did, and this is the last day I remember seeing Lindy happy.
Yet it had nothing to do with the sight of that shoe.
No. I admit it.
This time, I was to blame.
10.
I n the weeks after it occurred, Lindy’s rape was a strange sort of secret.
Everyone in the neighborhood “knew,” but I can safely speak for Randy and Artsy Julie and myself when I say that back then, we didn’t exactly
know
what we knew. We knew the police had milled around for a bit, sure, we knew that we had each been asked a few simple questions, but since our parents had also asked us to be discreet about the crime (another mysterious word for me in those years) we didn’t understand much more than that. We noticed that people now acted differently around Lindy, was all, that our parents lifted their voices when they spoke to her that summer, that they let us stay out a little past suppertime if they saw we were playing with her. “Did you have a good time with Lindy?” my mother would ask me. “It’s important that you kids have fun.”
All of this just to form my excuse, I suppose, when I tell you the next thing I did.
I was not yet fifteen years old, remember, and in the first week of that school year, my freshman year, when we were all changing backinto our uniforms after gym class, a few of the guys began talking of Lindy. As chronicled, many of these kids had their eyes on her since the onset of time, and our entry to high school seemed to give them a courage I was not yet feeling. They passed along rumors like scouting reports in the locker room: about how Lindy had broken up with some boy I knew she never dated, about how one guy had seen her breasts at a pool party that summer. And so, in a burst of self-serving slop I’m still ashamed of, I also offered up what I knew. I said the word low, and under my breath, because that’s the only way I’d ever heard it spoken.
Rape.
It was a word that refused to bring me an image, despite my recent relationship with it. In the weeks I’d sat alone in my room, wondering about its dark meaning, I envisioned Lindy suffering strange beatings, but yet I never saw any bruises on her face. In an attempt to increase my understanding, I went back to a poem I remembered reading in school the year before, Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock,” and the meaning became even further unmoored. I later looked the word up, just to get a hold of it, in a thesaurus my father had left in his study. I came upon these synonyms:
Plunder. Seizure. Violence.
So, I knew “rape” to ride shotgun with some grand injustice, yes, I was not dim. But I never thought of it in terms of Lindy’s virginity, her budding spirit, her body, being slaughtered in a sexual way. I never thought of a thing that could not be made right. All I knew was that the boys in the locker room wanted to talk about Lindy that day and that I wanted these boys to talk to me.
The effect was immediate.
Word shot like current through the high school circuitry. And when approached, Lindy denied it in every way. However, due to theunexpected depth of her bawling, her strange shouting, she was too obviously upset to convince them, and by the time the afternoon bell rang, Lindy had aged right in front of us. Her ponytail looked unkempt and off-center. She allowed notebooks to spill out of her backpack and spoke to no one as she trudged through the school parking lot to meet her mother, who, on this day, was waiting to drive her back home.
Later that afternoon, just before dinner, Lindy knocked on my door. I felt sick when I saw her through the peephole. All those times I’d lain on the floor and wished for this exact vision to materialize, for her to dismount from her bike and come see me, all the times I’d imagined just what I’d say; these all died, silly and unused, next to the potted plants in the corner.
I opened the door and stood there.
Behind her, I saw purple clouds slide like battleships into position, the evening rain set
Yet it had nothing to do with the sight of that shoe.
No. I admit it.
This time, I was to blame.
10.
I n the weeks after it occurred, Lindy’s rape was a strange sort of secret.
Everyone in the neighborhood “knew,” but I can safely speak for Randy and Artsy Julie and myself when I say that back then, we didn’t exactly
know
what we knew. We knew the police had milled around for a bit, sure, we knew that we had each been asked a few simple questions, but since our parents had also asked us to be discreet about the crime (another mysterious word for me in those years) we didn’t understand much more than that. We noticed that people now acted differently around Lindy, was all, that our parents lifted their voices when they spoke to her that summer, that they let us stay out a little past suppertime if they saw we were playing with her. “Did you have a good time with Lindy?” my mother would ask me. “It’s important that you kids have fun.”
All of this just to form my excuse, I suppose, when I tell you the next thing I did.
I was not yet fifteen years old, remember, and in the first week of that school year, my freshman year, when we were all changing backinto our uniforms after gym class, a few of the guys began talking of Lindy. As chronicled, many of these kids had their eyes on her since the onset of time, and our entry to high school seemed to give them a courage I was not yet feeling. They passed along rumors like scouting reports in the locker room: about how Lindy had broken up with some boy I knew she never dated, about how one guy had seen her breasts at a pool party that summer. And so, in a burst of self-serving slop I’m still ashamed of, I also offered up what I knew. I said the word low, and under my breath, because that’s the only way I’d ever heard it spoken.
Rape.
It was a word that refused to bring me an image, despite my recent relationship with it. In the weeks I’d sat alone in my room, wondering about its dark meaning, I envisioned Lindy suffering strange beatings, but yet I never saw any bruises on her face. In an attempt to increase my understanding, I went back to a poem I remembered reading in school the year before, Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock,” and the meaning became even further unmoored. I later looked the word up, just to get a hold of it, in a thesaurus my father had left in his study. I came upon these synonyms:
Plunder. Seizure. Violence.
So, I knew “rape” to ride shotgun with some grand injustice, yes, I was not dim. But I never thought of it in terms of Lindy’s virginity, her budding spirit, her body, being slaughtered in a sexual way. I never thought of a thing that could not be made right. All I knew was that the boys in the locker room wanted to talk about Lindy that day and that I wanted these boys to talk to me.
The effect was immediate.
Word shot like current through the high school circuitry. And when approached, Lindy denied it in every way. However, due to theunexpected depth of her bawling, her strange shouting, she was too obviously upset to convince them, and by the time the afternoon bell rang, Lindy had aged right in front of us. Her ponytail looked unkempt and off-center. She allowed notebooks to spill out of her backpack and spoke to no one as she trudged through the school parking lot to meet her mother, who, on this day, was waiting to drive her back home.
Later that afternoon, just before dinner, Lindy knocked on my door. I felt sick when I saw her through the peephole. All those times I’d lain on the floor and wished for this exact vision to materialize, for her to dismount from her bike and come see me, all the times I’d imagined just what I’d say; these all died, silly and unused, next to the potted plants in the corner.
I opened the door and stood there.
Behind her, I saw purple clouds slide like battleships into position, the evening rain set
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