A Whisper in Rope

 i. Motherless

The McGinty’s were mysterious beings, these children without a mother. Their mother died in childbirth, disappeared into the ether. Skulking past their modest closed-curtained house, I took great care not to step on their lawn or let the tire of my bike wander onto their walkway. As if the ghost of their mother in there might rise up. Mothers were there to protect you – right? And without them, God only knows what might happen.

The exterior was light grey with black shutters, the front lawn neatly trimmed, but the front gardens were empty of the rhododendrons, the tulips, the signature rose bushes, the rock gardens, the daffodils blooming in Spring, tended by the mothers in all of the houses on our street. The inside – on Halloween nights when we gingerly approached the door and rang the bell for candy – was equally stark: an ashen carpet, silver curtains, a dark grey couch. The backyard, which I could see from my yard, was untended; wayward clumps of ornamental grass grew in odd patches and a loose rail fence had shed in pieces lying about. David, Jimmy, and Veronica made rare appearances, walking to and from school; getting picked up by friends; yet the house itself was lifeless, perpetually silenced.  

ii. David

As the last few available babysitters declined one Friday afternoon, my mother turned a shade desperate and called The McGinty’s at the last minute. They are a good Catholic family, she said, dialing the phone, asking whoever answered if Veronica or Jimmy might babysit. They were much older than we, with David at Catholic Memorial and Veronica at St. Elizabeth’s, and Jimmy at the junior high; we kids were friendly in a neighborhood game of capture the flag kind of way with the youngest, Jimmy, a husky, smiley boy of fourteen. Jimmy and Veronica weren’t around, my mother told me, but David could babysit. I felt apprehension; I didn’t know David. I knew Jimmy.

“Why not Jimmy?” I asked, disappointed.

“He’s busy tonight,” my mother responded as I trailed behind her. Not that I had any say in things. Hunter and Tad were eight and five at that point, and I was in the middle, aged seven.

iii. Tickle

David was nice enough. Unlike most of our babysitters, he was willing to put the energy into chasing my brothers around until they were tired out. Most of the night, I watched from the sidelines, flipped channels on the television as the boys whizzed by, enjoying the relative quiet. My brothers wanted him back, so he was asked to babysit again. I had no objection.

The second time round he did one strange thing. David sat us on his lap and tickled us, pretending his fingers were spiders running over our butts, which cued us to laugh, then scream, then run away. It was a game of tickle and tag, I’d say now. When we told my mother about it, though, she decided it might be best if he didn’t come back. She said it was “a little strange, nothing bad, but let’s not have him back again.”

I didn’t fully understand why my mother was upset by his behavior but I had a small inkling. In those days, you didn’t get the make sure you never let anyone touch you there, talks – no one talked about sex or abuse or inappropriateness; no one thought anyone would do such a thing. There were no words or avenues of discussion to go down. You knew what was right and what was wrong, and I thought my mother was right to put a stop to us having a male babysitter. Plus, there was that new rumor about Veronica and her gym teacher. And of Jimmy throwing an apple into the street for the neighbor’s dachshund Tippy, only to get hit by a car.

I rushed even more quickly past their house after that, though, ashamed somehow of something no one had actually done. But like everything else in those days, my mother had a way of making everything right; waving a wand over us and dispelling our worries, our fears; we brushed it off and waved to them if we saw them on the street.

Poor them, I still thought, not having a mother to shield them. From everything.

iv. The Big Score

The big score came when Joannie, a straight A student and highly regarded young lady we knew from church, agreed to babysit the following weekend. At last, my mother must have thought, she found a competent babysitter, one who is certified as a sought-after sitter among all of her peers, someone we can count on. Pretty, sharp-eyed, long lashes, light freckles, auburn hair.

Joannie and her parents were regulars at the after-church coffee hour; I thought she was cool; she wore a bun with a leather clip, bit her nails, and had a button-cute turned up nose. She never said much to me when the mothers would chit chat. I pretended to bite my fingernails like she did, though, as both of us stood, constellations around our parents.

