Girls Like Us (14 page)

I didn’t look at nobody. I put one foot in front of the other one and kept on. When I got to the Brown Cow, I went to the side where ready-made food was.

“Is Quincy here?” I asked the worker lady.

The woman’s eyebrows went up. “She left at six. That’s when she gets off.”

I know time. I looked at the big clock over the lady’s head. It said almost nine o’clock. My stomach hurt. I wished I could clean something. Quincy would come home and everything would be OK.

I left and walked down the alley behind the store. Maybe Quincy walks home this way. I went down that alley a ways. It led to another alley. That’s when I heard it.

It was a little sound. I stopped walking. I tilted my head this side and that so I could find it. I heard it again. A “mew” sound, but kind of, I don’t know, maybe a hurt kitten. I went down a side alley. I couldn’t hear the sound no more. I went back to the alley from before. I seen something. A tennis shoe sticking out between two Dumpsters. There was leg attached to the shoe. I run up and saw the worst thing I ever did see.

Quincy was curled up in a ball. Her bottom half was naked. Her uniform pants tied over her head. Her shirt was pushed up. Her stomach and chest was bleeding. Quincy stayed curled up tight, that one foot sticking out. Her fingers scratched in and out of the alley dirt. And she mewed inside that sack.

I knew how she felt.

I knew.

I knew what to do. I couldn’t go screamy. I had to stay easy. I had to help my friend.

I stepped closer but didn’t touch her. “Quincy?”

Quincy give a gaspy sound. Pulled her hands ’cross her stomach.

“Quincy, it’s Biddy. I’m gonna help you.”

Quincy got real still. She put her hand out. “Get away from me.”

I kneeled down. I didn’t touch. “No, not gonna do it. You need me to help. You’re bleeding on your stomach, and . . . other places.”

Quincy mewed again. I never heard such a sad sound. I guess I made that sound before. It hurt me to hear Quincy make it.

“I’m gonna untie these pants legs on top your head. You put your hands right here ’gainst mine so you know that’s what I’m doing. I ain’t gonna hurt you.”

Quincy reached up and grab hold of my wrists. Her pants was tied in a doubled-up knot. It took me a while in that shadowy alley to get it figured out. I pulled them over her head. Quincy let loose of my wrists. She put her hands over her face, hiding it.

I done that too.

“How bad is your stomach?” I asked.

“It’s like deep scratches. They didn’t stab me.” Quincy stopped, then made another mew sound. “Not with no knife.”

“I know, Quincy. I know.”

We didn’t say no more. Then I came to myself. Remembered we was in a dark alley. Quincy mostly naked. “Let me help get your pants on and go home.”

I don’t know how we got home. I kept my head down and my hands over my stomach. I didn’t want nobody to see what was there. In the ’partment Biddy push me down on the couch.

“I don’t know what to do,” I tole her.

“I do,” Biddy say.

I look at her. I ’spect she might have one of them faces like a cat that done ate a bird. Her knowing that I’m just like her now.

But she look like she did when she looked at those cold duck eggs Mama Duck left behind.

“Do we gotta tell Lizabeth?” I axt.

Biddy shook her head. Sad-like. “Better not. Nice as Miss Lizzy is, peoples change when they hear ’bout this kind of evil doing.” She shook her head again. “All of a sudden you’re dirty and they don’t want to get it on them.”

I thought I’d gotten holt of myself, but I blubbered again.

“I’m gonna put you in the shower. You wash till you feel clean. Run the water hot and use lots of soap.” Biddy lean into my face and made me look in her eyes. “I don’t think you’re dirty, but I know you feel like it. You wash till you feel some better. I’ll make coffee. You gonna drink it, and I’m gonna tell you what to do next.”

I made instant coffee. Sat on a stool at our counter table. Quincy took a long shower. I think she didn’t stop until the hot water run out. She came out wrapped up in her thick robe. She sat. Her hands was shaking so bad, the coffee slopped. She didn’t look at me.

“You got to tell me about it. If you don’t, you won’t never be able to think of nothing else.”

“I cain’t,” Quincy said.

“You got to.”

