Deaths of Jocasta (55 page)

But hitting him wouldn’t bring Betty back. And there were other lives to save now. I had to get the location of the bombs out of him, not beat him senseless.

We were starting to get attention, a crowd forming. I wanted them on my side.

“Where did you plant the other bombs? How many more people are you going to murder?” I yelled at him. “I’ll beat it out of you if I have to.” I jerked him up to half standing.

“I want to see my lawyer,” he cried. “You can’t just hit me. It’s not legal.”

One of those white boys the world has always been fair to, I thought. He can blow up people’s dreams, but we can’t hit him. Where were his legal protests when Betty Peterson was being murdered? I lost my temper again and jerked him fully upright, then punched him in the stomach. He staggered back, but was caught and held by someone in the crowd.

“Where are those bombs?” I screamed at him, grabbing his shirt and cocking my fist to hit him again.

“No,” he cried, putting his hands up to protect his face. “I’ll tell.”

“Where? The next one?” I demanded.

“Uh…that AIDS place on Decatur. At two thirty.”

I heard O’Connor’s voice behind me say, “Radio that in. Hurry.”

I didn’t give a damn. Let him arrest me. I didn’t let go of Choirboy.

“Next?” I demanded. “Next?”

“She’s beating me,” he whined to the police officers who were behind me. The only white male faces in the crowd.

“Next?” O’Connor echoed me.

Choirboy got a lesson in fairness. He mumbled out the entire list. O’Connor made no move to take him until he had gotten every scrap of information out of him. Only then did he motion two uniformed officers to take Choirboy from us, handcuffing him and dragging him off. He looked like a little boy, with his bloody nose and eyes red from crying. I had no sympathy for him.

“Well?” I demanded of O’Connor.

He cocked an eyebrow at me.

“Aren’t you going to arrest me?” I asked.

He grunted, then said, “No one’s pressed charges. Besides, it looked like self-defense to me.” He shrugged and started to walk away, but stopped for a second and threw over his shoulder, “You know, Miss Knight, I like your style.”

Then he sauntered into the crowd.

It’s over, I thought. Sarry dead, Choirboy in custody, Frankenstein… I looked over the crowd again, still half-expecting to see him. Logic said he was probably on his way to West Texas by now. But it was hard to find anything logical in him.

I stopped at the store and got some juice. It’s thirsty work beating up guilty choirboys.

Sister Ann was propped under the oak tree, with her ankle bandaged and gauze on her forehead. I offered her some of my juice. She looked hot and tired.

“Thank you,” she said, taking the bottle from me. She took a long swallow. “Here, take it back before I finish it.”

“Go ahead,” I offered.

“Sit beside me and we’ll share,” she compromised.

“Naw, finish it,” I said, there wasn’t much left. But I sat beside her anyway.

“What happened?” Sister Ann asked. “I haven’t seen him in—it must be thirty years.”

“He was crazy. It’s not your fault,” I said.

“I know. I do realize that. Still, it is sobering to be somehow connected with…this.” She gestured to indicate the destroyed building.

I gave her an as-delicate-as-possible version of my meeting with Randall Sarafin.

She said nothing for several minutes after I had finished. “What changes a man? What makes him capable of this?” she finally asked softly.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Maybe he had nothing else to do. Nothing to take him away from that moment when he saw you abandoning him.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” Sister Ann answered. “All those years of hatred. The only way he could ever touch me again was to hurt me.”

“I guess we all need some semblance of control—power—somewhere in our lives.”

“Yes, we do. It’s a pity when it’s only the power to destroy,” she replied.

“Hi, Mick,” Bernie joined us. Then seeing the almost empty juice bottle being passed back and forth, “Do you want more? I’ll go get some,” she offered. “I’m going myself.”

“Sure,” I accepted, reaching for my wallet. “Whatever two dollars will buy.”

“It’s okay. I’ve got money.” She took our order and trotted off to the store.

“Ah, youth,” Sister Ann commented. “I think she has…”

“Don’t tell me she has a crush on me,” I said.

“She does, though she’s a little old for female crushes.”

“Unless it’s a lifelong occupation,” I amended.

“Is she?” Sister Ann asked, catching my implication.

“Heading that way, I suspect. Don’t tell her mother,” I replied. “I don’t recruit.”

“Of course, I never doubted that. Will she be happy, do you think?”

“Yes, I think so,” I answered.

“Are you?” Sister Ann probed.

“Me? Sure,” I replied offhandedly. “Or, if I’m not happy, it has nothing to do with being a lesbian.”

“If you say so,” she answered noncommittally.

“Do you blame every problem you have on being a nun,” I defended, “or do you think they have something to do with life just being difficult, period?”

“Point taken. Believe it or not, I’m not arguing with you. Not only is it too hot to argue, but you and I really have no argument.”

“We don’t?”

“No. If you have no problem with being a lesbian, then I don’t have any problem with it.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, I don’t. I think…it’s one of the better things that’s happened to me. Or that I chose.”

“Good. I’m glad to hear that.”

I looked at her. Nuns weren’t supposed to approve of lesbians.

“Now, why don’t you tell me what happened on that church picnic,” she continued.

“What does that have to do with my being a lesbian?” I asked defensively.

“Nothing,” Sister Ann replied. “But since you don’t have a problem with that I thought we’d talk about something you do have a problem with.”

“I don’t have a problem with church picnics,” I said shortly.

“Then you can have no objection to telling me what happened. You see, I remember looking for you. I was always curious why you hid. And what happened to your shoe?”

“What do you think happened?” I retorted.

“At the time, I’m afraid I took your aunt’s explanation at face value. That you were a difficult, disobedient child, getting into trouble for no reason.”

“I probably was.”

“Not for no reason.”

