Spilled Milk: Based on a true story (23 page)

“Oh my gosh. I’m
the
only
one who didn’t know?”

“You know now.
And stop covering your face, she’s trying to take pictures.”

Jason nudged me
as he sat down at the table that night for dinner. “You don’t need to make sure
it’s there every two minutes. It won’t fall of ya know.” He passed a beer to me
from the cooler and clinked the necks of the bottles. “To us.”

Jason was six
beers deep when I realized he was an emotional drunk and I hustled him to bed
with his arm around my neck.

 “Baby, I love
you, you know. You’re the greatest-”

He hiccupped.
“The greatest woman of them all. You, right here.” He patted the bed next to
him and I struggled to keep a straight face while I pulled his sneakers off.

“I know, Jason.
Hey, come here. Are you crying?”

“I would have
stopped it you know.”

“Stopped what,
baby? I think you should lay down.”

“I would have
stopped him. That jerk. I’m so sorry he did that to you, Brooke. I wasn’t
there, I wasn’t there and I couldn’t stop him.”

I realized his
intentions and soothed his wet face with kisses. “It’s not your fault, baby.
There was nothing you could have done.”

“Why. Why
though. I could have stopped him.” His cries ripped my heart in half. Drunk
Jason had no doubt that if we were together he would have been able to save me.

The truth was,
I
wasn’t ready to save me. I had kept it a secret for so long, that when it did
come out, the people closest to me felt like they missed the mark and blamed
themselves. It told me I did an exceptional job of concealing my secret, but a
lot of people I loved felt responsible.

“No honey. It’s
okay. I wasn’t ready to let people know yet. Even if we were together, you
wouldn’t have known.”

“I would have known.
And he’d be dead. That’s for sure.”

“Okay, all right
let’s lay down.” My hand feathered through his hair until he was breathing
softly beside me.

It was a rough
morning for Jason as we packed the car and headed for the Canadian border. I
turned on my cell phone only after we got into upstate New York to make sure I
didn’t get any roaming charges. I had two voicemails from my mom.

“Hey, I’m still
on my way back from Canada but I saw I had two voicemails. What’s up?”

“I haven’t got
the six hundred you owe me for this month. I need it.”

“Ethan okay?
He’s screaming in the background.”

“He’s fine. I
need the money.”

“I had to buy
my textbooks for college. I got them online but they were still over three
hundred dollars.”

“I don’t care
how much they were, my name is on your car and if you don’t make a payment it’s
my
credit that gets screwed. When will you have the money?”

“I know, Mom.
Next week. You know I only get paid every two weeks.” Jason looked at me as I
tried to remain civil.

“And what’s
this I hear you’re getting an apartment? You would rather give some stranger
your money than help out your own mother and just live at home?”

“Yea because
I’ll be closer to school. And I would have to share a bedroom with Kat again, plus
Jason couldn’t live there.”

“He doesn’t
need to live here. You do. I don’t know what you’re doing with him anyway, not
like he’s going anywhere in life.”

“Where exactly
is he supposed to go?”

“Look at
yourself Brooke. You don’t dress up anymore or wear makeup. It’s like you let
yourself go and you’re only eighteen. And for what? To be with a guy with no
future cause he doesn’t even want to go to college?”

“We
can’t
go to college at the same time Mom, one of us needs to keep a roof above our
heads.”

“You can do that
here. That’s just an excuse.”

“I love Jason,
Mom. I’m sorry that him treating me like a princess isn’t good enough for you.
I’m sorry that a lawyer or doctor would make you happier. This isn’t about you,
this is about what I want.”

“It’s always
about what you want. What about me huh? You think I chose this? You think I
wanted to live like this? Now I know why women don’t tell on their husbands,
how are they supposed to survive?”

I gasped in a
stunned silence. Did she really just tell me that she didn’t tell on Earl
because of money? Would that imply that she knew all along?

 “I don’t care
what you think of Jason mom, I love him and he loves me and I’m sorry that’s
not good enough for you. Maybe if you would have chose someone based on their
character instead of their wallet you wouldn’t have had a pedophile for a
husband. Jason is my
fiancé
now, and I could care less what you think.”

