Big Girl Small (31 page)

“Kyle, you mean?”

“Kyle.”

“A video of the two of you.”

“Did Ms. Doman not tell you anything?”

“She said she thought you would want to tell us the details of what happened.”

“Right.”

“Why did he make a video?” my dad asked, surprising me.

“We’ll have to ask him.”

My mom clarified. “You didn’t know he was making it,” she said.

“No. I didn’t know.”

“Is it a sexual video?”

“I think so. I haven’t seen it.”

“Were you, um, were you?”

“What, having sex with him?”

Meghan had reappeared at the mouth to the kitchen; maybe she had rethought it, decided I might want her there. Or maybe it was unbearable waiting in the other room for it to be over. I gestured to her to come in.

“I don’t know, Judy. I don’t know what I meant to ask.”

Tears had started a string of water down my mom’s cheeks. She made no move to wipe them, as if by ignoring them she could deny that she was crying. My mom hardly ever cries. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her cry, in fact. I felt myself float up above the room, watched the conversation with a detached feeling. Her face contorted into a kind of personal battle; the top half crying and the bottom not admitting it, not letting it. She said hello to Meghan as if nothing was happening.

“Can I get you some hot chocolate, Meghan?”

“No, no, please—don’t go to any trouble, I—”

“Isn’t it pretty obvious that I was having sex with him if he made a sex tape?” I asked.

My dad scooched his chair back and stood up, went to the stove to watch the pot of boiling water.

“Is that what the video is?” my mom asked. Her eyes were pinned to me. I thought of how much she worried, how she talked to my dad late at night about how I was going to get hurt. How now she had been right.

“You haven’t seen it?” I asked.

“Of course not,” she said.

“Have you had a chance to see it and you just decided not to?”

“No,” she said. “No one told us there was a video until now.”

“But given the chance, you won’t watch it.”

“No,” she said, without even pausing. “Your father and I won’t watch it.”

My dad cleared his throat and I thought maybe he was going to weigh in about whether to watch the video. But he asked, “Did you love this boy, Judy?”

I was surprised that my dad would have been able to find his way so quickly to the question at the center of things. But I didn’t want to tell him that I loved Kyle, even though I thought it would make him feel better.

“Are you worried about my virginity?”

“No. Did you love him?” His voice was so sad that I gave in.

“Yes,” I said.

My father nodded. “I’m glad,” he said, and even in the first, grief-drenched moments of this whole thing, I appreciated him. For wanting to know most of all whether I’d been true to myself. And caring that I had. Caring more about that, in fact, than he ever cared through the entire ordeal about what anyone else said or thought.

And for not pointing out that I had been stupid to love Kyle in the first place. Or that my mom had been right that I was a basket case, unable to protect myself from the evil world. To my dad, it was better to know I wasn’t a self-destructive slut. I hadn’t done it because I knew he’d tape me, or because of peer pressure, or because I hated myself and wanted to lose my virginity to a sadist. I’d just been wrong, thought Kyle was lovable.

“Did you know, honey?” my mom asked. “Did you two decide together to make the video?”

I was grossed out by this question, since it suggested to me that there was a place in my mom’s imagination for the possibility that people could “decide together” to make a sex tape. And I was furious again at having to repeat what I’d already told her.

“Of course not! I already said I didn’t know. You already asked me that. Do you think I’d agree to making a video of myself having sex? Are you insane?”

“Of course I didn’t think—I just hoped—” My mom cut herself off.

“Hoped what? That I was a porn star rather than a wretched victim?”

At this, Meghan flinched. I was too much, even for the people who loved me most.

My dad rejoined us at the table. I saw him inhale, preparing himself for whatever they were about to say.

“Honey, we’re just trying to protect you,” my mom said. “We’re going to have to get rid of the video, and get a lawyer. We’ll figure it out.” She looked over at my dad, desperately.

“Figure what out?” I asked.

“How best to defend you from whatever’s coming,” my dad said.

“Whatever’s coming? Isn’t the horror show already here? I mean, I don’t give a shit what happens from here on out—everyone on the planet has already seen that video—except me! It’s probably already on
MidgetHos.com
! My life is completely ruined!”

