The band kicked into “Lean on Me” by Club Nouveau as the Tigers got ready to try to pull a Hail Mary, a term coined by Roger Staubach but arguably dates back to 1922, when Notre Dame played Georgia Tech and prayed a Hail Mary before each of two fourth-down plays that resulted in touchdowns. Jonovan jokingly snatched the baton from the drum major, whose elaborate uniform was doing the most, and the two of them started doing the cabbage patch. That ignited everyone in the stands on the home team side to start doing the same. Next thing you knew people were moving from side to side and snapping their fingers . . . until the ball was snapped and then the music, the dancing, the talking all stopped.
Malcolm Briggs, better known as “Golden Arm,” grabbed the ball in the snap, took four quick steps back, and threw a thirty-nine-yard pass into the end zone that was caught by Cedric Parrish, better known as “the Steel Curtain,” due to his size and agility. It took about two seconds for everyone to realize that they had won the game before complete pandemonium started.
Even I was excited and I really didn’t have shit to do with the accomplishment. That is what’s so amazing about school spirit. Winning takes a lot of work and effort on the parts of various people, but everyone gets to celebrate the triumph. I was on the third row of the bleachers and rushed down to the field, almost getting trampled by the others who didn’t have shit to do with winning, either. The key players were being lifted up and tossed around like rag dolls instead of the two-hundred-plus pounds they were actually carrying. Some players had three to four girls—their own rosters—trying to fling their arms around their necks and shower them with kisses. I was trying to find Bianca and Cherie, since we were planning to attend a party together. I didn’t want to get lost in the madness, so it was better to hook up with them then.
Jonovan walked past me in his costume and roared at me. I gave him a high five with my hand against his paw but didn’t engage in conversation. The idea was for him to really pretend to be a tiger, and tigers don’t speak. He had to act out all of his emotions and speak through his movements.
I did ask, “Did you get where the cheerleaders went?”
He pointed his right paw toward the other side of the mass of people.
“Thanks.” I walked off and started pushing my way through the crowd again.
I eventually found them and, looking back on it, searching for them was the worst mistake of my entire life. If I had gone back home that night instead of trying to hang out with them, my life would have taken a much different turn.
* * *
I stared at Marcella and decided that I couldn’t go any further.
“What happened next?” she asked. “Take your time, Caprice.”
“I can’t do this.”
“Then maybe that’s enough for today.”
“Or maybe it’s enough forever. I’m sure you get the gist of what happened. My best friends set me up to be raped that night by the boys I had always trusted, and others. It was humiliating, painful, and I thought that they were going to literally fuck me to death.”
Marcella stood up and came over to sit beside me where I lay on her sofa. She took my hand. “I’m so sorry, but please understand that you’re not alone. A rape occurs every—”
“Why do people always go there? How does knowing that tons of other women, and men, have endured the same thing help matters?” I sat up, angry. “So that means that I shouldn’t be so upset because Peggy Sue was raped back in 1952 in Peoria, Illinois, walking home from third grade and Tiffany will be raped tonight leaving work at a diner in Milwaukee, Wisconsin?”
“No, I’m not implying that,” Marcella said, taken aback by my statement.
While I understood that I was far from the only person who had ever been victimized, I was fighting my own damn demons. There are two different ways to tell someone that they aren’t the only ones who have dealt with a traumatic experience, such as rape, death of a loved one, or even an addiction. One way is for it to come across like: you did nothing to deserve this and there are others who can be a support system for you because they have dealt with similar things. The other way is for it to come across like: you need to suck it up, get over it, and deal with it like everyone else because this is life and shit happens.
I decided to take Marcella at her word, that she didn’t mean to come across abrasively like I had taken it.
“I just don’t want to go into further details,” I said. “It was horrific and inhumane and now I’m back here to make sure they pay for what they did to me.”
“Okay . . .” Marcella tightened her grip on my hand. “Let’s not talk about that night. I’m sure that it was an atrocious experience. But I do need to know what you are planning to do to Bianca, Cherie, Jonovan, and—”
“Jonovan was the one who saved me that night. He showed up in his tiger costume and started pulling them off me. He wanted to call the police.”
“But you refused?”
“I ran and kept running. I sat outside in the park for a few hours, and afterward, I snuck into the house to look at Grandma one last time. I sat there beside her bed, in the darkness, listening to her breathing while her chest went up and down. At first, I was going to wake her and tell her the truth; let her call the police, even though I had run away when Jonovan suggested it.
“But then she started coughing in her sleep and she seemed to be struggling to breathe for a few seconds. She was way too sick to be burdened with the chaos that would have ensued if I’d told the truth. I was young but not dumb, and I already understood how most rape victims are treated; especially when they accuse men who are deemed too attractive to have to rape someone.
