still had trouble comprehending Leah’s meaning. “What with Danny?” she asked, the color in her face slowly rising.
Leah wanted to look away but forced herself to hold on Brooke’s flaring eyes. She repeated their gesture for intercourse.
“Where? How?” Brooke said.
Leah, suddenly calm now the awful secret was out, explained as best she could—Danny was waiting in his truck for his cousin. She left. I stayed. I kissed him. Then his hands were on me. Up here (she touched her breasts) and down there (she put a hand on the sheet covering her groin). I did not know what to do. So I let him do what he wanted to do.
“You let him?”
I did not plan that. I did not want to do that. But it was over before I could stop him. Then it was too late. Leah looked down then, the weight of last night crushing her anew.
Brooke was furious but suppressed her rage long enough to sit up and grab Leah by the shoulders. “Listen carefully, Leah!” she said in a sharp whisper with the breath of each syllable striking Leah in the face. “Did he use protection?”
Leah’s eyes showed her confusion.
“A condom. Like on the banana.”
Leah suddenly understood. She’d actually received her “deb balloon” along with all the other girls at last week’s final deb class. She’d hid it deep in her top drawer, inside a pair of knee socks she never wore. She stared wide-eyed at Brooke. I do not know.
“Were you all wet afterwards?”
Leah stared at Brooke. She never talked in explicit terms about bodily functions or symptoms, but Brooke freely did. And at the moment, Brooke was in charge. Around the opening, she signed and felt herself blushing.
Brooke rolled her eyes but pushed on. “Not dripping from inside?”
Leah shook her head.
Brooke nodded. Danny had always been careful when they were together, could slide a condom on without missing a beat in their foreplay. “Thank God for small favors,” she sighed. Then her face assumed a hardened cast. “You stay here,” she said and stood beside the bed.
Leah looked up at her sister from the shadows of the bed, her features weighed down by sadness and regret.
Brooke leaned over and held Leah’s face between her hands. “Look at me, Leah!” She waited for Leah’s eyes to come around to hers. “This is not your fault. Stay here till I get back. I’ll tell Momma you’re not feeling well and will sleep in for a while. She’ll leave you alone.”
Where are you going?
“I’m going to fix this.” She turned and left, closing the door slowly but firmly in her wake.
She spotted Danny standing in the middle of the farmyard, talking to his younger brother Carl seated above him on the tractor. Brooke raced straight toward him in the station wagon, slamming on the brakes only at the last minute so the car slid toward him on the gravel, stopping only a few feet from pinning him between the car and the tractor’s tall tire. Dust followed the car’s skid and settled over everything. Danny never flinched despite the car’s near strike. He glanced up to his brother’s stunned expression and gestured for him to leave. Carl started to protest till Danny shouted, “Go!” So he threw the tractor in gear and drove slowly away.
Brooke was out of the car before the dust had fully settled. She strode forward and punched Danny in the face then kicked him in the groin. The combination caused him to double over, but he didn’t fight back. She used her two open hands to push him over. He fell backwards to the drive. “How could you?” she shouted above the tractor’s drone and the car engine’s purr.
From his seat on the gravel, Danny looked up with a grimace, a little blood trailing from one corner of his mouth. He considered trying to stand but doubted he could do so at the moment. Brooke would no doubt push him down again anyway. She was small but she was strong and tough when this angry. He muttered, “She kissed me.”
“What?” Brooke shrieked.
Danny looked at her and repeated, more loudly and with a tad more confidence, “She kissed me!”
“She kissed you, Danny! That’s all!”
“She didn’t stop me.”
“She couldn’t stop you. She didn’t know what the hell was going on.”
“She could’ve said something.”
“She’s deaf, you asshole!”
Danny winced. “I mean she could’ve made some gesture. I would’ve stopped.”
Brooke smacked him across the face but with an open hand this time. “Shut up and listen to me!” She waited for his eyes to come back around to her then said the rest in a hiss, leaning over till her face was just inches from his. “You never again have any contact with my sister. If I hear you’ve talked to her, if I hear you’ve waved to her, if I hear you looked at her from across the street, I will come back here and cut your balls off and shove them in your mouth so then you can learn what it’s like not to be able to speak and say stop.” She stood upright and pulled a black-handled knife from the back pocket of her jeans. The press of a button brought the gleaming blade out of its sheath. “Do you understand me?”
