Rape Read Free Page B

She was having a good time, she loved casual neighborhood parties. And she loved Casey, sort of.
    But Momma decided no .

Like Mother, Like Daughter
    Y OU WERE B ETHEL M AGUIRE everybody called Bethie. Your childhood ended when you were twelve years old.
    Always you would think If . If Momma had not said no .
    You’d have stayed at Casey’s that night. Both of you. And what would happen in Rocky Point Park would not happen and no one would have knowledge of the possibility of its having happened and so your childhood would not have ended that night.
    Good luck, bad luck. Hit by lightning, spared by lightning.
    Mostly you liked the neighborhood parties, summer picnics that began in backyards and spilled out into the street. Amplified music. Rock, country-and-western, bluegrass. Ray Casey favored bluegrass and if you were a friend of Casey’s you got to like it, too. As Momma said either that or plug up your ears.
    At Casey’s that night lots of people were dancing. Just disco-dancing, wild and fun. Teena Maguire was one of the best dancers, no guy could keep up with her. Only other women.
    That Teena! Look at her!
    Teena’s hot tonight!
    Often you were told that you’d inherited Teena Maguire’stawny-blond hair and fair skin. Except you knew you weren’t pretty like Teena and never would be.
    Watching Momma dance and flirt and laugh so hard her eyes were shut to slits, seeing how other people looked at her, you worried sometimes. That Teena Maguire made a certain impression that wasn’t exactly her.
    Drinking too much at these parties. Acting kind of breathless, excited. Like a high school girl not a woman in her midthirties. (So old! You were too fastidious to wish to know your mother’s exact age.) Her tank top slipping off her shoulder, you could see Teena wasn’t wearing a bra beneath.
    Her hair, scissor-cut in layers, which she’d had “lightened,” falling into her eyes.
    Her skin that, if you touched, you could feel: heat lifting from it.
    Her laughter, in surprised-sounding peals like glass breaking.
    You knew: your mother deserved some good times. She was really nice compared to most of your friends’ mothers. She loved you, and it wasn’t any exaggeration she’d do anything for you. She missed your father but did not wish to dwell on the past. She did not complain, anyway not much. Her favored remark was Things could be a helluva lot worse delivered with a TV-comic shrug. She was under a lot of tension at her job, receptionist for two bossy dentists who were always critical of her. And there was her own mother depending on her to visit sometimes twice a day and wanting her and you to move in with her in the brick house on Baltic Avenue.
    Momma protested she could not! Just could not.
    It would be the easy thing to do. Move back in withGrandma. Of course she would save money but then she would never remarry. Her life would be over, her life as a woman. She could not bear that.
    Your mother was a woman who liked men. Sometimes, too much.
    Had it coming. Asked for it. Everybody knows what she was .
    Over the years there’d been a number of men in your mother’s life and yet none had ever stayed overnight in your house on Ninth Street. Your mother wouldn’t allow this, she didn’t want to upset you.
    Not that she’d told you this. But you figured.
    Now it was Ray Casey, your mother had been seeing for about a year.
    Were Momma and Casey going to get married? You could not ask.
    You told Momma you liked Casey a lot, which was true. You told her it was okay with you if they got married but really it was not.
    If they got married, if Momma brought you to live in Casey’s house, you believed that Momma would love you less. Momma would have less time for you. Momma would love him .
    You were jealous of Casey, sometimes you wished Casey would get back together with his wife. Or move away. Or die.
    Four years seven months since Ross