She shook her head. She still didn’t look at me.

“I’ll tell you how it happened to me. I’ll tell first. Would that make it OK?”

“I cain’t look at you and tell you what they done.”

An idea jumped in my head. I jumped up right after it.

“I can fix this.”

Biddy jump off her stool and run to her room. She come back quicker than a lizard’s lick. She slap a tape on the counter right in front of me.

“Go in your room. Tell on this tape. And I’ll go tell on mine. Then we trade.”

“Biddy, this ain’t gonna make it go away.” I open my bathrobe so Biddy could see
HO
cut into my chest and stomach. Not deep enough to kill me, just deep enough to make scars.

“That say ‘Ho,’ ” I tell her.

Biddy’s white face turnt plumb ghosty. “It ain’t true,” she say. “You don’t never go thinking it’s true.”

I wrap my robe around and pick up her tape. Telling what happen or hearing her story wouldn’t make nothing be different. But if Biddy say I wasn’t no ho, I’d do anything she axt.

A boy named Dale come up when I walked out of school. He said I was the prettiest girl he ever seen. That I was sweet as candy. I smiled. Said I liked candy.

He told me he had lots of candy in his daddy’s barn. He’d give me some. Maybe I’d give him a kiss.

I wanted candy. Kissing him might not be bad. He stepped close. Picked up a piece of my hair. Rubbed it. He smelled of it. “Smells sweet, like flowers,” he said.

I wanted him to kiss me then. I thought he liked me. I wanted somebody to say nice things to me. Not call me Retard.

I went with him.

I walked in his daddy’s barn. He shut the door. Put a board across to lock it.

Boys came out of the shadowy part of the barn. The dark parts. Where I couldn’t see. They come rushing at me out of the dark. They grabbed me. Pushed me down on the hay. One held my arms. Another one held my legs. They pulled my shirt up. My pants down. They took off my underwear. Pushed it in my mouth.

And they done it to me. Every one of ’em. Dale done it twice. They done other stuff too.

Once they was done, they zipped up their pants. They laughed. They slapped each other’s hands high in the air, then low. Laughed some more.

Dale looked down at me while I tried to cover myself and said, “Want some candy, Ho? I’ll give you more candy anytime you want it.”

Then he spit on me.

Then the other boys spit on me.

I finish work and put my apron in the bin that go out to the laundry. I was fidgety ’bout some stuff and wasn’t careful. I walk through the parking lot like usual, and somebody jump out from between the cars. Robert. He run through the cars and grab holt of me before my head tole my feet to run. He clapt his hand on my mouth and his arm ’round my waist and dragged me. His friend jump out his car and grab holt of my feet. They threw me in and Robert sat on my head so I couldn’t holler.

Robert said, “Get goin’, Darrel.” The car went fast and Robert got off my head, but he put a knife to my face. “I can’t make you no uglier, but I can cut your tongue out and I can gut you like a fish. You want me to do that, Ho?”

I shut my eyes and shake my head. I couldn’t do nothin’ but leak tears. Nothin’ else in my whole body worked.

Darrel stopped the car. Robert say, “Darrel, I don’t know. She be too ugly to get me a stiffy.”

“You got to get them pants off her ugly butt anyways, so put ’em over her head,” Darrel say.

Robert look at me. “That might work. Her butt bound to look better than her face.” Darrel got out the car and come ’round the side. Robert open the door and both of them jerk my pants off, pull them over my head, and tied ’em tight.

I felt the ripped-up places of the car seat sticking my bare skin. Robert got on me. He say, “You deserve this, bitch. No ho gonna dis me.” He shove in hard. It hurt me bad. He kept doing it, and he cuss in my ear the whole time. Calling me names.

When he was done, he tole Darrel to take his turn. So Darrel did. He didn’t say nothing to me. I could hear Robert laugh.

Then Robert shove my shirt up. He say, “This is so you remember what you is, skank.” He cut me.

They got in the front seat and drove. They stop and dump me out. Robert say if I tole anybody, he’d kill me. Darrel say they friends would help kill me. They say the police won’t care ’bout no ugly ho. But they’d kill me anyway. Just because they could.