Allison's Portrait
Author's note: This story revolves around a single incident of sexual abuse. Please take care of yourself and do not read it if it will overly distress you.
Chapter One
Terrence
The alarm clock ricochets off the dresser. It's 6:30 and Allison Reynolds is starting her day as usual: with an assault on the clock. She shuffles down to the kitchen wrapped in a blanket. Coffee is already made, her father having risen and left for the University medical school before her entrance. She dumps a pile of powdered creamer into her cup, carefully mixes it in without making lumps, ending up with coffee reduced to a fawn color. Sipping the creamy coffee, she makes her way back up the carpeted stairs. She pauses on the landing, looking out the circular window onto the manicured back lawn. She likes the garden gnomes, her father's covert (and ugly) contribution to the elaborate landscaping her mother chose. Her taste always was atrocious. She's glad her mother got the hideous Cadillac in the divorce settlement. She's glad her mother is gone. Period. Booze, pills, lovers...
Back upstairs, she navigates her messy room to put Purple Rain on the turntable and gets under the black duvet on her bed. Her coffee is a necessity to endure such early rising. "Let's Go Crazy" wakes her up enough to get in the shower. By the time "When Doves Cry" starts, she is ready to get dressed. It's a pretty ridiculous album, but it suits her mood this morning. She throws on a dark gray top and black skirt from her crumpled pile of clean laundry at the foot of her bed.
Rummaging through the kitchen cupboard, pushing aside herbal tea and stale cereal, she finds the poptarts. Cinnamon, as always. She squishes the second poptart on top of the first, spread with peanut butter, and is ready to leave for school. She sets the house alarm, juggling keys and poptart sandwich. Once on Lakewood Avenue, she enjoys the thick dew and cool air as she nibbles her sandwich. Huge oaks enclose the row of Victorian houses. Her favorite is the peeling white one, which has a turret. Her mother always complained about it, saying, "It brings down the property value." She likes to imagine candelabra and thick dust on mahogany furniture inside. A bit like Nosferatu, but in a Victorian interpretation.
As she nears school, her mood plummets.
That day in detention seemed so promising. As if she might actually have friends after all. Although Andy was not what she envisioned for her first boyfriend, she'd always enjoyed the unexpected and perverse. She'd been touched by his insistent kindness, his refusal to be rebuffed. It seemed as though what she said meant something to him. He did not ignore her, even when she begged him to leave her alone. The all-star patch gave her unanticipated pleasure also, though she couldn't say why. She still has it, buried under the junk on her dresser.
She sighs.
That had lasted all of two days. He'd been cool on Monday morning, his hand so limp in her own that she dropped it immediately. No hand-holding then. Next he ignored her wave in the cafeteria, went to sit with the jocks. At his locker, at the end of the day, he'd dodged eye contact. He didn't even have the balls to actually tell her she wasn't his girlfriend.
"Fuck you, Andrew Clark!" and she'd regally exited, nose in the air. The other jocks laughed but she had her dignity. She wouldn't be trampled down by such a boy. Because he was a boy, unable to think for himself, caving in to pressure... from his father, from the jocks, from the rich activities people. She doesn't regret their kiss. It was a nice first kiss. He turned out to be a shit, but it was a very nice kiss. She's philosophical about these things.
Seeing him every day in homeroom, though... not the best way to start her day. She flounces to her usual seat in the back corner and erects her REM album as a barrier between herself and the rest of the class. National Geographic had an article on Mongolia. They herd camels there, and serve testicle soup. There would be no Andrew Clark in Mongolia... She daydreams until the bell dismisses them to their first class.
Biology is good today. She has an entire fetal pig to herself because no one will be her lab partner. Exploring the convolutions of the intestines, observing the browns and grays of the internal organs, the liver a smooth, rounded wedge behind the stomach, the gall bladder pinched up in its place, it is all interesting to her. She seems to be the only one who thinks so. The girls are all cringing and the boys are not much better. She is surrounded by children.
