Page 100 of Under the Ink

“Oh…wemightknow their parents.”

Whew.Successfully diverted.

“Where all have you traveled?”

Naomi’s jaw relaxed at that question, because it was easy and unemotional. “All over. I’m in California right now, but Arizona, Utah, Texas, Nevada—”

“Oh.”

Yeah…Naomi knew what that meant and she wasn’t going to go there. She also wasn’t going to let her mother know that Colorado had been one of their stops.

“New Mexico, New Orleans, Arkansas, New York…” They had been to so many places. If she’d been looking at an itinerary, she would have remembered each state and all the cities they’d been to. But in the chaos of her brain, they reallywereall starting to blend together.

“How many days do you stay in each place?”

“It depends but we’re mostly only in one city for a day before we move on. States are different. Like, we were in Texas for several days and we’ve been in California for a week.” No way would she tell her mother about the festival they’d done last weekend. Surely, her mother would have thought it was sin-filled and evil.

But Naomi had actually enjoyed it. Watching lots of other bands, cradled in Sage’s arms, just buzzed enough that most of the shit she always carried was actually floating away…just for that tiny wisp of time. She was discovering that the music helped with that.

A lot.

“Have you been able to attend church anywhere?”

Okay…thatwas one of those topics that came up every so often—but why now? Naomi hadn’t regularly attended church since she’d left her parents’ house.

And her mother knew as much.

“No, mom. We’re usually in a moving bus on Sunday mornings.”

“You’re studying your Bible at least?”

Andthatwas usually Naomi’s answer to not attending church. How often had she told her parents that she could “read and pray” on her own, only to have them tell her she was “forsaking the assembly of the saints?”

Enough that she knew exactly where this conversation was headed. Only now, for some reason Naomi couldn’t quite grasp, she felt like fighting back. “No, I’m not.” She hadn’t even packed one.

“Sweetheart, you—”

“Mom, I know you and dad love the church. But I don’t. I don’t look at it the way you do—and I don’t feel safe or loved there.”

“It’s because you’ve lost your trust.”

There was a snap inside Naomi’s head that she could have almost sworn her mother could hear—but it was like the woman had never heard her before…or like both her parents wanted to pretend like nothing had ever happened.

And Naomi was finding it harder and harder to stuff it down anymore.

“No, mom. It’s because I wasraped.” Pausing enough to give her mother a chance to respond, Naomi jumped on the silence. “By the preacher’s son.”

“You—”

But Naomi was on a roll and kept going. “I questioned myself for the longest time. Had I somehow given consent? Or was it part of Paul’s message that women should be submissive—so go ahead and assault them while you’re at it? I wasn’t able to talk about it at first but then when I did, I was made to feel like it wasmyfault. But itwasn’tmy fault. And instead of going after the person who did it, I was made to feel ashamed. How dare I accuse the precious preacher’s son?”

Her mother responded with almost as much anger, not what Naomi had expected. “Wait a minute. You never once said what happened. You never told us. You told Karen Rodenbeck—and she said that you had taken marijuana and didn’t know if it had really happened. I asked you about it and you didn’t want to talk.”

“You asked me if it was all in my head!”

“Because you changed, Naomi. You’d always been a quiet child, but you completely shut down, and I wondered if you had some sort of mental illness.”

Naomi took a deep breath in through her nostrils. “It’s calledtrauma.”

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