Jason reached
for my hand as my cell phone went sailing across the car. “It’s okay, take a
second. Just calm down.”

Laura’s voice
trailed from the backseat. I had forgotten his mom was there.

“Brooke, honey,
I’m so sorry. I had no idea.” Stifled cries followed and Jason turned up the
radio to soothe the air.

Jason reviewed
my car insurance policy when we got home and I was stunned to find out that Mom
had been telling me I owed her two hundred dollars more a month than I needed
to give her. I had been paying for everyone else’s insurance in the whole house
for over a year.

Jason demanded
that I confront my mom and insist I only pay what I owed for my own vehicle, so
I did. It only made her hate Jason more, and I was livid that my car would have
been paid off before I even started my freshman year of college had I not been
giving her so much extra money each month.

“She was using
you Brooke,” he said. “I’m sorry. I guess she didn’t know where else to get the
money from with Earl being away so she just told you that your insurance was so
much each month.”

As I watched
the relationship with my mom deteriorate in front of my eyes, I tried to reason
in my head that after the trial everything would go back to normal.

“They wanted to
use my journals as evidence.” I twirled a fringe of wavy hair around my finger.
“But then they took it back when they realized that I probably had more
damaging information in them than supportive for the defense.”

“I imagine you
would have been really upset. Those are personal to you,” Midge said.

“Yea. Beyond
personal. I’ve had a journal since I was what, seven?” I stared at the advocate
posters littering Midge’s office walls. Coloring pages that clients had given
her with rainbows and happy faces were tacked behind her desk. The bean bag
chair I squished into every week was beginning to wear at the stitching and I
plucked at a lose string.

“What’s
bothering you, child.”

“I just can’t
believe you’re really leaving.”

“No need to
whisper, I’m movin’ on I aint dyin’. Besides, you moved two hours from here,
maybe you need to find a counselor closer to where you living and save you some
gas. I got a good opportunity to help those kids in Colorado, it’s a good thing
for me.”

“I know. But
the trial is next week. I thought I would have you here until it was over at
least.”

“No telling how
long those take. You’ve been going to court, what, well over a year now and you
just gettin’ into the main arena?” Midge shook her head. “Sad I tell you. They
wonder why women give up, drag them through the mill for justice and a year
later still nothing?”

She leaned
forward in her chair. “You got Gina, you got your knight in shining armor, and
your Mom. Even though we both don’t agree with her, she still gonna be there
for you. You even got Miss Heather. That’s a good support team if I ever saw
one.”

“Midge, did
anything ever happen to you? Is that why you counsel women?”

“Would it help
you any if you knew?”

“I think so.”

Midge nodded.
“Mmm Hmm, get on over here close to me so I don’t gotta talk loud about it,
make myself all rattled up. Normally I don’t tell my story, but I’m movin’ on
anyways.” She cleared her throat.

“I was
thirteen, growin’ up on the banks of North Carolina when my older brother Jon
came in my bedroom. He was a man now, just turned twenty one and had a bottle
of Jack in him before dinner time that day. Mama was at work, my daddy died when
I was three from heat stroke. It was just me and Jon.

 He came in my
room with that empty bottle and closed the door behind him. Turned my blood
cold when I saw the look on his face. My pants were ripped off, shirt undone,
and I screamed, oh lord did I ever scream. He raped me over twenty minutes
before he stumbled off me, drunk as a skunk, and I took my chance and I ran.”

I reached out
for Midge’s hand as she continued. “Ran straight through our sliding glass door
I did, straight through, shattered it. All the way down to the neighbors house,
about two miles. Neighbor pulled up just as I started bangin’ on the door and
she about fainted when she saw the blood. Bleedin’ like a pig, she said and
naked as a newborn. She wrapped me in a blanket, called the cops. They showed
up, Police man Smitty, that his name. Smitty. Took them two hours to find him
hiding in the fields behind our house. They found him, arrested him on the
spot.”

“Good, I’m glad
they got him.”

