheelchair. It
was a mess. Her own family was divided about believing the girl.”
She reluctantly shifts her eyes back to me.
“See, you are already wondering yourself. Mr. Vega was the prosecutor. He’s
brilliant. He had her talk about the details of maneuvering around the wheelchair during
… the acts. No one doubted her when she got out of that witness chair.”
“So the jury convicted her
aunt?”
“Yes. Texas is vicious with child
molesters. She’ll die in prison.”
“Was the girl glad
she testified?”
“I don’t know. She was pretty
ripped up afterward.” Benita offers me a weak smile. “I’m thinking
selling cabinets would be a lot simpler, you know? They open. They close.”
“Yeah,” I say. “But
you’re good at this.”
“Why does Obama need to know my damn
waistline?”
Effie, in Texas Rangers pajama pants and a
pale pink silk blouse with ruffles, is trotting across the lawn, shouting, waving a
piece of paper. Charlie and I have just arrived home after an early after-school dinner
at the Ol’ South Pancake House. Some days, I wonder how long Effie stares out her
window before we show up in our driveway, and if that time has any meaning for her.
I’m really hoping it doesn’t.
I’m sure it’s been a long day of
trying to remember for both of us. I’m not sure I’m up for Effie. My head
hurts despite a confectioners’-sugar fix. She meets us on the porch, breathless,
while her finger punches away at the typewritten letter. “It says right here that
he wants me to tell him my weight, waistline, and whether I like to drink and smoke.
It’s not like we’re courting. Although I do like a whiskey on the rocks and
a smoke with a handsome black man every good now and then.” A skim of green eye
shadow, two rosy circles of blush, and the large fake pearl clips in her ears are dead
giveaways that Effie has made it out of the house today. The pearl clips pop out of the
drawer for church every Sunday, but the glittering eyelids mean she’s been
jousting with the ladies of the historical society. Effie regularly declares them
“way too fix-y.”