Authors: Beth Gutcheon
48 / Beth Gutcheon
“Now, ladies, your turn.” The three men chose three ladies: Rae, Rusty, and Bonnie Gray. The women allowed themselves to be grabbed from behind, and then they fought back.
“Oh, ladies, ladies, ladies! Such ladies! You are being much too nice! You have to make them understand you want to
live
. Here, I’ll show you what. Hit your man in the stomach as hard as you can, and as you do it, yell HA!”
“Ha!” Rae and Bonnie gave the men little punches and squeaked.
Rusty couldn’t do it at all. On her third try, with Kim urging her on, she managed to land the punch but her eyes were full of tears. “See?”
said Kim. “See how hard it is? There is the enemy. The enemy is the good girl inside you. He’s trained, you can’t hurt him. Now let’s go,
hit him
!” Rusty clenched her teeth and rammed a noogie fist into Tom’s belly. He never blinked.
“You didn’t yell,” Kim said.
Rusty roared, “HA!”
“Okay, now what do we do if we’re lying down and we’re attacked? Say you’re in bed, asleep, and the guy comes in the window?
You’re helpless, right?”
She lay down on her back. Johnny, her Indian brother, was suddenly on top of her, and he covered her so that she looked half his size. And in another moment he was in a ball, protecting the family jewels. Once again, the ladies applauded in amazement.
“Okay, slow motion.” They resumed the position. “He’s got my hands pinned, right? And he’s heavier and stronger than me. Most women don’t have much upper-body strength. But you have legs, right?”
She pulled her feet in, bending her knees, and then with a thrust of the pelvis, toppled him off her. “And then you pursue your advantage, ladies! The minute you get a space, you attack! Now let’s show you how easy it is: you, you, and you, please.” She indicated Jill, Carol, and Glenna. Carol stepped right up. Glenna followed, half shy. Jill stayed where she was.
“I really think I better watch…”
“You’ll be fine, I promise,” said Kim. “You can do it.” And then
Five Fortunes / 49
loudly, to the whole room, as she pulled Jill to her feet and led her forward, “The only way you will really believe you can do it is to
do
it. Feel your muscles do it, and if you’re ever in that position for real, your
muscles
will remember!”
Glenna was in position, and Tom was on top of her. Johnny took Carol, and Lenny positioned himself over Jill. Carol gave a yell, and Tom went sprawling. Glenna was struggling to get her knees up.
Carol, whose voice had an adenoidal quality, was saying insistently to Kim, “But, could I do it again, because I don’t understand how I’m going to follow up if I’m under the covers.”
Suddenly Carter moved across the room like a tiger leaping, hauled Lenny off Jill and threw him across the room. Jill’s eyes were wide and staring, completely hysterical. She was trying to scream, but no sound was coming out. She was shaking her head; in fact, her whole body was shaking, but she couldn’t make a sound. The look on her face expressed such agonized terror that it could stop hearts.
“Jesus…” somebody said. Rae was out the door, running to find Amy as other voices cried, “Get Sandra! Get her mother!”
Somebody tried to give her water to drink, but she knocked it away. Never saw what it was, Carter thought, just thought it was a weapon. Carter held her and said over and over, “You’re safe, you’re safe…” The class, stricken, stood in a ring and stared until Kim, like the wave brushing kelp, wordlessly turned them away to give Jill some privacy.
Amy ran in, looking white. Rae was with her. Amy had one foot bare and the other, with shell-pink toenails, in a brown paper toeless slipper.
“Oh god, baby…” Her eyes met Carter’s. Jill was hyperventilating, and both women knew if she didn’t stop it, she would soon lose consciousness. Carter was wondering whether or not she was strong enough to carry Jill. She decided she was.
“Can you help me? Get her to my room?” Amy said low, to Carter.
Carter nodded. “Come on, baby. Come on, baby girl, it’s all right now. I’m here.” Jill’s eyes seemed to focus a little; she seemed to understand at least that this was her mother. Carter helped her to her feet. “Come
50 / Beth Gutcheon
on, baby,” said Amy, crooning, “you can walk. Let’s go.” And she could walk. With their arms around her, she was taken out of the room, leaving rows of stunned, frightened faces.
“I have some Valium,” said Amy. They put Jill on her mother’s bed and Carter pulled a blanket over her as Amy went for her medicine bag. She was back with a pill bottle and a glass of water, and she whispered to Jill, who was whimpering and shivering. Amy slipped the tiny tablet between her lips and whispered, “Swallow.”
