Hollis leaned forward, dogged determination in the set of her shoulders. She had crossed some sort of Rubicon tonight and was not going back without a fight.
Everybody else was finding the tabletop mighty interesting.
If Martha was startled by my request, her training kept her from showing it. She took a few seconds to gather her thoughts, then began. “Well, first, she has diametrically opposed feelings that flip back and forth. She’s terribly ashamed and feels powerless, yet another side of her is very sexualized, so she can look at other girls and feel superior, or think, ‘I know things about which you know nothing at all.’ She might look very prudish and demure, but she may go home and watch the adult Spice Channel or look up porn sites on the computer.”
Hollis caught a quick breath, but nobody else seemed to hear her. Sara Meg was more interested in watching the door. Buddy sneaked a peek at his watch under the table.
“She will be tinged with cynicism,” Martha went on. “She knows how bad the world can be. She will try to avoid the perpetrator whenever possible, but if he is around, she will do all she can to be nice to him. She fears his violence, you see. So while she looks calm to other people, she is real tense inside. She may clench her fists, pull out her hair, or bite her lips so hard she draws blood. And she will be withdrawn, real secretive.”
I was beginning to feel queasy, and I noticed that Martha was talking slower. Her eyes sought mine as she said, “Almost as soon as the abuse begins, people will remark on how quickly she has grown up.”
It fit. She and I both knew it. If I felt terrible for not noticing, how much worse must Martha feel? I truly pitied her as she reached out to cover Sara Meg’s hand with her own. “Do you suspect that Garnet—?”
“Of course not.” Sara Meg pulled her hand away as if Martha’s touch was as distasteful as what she was discussing. “It’s a friend of Hollis’s—and Bethany’s,” she added.
“It is
not
! It’s Garnet!” Hollis pounded her fists on the table and stamped her feet on the floor. “It’s Garnet, dammit, and you just won’t see it! Why won’t you see it?” Her voice rose in a desperate scream.
Sara Meg looked at Hollis with shocked, rebuking eyes. Buddy had his arm around his sister, protecting her. And I finally knew why the ancients used to kill a messenger who brought bad news. We were all so
distressed
with that furious child for the way she was shredding our comfortable world. Then we heard a distant voice beyond the two sets of doors. “That’s my sister! I have to get out there. Please!”
Martha hurried toward the doors. She came back in a minute, supporting Garnet. I swear, that child was beautiful even in a shrunken white johnny gown with her hair tumbled on her shoulders. She stood looking at Hollis with large, unfocused eyes. “What’s the matter? I heard you shouting.” Then she looked from one of us to the other as if she couldn’t see clearly—probably the result of something to make her sleep. She walked woozily toward the table, leaning heavily on Martha’s arm, and stood there, obviously puzzled.
A nurse hovered at the door. “I’ll be here,” Martha assured her.
As the nurse left, Hollis turned to Garnet, calm and pale. “Tell them what Uncle Buddy’s done to you. Tell them, Garnie. Don’t let him do it anymore.”
Garnet’s eyes flicked around the table. When she saw Buddy, she gave him a hesitant smile.
“Go back to bed, honey,” Sara Meg urged. “You need your rest.”
“I’m okay. But you don’t have to be here, you know. You have to work tomorrow.” Garnet’s emphasis on
work
made it a criticism.
Martha pulled out the chair she’d been sitting in beside Joe Riddley and gently steered Garnet into it. “Hollis has been saying some pretty serious things, honey. Is there something you need to tell us?”
“Of course there isn’t.” Sara Meg’s voice was sharp.
Martha turned to Garnet and her eyes never left the girl’s pale face as she said softly, “The most painful thing in an abused child’s world is the knowledge that somehow her mother is to blame. Mothers are supposed to protect us, but her own mother hasn’t done it. She won’t be able to deal with that, so her relationship with her mother will be passive aggressive. She’ll say things designed to hurt. She’ll pick at her whole family like a sore.”
Buddy barked a short laugh. “Come on, Martha. You’re describing every teenager I know. Secretive, passive aggressive, picking at their parents—isn’t that normal adolescent behavior?” He looked around the table, inviting us to laugh with him. Sara Meg tried to smile, but it was a pitiful attempt.