“The parents of those boys would have defended them, refused to believe that their sons would rape an ugly, anorexic girl whose mother was locked up in a psych ward. They would have made all sorts of accusations about me: That I had to be crazy like my mother. That I was a liar and starving for attention. That their sons all had girlfriends and would have no reason to lay a finger on me.
“Cherie and Bianca would’ve lied, if for no other reason than to cover their own asses. They’d lured me into the entire thing, and then watched when a drunk and high Herman took the first turn. It all happened so fast, but I swear that I remember Bianca helping to hold one of my legs open so they could hurt me.”
Marcella let go of my hand and started rubbing it. “How many of them were there?”
“Six, maybe seven. It was at the party. I thought it was going to be at someone’s house—that maybe even the parents would be there to supervise—but it was in an old, abandoned building in Southeast. They started fires in large metal trash cans for lights and the music was played from a battery-operated boom box. They had cases and cases of beer that some college students had purchased and a lot of illegal drugs.
“I wanted to go shortly after we arrived. The entire thing spelled trouble. The ironic thing was that I was worried about the police showing up and my being arrested on drug or alcohol charges because of the party law. My future possibly being ruined for being guilty by association, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That part about being in the wrong place rang true, but the police never showed up to break up the party. People didn’t have to knock one another over to dash out broken windows or busted doors to get away from them. The only one who ended up running for her life was me.”
“The statute of limitations has run out, but that doesn’t mean we can’t confront them, together.” Marcella seemed so sincere when she said that. “They need to know how this affected you and at least face the fact that someone else knows.”
“Marcella, that can’t happen. In order for me to confront them, I’d have to admit to being Caprice Tatum, and that shit is out of the question.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Then how do you plan to get retribution?”
I started to tell her about the videos I already had of Michael, Glaze, and Duchess. I was still contemplating the best way to use them, but I was most certainly going t
o do so. I also started to tell her that Herman was next on my list, but she would’ve only tried to convince me not to do it.
“Caprice?”
“I’m not quite sure, with two exceptions. I’m not going to physically harm anyone, and they can never know why their lives are suddenly falling apart. They should assume that it’s karma. We all know she’s a bad bitch!”
“What do you mean by their lives suddenly falling apart?”
I shrugged. “Some people create their own storms, then get all upset and in their feelings when it starts to rain. Like I said, I haven’t drawn any conclusions about it yet. Maybe that’s why I’m here; for you to prevent me from doing anything at all.”
Marcella smiled. I’d only said that to deflect her questions. There was not a chance in hell that I wasn’t going to get them back, one way or another.
“That’s a positive outlook, Caprice. It’s really not healthy for you to wish negative things on others, or to be the catalyst for their struggles. Karma does work both ways. Whatever is thrown out into the universe comes back, regardless of who is doing the throwing. You need to learn to accept that they won’t ever apologize, mainly because you never plan to give them the opportunity to do so.”
“Even if I told them who I am, they wouldn’t apologize. That would mean admitting what they did. I wonder if they ever discuss it with each other anymore, or if they’ve attempted to block it all out. Maybe they blamed it on the alcohol and drugs, and reasoned that it was a mistake. But it wasn’t a fucking mistake. A mistake is making an oversight on a question on your final exam. A mistake is making salmon patties with a packet of crab cake seasoning because they looked the same. A mistake is putting an empty soda can in the regular trash instead of the recycling bin. But holding me down and raping me, or helping others to rape me, was not a mistake.”
“I agree,” Marcella replied. “It wasn’t a mistake. It was a crime. But there’s this amazing and true quote by Maya Angelou. ‘Hate. It has caused a lot of problems in this world, but it has not solved one yet.’ ”
“That may be your truth, and her truth, but I can’t overcome my hatred toward them, and I need to come up with some sort of solution so I can move on with my life. I’m almost forty and, to the naked eye, I have it all. But that’s not the case. By the way, she also says, ‘If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.’ I can’t say that Bianca or Cherie ever really loved or respected me, but I believed that they did up until that night, and by the time that night ended, I felt like a part of me was dead.”
“Then it’s time for you to resurrect it.” Marcella got up and walked over to close a blind. The sun was shifting and beaming right in on the sofa. She pulled the string and then stood there, with her back to me as she asked, “So how’s your love life?”
I let out a sound that I could not even describe with a word.
She turned around and then sat back in the armchair across from me as I sat up and put my feet on the floor. Then I stared at her. If I was going to tell it, I may as well go ahead and tell it all. Clearly, she knew that I was incapable of having a healthy, normal, loving relationship with a man.
“That bad, huh?”
“Depends on which way you look at it. I haven’t had a string of bad relationships. I don’t bother with having them at all.”
“And why is that?”