When Jill didn’t, her mother stroked her throat the way you do when giving a pill to an animal, and looked at Carter in relief when she felt the throat muscles respond. She held the water to Jill’s lips and she took a little.
“Jesus, I wish I had some whiskey,” said Carter.
Amy nodded. “For
us
,” she said. Amy held her daughter’s hand and stroked her hair, and Carter sat on the other side of the bed beside her. After long minutes, during which Amy crooned and sang to Jill, they began to see the rigid muscles soften. She moved her eyes, as if she were seeing out of them. She looked at her mother.
“Mister Lister sassed his sister, married his wife ’cause he couldn’t resist her,” Amy whispered, barely knowing what she said, but trying to pour Jill’s childhood over her head and keep her safe in it forever, although it was too late. Jill made an effort to smile.
“What happened?” Carter asked. “Though I think I can guess.”
“She was raped when she was thirteen.”
Carter looked at Jill. The beautiful face, bloated and terrified.
Lovely hazel eyes, the long lashes.
“In Central Park,” Amy said. “In broad daylight, on a sunny Sunday afternoon. She’d gotten a new bike for her birthday. She was riding over to Lincoln Center to a rehearsal. Two kids stopped her…. One wanted the bike, and she gave it to him. The other one…”
She looked at Jill, who was calmer now, holding her mother’s hand.
“We know he hurt her and we know he raped her, but we don’t really know how, or what it was like; she can’t remember. A jogger found her.”
Five Fortunes / 51
Carter took a deep breath. She was used to stories of beastly behavior, but this struck to her core.
“You’re looking more like yourself, baby girl. Do you feel better?”
Jill nodded. Her mother stroked her hair, then held her wrist and took her pulse. She went on stroking her arms and hair in a soothing way, and talking softly to Carter.
“She had a terrible time. I kept her home from school a whole year. The nightmares were awful. She couldn’t be alone. You can’t imagine, if you haven’t been through it.”
“Poor kid. Poor, poor little kid,” Carter whispered. “And she still has no memory of…?”
Amy shook her head. “In dreams, but of course…they’re dreams.”
“So, the guys just got away with it?”
“Apparently.” Amy took Jill’s pulse again. Her color was almost back to normal, and she indicated to Carter that the pulse was too.
“We going to live, kiddo?”
Jill nodded.
“What shall we do now? Do you want to sleep, do you think?”
Jill shook her head.
“Would you like me to read to you?”
Jill smiled and nodded.
“Are you reading something you’d like to hear?”
Jill shook her head. Carter said, “Why don’t you go find a book in the faculty lounge, you know what I mean, and I’ll stay with her.”
Amy went off to the staff library, and Carter got up and turned on some lights in the room. It was growing dark outside.
“Thank you for saving me,” Jill said. She seemed to be forcing herself to use her voice, to be sure she still could.
“You’re welcome. Now that I think about it, I hope I didn’t hurt that kid. I tossed him pretty hard.”
“I’m sorry I freaked.”
“Don’t ever apologize because something was done to you.”
“It’s still embarrassing.”
52 / Beth Gutcheon
“He was lucky. You might have torn that little guy limb from limb. Imagine explaining that to the self-defense girl. ‘Yo, excuse me, I may have killed your friend’…you’re standing there beside this steaming heap of bloody scraps.”
Jill smiled. “I try to feel angry. My shrink keeps telling me I should scream and howl. She keeps handing me the pillow from her couch, hoping I’ll tear it open…”
“I’ve never been to a shrink,” said Carter. “I’m the only person left in L.A. who hasn’t. Do you like yours?”
Jill shrugged.
“Not so much, huh?”
“Don’t tell Mom. Mom thinks she’s fab-o.”
“And what do you think?”
“She doesn’t see that I’m different from her. It’s like there’s one right answer and I’m not getting it. How come there can’t be other right answers?”
“Don’t ask me. I’m leading the last unexamined life.”
“The only answer is, I have to get mad. What if I can’t? What if I can’t, ever? I’ll always be a great, fat freak? It’s not like it’s a choice you make. You don’t say, like, should I get an Uzi and blow away some guy in the park? No, I think I’ll eat a gallon of Rocky Road instead.”
When Amy came in, Carter looked at her with new admiration.
Five long years of picking up the pieces. Five years of giving up your own life, five years of never blaming the victim. Even when she’s a teenage pain in the ass.
