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“No,” he said calmly as he combed his fingers through my hair. “I’m sorry, Brenda, but I can’t do that. Kyler asked me to be here when she told you about this, and I’m staying unless she tells me to leave.”
“Okay, let me try this a different way. Get out of my house, or I’ll call the police and have you arrested for trespassing.”
“You forget I’m eighteen, Mom,” I sniffled. “I’m a legal adult now, and I invited him here. He’s not going anywhere. Of the two of you, apparently he’s the only one who actually gives a crap about me.Howcould you make this about you? The whole world doesn’t revolve around you, Mom! I had my innocence stolen from me. My childhood. Myvirginity! I was traumatized and displaying symptoms of PTSD for two years and you never pulled your head out of your ass for long enough to notice it!”
Oh, my God! Had I really just said that?
I’dneverdone that before. Sure, I’d spat back at her a few times when she’d said something particularly ridiculous, but I’d never just gone off on her like that before. I’d always been too afraid of what she’d do. I had no idea what had gotten into me, but I couldn’t deny it felt good to give her a little taste of her own medicine for once.
I opened my mouth again to apologize, but before I could get a word out – before I even registered what was happening – her hand flew across my face and slapped me hard enough that I saw stars. I curled up against Ian, trying to make myself as small as possible, and he held me protectively, shielding me from any further blows.
“Brenda, I’m going to let that slide because I understand you’re in shock right now,” he clipped out, low and deadly. “But if you raise a hand to your daughter again,I’llbe the one calling the police, and my next call after that will be to my father, who’s an assistant district attorney in this county. And that red mark on Kyler’s face will be enough proof that they’ll arrest you for assault. Correct me if I’m wrong, but can’t you lose your nursing license over something like that?”
I didn’t see what she did because my face was buried in my boyfriend’s chest, but apparently she made a gesture of some sort.
“Okay, now that we’ve cleared that up, why don’t you listen to your daughter instead of trying to make this about you?” Ian said, like he was talking to a child.
“What gives you the right to speak to me like this?” she spat.
“The fact that you just slapped my girlfriend, who I love more than my own life, in the face after she told you she was sexually assaulted!” he scoffed. “And she's not wrong about you ignoring the signs. I knew something had happened to her almost immediately because of the way she behaved around me, and you didn’t notice anything for two whole years. Not once did you notice how she flinched if someone touched her. How she had panic attacks if someone startled her. How her fight-or-flight instincts kicked in if someone came up behind her. How she was closed off from the world because she was scared of everyone in it. You ignored signs that anyone else with a set of eyes would have noticed immediately.
“I understand this is overwhelming. It broke my heart when Kyler finally decided she could trust me enough to tell me about what happened to her, and I’ve spent every day since then trying to protect her from any more pain. So I’m going to give you a choice. Either you make an attempt to hear what Ky’s trying to tell you, or I call the police and tell them that you just hit your daughter without provocation. What’s it going to be?”
“Continue, Kyler,” my mom muttered like a petulant toddler.
“Babe, let me up,” I sighed. “She’s not going to believe me any other way.”
Ian kissed my head, then released his hold on me. I stood up and took a deep breath before taking my shirt off. Then I walked over to stand right in front of her, so the small, round scars on my stomach were right at eye-level with her.
“See these, Mom? They’re from the cigarettes those monsters burned me with when I tried to resist them. There’s another oneon my vagina, where I also had a painful rash for days because they used latex condoms.”
I pulled the bra strap on my left side down and folded the cup down with it, pointing to the scar from Max’s bite.
“See this? It’s a bite mark from where one of the boys bit me so hard that he drew blood. It hurt so bad that I didn’t wear a bra for a week. I had Melissa get me gauze and burn cream and hydrogen peroxide and I treated the woundsby myselfbecause I was too terrified to tellyou, a medical professional, about it and let you treat me. And that was the only reason I told her. Because I needed someone to come and bring me the supplies, since I knew I couldn’t get them past you without you asking questions.
“Did you never question why I’ve only bought one-piece bathing suits? Why I always shut my door and make you leave the room when I’m changing? And why thatall of a suddenstarted right before I turned sixteen?”
I wiped away the fresh tears that had fallen, then pulled my bra back up, put my shirt back on, and went back to Ian, who was waiting for me with open arms.
“So a heinous crime was committed against you, and instead of trusting your mother to protect you, you kept secrets. Just like always. How am I supposed to trust you when all you’ve ever done is lie and keep secrets from me?” she sniffed dramatically.
Another sob bubbled out of my throat, and Ian rubbed my arm as he held me close.
Seriously, how selfish could she get? She wasstillmaking this the Brenda show. All her, all the time. She couldn’t even fathom anyone else’s pain or think about anything other than how this affected her. And she still wanted to accuse me of lying because she didn’t like what I was saying.
“And again, you can’t see past the tip of your nose, Mom. Did you miss the part where they held a knife to my throat and threatened to kill me? I was terrified. After I told Melissa, I was so scared that they’d somehow know, even though I knew she would never tell a soul. I couldn’t sleep for weeks. I kept having nightmares about what happened to me, or about them coming back and torturing or killing me. Oh, and did I mention that I was threatened again a couple of months ago? On school property. Because they found out that I’d told Ian. And that time, the guy actually cut my neck. There’s no scar from that, because Ian helped me treat the cut so it wouldn’t leave one.”
“If you werereallyso scared, why didn’t you report it to the police?” she challenged. “Then they could have been arrested. This sounds like you’re just making up storiesagainto cover up the fact that your entire school knows how much you’re whoring yourself around!”
Something that almost sounded like a growl rumbled in Ian’s chest, but he didn’t say anything. He just held me tighter.
I took a deep breath to center myself before responding.
“I didn’t report it because I knew they’d be tried as minors and given a slap on the wrist, and that they’d hurt me even worse for talking. I’ve been scared of my own shadow for over two years, Mom. And the only reason I’m telling you now is because I found out that there’s sufficient evidence to get them tried as adults and put them away for a very long time. I was fifteen, and the legal age of consent in Kansas is sixteen, so it was statutory rape. And apparently there was someone there taking video too. That’s child pornography, and it’s a federal offense that carries a huge prison sentence.”
“And how did you find that out? Because you were watching porn online?”
What the…