He looked at the knife then up at her and nodded.
“I didn’t hear you!”
“I understand.”
“Good.” She turned back toward the car.
“Tell Leah I’m sorry I misunderstood her intentions.”
Brooke turned on a dime and raced back, the knife still open in her hand.
Danny feared for a moment she might use it.
But she left it by her side as she leaned over and said, “You’re a fucking liar. You knew full well she was helpless and did it anyway.” She turned again only this time walked across the drive to Danny’s bright red truck parked in the shade of a silo. She used the knife to draw a neat X on the driver’s side door.
She paused before getting back in the station wagon. “Do not touch Leah ever again.” She got back in the car and threw it in reverse, scattering more dust and gravel.
Danny watched her exit from his seat in the middle of the drive.
Leah was still in bed when Brooke returned. This shouldn’t have been surprising, since Brooke had told her to stay there. Still, the sight of her curled under the covers in the room dimmed by drawn curtains so late into the morning deeply unsettled Brooke. Leah was all about light and enthusiasm and meeting the world on her terms, not hiding in the shadows like some whipped dog. Her anger toward Danny flared up again, and she wished she’d given him another kick in the balls for good measure. Then she willed Danny out of her consciousness, for her sake and Leah’s, and went to the window and pulled back the curtains.
Leah rolled over at the sudden change in light. Her face was slack. Her eyes, blinking against the sunlight, were red though dry.
Brooke went to the edge of the bed. “Come on. Get dressed. We need to go pick up my tux,” she said then added, “What color nail polish will go good with a black tux?” She extended her hand.
Leah made no move to accept her hand, actually recoiled a bit, deeper into the bed’s refuge.
“Get up, Leah! We’ve got a lot to do to get ready for the Ball.”
Leah shook her head. I am not going to the Ball.
“Why not?”
Last night!
Brooke noted a widening of Leah’s eyes in anger and indignation. That was good. “Forget about last night. Never mention it again.”
You know.
Brooke actually laughed. “Know what?”
He knows.
“He’ll never bother you again, and he won’t talk.”
For a fraction of a second, Leah wondered about the many possible meanings of this statement. But then she let it go, trusted that her sister had found the right mix of retribution and persuasion as far as “he” was concerned. But there was another “he” that loomed large, his shadow steadily growing since Brooke had left earlier. Paul, she signed.
“What about him?”
Leah’s eyes widened. I cannot face him!
“Why not?”
What I did! I betrayed hi
m! He will hate me!
Brooke sat on the bed. “Are you screwing Paul?”
Leah actually leaned back in shock. Of course not! We have not even kissed!
“Have you made any promises?”
No.
“Then you haven’t betrayed him. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
I have to tell him!
Brooke jumped on the bed and knelt over Leah. She put her hands on Leah’s shoulders and leaned close to her sister’s face. “Listen to me! You must never, ever speak of last night to Paul. You did not betray him. To tell him will only hurt him and you. Never say a word of it. Never speak of Danny again.”
Paul will know.
“Not if you don’t tell him!”
How can I face him?
“You pretty your face, you do up your hair, you put on your gown, and you walk up to him at the auditorium with one of your ‘charm the leaves off the trees’ smiles.” This later phrase originated from a comment Father made about Leah to an admiring visitor at church one Sunday. Now Brooke used it anytime she wanted to tease Leah about her emerging self-possession and grace, a tease that carried just a smidgen of sibling jealousy.
Leah wouldn’t rise to the bait. And say what?
Brooke sighed in frustration but decided to take one more stab at humoring Leah out of bed and back into life (before dragging her, kicking and screaming). “Did you ever ask him what he meant?”
When?
“The first time Paul sat at your lunch table and you thought he said ‘farted’?”
Leah giggled. She’d long since forgotten the incident—so unlike Paul, or her: a comedy of missed understandings. What a way to start her first serious male friendship! She looked up at Brooke with