Page 33 of Stripping Bare
“’Cause you look all nice and put together, like you got everything figgered out and all. I wanna know how you dothat.”
Oh Lord, sometimes with spit and safety pins. Other times with denial and duct tape. After the rapes, she’d never again wanted to be involved in any high-school activities. After a lot of talk and tears, her parents had agreed to allow her to get her GED instead of returning to school. When she’d insisted on applying to a university across the country, they’d protested at first. But she’d needed a clean slate, an environment where she could heal. Where she could breathe and regain herconfidence.
In college, she’d continued to avoid rowdy parties. Even now, she fled the scene if she was in a social situation where men weredrunk.
“Total control is an illusion,” she told Doris. “No one has that, no matter how nice her shoes or clothesare.”
“Ain’t what I want to hear. If a real nice lady like you don’t run her own life, how’m I ever gonna doit?”
Gently Tessa turned Doris’s hand palm up and touched the callouses below her fingers. “How did you getthese?”
With lowered eyebrows, Doris glared at her own hand. “I done worked my whole life. Everything from fast food to janitorial. Ain’t too proud towork.”
“You should be proud of each one of these,” Tessa said. “Tell me, did you develop them all in oneday?”
“What youmean?”
“I mean did you mop and develop these callouses in a singleday?”
“Naw. It took me all summer the year I turned nine. They been like this eversince.”
It broke Tessa’s heart to hear that this woman had been scraping and getting by since she was a child. “Building a life—a good and healthy life—is much the same way. It doesn’t happen overnight. And we have to be willing to work hard forit.”
Maybe she’d forgotten that when it came to Jonah. She felt as if she’d been working hard to get close to him for years now, but for some reason he wasn’t ready, even though he’d proven that he was physically attracted to her. How much time would he need? And how long was she willing towait?
“I go to the job every damn day. But Barney show up here anyway and grab my kids. That ain’t good. Ain’t healthy. My Kyra done cried herself to sleep tonight. I had to rock her in my arms and promise her he won’t be back, won’t hurt her no more. I had to flat-out lie. And then she up and tells me she misses him. I can’t win forlosin’.”
“What scares you the most about what happenedtoday?”
“Everything, but mostly what if he’d taken my kids and nobody found them again? What if he taught Kyra that it was okay for her daddy and her boyfriend and her husband to knock the shit outtaher?”
“You’ve worked very hard to get your children out of a dangerous and unhealthy situation, and I would imagine today felt as if all your hard work was fornothing.”
“Made me wonder what was the use.” Doris squeezed Tessa’s fingers. “Do you think it was a lie to tell my daughter she could be safe? Do you think it’s a lie to tell her not all men get mad and hit like herdaddy?”
The assault on Tessa hadn’t been about anger. Those boys hadn’t bloodied and bruised her because they were mad. Tessa believed, based on her years of therapy, they’d done it because she’d rejected Harrison Shaw earlier that evening. And because he’d been attracted to her in the firstplace.
Although her memories of the physical events had been almost obliterated by the drug he’d given her, she remembered the moment when he called her a half-bloodbitch.
It had taken her a long time to believe any male outside her family was safe and trustworthy. She still didn’t trust easily, and she did everything she could to avoid risky situations—elevators with only one other passenger, dark parking lots, parties where people were drinking toomuch.
“I think all children need to be taught to protect themselves and advocate for themselves,” she told Doris. “But you also have the power to help her connect with men who don’t abuse. Maybe someone in your family orchurch.”
Jonah’s image drifted through Tessa’s head. Messy hair, searing gaze, restlesshands.
He was just aman.
In her recovery, she’d had to accept and embrace that although she’d been attacked by boys, another boy had been responsible for freeing her from thatroom.
Had she overcompensated and idolized Jonah for rescuingher?
Maybe.
But he’d been a critical touchpoint for her in therapy. Inhealing.
Yet, he distanced himself. From her. From others as well. He was a complicated man who held himself to high standards. Standards he might never believe he wasmeeting.
“Don’t know that I trust no man rightnow.”