“I scored,” Amy said. “I got a P. G. Wodehouse. And I stopped in the office and asked them to bring our dinner here. Do you want to stay, Carter?”
“Maybe I’ll come back after dinner in my pj’s.”
“Please do.”
Across the courtyard they heard the gong sound. Dinnertime.
“But I was kind of looking forward to the evening program. We’re making prayer arrows,” she added, and Jill laughed, a real, full-throated laugh.
A
s Jill sat at breakfast the next morning, someone tapped on the door.
“Come in,” Jill called. Sandra from the exercise office opened the door.
“Good morning. How are you?” she asked.
“I’m fine, thank you.”
“Are you really?”
“Yes. My mom gave me a sleeping pill after dinner. She used to be a nurse.”
“That’s lucky.”
Jill agreed.
Sandra said, “Kim was very upset about what happened. We all are.”
“It wasn’t her fault.”
“Will you let us know if there’s anything we can do for you to make up for it?”
Jill was finished with her tiny muffin and her piece of cantaloupe.
She nodded.
Just then, Amy appeared, carrying her tote bag with shoes, bathing suit, books, and bottled water for the morning. She looked at Jill’s departing visitor.
“She wanted to see if I was all right.”
“That was nice of her,” Amy said, a little dryly. She bloody well ought to want to see that you’re all right, she thought. You could have landed in a mental ward, and they wouldn’t have liked the lawsuit that came next. What she said, brightly, was: 53
54 / Beth Gutcheon
“I’m off to Stretch. Did you sleep well?”
“Perfectly. Thank you. How was your walk?”
“Nice, I’ll tell you about it at lunch. Are you going to T’ai Chi?”
Jill understood that her mother was telling her she was late. Her mother was Patience on a Monument when there was a crisis, as yesterday, but she was ready to switch gears, back to Everything’s Fine the first second it was possible. Who wouldn’t be? Jill got up and began getting dressed.
The T’ai Chi class was going through its paces when Jill found it.
Because the morning was so clear and warm, they had moved outside and were arranged in a circle on the lawn. They were finishing an exercise called Accepting the Tiger when Jill arrived and tried to settle into the serene mood she had found in this class the first two mornings.
Solemnly, slowly, each member of the group was rotating in place, trying to experience the world from every angle simultaneously, as a tree does. Jill, whom serenity was eluding, mostly noticed that now about half the ladies had shed their standard issue sweat clothes and were sporting their own exercise gear. There were spandex tights, and one or two fleshless little career exercisers wore thong leotards that go into the crack in your behind, which Jill thought would feel horrible. No fear that with her figure she was ever going to find out. But on the whole, she felt mildly irritated by the glam aerobics garb, not to mention these women, who were twice her age and half her size. In truth, she was feeling fairly pissy this morning.
She wondered if it was a hangover from the pills her mother had given her.
“Any questions before we go on?” asked the annoyingly perky instructor. Her clothes were vaguely Chinese, and she wore ballet slippers. The rest of them were in stockinged feet, because it was important to feel the earth with your soles. So you feel
really
grounded. Jill was beginning to wonder how it was that on the first two mornings this whole thing hadn’t struck her as a crock.
“I have a question,” said the barrel-shaped woman whose tag said BONNIE GRAY. “I’m having trouble accepting the tiger. I keep thinking shooting the tiger would make more sense.”
Five Fortunes / 55
The instructor laughed happily, as if she thought this were not a hostile question. “I’ll tell you a story about the meaning of the tiger.
There was a Taoist farmer whose best stallion ran away. And the neighbors heard about it and said, ‘Oh, bad luck,’ but the farmer said, ‘Maybe.’
“The next day, the stallion came back, and he brought with him a whole herd of horses. The neighbors all came to see and they said,
‘What good luck!’ But the farmer said, ‘Maybe.’
“The next day, the farmer’s son was trying to break one of the new horses, and he fell off and broke his leg. ‘Well!’ said the neighbors. ‘Bad luck!’ But the farmer said, ‘Maybe.’
“The next day the conscription forces came from the emperor and rounded up all the young men in the neighborhood to go fight a war. But they couldn’t take the farmer’s son because his leg was broken. The neighbors all nodded wisely and said, ‘That’s good luck.’ But the farmer said, ‘Maybe.’ That is tiger power. The tiger is a force we must not judge; we must simply accept it. Understand?”