Page 24 of Bucked Hard

Today is my nineteenth birthday, and the fourth one I’ve celebrated since I came to live permanently with Aunt Jessie. All the yelling, the name calling and the other horrors of the tin can trailer park I called home before here are long behind me. Not that I was able to leave on my own; the law had to intervene and help things along.

When Aunt Jessie took me in and sheltered me, it was the first time in my life I found some peace. I finished high school and then stayed on here at the sprawling farmhouse, working in the quiet corn fields and rolling meadows.

From my place in the garden Jessie’s silhouette decorates the kitchen window as she works away at the sink. Her lips are moving, but not at anyone in particular. She’s just singing away washing up the breakfast dishes. Her face never loses its smile. I kneel down and pick the ripe tomatoes off the vines, filling the basket at my knees.

Aunt Jessie was fifteen years older than my mom, her sister. We never visited much. My mom didn’t get along with many folks unless they were men and wanted to pay the electric bill that month.

Jessie’s strong in so many ways, but these days she relies on her cane for stability, leaning to the left on her good leg, desperate to keep herself out of the wheelchair.

I tend to the garden, but, overall, the farm is more than we can handle just the two of us. Uncle Daniel, Jessie’s husband, passed away going on ten years now, and Jessie has run the show ever since. She’s taught me a lot about work, farming and life. But we always have workers to help with the fields to plant early spring and harvest come the end of summer. It is simply more than we can manage on our own.

I brush the dirt off my hands onto my jeans and stretch up, working the kinks that always form in my back from bending over in the garden. The breeze carries a faint hint of a chill now. Fall is at hand and it’s time for the harvest.

I’m nineteen years old and until last night even my first kiss had proven to be elusive, let alone some of the other things that happened in the back of ol’ Clifford.

I don’t count the kisses and other things that had happened before with one of my mom’s boyfriends. I pretend none of that happened.

My heart skips a few beats thinking about who that girl was that did those things last night. Spreading my legs like that, the memory making me shiver.

It is so unlike me. Having my first orgasm from someone other than myself on the side of the road? And with some guy I don’t even know? What was I thinking?

It never ceases to amaze me just how naive I can be. If his girlfriend hadn’t come along when she did, who knows what else might have happened? I lay down and let him do those things to me, and I guess I can chalk that up to hormones and wishful thinking, but I’m just glad it didn’t go any further.

I mean, is it in my genes or something? Even as I was doing those things I knew it was too good to be true, but I just kept on rolling along. I’m my mom’s daughter after all, it seems, ready to throw my heart at any man that turns on the charm.

And it makes me even angrier that I let him in like that, actually believed the lies. Even now it’s like my heart is broken, like I wanted so badly for it to be true. Boys are not my thing, and I should just wake up and realize it, because I’m not their thing either.

Growing up with my mom and her many male friends, the ones who’d move into our place at the trailer park and then move back out again, I had the opportunity to be kissed more than I care to remember, believe me. But God, that was nothing you would wish for. Some of her male friends would flirt with me, put their hands on my knee, and that was bad enough, but one of them did more.

Leander. Just the name makes me shiver. I still hear his thick, intimidating voice. I remember his size most of all. And not in like a buff, hulk kind of way. No, this was in a four-hundred pound-bring-me-another-Big Mac kind of way.

I remember the sound of his thick breathing behind me, the stink of sweat, beer and cigarettes, the touch of his fingers on my lower back, making little circles, sliding his hand lower and lower.

I remember feeling frozen that first time, like in a nightmare. But a voice in my head told me tofight…so I flung my head around and bit him, hard, right on the shoulder. Then I ran. The memory of his screaming after me, calling my name, still echoes in my nightmares.

He didn’t stop after that, mama didn’t do anything, and he just waited. There was more. Later. But I don’t ever think about that. It’s done and over.

Memories of school are a fuzzy blur. I kept my head down and tried to make it through. It didn’t help that I carried more fluff that most of the other girls. I still do. I don’t care as much as I used to about my extra curves though. I grew into myself the last couple years. But, school was hell. Kids are mean.

I still hear the boys making ‘moooooo’ sounds behind my back. One boy, David Collier, asked me to the harvest dance in eighth grade. I should have known better when he did it right in front of a crowd of other kids.

My heart nearly beat out of my chest, my stomach filled with butterfly wings; I so wanted it to be true, that maybe he liked me.

“You want to go to the dance Friday?”

“Uhhhh, sure, that would be nice.” I caught the little smile on his lips as soon as the words left my mouth.

“I’m sure you do! I’ll see if anyone wants to milk a cow and take you as their 4-H project!”

The hallways filled with laughter, my face turned red, my stomach knotting into a ball. Just another day in paradise for the ugly, fat girl.

The thing is, I don’t even think I’m really that big. I mean, there were plenty of other girls as big, or bigger than me in school. But, somehow, I got the ‘Cow-girl’ nickname young, and it just stuck. Lucky me.

“Rachel! Come on in for lunch, honey!” Aunt Jessie’s voice drifts over from her place on the porch, catching in the white sheets strung on the line and picking up the low bellow and clip as they flap in the wind.

“Coming…”

This farmhouse we call home could sure use some love. The porch is crooked, the paint chipping, and the windows either won’t open or won’t close. She’s done her best, but keeping up on everything requires more hands than we have.

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