On the prescribed evening, Joannie showed up in a wool plaid mini skirt and white blouse, chunky heels and a bouffant, the uniform of the Catholic schoolgirls of our middle-class town. Eager to have her to myself, I rushed to the door, I stood behind my mother to greet her.

On our stoop, there stood Joannie. And a friend. My heart wilted. Even my hair fell.

“Do you mind if Lana stays? We have homework to do together,” Joannie said and pointed to her plaid backpack, flipped her hair and stared at my mother with wide blue eyes outlined in liner, eyelashes curled and caked with mascara and above them an arc of too-shiny blue eyeshadow. Whomever had dropped them off had already taken off into the pitch night.

I felt myself dissolve into the air; took a step back.

v. Pink Dahlia

Moments before, my mother putting the final touches on her outfit, applying her lipstick, before they’d arrived. Pink Dahlia, she told me as she dabbed my lips too. There I stood, a pink dab of lipstick on my lips in my bunny slippers and my strawberry nightgown.

“This is okay with your mother, Joannie?” my mother asked, towering over them in her black heels, tailored beige dress, and curled under blonde pageboy; my father waiting at the screen door in khakis and a button-down, jangling car keys.

“Your mom is fine with you bringing a friend, Joannie?” she asked again, looking her straight in the eye. Joannie didn’t flinch. At seven, I’d never told a bold-faced lie, but I was sure this was how to pull it off. Joannie glanced at me sideways.

“Ya,” she said, brushing past both of us.

“This is Lana,” she said as she passed. Lana pranced behind her, like a pony on a leash.

“We have to be there by seven, Elaine,” my father said. “Or we will lose our reservation.”

My mother turned, beckoned my brothers over, kissed each of us on the head, and said, “Be good, children. For God’s sake, behave. Joannie – they go to bed at nine.”

“Okay,” Joannie called out in a reassuring tone. My parents shut the door.

She turned to us, and said sharply, “Kids -- go play in the basement.” She and her friend plopped onto our small blue living room loveseat, turned on my parent’s lumbering color console TV, pulled the phone into the room, and shooed us out.

vi. What is Allowed?

The three of us stood in the doorway in our pajamas, staring for a minute. Realizing they’d be unsupervised, my brothers ping ponged into the basement to turn on the one show our parents told us never to watch: Twilight Zone. I flew after them and we jumped on the couches until we tired of it; raided the kitchen for unopened bags of Chips Ahoy until we grew bored; and watched every forbidden television show we could find, including All in the Family with Archie Bunker.

“Let’s run out the back door into the yard,” Hunter said during a commercial.

“Ya!” Tad agreed, both running to the cellar door to peer out.

Are we allowed to do this? I thought. Out back was pitch dark, our yard encircled by hundred-foot pine trees, and far out back, the train tracks. Nothing in the world would convince me to go out there at night without a grownup. I shuddered.

“No,” I said, “there might be ghosts,” trying to discourage them. “Let’s play fifty-two pickup,” I said and threw a pack of cards on the floor. They stared blankly, shuffled away from the back door, kicked the cards around laughing and picked up a couple of plastic swords sitting against the back wall.

vii. Let’s Call Phil

After a while, I decided to sneak upstairs to see what the girls were up to, on the premise of having to run up to my room to get my robe.

“Call Bobby, Lana, call him!”  Joannie was saying as I sauntered past. They didn’t acknowledge me.

“You call him.”

“I called him last time.”

“Then let’s call Phil.”

Giggles.

“I need to . . . get my . . . robe,” I said to none of them in particular.

“Okay,” one of them muttered between chips and the phone and the television. I darted past.

My digital clock read 8:30 pm when I slipped from my bedroom back downstairs in my frilly robe. I hesitated on the bottom stair, listening. The doorbell rang and Joannie let in a third girl, who they greeted as Diana. I peeked around the corner and shyly said hello.

