asked me the questions you would expect. Where had I been? What had happened to me? When I didn’t answer them, I heard them whisper to each other. They concluded that I was traumatized. Mr. Martin said they should keep asking questions until I answered. My mother agreed.
“Cass—tell us what happened!”
I did not answer them. “We need the police!” I cried instead. “They have to find Emma! They have to find her!”
Time froze for what seemed like forever, but was only eight seconds. Mr. Martin shot a look at my mother. My mother calmed down and started to stroke my hair as though I were a fragile doll she didn’t want to break—and that she didn’t want to move or speak.
“Okay, sweetheart. Just calm down.”
She stopped asking me questions but my hands were shaking. I told her I was cold and she let me take a hot shower. I told her I was hungry and she made me some food. I told her I was tired and she let me lie down. My mother stayed by my side and I pretended to sleep while I secretly soaked in the Chanel No. 5 that lingered on her neck.
When the cars started to appear, Mr. Martin went downstairs. He did not come back up. I could see each car as it entered the property because the window from my mother’s room has a view of the top part of the driveway. First came the state police in three marked SUVs. Next were the paramedics in an ambulance. It took another forty minutes for the specialists to arrive in all sorts of cars. The FBI agents would be among them. And some kind of evidence evaluator. And, of course, a psychologist.
Some people took samples from my nails and skin. They combed through my hair. They drew some blood. They checked my heart and pulse and they asked me questions to make sure I wasn’t insane. Then we waited again, for the people who would ask me the questions about where I’d been, and where Emma was.
I had not been in my mother’s bed since I was a little girl, since well before the divorce. We were not forbidden. It was just not a place either of us, Emma or I, wanted to be after we learned about sex. Our parents’ bed was the place they “did it,” and we found that disgusting. We used to talk about it when we played with our Barbie dolls.
They get naked and Daddy puts his dick inside her.
Emma would say things like that with complete nonchalance, as if it didn’t faze her at all. But I could sense her anger from the words she chose and because I knew her so well.
She took off Ken’s clothes and Barbie’s clothes and mashed their androgynous crotches together. Ken was on top. Emma made oohs and aahs.
That’s what they do in their bed. I’m never going in there again.
Emma had learned the truth about sex from our half brother, Witt Tanner. Emma was eleven. I was nine. Witt was sixteen. Emma had come home from school upset. We usually took the bus because our mother didn’t like to interrupt her nap. Sometimes we walked. We attended a private school, so we were on the same campus no matter what grades we were in, and Emma always let me walk with her even though I was annoying. It was on these walks she would tell me things she had come to know, usually about boys. On this day, though, she had been quiet the whole way, telling me to “shut the hell up” every time I tried to talk to her. When we got to the house, she ran to her room and slammed the door.
Witt lived with us every other weekend before the divorce of our father and mother. He spent the rest of his time at his mother’s house. That added up to 96 hours out of 672 hours each month. It was not a lot. It was not enough.
But the day Emma learned about sex was a Friday that Witt was at our house. He was playing a video game in our family room when we came inside.
What’s wrong with her?
I went into the family room and sat down as close to Witt as possible without being in his lap. He leaned into me, bumping shoulders. He didn’t say anything except to ask about Emma and why she’d run upstairs. Usually on every other Friday, we both would find Witt and cling to him like plastic wrap until he went back to his mother Sunday night. He was soft-spoken and easy to be around. But he was also strong and he always knew what to say and how to say it.
I used to think that Witt was a gift our father had given us to make up for the mother he had given us. I know that’s stupid, because we wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t our mother and because Witt was born before we were, before our father had even met our mother. And anyone looking at Emma could see Mrs. Martin—in her eyes, her jaw, the way she spoke. Still, that’s what I used to think.
Witt finished the round of his game. He cursed at having been killed or out of lives or coins or whatever. He looked me in the eye and asked me how my week had been. He kissed my forehead and messed up my hair, and I smiled so hard, I could feel water in my eyes. Then he said he was going to check on Emma, which he did. She let him in her room and he came out soon after, shaking his head and laughing. No one told me anything then. But when we were playing with our Barbies a few days later, Emma couldn’t resist shattering my ignorance. She was over the shock of it, and this thing that men did to women was now part of the fabric of her.
That day I was upset, do you remember it? And Witt came in to talk to me, do you remember? Well . . . I was upset because some jerk told me that sex is when a boy pees on a girl and then she has a baby.
I remember wanting to cry myself when she said this. I remember thinking that life could not possibly be that humiliating. And I remember thinking that I would never, ever let a boy pee on me even if it meant I could not have babies. The moment didn’t last long, but still—I remember the reaction I had and that I understood why it had made my sister run to her room and slam the door shut.
Witt told me what really happens. Boys don’t pee on you.
Emma explained about penises and vaginas and sperm. Then she took off the clothes of our Barbie dolls.
I suppose it’s strange that our brother was the one to tell us about sex. But that wasn’t the only parental duty he took on.
Our mother didn’t like being our mother. She said she wanted to be our friend. She said she was waiting for us to grow up so we could all do fun things together like shopping and going to get our nails done. She used to tell us about her plans to take us on vacations where we would get spa treatments and sit on the beach reading magazines and sipping drinks that tasted like coconut and had little umbrellas. She made them for us sometimes during the summer. She said when we were older, we could have ones that tasted even better and made you feel relaxed and happy. I would fall asleep dreaming that dream our mother put in our heads, the dream where we were all three like sisters.
There were lots of dreams back then, before our mother started her affair with Mr. Martin. Witt talked of college and wanting to be a lawyer like his mother. He sometimes had girlfriends and they would kiss in the basement. He learned to drive and got his own car. It was like he was paving the path for us to become grown-ups, and he did it with such glee that he made it seem like something worth doing.
This place feels big now, like it’s the whole world, like what happens here matters. But it’s not. And it doesn’t.
Witt said things like that after he went to Europe one summer.
This place is small. Very small. And you can leave here one day. You can become something else. Anything you want. And when you come back, this place won’t feel big anymore. It will appear the way it really is, which is very little and