I shrugged. It was too hot to get into all this.

“You do have a problem,” she pressed.

“No, I don’t,” I returned sharply, starting to lose my temper, then backing off as I realized it wasn’t her I was angry at. “Oh, hell, isn’t it obvious? A fourteen-year-old girl goes for a walk in the woods. Her…nineteen-year-old cousin and some of his friends follow her. What do you think happened?” I stared at the ground, not looking at Sister Ann.

“They made you do something you didn’t want to do.”

“Yeah.” I nodded, shredding the label off the apple juice bottle.

“Sexual?”

“What do you think?”

“Something sexual, that even fifteen years later, you’re too ashamed to mention,” she said.

“Do you know what a blow job is, Sister?” I retorted sarcastically.

“Celibacy isn’t ignorance,” she replied. “Is that what they made you do?”

“Yeah, that’s what they made me do.”

Bernie returned with our drinks.

“Made you do what?” she asked innocuously.

“Made me…” I started to make up some lie, not to seem tainted in front of Bernie, then I stopped. Silence was the trap. What if, when I was nineteen, someone I admired had admitted in front of me that she was molested? “When I was fourteen, I went on a church picnic, some place up north. I hadn’t been out of the city since I was ten, and, anyway, I went off, wandering by myself in the woods. My despised cousin Bayard, who was nineteen, and some of his friends…I don’t know if they followed me or just ran into me by chance. They…cornered me out in the woods away from the others.” I was shredding the label off one of the new apple juice bottles, I realized. “They made me…one did…a blow job. The next one…I started gagging. I got sick…started throwing up. Some of it landed on Bayard’s shoes. So he got angry. I had embarrassed him in front of his friends. I was supposed to ‘behave’ and do them all, not vomit on his shoes. They laughed at him, at his messed-up shoes.

“I don’t know what he would have done if one of the other guys hadn’t stopped him. I guess I lost my shoe somewhere in the fight. He kept punching me in the stomach and…between my legs. Calling me ugly names.

“The other guys finally stopped him. And they just left me there. I didn’t want to come out of the woods. I figured I had a better chance there than…Bayard had promised I would pay for it.”

I stopped, taking a drink of the unlabeled juice.

“Did you?” Sister Ann asked.

“Yeah. Yes, I did. I…made up for everything I got out of that day,” I replied bitterly. I had lied to Joanne, maybe just couldn’t tell her the truth, when I had said it hadn’t happened that often. “What a good Catholic boy he was.”

“Not by my standards.” She took my hand and held it. “I am so sorry. I should have seen it. And done something.”

“What? It would have been my word against his. Aunt Greta would never believe me over him. You know that.”

“Yes, I do,” she replied. “And it’s too late for regrets over what I should have done.”

“It’s okay. I survived.”

“Yes, you have. Without becoming like them.”

Something across the street caught my attention. The workers, police, and firemen digging through the rubble had stopped. Then they started again, slowly and carefully, gently even. They had found Sister Fatima.

Sister Ann bowed her head.

I wanted to turn away, not to have a memory of her battered body, but I couldn’t, transfixed as I was by the reverent movements of the workers. I guess they felt that they were uncovering a true victim, one of unimpeachable innocence. We were spared the sight of her, instead seeing only the vaguely human shape in a black body bag.

“I guess it’s time to make funeral arrangements,” Sister Ann said wearily as some of the other nuns joined us. Two of them extended hands to help her up. “You will come by and talk to me, won’t you?” she asked me. “When I have someplace to come to?”

“Sure, Sister,” I agreed.

“I think once a week will do,” she said as she hobbled off. “I’ll call you.”

I started to protest, but she was too far away. Oh, well, I shrugged, then thought indelicately, wait until we start getting into my sex life. It would be interesting to see how far her liberalness went.

I glanced at Bernie, wondering what she thought of my revelations. Suddenly my bravado was gone, the empty feeling of “if only they knew” was back. And she knew.

“Bet you thought I was a tough guy,” I said.

“But, Mick,” Bernie answered, “isn’t it the tough guys who survive?”

I looked at her, embarrassed that it took someone I’d thought of as young and naïve to point out the obvious to me.

“Yeah, you’re right, Bern, it is the tough ones who make it. And, goddamn it, I made it.” I ruffled Bernie’s hair in thanks.

“I hate insurance agents,” Cordelia fumed as she joined us. She reached down and took the apple juice out of my hand. “Thanks,” she said, taking a swig, then handing it back to me. “Label shredding again, I see,” she said.

“Insurance on the building?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she replied, sitting down next to me. “And my car. I parked it in the shade, next to the building.”

“Oh, my car,” Bernie suddenly said. “I’d better check it out.”

“Be careful,” Cordelia cautioned. “I think they’re going to pull down the remaining walls.”

Bernie got up, dusting herself off, and headed across the street.

“What are you looking so serious about?” Cordelia asked me. “Sister Ann playing social worker?”

“I don’t think she was playing,” I commented ruefully. “Just childhood memories.”

“Unpleasant ones, I gather,” she said, pointing to my shredded labels. “Two bottles’ worth.”

“Yeah, fond memories of life with Aunt Greta and…my cousin Bayard.”

“I can imagine.”

“I hope you can’t. I hope…” I trailed off.

“I can guess. Believe it or not, you’re no less transparent than Joanne. Probably more so, since you’re more…expressive,” she finished politely.

“Oh…you’re not…”

“Surprised?”

“Upset?”

“Yes, of course I am. I hate seeing my friends hurt like that.”

I had meant upset with me. At my…weakness, defilement, all the ugly things I still carried.

“Hi, girls,” Millie said, taking Bernie’s spot in the shade. “Great way to spend a summer afternoon, huh? I finally got through to Hutch. He can pick me up after work.”