“Isn’t she cute!” Diana said, stepping in from the cold, dressed in an even shorter mini-skirt, tie-dyed blouse, tan suede fringed jacket, chunky suede boots, long straight platinum hair, parted in the middle, and a hippie-style head band.

Joannie looked at me with a jaded glaze and said, “Yea, she is, isn’t she?”

I beamed, hoping the girls might take me into their circle. Instead, they turned toward one another, whispering.

“Go ahead, back down then,” Joanie said to me, getting up to push me along out of the room, “it’s almost bed-time.”

I skipped down to the basement to get in the last few minutes of freedom.

Twenty minutes later Joannie called to us. “Kids, come up and brush your teeth.”

viii. Three of Us

Minutes later the three of us, three small children, ready for bed. Lined up as if for inspection. Joannie is pouring a clear liquid from a glass bottle into a tumbler of orange juice as the three of us stand in front of them, in front of the television, blinking, in our small living room.

“Are you going to read to me?” I ask, butterflies pounding my heart. Joannie rolls her eyes, Diana laughs but I don’t look at her. I stare at Joannie. Sound of a pin drop.

“Can’t you read?” she answers, elbowing Lana. I am ashamed that I asked.

“Will anyone tuck me in?” Tad peeps up, his bravado shriveling, tow-headed five-year-old that he is, looking for grown-up help.

“No – no, just -- head up to bed,” Joannie says, walking us to the bottom of the stairs.

“I’ll tuck you in, Tad,” I say, seeing his eyes grow big, tears verging, his innocent heart swelling up for attention. Tad teeters, Hunter slaps his back and he turns, bolts up the stairs and I fly after them.

“Good night!” I hear one of the girls call out, followed by a fit of giggles.

The girls make me feel something I don’t like: a sense that I am not all right. A sense that they have no interest in knowing me. A sense that, to them, I don’t, we don’t, matter. It stings.

ix. My Soul to Keep        

Helping Tad helps. Acting the grown-up puts me right again.

“Go to sleep,” I say as I pat the covers around his chin, tuck the blanket around his small frame, mimicking my mother’s ritual, the one her mother used on her. I am more independent than he is; I hadn’t needed as many tuck-ins, but Tad is immature, a miniature, still a baby in a way, still precious.

“Good night, little brother,” I say and he looks up at me. He smiles; his eyes glint; hazel-colored almond shapes, squinty, a laughing smile; at this age he is a strikingly handsome young boy, fine features, perfect skin, blond hair, swept to the side, already developing a wry sense of humor. I hear the owl outside, hoo hoo; and he starts. “It’s an owl, I say,” not a ghost. He smiles.

“Good night Evie,” he says, turns on his side. Then he looks back at me: “Can we say our prayer?”

“Yes,” I say, and we our hands clasp together, tightly, in the dark. The prayer hangs on a plaque in my bedroom, with a small child, praying, kneeling. I know it by heart.

“Now I lay me down to sleep . . .” we start.

“Good night, Evie,” Hunter interrupts, mocking us. I huff at him.

“I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep…” we continue.

“Blah blah,” Hunter shout-whispers from his bed.

“May Angels watch me through the night,

And wake me with the morning light.”

x. Creeping Out

Hunter says nothing though I sense he is awake. Tad doesn’t move so I creep out, return to my room, alone, shadows hovering, pink walls flickering in the moonlight, white frilly curtains framing the dormer, shades drawn down by my mother earlier in the day. A small note on the bedside table in my mother’s perfect hand: Go to sleep, Evie. Be good. I love you! - Mum, accented with a smiley face with turned down eyes and long eyelashes, and a whisp of hair; her signature. I flip through the Alice in Wonderland on my nightstand; I look at the sketches. The Cheshire Cat, the Rabbit; Alice, too big after she eats the cookie; the creepy Queen, and that Mad Hatter. The Queen, with her turned up nose, bore a resemblance to Joannie; I clap the book shut.

In those days my parents took the doors off the hinges because we slammed them on one another; locked each other out; small children who shouldn’t be locking themselves in rooms in case of an emergency, they said; so I can hear Tad call out in the darkness.