Midge held up a
finger. “Over two hundred stitches to close me up. Jon spewed some story that I
was in the shower, and he scared me with a Halloween mask so I ran through the
glass door all on my own doing.” She shook her head. “When we went to court, he
spat at me, stood up in front of that judge and told me when he got out of jail
he was gonna kill me.”

“He went to
jail right?”

“Sure he did.
For all of eight months. See Jon was a bargaining man, and he found himself
messed up in the wrong crowds of people, drug people. He gave over some names
and they let him out in eight months.”

“He plea
bargained and got out in less than a year?”

Midge nodded.
“That ain’t even the sweetest part, child. When he done his time, Mama let that
fool back into our house like nothin’ happened. For four months I slept with my
dresser up against my door, waitin for him to come and kill me. But he
disappeared one night, and we never saw him again.”

“Midge, I can’t
believe your mom let him back in. Did you ever ask her why? Why would she do
that to you?”

A hand trembled
across her wet face. “Oh sure, I asked. She say
Because he my son, Midge,
what you want me to do?
Last we heard he made his way to California, even
got a woman to marry him. Wound up raping his wife’s two year old baby. Can you
imagine that? They got better laws now, makin’ sure he won’t ever see the
outside of those California walls again.”

“I’m so sorry
Midge. I am.” I patted her hand as she grabbed a tissue. “I can’t believe your
mom let him back in the house. You’re such a strong person.”

“We both are,
child. And you know why? We don’t have the luxury of fallin’ apart, for someone
else to come picking up the pieces. We have a gift, you and I, we feel people’s
hurt and pain when we talk to someone. That’s what makes you protect your
siblings like you do, without even being asked. It’s what makes me work at a
place like this, to do what I can. Ain’t nobody gonna tell us it’s all right to
fall apart.” She wagged a finger at me. “But you, you are somethin’ else. You
got something I didn’t at your age, and I wish I did.”

“What do I have
that you didn’t?”

“You have a
Midge. And a Gina. You had a helping hand guide you to me, make you realize
that your worst fears were real. And we supported you, didn’t we?”

I nodded,
wiping my own face. “Then why do I feel so alone?”

“Because he
wants you to feel like that. So you step down and you give up. But you look at
me child, and you promise me, promise me, you won’t ever back down. Don’t you
feel sorry for him about to sit in a jail cell the rest of his life, and don’t
you feel sorry for your mama’s money problems now that he’s gone. You doing the
right thing, for
you
, and anyone else he’ll never be able to hurt now.”

I promised
Midge, and hugged her after our last session together. She was there for me
when my journey started and I hoped I learned enough to see the trial through
to the end without her.

I met Heather
at the courthouse that weekend. “I want to give you a tour of the courtroom and
explain what will happen the day of the trial. There will be a lot more people
in here than you’re used to from the preliminary hearings, including a jury.”

I followed her
into the elevator as she spoke. “David changed his lawyer, a woman this time.
Guess he didn’t like the way the preliminary hearing turned out. Subpoenas are
all out too.”

“What’s a
subpoena?” I held the elevator door open for a police officer as we got off.

“It tells the
person it’s addressed to that they’re being asked to serve as a witness in
criminal court, so they have to be here. You and your mom get one, so did Gina
and your Aunt Jean, and your mom’s friend Ellen since David called her when you
guys fled to New York.”

We stopped in
front of a white door with three wooden chairs lined up along the outside wall.
Heather pulled a chain of keys from her pocket. “This is where you’ll wait
until your name is called to testify, usually if you’re subpoenaed they don’t
like you to sit in the courtroom listening to other people’s testimony.”

“Why not?”

“Everyone’s
testimony needs to be their own. We don’t want people adding things to what
they say based on what another person said. It happens sometimes, even if you
don’t mean it to.”

“This is a big
courtroom. Very white.” I said, staring around at all the empty space.

“The judge sits
at the front.” Heather pointed to the tallest mahogany bench at the back of the
room. “That door behind her bench is where she’ll come in. The smaller seat to
the side of her is where any witnesses will sit. If you’re looking out at your
lawyer, the jury will be to your left, in those rows of benches.”