This made my mom stand up and come over to my chair. She put her arm around me and moved the chair out from the table. “Let’s go upstairs,” she said.

I climbed down and let her lead me to my bedroom. Meghan followed us. My mom sat on the bed with me and rubbed my back for a few minutes, silently. She didn’t ask me anything else, and eventually she leaned down, kissed me, and stood to leave.

“Honey, we’ll help you fix this. This isn’t unfixable. Your dad and I will call a lawyer, get rid of the video, and deal with whatever the potential criminal aspects might be. We’ll—”

She was off and running, list-making, organizing us out of whatever had happened. But I was thinking, potential criminal aspects? I didn’t say anything, couldn’t tell her that it wasn’t only Kyle, that there might be others, too. It was too sickening, too sordid, too much. I just nodded, thinking I would listen to my parents later, hear whatever they actually thought. Maybe I would have to decide whether to press charges against Kyle and Chris and Alan, like in the movies. I had an image of myself in court, naked, everyone talking about whether what happened was my fault. The doorbell rang, and my mother went to answer it. A moment later, Sarah appeared in the doorway. She looked like someone she loved had died.

“Holy shit, Sarah,” I said. “What the—”

She came into the room and closed the door.

“I have a copy, Judy,” she said. She took a DVD out of her purse and handed it to me. I looked at it. It was unmarked, which surprised me, although I don’t know what I was expecting, Kyle’s handwriting? “Me and Judy Fucking”? “The End of Judy’s Life”?

“How did you get this?” I asked Sarah.

“From Alan.”

“You called Alan?”

“I went to his house.”

“You went to Alan’s house?”

“Right.”

“And how’d you get him to give it to you?”

“I threatened to tell his mother or call the cops.”

I closed my eyes. “Have you watched it?”

“Part of it.”

“Because it’s too terrible to watch the whole thing?”

“I didn’t think it was my business,” she said. “Um, Judy?” she started.

I was holding the DVD, frozen, unable to put it into my computer.

“Yeah?”

“I’m not sure you should watch it, actually.”

“I know,” I said. “I appreciate all your help. But I have to. I can’t be the only one who doesn’t know what it is. I mean, I can’t live with that, either.” I leaned down, started to put the disc in, and then turned back up to the two of them, standing behind me, looking terrible.

“Do you guys mind if I watch alone?” I asked. “I mean, I’ ll—”

“Of course not. Tell me what we can do to help. Anything,” Meghan said.

She reached up and took Sarah’s arm and led her into my little bathroom. I could hear the water running.

As soon as they were gone, I had the distinct sense of standing on the edge of something, the knowledge before I even put the DVD into my computer that it was about to change my life forever, that even watching it would be an utterly disastrous event. There are certain things we’re never meant to see, and this was one of them.

I put it in the drive, and my computer whirled and then the screen turned blue, offered me some choices, start movie, resume movie, exit. I thought how I’d like to exit, pushed start movie, let the tiny forward arrow pulse with my choice to watch, and then came the bed, the room, the walls, the people. For a minute, I had a surge of hope, because our faces weren’t clear, that we weren’t recognizable. Maybe no one would know it was me. But then I realized that I was three feet nine, standing next to that foldout bed in the basement, the one I’d woken up on. I was wearing a T-shirt I didn’t recognize, very long on me. I couldn’t tell whether I still had my corduroy skirt on underneath. I was standing there, kind of swaying, laughing. Kyle was already on the bed, under a sheet, and I climbed up next to him and pulled the long T-shirt over my head, like a stripper. I did have the skirt on. Kyle was watching me, peeling the sheets back, and I lay down next to him on my side, and then, to my surprise, turned onto my back as if we had agreed on what was going to happen next. It was all strangely choreographed, looked like it had happened the way it happened because there was no other way it could have gone. Kyle climbed on top of me and pushed the skirt up and started moving his body up and down like an enormous puppet. Then another figure was standing next to the bed. Alan. I heard myself breathe in, but couldn’t tell if it was the me watching or the me in the video. I squinted my eyes as if I might be able to block out what was about to happen, what had already happened, by not watching it. But I couldn’t. So I saw Alan stand at the side of the bed and unzip his jeans. I saw him pull them down and his underpants off. He was naked, and I remembered it again—his legs, his body, familiar and yet utterly strange. Kyle climbed off the weird miniature woman in the video, and she turned over toward Alan, moved her mouth close to where he stood at the edge of the bed. Then the video cut, and I was there, close up, clear, smiling, saying, “Lohden. My name is Judy Lohden.” I looked really pretty in that shot.

