Are You Sitting Down? (9 page)

His real name wasn’t Andre.
Andre was the name of some cute jock in high school I had a crush on
back then
.
He never looked my way, and graduated two years before me.
He joined the marines and was killed in the line of duty in
Iraq
.
His pa
r
ents had taken out a memorial ad in my senior yearbook with Andre’s senior picture and a photo of him in his uniform shown side by side.
I drew a red heart around his photos, just like I did in the yearbook two years earlier when Andre was a senior.
By giving Jake’s father that nickname, it somehow made him less
terrifying
.

I didn’t know his real name.
Luckily,
I’d never seen him again since that night.
Me and a friend, Chelsea, were out at a bar on a typical Friday night.
She
lived in a trailer park on the edge of town, but liked to hang out at bars in the projects on
Forrest Avenue
.

Chelsea
preferred to date colored men, and she wanted to go to some new bar called Project X.
I had never been to those bars before, and was a little too trusting of
her
judgment.
I had read about police raids and drug busts going down at Pr
o
ject X ever since it opened, but I let
her
talk me into going with her anyway.
Surprisingly, we weren’t the only white people there
like
I thought we would be.
The bass of the music was so loud it hurt my ears and my teeth.

“You’ll get used to it,”
Chelsea
told me.

The thick sweet smoke of cigars was not like the smoke in the truck stop bars I normally frequented.
It stung my eyes but had a pleasant aroma.

You’ll get used to it.

We barely had time to finish a beer when
Chelsea
wanted to dance.
Some tall thuggish guy immediately started to flirt with us.
Chelsea
went with him to the bathroom to score some weed.
I didn’t want to go, but I didn’t want to stay on the dance floor by myself either.
I must have washed my hands a tho
u
sand times while Chelsea let the man snort lines of coke off her breasts in one of the stalls.

From under the stall wall, I could see
Chelsea
down on her knees.
Standing there holding her
bag
, I wanted to go home and knew the car keys were in
her
purse.
I couldn’t just leave
her
here though.
Friends didn’t do that to each other.
I wouldn’t do that to
Chelsea
, and I wished I could say
she
would
n’t have left me either
.

I
honestly
didn’t know.

When they finished
in the stall
, the man wanted to take
Chelsea
outside.
He offered to drive both of us to another bar just down the street
or back to his place
. I didn’t want to go, but was too frail to speak my own mind.
I knew by now that
she
would go with or without me, and so I went too.
But I knew that no matter what happened, I couldn’t save
Chelsea
.
I didn’t even think I could manage to save myself.
Outside in the parking lot, the man conveniently ran into a friend of his who decided to accompany us.

“
Chelsea
, we should go,” I said to no avail.

She
just laughed while the man whispered empty co
m
pliments into her ear.

“Chill out, Clare,”
Chelsea
said
.

“Yeah, Clare.
Chill,” the man said with a wink.

In the front seat,
she
squeezed the man’s bald head
now
buried between her breasts.
Soft moans bounced off the windows as she pushed his head downward
.
I didn’t
want to, but I let the man’s friend play with m
y
hair and nibble m
y
ear.
I closed m
y
eyes and envisioned a better place.
I
tried to
envision a better man too, but I’d never met one.

A callused hand pinched m
y
face, clasping m
y
mouth shut and pinning me down in the seat.
T
h
e
r
e was no breath to scream as he pu
she
d m
y
face into the seat and pinned m
y
arms behind m
y
back.
From the corner of m
y
eye, through tussled hair I saw fists flying in the front seat as the man wrestled with
Chelsea
.
Panties ripped and private parts were exposed.

“Don’t fight bitch.
I ain’t gonna kill ya,” the man in the front seat yelled.

I didn’t believe him, but
I didn
’
t fight
back
.
The weight of the man on top of me was
too
suffocating.
The invasion b
e
tween m
y
legs was
excruciating
.

You’ll get used to it
.
Chelsea
’s words
echoed in m
y
head.

The man never hit me.
It was the pavement that bruised m
y
face and scuffed m
y
elbows when I was thrown from the back seat.
Chelsea
was not as fortunate, with two black eyes and a missing tooth.
Bite marks bled on m
y
neck from some wicked vampire, but this was somehow much worse.
We
were
just
lucky to still be living.
Funny, because I’d never had much luck at all.

I managed to help
her
to
the
car.
I wanted to take both of
us
to the nearest hospital, but
she
refused.
She
just wanted to go home.
With
Chelsea
soaking in
a
hot bath, I sat
outside the bathroom
with m
y
back to the door and m
y
knees pulled up to m
y
chest.
I cried the tears of a lonely insane person locked in a padded cell somew
h
e
r
e in a straight jacket, unaware of if or when daylight would come.

The only difference was that I could get up and walk away.
I wanted to bust through the bathroom door and yell at
her
, “I told you so
!
”
But no one had told me, so who was I to blame?
Who’s to say I would have even listened?
Instead, I walked out the door and got in m
y
car.
I cried for a long time with m
y
head on the steering wheel, and then I started the car and went home.

Two months passed and the phone rang in m
y
apar
t
ment.
I did not want to answer it when I saw
Chelsea
’s name on the caller I.D.
I still wasn’t sleeping
soundl
y and the slee
p
ing pills weren’t curing the nightmares that woke me.
I let the phone ring several times and then go to voicemail.
The r
e
cording told me
I still
had things in common
with
her
.
She
was pregnant too, and wanted
me
to go with
her
to an abortion clinic across the state line.

T
h
e
r
e I was in the living room of some two story house that had been transformed into a clinic.
T
h
e
r
e was a warm fire burning in the fireplace.
M
agazines and crossword puzzles
were spread out
on the coffee table.
Soap operas played on a
black and white
television hanging on the wall, and fresh co
f
fee was bre
w
ing in the corner.
One nervous man
,
pac
ing
back and forth, t
ook
the blame from every woman in the room who just looked at him
through squinted eyes
.
Two women chatted in the corner, o
b
viously
th
e
r
e just to support a friend because all of the ot
her
women in the room were quiet and looked
a
p
prehensive
.