“I can’t sleep.”

“Shhh,” I say, assuming Hunter is asleep.

There is a silence, in the dark, across the hall. The sound of the wind, the cooing of a dove, the hoot of the old barn owl in the oak tree out back, the evening cicadas, lull me to sleep.

The last thing I hear is Tad creeping downstairs, maybe looking for a glass of milk or someone to rub his back so he can get to sleep. The final sound before darkness. I am out before I can turn off my light.

xi. Dream

A strange dream awakens me and I realize it is my mother shaking me.

“Evie!” my mother says, frantic. “Evie – are you awake? Did anything happen tonight?”

“No,” I say, sleepily. I look around the room; it’s empty, except for my mother.

“Did these girls do something to you?”

“Nnnooo? We watched TV then went to bed. I read my Alice in Wonderl. . . ..”

“Tad has rope burns on his neck,” she spills out. “What went on here?”

“What?” I sit up and pull my rose-covered sheets around me. The ones my grandmother had given me, the sheets that had been my mother’s as a child; soft, worn, comforting. The ones I loved so very much until my hand ripped through the top sheet a week later.

“Did you or Hunter play a game with him or something?”
“No. We went to sleep.”

Her eyes are open with alarm that I’ve never seen before; and she infuses me with worry.

“We walked into the house and the three girls were on the couch. Tad came running down the stairs saying the girls tied a rope around his neck and arms and looked at his . . . .”

“What?”

“His private parts.” My mother sobs; a guttural heave, a grasping sigh.

I freeze in bed a few seconds, her pretty blue eyes looking me over, checking my neck, my arms, my head; makeup running around the edges, staring at her precious girl, her seven-year-old; her hand on my hair.

We hear my father say something downstairs and Tad’s cry.

xii.        Shakes

“Did anything happen when you were awake?” my mother asks again, as if she hadn’t heard me the first time.

“No,” I tell her, confused.

“Something happened here,” she says.

I follow her down the stairs and sit on the bottom step, listening.

“What has gone on here this evening?” I hear my mother say. There is silence.

“Girls, Tad here says you tied him up by the neck and looked at his private parts?” I hear my father say.

Icy quiet. A chasm opens up and swallows us.

“No um.” I hear Joannie say.

“We didn’t do -- anything.” I hear Lana say. I peer around the corner at the odd cast, shifting, uncomfortable. Diana’s eyes are shot open as if she has a gun to her head; sitting in between Joannie, whose expression is cool and uncaring, just as it had been when I had headed up to bed, just as it had been when she brushed past me on her way in; and Lana, staring at her feet. Tad clings to my father’s leg. My five-year-old brother, eyes widened from terror, from the universe gobbling him in, from three girls throwing his innocence into a garbage bin.

“She brought the rope,” says Lana, pointing at Diana. Diana sits up straight.

“No, I . .”  she starts to say.

“What?” I hear my father say, my ears ringing. “What in God’s name did you do to my son?” A scene floats into my head of my brother with a rope on his neck and his pants pulled down. I can’t make sense of it, I try to shake it out of my mind. I can’t shake it out.

Tad cries out; my father rushes him to the back of the house to settle him in their bed.

xiii.        Silence

My mother is dialing the phone, the three girls sitting toe-curled, icy statues on the small couch. I walk past them, I stare at three teenaged girls, in slow motion, not moving, their long eyelashes, perfect straightened hair, freckled skin, lovely looking girls, not daring to move.  None of us – not them, not me, take a breath as I cross the room. I study their feet. I take a seat at the kitchen table and watch my mother; no one tells me not to. This is an emergency, and in an emergency no one knows what you are doing.

“Geraldine? This is Elaine. We have had a -- terrible thing – um -- happen. Can you get over here right away and call the parents of . . .” the sound drops off as I try to hone in on the girls’ whispering through the wide doorway, into the living room, where my mind goes.

xiv.       Ladies Guild

The doorbell rings and in comes one, then another, then another couple. Again, I sit and watch from the kitchen. No one tells me not to.

