Rape (3 page)

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's
tawny-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 with
Grandma. 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 Maguire your father had died yet you thought of him a lot. More like the idea of
Dad, Daddy
sometimes than any actual memory. When you were fully awake, his face was kind of blurred. But drifting off to sleep you would see him, suddenly! You would hear his voice, the deep, comforting sound of his voice, you would see
his face, his smile, you felt his presence in the house. Before he'd gotten sick and went to the hospital and did not return there'd been two times: the feel of the house when Daddy was there, and when Daddy was not there.

It would be wrong. It would be not-right. For another man to pretend to be your daddy.

Some mean-mouthed people in the neighborhood were saying that Ray Casey had left his wife for Teena Maguire but that was
not true
. Casey's wife had left Niagara Falls, with their children. Moved back to live with her family in Corning, New York. It was a hard commute for Casey to see his kids. He was hurt, he was disgusted. He was baffled what he'd done wrong. His marriage was finished, he said. His marriage was dead. Casey had a way of saying
dead!
with a certain vehemence. He would say he was crazy in love with Teena Maguire.
Crazy in love
uttered with a certain vehemence, too.

It would be said that Teena Maguire had had a quarrel with her boyfriend Casey that night. That's why she left the party, took her daughter, and went to walk home. That's why she was in Rocky Point Park at midnight.
They were drunk, fighting. She ran off. He let her go
.

Just after dark the fireworks display began on the Niagara River a mile and a half away. A few kids went upstairs in Casey's house, climbed out the front windows to squat on the porch to see the dazzling lights, you were one of them, hoping your mother wouldn't notice.

She did, though. Or somebody tipped her off.

“Bethie, get down! Damn you, get down before you break your neck.”

You protested the roof was practically flat, you weren't going to fall off, but Momma insisted, threatening to come upstairs and get you. It was embarrassing how much fuss your mother was making over you on a porch roof not fifteen feet from the ground but this was typical of her obsessing about your safety. Casey tried to make a joke of it saying you could jump down and he'd catch you, like a fireman.

In fact, Casey was a volunteer fireman.

Naturally, your mother got her way. You were mortified having to crawl back up the roof and through the window, while the other kids watched. Rolling your eyes, muttering, “Damn my mother, she's always bossing me around. Treats me like some stupid kid five years old.” You sounded harsher than you meant. Really it was meant to be funny.

Later, after the fireworks ended, you must have fallen asleep on the rattan sofa. Amid the loud music and raised voices and laughter you slept for about an hour until your mother stooped to blow into your ear, waking you.

“Bethie. Time to go home, sweetie.”

“I wasn't asleep. . . .”

You were confused at first, your face throbbed with sunburn.

More than twelve hours before you'd been playing softball in the park. Swimming in the pool that was jammed with screaming kids, and exposed to the hot sun. Your stomach was queasy, all the delicious corn on the cob you'd eaten. Casey's grilled hamburgers, Momma's potato salad
with slices of hard-boiled egg. Carrot cake, ice cream. God knows how many soft drinks out of the ice chest in the backyard.

The daughter was drinking beer, too. Like mother, like daughter in that family
.

There was a final shake of the dice. Another time it might have been averted. When Casey said, “Teena, let me drive you two home. Wait a minute, I'll get the car,” and your mother thanked him and kissed him on the cheek, telling him not to bother—“We want to walk, don't we, Bethie? It's a perfect night.”

The Boathouse

B
Y
1:25
A.M
. of July 5, 1996, it would be cordoned off by Niagara Falls police as a crime scene.

It was a low shingleboard service building beside the Rocky Point lagoon. It was used for the storage of park equipment: rowboats and canoes not in use, picnic tables, benches, folding chairs, trash barrels. In the interior there was a smell of stagnant water, rodents, rotting wood. There was a lingering odor of stale urine, for homeless men sometimes slept here.

On the filthy floor near the front entrance, the gang-rape victim would almost die. It would be speculated that she'd been left to die. If her rapists had been thinking, not so drunk, or so drugged, not so excited, they'd have made sure she was dead. And her twelve-year-old daughter who'd crawled behind the stacked boats to hide.

A witness. Two witnesses! To identify the rapists, testify against them
.

But the rapists hadn't been thinking. They had not had time to think and they were not in a state to think. Had not thought out what they would do to their thirty-five-year-old victim beyond the frenzied act of doing.

The Lagoon

B
Y DAY YOU SOMETIMES
bicycled along this path. Alone, or with friends. Weeping willow branches brushed against your face, whiplike. The brick path was uneven, bumpy. In the corner of your eye you saw the figures of homeless men slumped against the service buildings, or lying seemingly comatose on the grass. By day, you felt no danger.

