***
I woke up, forehead pressed into the steering wheel. I sat up slowly, head pounding from what felt like a hangover. It was dusk, and the colors beyond my windshield were disorienting. It took me several minutes to recognize the student parking lot at school. Mine was the only vehicle, and I realized I was alone. Instinctively, I locked the doors and looked around for my car keys. They were dangling from the ignition, but I didn’t remember putting them there. I didn’t remember getting into my car. I had no recollection of the day.
I noticed my wrists hurt badly, and I brought them close to my eyes to get a good look. There were marks on them, and I had a small cut on the inside of my right wrist. The blood was dried and caked in a smear over my skin. What happened to me? My muscles were stiff. My shoulders screamed. My hamstrings felt tight. The back of my neck ached. I felt like someone had beaten me up.
I wasn’t sure I could drive home. My head continued to pound relentlessly, and I knew I shouldn’t chance it on the road. I looked around for my book bag, locating it in the back seat, and thought that was strange. I never put my book bag in the back seat. I always set it beside me in the passenger seat. I pulled out my cell phone and called Dad.
“Honey? I thought you’d be home by now. Isn’t the game over?” Dad asked.
“What game?”
“Funny, Brooke,” Dad replied.
I panicked. “Dad, I don’t feel so good.” I choked back the tears. I wasn’t ready to cry yet because I wouldn’t know why I’d be crying.
“What’s wrong?” I could picture Dad sitting up in his chair, straight as an arrow, ready to go for the gun at my signal.
“I don’t know. But I woke up in my car. I must have passed out or something. I don’t think I can drive home,” I said. “Will you come get me?”
“Lock your doors. I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Dad said.
I hung up and rested my head against the seat. What game? I thought hard trying to remember the game I was supposed to be attending. I was supposed to go somewhere after school. I was supposed to do something. And then I remembered. The baseball game! I went to the baseball game, but I don’t remember leaving it. Think, Brooke, think! But I could recall nothing. Not the slightest memory of events that took place after the game.
Dad pulled up, and I unlocked my door for him. At that very instant I felt like a little girl, six years old again and bruised and broken from a nasty fall off my bike. I didn’t say a word but stretched my hands to him, palms facing up so that he could see the marks on my wrists, the deep wound just shy of a major blood vessel.
I cried then. I cried because I knew why I was crying. Someone had hurt me. That’s all I had at the moment, but it warranted tears.
Dad gently pulled me from my seat, and only then did I notice the dull aching between my legs. And then I noticed another ache, a stinging soreness in my anus.
“Daddy,” I whispered, clinging to him while I cried into his shoulder.
“It’s okay, honey,” Dad replied, stroking my back.
I sobbed hard as my father rocked me gently side to side, like we were slow dancing to a terrible tune, one that sang the disjointed melody of a brutal assault.
“I-I need to g-go to the hospital,” I stuttered.
And then I heard my father’s sob, felt the shaking and shuddering of his chest, because he knew what I meant, and he didn’t want it to be true.
***
It was humiliating: legs spread, swabs taken, blood drawn, questions asked. I screamed when my father left the room before the exam started, and they erected a hasty paper screen, separating us so that I could hold his hand while they prodded me.
Most of my answers to the questions were “I don’t know.” I recalled the faces of each of my attackers, but I couldn’t remember what they said to me. It was mostly blackness with a few sharp rays of recollection: the stifling closet, something shoved down my throat, several hands in places they didn’t belong.
The exam concluded with “three days.”
“We’ll get the DNA test results in three days, Ms. Wright.”
“Call me Brooke. I’m a fucking kid,” I snapped.
The nurse bristled, then remembered I was a rape victim. A brutally raped victim. They had sodomized me, made me bleed, and there was damage done to my cervix. It would heal, and I could have all the babies I wanted, I was told. It was little comfort, but I understood they were just giving me the facts.
“Honey, is there anything else you want to tell me before I bring an officer in here to talk to you?” she asked.
I thought no, then remembered the terrible shame of one event. Right before I blacked out for good. I was embarrassed and asked Dad if he could leave us alone for a minute.
“Girl stuff,” I said, and he nodded and left.
I glanced at the nurse before averting my eyes. “I think I had an orgasm.”
She said nothing. I waited.