“Elaine?” Joannie’s mother says. “What happened?” Indignation in her voice, the president of the Ladies’ Guild, the stalwart Catholic mom, a sharp tone, as if my mother is the wrong-doer, as if how dare she accuse her daughter of – of something. My mother looks around the room, grasping for words, notices me, tries to shoo me back to bed; no, I mouth to her, shaking my head, no.

“Geraldine . . .” she starts and I see the six parents’ faces change into gush, into disgust, into indignation. Six gaping parents and three guilty teenage girls and my parents having a “discussion.” My mother huffs, smokes, fumes; Tad is her baby, she says.

Their faces twist, tighten, redden, heaving into rage.

“I find it hard to believe that our daughters did this,” one of the Dads spits out, his posture erect, his Kelly-green Lacoste shirt wrinkling as he turns toward them, collar turned every which way, the back of his hair matted from sleep.

My father – back from tucking Tad into my parents’ bed, straightens up, clenches a fist, keeps it by his side. “I find it hard to believe too, but you saw my son’s neck and you heard what he said about it,” he says, airing his blue-collar roots, shifting from foot to foot. The mothers and the three girls stiffen, indignant, how-dare-you-say-this-about-us.

xv.       A Lesson

“Well, if they did do something, I am sure they didn’t mean anything by it,” one father finally says. He shifts in his docksiders, pulls up his chinos, adjusts the collar of his yellow golf shirt. Looks sideways like he can’t wait to get outta here and get back to his scotch.

My father grew up poor, the son of a coal-shoveler-turned-town carpenter who drove a cab at night; in the shadow of waspy Boston Brahmins, a Catholic. His mother cleaned houses; his grandmother a household maid for a rich family nearby. My grandmother scored a house at the end of the depression anyway, with my grandfathers’ WWI out pay. My father went to school amongst the wealthy; learned to dress and act like them; to golf with them for business; makes money like they do; but he does not mince words or play games.

My father -- a head taller than all of them, handsome, a fine-looking salesman who could beat the hell out of any of these men if he needed to -- takes a step back. I’ve never seen grown men fight but I feel my father, trembling, from where I sit. Not a tremble you can see, but one that expands into his soul, my soul, our collective family soul. My father teaches karate on weekends at the YMCA across from our church; he can hack a board in two with his bare hands. His movements sharpen. There is an invisible wave in the room; one of disbelief, one of shame, one of palatable tension.

“Well, let’s get you all home now,” my father says finally after some back and forth between the fathers. The six parents let out a collective sigh. The mothers’ faces pasted over shut with a haughtiness, a we-don’t-talk-about-this, a how-dare-you. My father ushers the mothers and fathers and their good little girls out the front door.

I creep forward, standing behind my parents now, waiting to hear something.

“I will not call the police,” I hear my father call after them as they seep out, carefully, “but I hope this is a lesson to you.” The girls turn their heads away, in the direction of the street, and the mothers lead them to their respective station wagons.

My mother collapses into a chair.

What kind of a lesson would that be? I ponder.

 xvi.      Rope Burns

We do not have words for this thing – this – assault -- in my home. My parents do not have the words for it. My brother does not have the words for it – for the sexual assault of a five-year-old boy. He is unraveled, his eyes wringy red; from the bathroom I see him sitting on my parents’ bed, staring straight ahead, sitting up amongst the pillows. Staring straight ahead.

A rope, him naked down there, his thingy out, how did the rope burns happen?

In that moment I wished my parents had stuck with David McGinty.

From my bedroom window I follow the three girls as they load themselves into their cars, waving at one other as if it’s just any old day. I feel their icy stares as if they are meant for me. 

I watch as three sets of parents exchange words, turn to look at our house and shake their heads. As if my family has something to be ashamed about.

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Eve Chilali is an American writer, poet and memoirist. Her works have appeared in Spirit, The Dillydoun Review, Angry Women Anthology (Moonstone Arts Center), Entrepreneur, Boston.com.