By night, the path was lighted. But half the lights had been broken or were burned out.

Still you could see the surface of the lagoon. Moonlight reflected in broken patches. The water was covered in a faint scum that rippled and shivered like the skin of a nervous beast. The sky was gauzy drifting clouds high overhead. Near the Falls there was always mist, clouds of vapor. You could see the moon's battered face, what looked like a winking eye.

It would have been a ten-minute walk through Rocky Point Park, from Casey's house to your house. Except Momma wanted to take the lagoon path. Where it was
so pretty
.

Saying in her happy-wistful voice you dreaded, “Your father used to take the three of us out in a rowboat on the
lagoon, Bethie, do you remember? Sometimes just him and you in a canoe. You took your dolls along.”

“I always hated dolls, Momma.”

On the lagoon were scattered feathers. No swans, no mallards or geese, must've been sleeping in the rushes at shore. Or maybe kids tossing firecrackers had caused them to fly away.

On the other side of the park, the high school baseball game had long ended. The bright lights on thirty-foot poles at the field had long been extinguished. The bleachers were empty and most of the park was deserted. There was little traffic on the roadways. Now and then you would hear the rapid-fire
crack-crack-crack!
of firecrackers and young-male laughter.

Beer cans and litter floating in the lagoon. Still it was beautiful by moonlight, Teena Maguire insisted.

The ornamental stucco facade of the waterworks was lighted. This was an old “historic” building designed by a renowned architect and in its derelict state it retained still some measure of dignity. Dark brick, cream-colored stucco, mortar now badly crumbling. Once-elegant iron scrollwork over the windows and doors. Heroic stone figures in recessed alcoves and at the edge of the roof: nude male warriors with swords and shields, females with blank faces and hair to their waists. One of them was a mermaid with a ridiculous curving fish tail instead of legs.

You asked your mother what's the point of a mermaid—“It's so
silly
.”

You didn't want to say the mermaid scared you, somehow. Since you'd been a little girl, seeing it above the lagoon. A freaky deformed female with no legs.

Momma said, “What's the point of anything made up? Just something exotic for men to look at, I guess. Men make these things up.”

“But, Momma, there has got to be some
point
.”

Suddenly you were angry with your mother. Not knowing why.

There was a small spit of land, out into the lagoon, you could walk out to see a low-built dam over which water flowed in a constant frothy stream. You hoped your mother wouldn't want to walk there, where the path was poorly lighted.

You hoped your mother wouldn't bring up the subject of your father again tonight. It wasn't the right time, July Fourth. It was meant to be a silly-happy time. An empty-headed time. At Casey's, the way Momma stared up at you on the porch roof like you were in actual danger of your life, you were so embarrassed! Teena Maguire was one to exaggerate certain things while completely ignoring others.

She was staring at the boathouse now. It was closed for the night, a metal shutter had been clamped down on the side facing the lagoon. The boathouse was covered in graffiti like deranged shouts. KIKI LOVES R. D. TO DEATH SUCK ASON FUCK YOU!!! FUK ST THOMASS.

(You'd have to be a local to know that this referred to St. Thomas Aquinas High School, on the north side of the city.)

Momma said, in a voice like she was personally hurt, annoyed, “Somebody should clean this park up, it used to be so beautiful and now it's just
sad
.”

You said, brattish twelve-year-old needing to get the last
word, “Momma, the city of Niagara Falls is
sad
. Where've you been?”

Across a roadway, through a stand of pine trees, was Ninth Street.

A five-minute walk home.

Faces rushing at you. Grinning teeth, glittery eyes
.

Like a pack of dogs. So fast!

Three of them ahead of you, driving you back
.

Teasing, laughing. Yipping
.

One of them is bare chested. Skinny chest, hairless. A smell of something sweetly acrid, burning
.

Straggly-haired, loud-laughing. Running beside you. More of them, younger kids. Clapping their hands hooting and jeering driving you and your mother back, toward the interior of the park. The boathouse
.

It's happening too fast. Your eyes are open but blind
.

Telling yourself this isn't happening, this will not happen
.

In another minute this will stop. This will go away
.

Momma is trying to talk to them. Smile at them. Joke. They seem to know her. Teeeeena! Touching her hair, grabbing at her hair. One of them, sand-colored hair in his eyes, unbuttoned red shirt falling open on a flabby fatty chest covered in wiry hairs, tries to kiss her, lunging like a barracuda with bared teeth
.

Trying to joke with him. Trying to fight him off
.

Five of them, or six? Another two waiting, by the boathouse, where they've forced a door open
.

Neighborhood guys, familiar faces. The one in the red shirt is a face you know
.

Momma pleading please guys leave us alone, okay? Please don't hurt us, don't hurt my daughter please she's just a little girl, okay, guys?