Page 19 of Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Book
Chapter 9
The Clue in the Diary
Back in the nineties, rapes were committed by men wearing masks. If a stranger jumped out from a bush and forced himself on you, the police might show some sympathy. If your rapists were three boys who sat behind you in chemistry, you didn’t go to the cops. If you were drunk when it happened, with only hazy memories of what had been done to you, you kept your mouth shut altogether. It didn’t even occur to you to seek retribution. You were the one responsible.
Darlene Cagle’s mother believed her daughter was to blame. She said as much the night of the party—or to be perfectly accurate, early the following morning. Darlene had walked home barefoot from the lake, hiding behind trees every time a car passed. She hadn’t been able to locate her bra. All she’d wanted was to get in the shower and wash the night off her. After three hours of walking, she’d reached the trailer she shared with her mother, only to find the front door locked for the first time in her life.
She’d banged on the fake wood. Louder and louder, her panic building as though everything she’d left back at the lake was bound to catch up with her. Finally, she heard her mother’s slippers shuffling across the living room floor. The door swung open and her mother stood there wearing her latest boyfriend’s boxer shorts and a Mickey Mouse tank top.
Her mom’s mouth had opened to deliver the lecture she’d been waiting half the night to deliver. Then she stopped as her eyes took the terrible journey from her daughter’s head to her toes. Hair in knots. Mascara running instreaks down her face. Bra missing. Breasts visible through the gaping holes left by three missing shirt buttons. No shoes—only socks.
For a moment, it could have gone either way. Darlene thought about that moment a lot. So much had been decided in that five-second interval. Now that she was older, she knew that her mother had likely been on the opposite side of that threshold at some point in her life. She must have known exactly what Darlene needed to hear in a moment like that. But no one had shown her any kindness, so she chose not to offer any to her daughter. Instead, she dragged Darlene down into the muck she’d been trapped in for sixteen years. That, more than anything else that had happened to Darlene, was the thing that came closest to killing her.
“Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“No.”
She didn’t know how to tell her mother what had happened. She didn’t even know what words to use.
“You’ve been drinking, haven’t you?” her mother had demanded, as if that were all that mattered.
“Yes.” She had been. There was no point in denying it. Darlene could smell it oozing from every one of her pores. No one had forced her to fill her Solo cup with the stuff they called Green Goddamns. No one had poured it down her throat. But then again, no one had told her that even a little would be too much. Or that someone who’d only had three beers in her life had no business consuming a mixture of grain alcohol and green Kool-Aid.
“I thought you were supposed to be better than all this.”
“Mama—” Darlene hadn’t cried all night, but now she started.
“I’m not interested,” her mother said. “You made your bed, now you’ll lie in it.”
It was just the two of them. Darlene’s father lived in ritzy Cashiers, North Carolina, with his real family. He and Darlene’s mom had hooked up in high school. Or at least that’s what he’d called it after the results ofthe paternity test had come in. He’d been away at college when his daughter was born. It was ridiculous to think a boy with such potential would embrace fatherhood at nineteen, so no one had bothered to ask him. His folks hadn’t wanted much to do with Darlene or her mother, but they’d picked up some of the bills for a while. They’d both died in a car crash when Darlene was in the sixth grade. Their son had never come back to Troy. Not even for their funeral.
Her mother didn’t talk about the years before Darlene was born. It was as if she’d skipped high school altogether and gone straight from eighth grade to working at the Stop & Shop. Darlene’s grandfather had been the local postmaster. Her grandmother ran the high school cafeteria. The Cagles weren’t rich like the Lamberts, Wainwrights, or Underwoods. But no one would have called them trash. Darlene had been ignorant of her role in her mother’s fall from grace until she was eight years old and the police dropped her off at her grandparents’ house after her mother’s first arrest for possession.
“You know, she could have done something with her life if it hadn’t been for you,” Darlene’s grandmother informed her.
That came as a surprise to Darlene. It seemed like such a strange thing to say. But the poison oozing from her grandmother’s voice told her there had to be truth in it. She lived with her grandparents for two months while her mother got clean. That was long enough to find the boxes in the basement filled with books, spelling bee trophies, science fair blue ribbons, and straight-A report cards—mementos pointing to a life her mom had never had a chance to lead. Two months was also more than enough time to figure out why her mother never showed any desire to visit her parents.
Darlene took three showers and two baths the day after the lake. When her mother got home from work that evening, Darlene went straight to her bedroom and barricaded the sole means of entry. Her room had one tiny window too small for a human to squeeze through. As long as the dresserwas shoved in front of her door, Darlene felt safe. She stopped going to her summer job at the ice cream parlor. She wouldn’t pick up the phone or answer the door.
When her period came, she spent the whole day thanking God, though deep in her heart she was furious at him as well. She had made one mistake and paid a terrible price for it. It didn’t feel like something a loving God would do to a sixteen-year-old girl.
When her mother noticed the pads in the trash, she seemed angry that Darlene hadn’t been properly punished.
“So you got away with it, did you?” she said. “Next time you might not be so lucky.”
Determined to avoid a next time, Darlene hardly left her house for the rest of the summer. Only during the day, while her mom was working, would she emerge from her room. There was no television. The library books on her nightstand—Flowers in the Attic,It, andThe Giver—had all been read and were long overdue. There was nothing to do but practice cheerleading jumps in the backyard—never too far away from the trailer to run inside if a car turned into the drive. The jumps were the only thing that cleared her head. So she practiced them for eight hours every day. Over and over again. Nothing else on her mind.
Her mom would return home after dark. By that time, Darlene had already been locked in her bedroom for hours. Sometimes Darlene would hear her mom talking. Sometimes a man would respond. But never once did anyone knock on Darlene’s door. Not even when Darlene woke up screaming in the middle of the night.
School started in August as always. Darlene kept her head down, hoping everyone had forgotten her. Judging by the number of boys who went out of their way to say hello, they hadn’t. Darlene wouldn’t have bothered with varsity cheerleading tryouts if the girls’ coach hadn’t caught her on her way out the door and insisted she return to the gym.
Darlene performed her favorite drill—the same one she’d practiced 315 times over the summer. Afterward, she hadn’t stuck around to hear the results. She’d seen Lula Lambert’s routine. It was good—not as good as hers, but good enough to make the cheerleading captain, Beverly Wainwright, feel comfortable giving the last spot to one of her own. Darlene knew how things worked in Troy. Rich girls stuck together. Poor girls fended for themselves.
She slipped out of the gym and made her way home. When she got there, she went straight to her room. There was no point in practicing anymore. The idea of cheering in front of a crowd squeezed the breath from her lungs. The last thing she wanted was to be conspicuous. There was no way she could perform knowing Randy and the others would be watching.
That afternoon, when she heard the sound of the car in the drive, she ignored it. When the knock on the door came, she pulled the covers over her head. When she heard Beverly’s voice calling her name, she threw the sheets back.
“I know you’re in there! I’m not leaving until you come talk to me.”