“Whew, that’s a list! Take your pick. Gold-digging men who would only want me for my fame and money. Men believing that they are the greater sex and therefore, can fuck the masses and expect women to only fuck them. Not believing in love because I’ve never truly seen it. Grandma never had a man around, Momma was raped and already bat-shit crazy before I came into the world, Daddy would rather run women than allow women to run him, and Hannah never found the look she was searching for. So what would I be basing such a situation on, even if I dared to go there?”
“That’s the case with a lot of young ladies,” Marcella replied. “But it makes no sense to just give up.”
“You don’t have on a wedding ring.” Marcella seemed uncomfortable with that statement. “I’m not putting you down or anything, but I’m just saying. You’re a psychiatrist, which hopefully means you don’t have mental issues, and apparently you’re single.”
“I never discuss my personal life with clients.”
I felt bad about what I’d said. She was right. I had no right to intrude on her personal life. Even though I was spilling my guts to her, it was my choice, and that was her profession.
“Mea culpa. My bad. In other words, mind my own fucking business.”
“I didn’t put it like that.”
“But really, if I had to wrap the entire thing up and put a pretty red bow on it for you, I would say that falling in love to me would mean giving up power to another person.”
“Power to do what?”
“Everything!” I sighed. “I once had a man tell me that he couldn’t be in control of his life and be in love at the same time. I didn’t understand what he meant then, but now I do. Also, the few times that I’ve attempted to date a man, it was always frustrating to me when it came to the intimacy. I wasn’t ready and they weren’t patient. You know what hurt the most?”
“What?”
“A man making me feel special one day and making me feel like a nobody the next. How do people switch up so fast? I see it all the time on the news with high-profile breakups and I’ve seen it in everyday life. One moment, a couple seems like they are perfect together and everyone is commenting on how loving and attentive they are, and how they wish they had that kind of love. Then wham! Next thing you know, they are calling each other all kinds of bitches and whores, they are taking out restraining orders and slanging accusations of cheating, abuse, violence, threats, diseases, and start snatching funds out bank accounts and hiding the jewelry.”
“Interesting description but not far off base for some marriages.”
“Oh, they do it sometimes without there even being a marriage. And that’s another thing. I have some friends who dated men for less than six months, and when they decided they no longer wanted to be bothered with their trifling behinds, the men had the audacity to want to be paid to go away. Like they’re owed something for their time. The Devil is a liar! I’m not putting myself in that situation.”
“You said something about not wanting to be intimate. So you’re not sexually active?”
I smirked. “Oh, that’s a totally different concern. You may want to pour yourself a drink before I go there.”
“I’m fine, but I can make you one if you need it,” Marcella said.
“Give me whatever you have that’s strong!”
Chapter Twenty
I called the house to make sure Nikki was working with the label to get my upcoming tour schedule together. There were certain venues that I refused to perform in, either because I had some kind of beef with the managers or because I hated the acoustics. My ass could actually sing—unlike a lot of the lip-syncing broads—but some places had such fucked-up structure that I sounded ridiculous. I had a reputation to protect. Rarely did awesome performances go viral, other than people posting selfies of themselves with the stage in the background with me on it. But let a singer put on a bad show, have one bad night, and millions of people were spreading it all over social media. Mostly women, but that’s not a surprise. Women putting other women down was like telling the world that they were more worried about the “competition” than their own progress. Silly, really, because how can you compete in a space that you don’t even own any real estate in?
After she ran down the list for me, only one was unacceptable, so they were going to find another spot in Jacksonville, Florida, for me to “set it off.” I was looking forward to touring, as always. That was when I felt most free and could talk shit to the masses through my lyrics and dance. Plus, the busier I was, the less time I had to concentrate on my pain.
“Sorry about that,” I told Marcella as I hit
the end button on my cell phone. “I still have to be Wicket after all of this, and during it, I guess.”
“You’re so talented, so beautiful. Did you ever think that you’d be so successful?”
I giggled. “Are you fucking serious? No, I never thought that any of this would happen—not when I was a child. I recognize that none of the good things in my life would have happened if I had not been through everything in the beginning. I am a living testament to the ideology that where there is no pain, there is no gain.”
“Some people believe that pain is weakness leaving the body.”
I let that sink in and nodded, taking a sip out of the double hit of cognac that Marcella had poured for me. “That makes a lot of sense. In some ways, my pain did make me stronger, and it put Hannah and Daddy into my life. I definitely can handle most normal problems better than the average person. My career is stressful, but I rarely feel any stress from it at all. When shit goes awry, I concentrate on resolutions instead of flipping out.”
“Then that proves you can do the same thing when it comes to your personal life.”
“Not so!” I said without hesitation. “Let me just keep it real.” I swirled the ice cubes around in the glass. “Now that I have some liquid support. I’m not referring to you, but it’s funny how everyone considers honesty a virtue, yet nobody wants to hear the truth.”