They had edited it. They had cut in the footage of me meeting Kyle at Chessie Andrewjeski’s party. In the bathroom. The chair I was on and the floor dropped out from underneath me, the walls began to melt. Everything felt like slush. Midwestern-highway-style, polluted, melting, poisonous slush. They had edited the video so I would name myself, grin like an idiot at the end. They had, he had—taken the time to make sure everyone would know it was me. Why?

It cut back to the dark room, the bed. After Alan, Chris Arpent came into the frame, his muscles so big they were discernible even in the blurry, badly lit video. He was wearing nothing but boxers. He walked over to the bed, and—the bathroom door opened and I frantically shut down my computer, turned to see Meghan standing there with Sarah behind her, still in the doorway to the bathroom. I got off the chair, but as soon as I was standing, I felt boneless, flesh all the way through, Silly Putty, Gumby. I sat down on the floor. Meghan came toward me. I had no idea how much time had passed since I’d begun watching the video, since they had gone into the bathroom, since—maybe it had been five minutes, maybe five hours. The world started spinning faster and I thought I might faint.

Meghan said, “I’m so sorry, Judy. I just, you know, heard you crying, so I wanted to ask if I could help, if I—”

I reached up and touched my face, hadn’t realized it was wet.

“Is it horrible?” Meghan asked. She crouched down so we were both on the floor.

“It’s unbelievable,” I said. “They—someone edited it.” Sarah had emerged into the room and now she sat on the floor too.

“Did you see that part, Sar? Did you see where I say I’m—”

She shook her head no, but I didn’t know whether to believe her.

Meghan wrapped her arms around me and then Sarah moved in closer, and the three of us just sat there on the floor, not saying anything else.

But after several minutes—or again, maybe hours—like that, I stood up. “I have to watch the rest,” I said.

“Do you want us to—?” Sarah gestured back at the bathroom.

“No,” I said, “stay.”

So we all stood in front of my desk. I didn’t sit at the chair again, just leaned forward and clicked the play button, and watched the remaining minute, during which Chris came into the shot and climbed onto the bed, me, moved like a monster. I turned the sound up—not loud enough to bring my parents knocking on my door, I hoped, but loud enough that I could hear laughing.

After six seconds of it, Meghan covered her face with her small, tan hands and cried.

13
If the media’s love of me is any indication, maybe I was in fact meant to be a movie star. I am the tragic heroine of their stories, the victim. No one is spinning this with any kind of she-was-asking-for-it angle, because apparently I’m so deformed and undesirable I couldn’t have asked even for abject humiliation. Everyone has run with it like I’d been lobotomized, unable to make a decision for myself.

When the news first broke, you could tell it was a hit reality-TV show in the making: “Authorities at Darcy Arts Academy in Ann Arbor, Michigan, say they are investigating charges that a sexually explicit videotape circulating among students shows three male students engaged in sexual relations with a sixteen-year-old disabled girl from the school. It is unclear whether the act was consensual or whether the boys will face prosecution.”

Some of the stories are more salacious than others, but the reporters all pat themselves on the back for not naming Kyle, Alan, Chris, or me “because of our status as minors,” and mine as a potential rape victim. The whole not-showing-the-face thing. None of the TV news can do anything, because they can’t show any of us. They must be grinding their teeth, covering the coverage instead of the actual sex story they’d love to show. They’ve all clearly seen the video. The first time I saw a TV reporter mention it, I was sitting on the bed, and by the time I realized I had heard the words
video we received of a disabled
girl from a local private performing arts school
I was already under the covers, shaking. I couldn’t even come out to find the remote, so I couldn’t turn it off and had to listen to them rhapsodize about their decision to show no footage and name no names.