“He… he made me feel guilty,” she insisted. “I wanted to tell someone. But after it happened, he just laid there and cried in my arms, and kept going on about what a bad person he was. I didn’t knowwhatto do.”
I understood. She’d fawned in order to keep herself safe. Her assault hadn’t been as violent as the rest of ours, so she’d found excuses and tried to tell herself it hadn’t been rape. At the time, part of her loved John as much as she feared him, and the two had combined to make her comply with whatever he demanded. John, worrying that she’d expose him, put on a show of being some tortured soul to guilt her out of turning him in.
I was fed up with this trial by the time the last girl was approached by the defense. She was the girl who’d been sobbing the entire time, and she was still crying as Walker nailed her with questions. He was harder on her than he’d been on the rest of us, as he was clearly frustrated this wasn’t going his way.
“Miss Flynnia, is it true that you terminated a pregnancy after your encounter with Mister Smith?” Bernard asked.
I felt my skin grow cold, and beside me, Oberi recoiled. Something hollow opened up inside of me, blooming a void in my pelvis that sank further down and ruptured.
“That’s… yes,” she whimpered. She wiped at her wet face as she sank lower in her seat.
“Why was that decision yours alone to make? Doesn’t Mister Smith have arightto decide what happens to his child?” Bernard ranted.
A crawling sensation, one of cockroaches scuttling over my skin, overtook my entire body. The girl next to me went green. Similarly, I thought I also might hurl.
Bernard kept on grilling this poor girl, and every accusation he flung at her made me want to crawl into a hole. I wondered who was on trial here; John, or us.
Oberi, I don’t know if I can do this.The crawling sensation that had spread over my skin was getting unbearable. If I opened my mouth, I was afraid I’d scream.
Just think of something nice, Oberi encouraged.You don’t have to be here.
Mentally… no, I didn’t. I’d testified— my part was done. My thoughts could float on out of here, and no one but Oberi would be the wiser.
And they had to, because if my spirit remained in this suffocating courtroom, with my torturer sitting twelve feet away, I’d absolutely lose my shit. I couldn’t do that. I had to appear sane, because I had to get the judge to take me seriously. Even though breaking down would be totally understandable in a situation like this, it wasn’t something women could afford. Showing emotion here would be considered a weakness or a lie.
I had a really hard time shifting out of my current state of mind. I attempted to take breaths, but they were shallow, and my lungs tightened with each inhale.
Oh, shit. I was about to have a panic attack.
The judge banged his gavel and said, “I would like to remind the defendant to keep his eyes forward, please.”
John was looking at me. Iknewhe was. I didnotwant to give this bastard the satisfaction of watching me have a meltdown. He didn’t own me. I wouldn’t let him know his actions had affected me this badly.
Breathe, Oberi said gently, laying his head on my lap.Pick a spot, focus your sight, then allow yourself to float away.
I gulped another shaky breath, then fixated my gaze on a speck on the floor. I didn’t allow it to move, and I forced my quickening heartbeat to steady. Ancestors, I wished Charlie was here.
Charlie.Hewashere. There wasn’t an ocean between us. In fact, I wasn’t in this courtroom at all. I was on the beach at my grandmother’s house inHok’evale, lying on a blanket next to him in the sand. Oberi was playing in the waves, and Charlie was laughing. I must’ve said something funny. The sun was bright and warm, and I could smell my grandmother’s cooking wafting from the open windows of her home. Charlie reached out for me and cradled me against his chest, and I buried my face in his t-shirt, indulging in his scent as I counted the beats of his heart. He placed a kiss in my hair, told me I was his pidge and it would be all right.
I didn’t care that we’d never been there together, because it was real to me. I think I spent a few hours absorbed in that vision, soaking up the rays and locked in Charlie’s arms, because that was the one place on Earth I wanted to be.
It was the only way I got through it. If I didn’t love him so much… I wouldn’t be able to endure this.
By the time I came out of it, I realized that a warm, firm hand was grasping mine. I looked down, and saw that the girl beside me was clutching her fingers tightly in my own. She gave me a wavering, but encouraging, smile.
I returned the gesture and squeezed her hand back. This girl was a stranger to me, but we’d manage to make it through this together.
I saw my Uncle Jonah cross the room. I hadn’t even recognized that he’d entered. He must’ve just got done testifying. He gave me a wink as he went to sit back down, telling me things were going to be all right.
Oberi, what happened?I asked.I totally blanked out.
Your uncle testified that he walked in while John was attempting to suffocate Miss Flynnia. The evidence your uncle gave was too damning to deny. Walker has been portraying John as a sexual sadist to the court, who needs to torture his victims to gain a sense of relief from his inner longings. He doesn’t mean to kill, but he’s ceasing to derive pleasure from the assaults themselves, and is pushing his victims further and further to satisfy his urges,Oberi replied.
Sounds about right.John wasn’t quite the Dollmaker, but he still enjoyed torturing women, and he needed to go down for it.
After the last terrible round of questioning, John was up next, in order to defend himself for what we’d accused him of. Oberi told me not to listen, and I tried not to, although it wasn’t easy.
Everything he said, about that night and about me, was straight bullshit. Worse than that, it didn’t match up. John started off his story saying that I was the one who’d come on to him, then changed it mid-way through, saying that we’d been in a secret relationship for a month before that night in the woods.
