The next morning, I asked why we had to go back. Couldn’t we move?
“Let them move,” Mom said. “We did nothing wrong.”
The house was suspiciously quiet. I waited for my parents to go inside before I would. Inside, everything was in its place except for the clothes I’d worn, and a towel Mark had used to wipe himself. The police had those. Otherwise, it was nothing like a crime scene, no lamps on the floor or chairs knocked on their side like in an episode of Murder She Wrote. I felt almost insulted.
After we dropped off our bags, we had to go out again, to the police station to file formal charges. Though we’d driven countless times past the building, an old schoolhouse that dated back to the early 1900s, I’d never realized it was a police station. Behind the stone facade, they’d built an ugly modern addition with padded gray cubicles. The sole decoration of our cubicle was a yellowing spider plant languishing in the corner.
There weren’t enough chairs, so I shared one with my mom, who patted my back as if I were a baby needing burping. My father occupied his own chair, sitting forward in his seat, chin raised. David slouched behind him. Maybe he was ashamed to be here. “Why does he have to come?” I wanted to ask, but I had trouble finding my voice. Better to let it all happen, play out, burn out, naturally shed its energy.
The detective asked how Mark had gotten into the house—or rather, how I’d let him into the house. I explained that Mark had given me two choices: either he’d kill me, or if I let him in, he’d think about killing me. I went with the second option. The detective recorded me on a handheld cassette player, and he also took notes with a pen that said “Lose Weight Now, Ask Me How.”
The cassette ran out, and as the detective had to get another, it hit me, that this was really happening. This was no dream. I felt woozy with the weight of this knowledge. Focus, I told myself. Or maybe pretend you’re somewhere else. That’s what Mark told me, before the worst of it. Relax, and it’ll be over sooner.
The detective returned, and had me continue the story. When I got to the part when Mark had dragged me into the kitchen, the detective said, “He made you pull down your pants?” I said nothing, pretended it wasn’t a question that demanded a yes-or-no answer. My vision went a bit bleary. “Did he pull down his pants?” the detective repeated.
“I wasn’t really able to see.”
“Why not?”
I cleared my throat, which felt red and raw. “Because I was on the floor.” I couldn’t look at my parents, so I looked at their shoes, my father’s shiny brogues catching the glare of the ceiling light. My mother’s feet sliding inside her high heels.
I heard Dad say, “David,” and my brother left the room.
“Facing him or facing the floor?” the detective asked.
I closed my eyes and saw pink streaks of light running across the insides of my eyelids. Don’t throw up, I thought. “I don’t remember. Maybe the floor?”
“Was he on top of you?”
My mother gripped my shoulder. And then the answer slipped out: “I guess.”
The detective looked down at his notepad. I could hear the pen scratching across the paper, and I sensed the permanence of those ink marks. Mark had threatened to kill me if I told. So now I could expect death.
We were then informed of Mark’s statement. He’d claimed he’d fought me in self-defense. He said the sex was consensual. His evidence? In school, everyone knew I was a fag, and as logic would dictate, like all fags, I must have wanted it. Fags wanted it constantly. I hadn’t managed to fight him off, so I must have wanted it, right?
The detective watched me from behind his desk. I was expected to talk.
“But that’s a lie! I told him no, no,” I said firmly. “I didn’t want it.”
“We know.” The detective let out a deep breath. “We just had to hear you say that. We know you weren’t like that.”
Like that, I thought, my heart pounding. Like what?
The detective added, “He’s not going to be bothering you anymore, alright?”
“How?” I asked. “What if he comes back?”
“We won’t let him get anywhere near you. We’re making that very clear.”
Now I understood. Because I’d said no, it was their job to keep me safe. I could cling to my no like a life preserver. Nothing could be allowed to muddy that no.
PREPARATORY
SCHOOL WOULD RESUME IN THE FALL as if nothing had happened. Back to Stern Academy, which Mark could no longer attend. Still, his shadow would linger.
I begged my parents to send me anywhere else, somewhere far from our district, somewhere I had no history. Somewhere with strict rules to keep me safe.
Our local public school was too close by, too Jewish. The Taborsky family was known there.
There was Rockingham Private Preparatory Day School, but a few years ago, a scandalous article in the Jewish News had alleged that Rockingham’s admissions department was marking the applications of Jewish students with hand-drawn bagels.
Another possibility was the Eaton School for the Arts, which Mom ruled out. “You need somewhere that will prepare you for a real career,” she said.
“What about your career?” I asked. “You’re an artist.”
“That’s different,” she said. “I don’t have to support a family.”
So if I didn’t have to support a family, would it be alright then to make art?
The winner by default was the Dalton College Preparatory School for Boys and Girls of Detroit, which despite its name, was not in Detroit, but in a suburb known for tasteful Protestant churches and private lakes. Mom canceled an appointment with Dr. Don so we could meet the assistant headmaster to discuss my prospects there.
The Dalton campus was a twenty-minute drive from where we lived. The entrance was next to a once “restricted” golf club that had banned Jews entirely and blacks outside of the kitchen and gardens. We drove past an unmanned gatehouse and up a severely sloped hill that hid the school from the road. Was it the elevation that made my stomach churn? The day was disgustingly humid—we were the Great Lake State, after all—and a pack of football players in full pads jogged uphill alongside our car. They carried their helmets, and their damp faces, in shades of black, brown, yellow, and white, glistened with sweat. “Let’s pick it up, ladies!” yelled their coach, trotting behind them.
Watching them, I realized we’d made a mistake.
Dad was watching them too. “Do any Jewish kids go to this school?” he asked.
After swerving around a flag plaza, we were confronted by the school itself: a sprawling brick palace with glass skylights poking out of the roof, reflecting the heavens. The front door was framed by Doric columns and an arch, like a Greek temple.
Inside, a group of moms in pleated slacks and glossy penny loafers were decorating the lobby with gold and blue signs to welcome students back from vacation. A sign-up sheet to volunteer at a food bank was filled with signatures. I took this evidence of the Dalton students’ kind hearts until I read the note at the bottom: “Fulfills your community service requirement!”
A few students dressed in soccer uniforms—shiny jerseys, shorts, kneepads covered in socks—roamed the halls. One girl gave us a strange look, then dissolved into a fit of giggling. Why? What had I done? But she immediately went quiet when an adult with a whistle around her neck appeared from around a corner.
“A place like this, you could learn some stuff,” Dad said, admiring a schedule of football games tacked to a bulletin board like a dead moth. “Dee, why didn’t we send David here?”