Laney

RAPE, FROM THE Latin rapere, meaning to seize, a term used in Roman law for crimes of theft. Theft of a fella’s property, women being the property of men under Roman law. If it had been anyone but William with me when I hung up the phone from talking with Mia that night she called to ask about marrying again, I might have begun the conversation about what happened on Cook Island with that Latin, if I’d begun it at all. I might have held the rape away from me, wrapped it up in a single word in a dead language that I could explain.

In retrospect, I see so many ways I might have reached out for help in the aftermath of Cook Island. There was rape counseling available in Ann Arbor. There was a twenty-four-hour peer counseling hotline, 76-GUIDE, I could have called; I could have been a nameless gal helped by a faceless voice over an anonymous telephone line. But I wasn’t behaving in a particularly rational way in the aftermath of Cook Island. How could I act sensibly in a world that no longer made sense? And what would I have told the voice that answered the telephone anyway? That I’d gone skinny-dipping with Trey Humphrey. That I’d gotten drunk with him. That when he asked me to leave everyone else in that cottage behind and go to the lighthouse with him, I had gone.

It got no easier to talk after I moved to Atlanta, either, after I started working in the mayor’s office. Once I was part of Maynard’s team, my behavior reflected on him, whether it should have or not. A story about a sex scandal involving a young female aid to the mayor and a dead Washington lawyer was no longer just about me. And there was that, too, of course: Trey was dead. I couldn’t talk to anyone without raising questions about that.

Whenever I start in on the Latin, though, William gives me a look that says I can’t hide from him. Maybe he gave me that look even before I’d finished assuring him the kids were fine that night, that the caller had been Mia. Or maybe I finally asked myself why I couldn’t I tell this man who loved me about something I ought not to be ashamed of, something that wasn’t my fault. I’d never have forgiven myself if he learned about what happened to me the way, a few weeks later, I would learn that Betts was nominated for the Court: by reading it in the news.

“William,” I said, “can I tell you about something that happened to me a long time ago? A long time before I even met you. I don’t know why I never told you before.”

He didn’t answer exactly, but William has a way of letting you know he’s with you without saying a word. And he listened, and he held me, and when I was finished he just kept on holding me. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t need to. It was as if he always did know.

“I think I need to tell the children about it,” I said finally. “But how do I tell Gemmy?”

William took my hand then. Wrapped both my bony hands in his beautiful ones.

“How do I tell Gemmy this happened to her own mama?” I asked him. “How do I say that in a way that doesn’t leave her forever worrying about herself?”

THE MORNING GEMMY was born, late morning after a sleepless night in labor, I looked at her long skinny feet and her long skinny fingers, her perfect little nails, and I wondered if there ever was a more beautiful girl in the world. “Beautiful” was the word I used, but I didn’t mean it in a physical sense, I meant it as a reflection of the way she makes me feel every time I look at her.

Okay, not every time. Not at 7:45 in the morning her senior year in high school, when first bell was just minutes away and her not yet dressed. Maybe not during those annual September ordeals when I dragged her around to every store in Atlanta in search of new school shoes only to have her decide, invariably, on the first pair she’d tried on at the first store we’d left hours before. But most every time.

I had two sons before I had Gemmy, and then the surprise of Little Joe after her. I don’t love her more or less than them, or even differently. But it’s special, having a daughter, even when she’s thirteen and doesn’t much want a mama.

It was William’s idea to name her after the Ms. Bradwells: Virginia Elsbieta Mary, that was his thought. But she was born such a willowy little thing, and those names all seemed so stocky. We considered Libby or Beth, but that didn’t seem right, either. It was the whole of us we wanted to capture the spirit of, anyway. That’s what I told Mia when she called from wherever in the world she was after Ginger called her with my news.

“Gem,” Mia said. “Ginger Elsbieta Mary. Or you could do Elizabeth if Elsbieta is too much.”

I said I never really thought of Betts as an Elizabeth, and William said, “Gemmy.” And she has been ever thus.

There is so much in a name, I told myself as the days grew into weeks after I’d told William about being raped and still I hadn’t told the children. I began to rationalize that I didn’t need to tell them, I wasn’t going to get the nomination, never you mind the polls moving in my direction. And even if I did, how would anyone find out about what had happened? No one knew except the Ms. Bradwells and now William, and none of us would ever tell.

Then I did get the Democratic nomination. I remember watching the primary results come in on the Internet, the spread widening until finally the last of my opponents called to concede. I remember Gemmy hugging me like she didn’t often do in her teenage years. My daughter calling me “Senator Mama” and looking so proud, like she might want to be more me than Mia after all. Gemmy asking if she could call her friend Tara to tell her, forgetting it was the middle of the night. I resolved then that I would tell her about what happened to me on Cook Island, that I wasn’t ashamed and I didn’t want her to think she should ever be. I was about to go up against a Republican opponent who wouldn’t hesitate to smear me the way someone in my own party would, and I wouldn’t leave any of my children emotionally unarmed for this.

But in the bright light of the next morning, I was less sure. Knowing her mother was raped would change my daughter’s sense of security in the world in a way I just couldn’t bear. And she never would be raped. She was smarter than I was. More cautious. And I would never allow it. As if it were something I could control.

