Page 80 of The Way I Am Now
Mara stares at me and nods, her eyes wide, unblinking, from across the room now.
“He pulled my underwear down my legs and yanked my nightgown up so hard it ripped,” I say. “And then he shoved it into my mouth.”
“Why did he do that?” DA Silverman asks.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see his lawyer’s white-haired head pop up, his hand rising in the air, but I keep my eyes on Mara. “Speculation,” he says.
“What happened then, with the nightgown in your mouth?” she asks instead.
“I was trying to scream, but I couldn’t.”
“And what do you remember next?”
“He was kicking at my legs, trying to separate them. I got one of my arms free and I hit him, but he just held me down harder, tightened his hand around my throat. He kept telling me to stop, to hold still. I didn’t, though, and he was getting more and more angry.” I clear my throat.
“Was he yelling?”
“He was whispering, but directly in my ear. His face was right next to mine, and he said, ‘fucking do it,’ and I remember that because I didn’t know what he wanted me to do.”
“Can you tell us again how old you were then, on December twenty-ninth?”
“I had just turned fourteen in November.”
“And Kevin was a few weeks away from turning twenty years old?”
I look her in the eye. Was that true? Was he that old then? I don’t know. But I don’t have a chance to answer because his lawyer does that hand-raise thing again, this time laughing. “Your Honor, relevance?”
“Had you ever had sex before?” she asks instead.
“No. I had never even kissed anyone.”
“Again.” Hand. “Relevance?”
She spins on her heel and looks directly at White Hair, practically spits the words “I’m trying to establish why, when thetwenty-year-old man told thethirteen-year-old girl to ‘fucking do it,’ she didn’t know what that meant.”
Now he stands. Takes off his tiny wire-framed glasses and shakes his head, even lets his mouth hang open for a moment as if he has no words to express how deeply he objects. “Your Honor . . .” is all he says.
“Withdrawn,” she says, and turns back to me. “After he said ‘fucking do it,’ what happened?”
I lock eyes with Mara. “He forced my legs apart. I—I was getting weaker. I couldn’t breathe.”
“Because of the nightgown in your mouth?”
“Yes, and because he was squeezing my throat tighter and tighter.”
“What do you remember happening next?”
“He . . . um . . .” I close my eyes. I picture the wooden play-ground. Just me and Mara. The softness of the night all around us. Mara’s hand holding mine.
“Do you need a break?”
I open my eyes. “No.”
“What happened next?” she repeats.
“He raped me,” I finally say, the word sounding too small and simple to convey its own meaning.
“Okay, and did he hurt you?”