“Stop it!” Hollis shoved back her chair and jumped to her feet again. “Stop sitting there pretending this is just a discussion.” She looked from Buddy to Garnet, her face bright red. “He did it and we three know it. He’s been doing it for years, hasn’t he? You’ve been weird almost since Daddy died. Is that when it started? Is it?”
Garnet made a high little sound, but she did not nod.
“My God, Hollis!” Buddy slammed his palms onto the table. “You’ve got sex on the brain! First you go talking to DeWayne about how somebody you know is having sex and what you should do. Now this! What are you trying to do to me?”
“DeWayne?” I asked before I thought.
Buddy heaved a disgusted sigh. “He came to me embarrassed to death, saying Hollis suspected somebody she knew was sleeping with somebody. He said he was telling me because if it were his niece or sister saying things like that, he’d want to know. Is this what you were trying to tell him, Hollis? Thank God you didn’t.”
“Yes, thank God I didn’t,” Hollis blazed back, “because then you
might
have killed him, like I was scared at first you did.”
“You’re crazy, girl.” He flung himself back in his chair. “Stop this nonsense right now. You are worrying your mother.”
Garnet froze.
Hollis breathed heavily through her nose, and as she began to speak, tears streamed down her cheeks. “She ought to get worried. Garnet cries all the time in her room, and she won’t talk to people, and she avoids boys, and she’s mean to Mama and me. I thought she’d gotten all weird because Daddy died, but that wasn’t it. It wasn’t it at all!” She whirled around, covered her face and sobbed. Through her fingers, her voice was muffled. “I hate you! I want my sister back!” She stood there, shaking and crying as if her heart had broken.
Joe Riddley—an old softie who can’t stand to see a woman cry—scraped back his chair and went to her. “There, there,” he said, patting her back. She turned and sobbed stormily against his shirt while he stroked her hair as he had stroked Bethany’s that dreadful Saturday when DeWayne died.
Garnet moved her eyes from Hollis to her mother without saying a word, but I saw a small drop of blood begin to form where she had bitten through her lip. Sara Meg was as white as the Styrofoam cup before her, her eyes enormous and confused.
Buddy frowned at Hollis as if she were a toddler having a public tantrum, then he looked over at Garnet and shrugged, with a wry smile that said
Let her get it out of her system.
“Wipe that smile off your face,” Martha snapped. In that instant, I knew Hollis had one ally. I soon discovered she had another.
Joe Riddley spoke over Hollis’s head. “What about the fellow? What kind of person is he? How does he keep that going on without the child telling somebody?”
Buddy again checked his watch, like he needed to get home if he was going to work in the morning. I automatically checked mine, too. It was well after midnight.
Martha laughed, but there was no mirth in it. “Oh, the perpetrator is a clever fellow. He will always try to convince the child it’s her own fault. At first he’ll use mild threats:
‘You seduced me. I was just trying to make you feel better, I would never have done this if you hadn’t wanted it.’ ”
I looked at Garnet, but for all the expression on her face, she could have been anywhere except right there.
Martha kept talking. “Over the years, if she tries to break the relationship, he moves to harder threats, like ‘Nobody will believe you—they will believe me’ or ‘Your mother would never understand. If you tell, it will break her heart.’ ”
Hollis sniffed against Joe Riddley’s shirt. “Don’t worry your mother,” she said bitterly.
Still Garnet didn’t move.
“If she tries to break it off at that point,” Martha continued in a soft, calm voice, “the perpetrator will threaten violence against her, or he will threaten that maybe another, younger relative could take her place. To protect the other child, she will continue the relationship.”
Hollis wrenched away from Joe Riddley to grab Garnet’s nearest shoulder. “Is that what he told you? Is it? That if you didn’t, I would?” She whirled on Buddy. “I never would. It’s wrong, wrong, wrong. Do you hear me? It’s wrong!” She had never seemed so gallant to me as when she stood there with her hair wild and tears streaming.
Finally Garnet spoke. “It’s not really
wrong,
Hollie,” she said in a sweet, reasoning voice. “It’s even in the Bible. Genesis eleven?” She gave Buddy a quick look for confirmation, but he was checking his fingernails. “Abraham’s niece Milcah married her uncle Nahor. It’s in the Bible.” Her large dark eyes circled the table, urging us to understand.