Then Betts was nominated for the Court.

Ginger called me the minute she heard; she couldn’t understand why Betts hadn’t told us before it was made public, why Betts didn’t trust us with her secret. But I didn’t think it had anything to do with not trusting us with secrets, and I still don’t, even now that I know about her affair with that partner fella in New York. I thought it had to do with her fearing I would ask her not to accept the nomination. But I wouldn’t have. I’d have told her she ought to. I’d have told her the Court needed her.

The way they dig into a Supreme Court nominee’s past, though, surely someone would question her being there that night Trey Humphrey was said to have shot himself. I couldn’t help wondering what they might ask her and what she might say, whether she would be under oath if the questions came and if it would matter if she wasn’t. The planets were gathering the way they had that week on Cook Island, lining up against me with Mercury about to rise.

And so I told the boys first. Willie J and Manny were home from college for the summer, so I told them together with Little Joe. I told them in a different way than I would tell Gemmy, but it gave me a little practice at the children reacting. I said this happened to me, and I wanted them to know in case it came out in the press. I said I wasn’t at fault, that bad things happen to good people, that I wasn’t ashamed. I told them if it did come out, that was what I would say: I’m not ashamed. And being boys, their reaction was less complicated; boys do get raped, but they never imagine they will. My sons’ reactions focused on me, on what it meant about me, and it was enough for them to know that it was a long time ago, before I’d even met their daddy, and that the fella was dead. I expect they heard it as much as anything as a caution to be gentle with girls, to make sure they weren’t pushing anyone. The boys didn’t ask too many questions, and at the first pause Manny wondered if Little Joe was getting enough practice at the hoop in the off season, and the three of them took a ball to the high school nets. They might have talked among themselves there, but I expect they did not.

That left me alone to talk with Gemmy, in the quiet of the house that had been the only home she’d ever known. I found her in her bedroom, leaning back against her pink pillows, the matching comforter on the floor in the company of yesterday’s underwear and socks. I believe I smiled when I saw them. I believe I thought how very young an eighteen-year-old girl is. I believe I wondered how I could ever let her go away to college in September, and how my own mama had let me—her only child—go.

But what I said was, “Gemmy.” And then I repeated her name, “Gem,” remembering that a gem was a good thing, beautiful and strong. I sat at the end of her bed, on the sheet where the comforter wasn’t, and I set my hand on her long, skinny, bare foot, and said, “Gemmy, can I tell you about something that happened to me a long time ago?”

THE COOL OF the window glass against my shoulders soothes me, as do Betts’s gentle fingers on my hair. Poor Ginger, I think. She’s standing there at her dead mama’s desk watching Mia wipe dust from Faith’s framed copy of her African women piece, one of the few things Faith kept in this room other than her books. How many times over the years have I listened to Ginger carry on about her mama framing that thing? Nearly as many times as the two of us talked about getting our daughters to tell us things we surely never told our mamas when we were their age.

I think of the way Izzy gave Betts what-for this morning when Betts was poking around about this new fella of hers. Annie and Gem never sass Ginger or me the way Izzy has sassed Betts her whole life. I believe we’ve privately welcomed that as evidence that we’re the better mamas. But it strikes me now that Izzy does tell Betts everything, and I wonder if there aren’t things my daughter doesn’t tell me.

“Gemmy already knows about what happened, Ginge,” I say quietly. “I don’t have to tell her over the telephone. I told her this summer.” I hesitate, but then I do ask, “Does Annie know?”

In the silence that follows we all know the answer. Ginger has never told another soul about her and Trey. Our reaction back then had shown her what she surely knew on some level but likely couldn’t face and maybe still can’t: that her relationship with Trey would be considered sick. His sickness, but she didn’t see that, she saw it as her own.

Ginger sinks down into one of the guest chairs, fingering the back of her head where all that long hair I used to so envy no longer is. “If you say anything, Lane, they’ll find out everything there is to find out about me, too. That I slept with him. That I found him and maybe he was dead or maybe I left him to die instead of going for help. That maybe I killed him.”

“But the Lord’s truth is he shot himself,” I insist. “It was an accident.”

“And whether there are other truths that did or didn’t happen around that truth isn’t the point,” Betts agrees. “I think we need to back up here. No one is asking if Trey Humphrey did anything to anyone Friday night.”

“No one has the rape,” Mia says.

“And how will they get it if none of us talks?” Betts says. “Talking about it just muddies the truth.”

“Which is that Trey fucking shot himself,” Ginger says.

“But how can we be sure they don’t have it?” I ask. “How can we be sure this blogger fella doesn’t have everything that happened that night?”

Mia rubs her temple at her cowlick. She looks like she needs air, like the extra weight she’s picked up is stressing her poor heart.

Ginger crosses her arms, hugging the Transformations to her chest. I silently will her not to say what I know she thinks, that Mia is the blogger. If Mia is the blogger, let her say so herself.

What Mia says, though, is, “I didn’t tell him anything about what Trey did. Honestly. I might have told Beau the night after it happened, I don’t know, I was so upset I’m not sure what I said. But I never told Doug a thing about the rape.”