Understand? I couldn’t even breathe. Garnet had jumped back in the filthy pond and taken us all underwater with her.
Martha got up and put a hand on Hollis’s shoulder. “Go wash your face. The rest room is just down the hall to the right.”
“Do you believe me, Mrs. Yarbrough?” Hollis gave her a long, searching look. She seemed satisfied with what she saw, for she turned and stumbled out the door, sobbing.
Martha sat down again beside Garnet. “Honey, it is wrong. You know that as well as I do, but it’s hard to admit it, isn’t it?”
Garnet didn’t move. I had the impression that when we hadn’t believed what she’d said, she had departed for another planet and left only her beautiful shell behind.
“But why would anybody put up with that—not tell somebody?” I asked, confused.
Martha put a hand on Garnet’s shoulder. “Because she is afraid of his threats. She will have seen his violence, which he will probably have hidden from anybody else. But you don’t have to be afraid anymore, Garnet.”
“I’m not afraid,” Garnet said. She sounded like she was surprised anybody would think she was. Martha looked at me, and I read the word “denial” in her eyes. She reached for the silver chain around Garnet’s neck and held up the silver tiger’s eye necklace I had admired at Myrtle’s. “There’s another thing about the perpetrator. He almost always showers the girl and her family with gifts.”
“Like a new kitchen?” I could name them without thinking twice. “A new car? Trips to the beach?” Sara Meg’s eyes widened with each item I named. Now she seemed to be having trouble breathing, too.
Joe Riddley squeezed my shoulder. “That’s enough, Little Bit.”
Buddy shoved back his chair. He rested his fingertips on the table and leaned into them, looming over us all. “This is ridiculous. I am not on trial here. And I am not having sex with my niece. Look at her. Does she seem afraid of me? Disgusted by me? No, she doesn’t. Do I mess with you, Garnet? Tell these nice people. Do I mess with you?”
Her eyes flew to his and his held hers. Slowly she shook her head.
He gave us a triumphant smile. “See? So maybe Garnet has been having sex with somebody—Art Franklin, for instance. I don’t know and I don’t plan to ask. I happen to think that sort of thing is real private. And yes, I have certainly helped my sister out through some rough times and tried to repay some of what she and her husband did for me over the years. But I’m being accused of some serious stuff here, and it’s a lie. Do you hear me? It’s a lie. I don’t know what Hollis’s game is, what everybody’s game is, but if this continues, you can discuss it with my lawyer. This is my life you’re playing with, and I’ve had enough.” He turned on his heel, strode swiftly to the elevator and pressed the button.
The elevator was still there from when we came up. As the door opened, he turned as if he’d had a sudden thought. He came around the table and took Garnet by the arm.
“I don’t want them saying these filthy things to you, either—these psychological geniuses.” Before any of us knew what was happening, he’d drawn her into the open elevator and closed the door.
Sara Meg collapsed in a faint.
28
“Help her!” I cried to Joe Riddley as I ran after Martha to the stairs.
Breathless—for we are both too plump for that nonsense—we clattered down. My knees were jelly after two flights.
We burst into the emergency room and looked frantically toward the elevators. They were both open. Neither Buddy nor Garnet was in sight.
“I can’t go after him,” Martha gasped. “I have to stay here.”
“I’ll follow and call the police,” I promised.
I reached the outside door in time to see Buddy in the shadows beyond the emergency room door, running down the sidewalk and pulling Garnet after him.
“Stop!” I shouted as he reached his car. He shoved her into his backseat, slammed the door, and jumped in the front.
“Help!” I called over one shoulder as I dashed out. “He’s kidnapping her!”
That certainly got attention, but by the time a crowd filled the door and I reached my own car, Buddy’s Toyota—the old car we’d been so proud of him for driving so he could help out Sara Meg—was pulling from the lot.
I followed, fumbling for my cell phone, not daring to take my eyes off the taillights ahead. I have the police on auto-dial. With one button I could summon help and keep them abreast of developments until they caught up with us. I felt brilliant and modern—until I remembered Joe Riddley had the cell phone.
“Oh, God,” I moaned. “Help!”
Up ahead, Buddy turned and headed down Oglethorpe Street. Maybe he was taking Garnet home, as he’d implied.