Claire, dressed in one of her usual stylish pink outfits, is in the front of class, making a din over the formaldehyde smell. She always was squeamish. She never let on, not even in detention, that they had known each other in Sunday school class for years, and that their mothers were close friends. Their mothers went to the same Episcopal church, the "right" one. Allison didn't talk much more there than she does in school now. The teachers, however, would get annoyed with Allison's occasional questions, especially when she asked about the Garden of Eden. If women were made of Adam's rib, why did everyone have the same number of ribs now? And why was Eve more guilty than Adam? Eve at least was tempted by someone a bit more eloquent and convincing. Claire, on the other hand, always knew the correct readings by heart and said her prayers in an ostentatiously pious way. But, yeah, very squeamish. When another girl fell and hit her head on the corner of the slide, Claire had vomited at the sight of blood. Allison can't imagine Claire will do any better today.
Look, there she goes, she's fainted.
Claire's rejection was not unexpected. Bender had called her a bitch and she had cried, but she never said she'd change. And she hadn't. She'd ignored Allison's Monday morning greeting without the bat of an eye.
Next is trig with Brian. She's glad he hasn't rejected her. He talks about grades too much, but he also helps her with her math problems. Monday at lunch, after being ignored by both Andy and Claire, she catches Brian's discreet signal. He'd probably seen Andy turn away from her, but he never mentioned it. Since then, she has sat at the geek table. Eating lunch with him and his friends is okay too. It's nice, to have a place where she is accepted, an improvement over pre-detention days when she dined alone. She fits in as Brian's weirdo friend. He is considered a worldly man among his friends, having a cousin who does drugs and having kissed a girl in Niagara Falls. Allison doesn't let on the reality of the Niagara Falls story. He enjoys it so much, and she'd never crush his reputation. Anyway, the sophisticated Brian is allowed to have strange artistic friends. She suspects it adds to his mystique.
Today the caf is serving meatloaf and potatoes. Allison brings her tray to join the guys at their usual table. She drinks the carton of milk unadulterated, but pours pixie stix over her potatoes. The meatloaf becomes abstract sculpture. She finishes her creation with green beans speared by a fork. She imagines the upthrust fork proudly standing in a corporate plaza in downtown Chicago. Then an unwanted memory flashes through her mind. She savagely attacks the food and reduces it to mush.
The guys have been talking about Latin club. Brian, laughing so hard he can barely speak, says "Ubi o ubi est meus sub ubi?"
The other guys find this hysterical, Lester snorting milk. Brian is in danger of sliding under the table.
She doesn't understand the joke but their laughter cheers her up a bit. It's nice to know someone is having a good time.
After lunch, Allison decides to skip history and heads down to the soccer field and the bleachers. She has her sketch book and pens and she thinks maybe she'll try to start a sketch of the sycamore tree that stands at the other end of the soccer field. She settles herself beneath the bleachers, looking out at her tree. But she can't bring herself to make a mark on her blank paper. She sits there, lost in unhappy thought, gazing at the spreading tree.
Then she smells marijuana. She turns. It's Bender. He has lit a joint and is walking towards the bleachers. She feels too inert to get up, to leave, so she just sits there, watching him approach. She hasn't seen him up close since detention, weeks ago.
He notices her as he ducks under the seats. They can't avoid acknowledging each other. She gives a wan smile. He returns it with a deep scowl.
She cautiously greets him with a squeaky "Hi."
His scowl deepens and he coolly observes "It's you."
She nods. What other reply can she make?
"I saw you... before Saturday detention. At the art school place." This statement is not friendly, more like a confrontation. She nods again.
"You were with that teacher, last time I saw you there. You seemed to be getting along pretty well," he says with heavy sarcasm. She remembers that day. She knows exactly which day he is talking about.
All of it comes back to her as Bender looks at her with disgust.
"Come here, Allison," Terrence had said, and showed her out the side door. "You'll need to learn how to stretch canvasses for yourself, all serious painters do so."
She had preceded her teacher down the alley and into the tiny courtyard that was sided by a ratty loft apartment building and the blank walls of two other warehouses. She expected to go up the cement stairs to the rear entrance to the warehouse space. Instead, she'd suddenly found herself backed into a corner of the rough concrete wall. Terrence barred her exit with a palm against the wall, his extended arm trapping her there. She pulled back, away from his changed expression. His face was approaching hers. She looked for an escape and found none. She was hemmed in on all sides. He was so close. So close she could feel his heat, smell linseed oil on him. He fumbled beneath her t-shirt, his hand against her bare skin. His knee shoved its way between her legs.
Just then, Bender had come rattling down the stairs from the upper apartment that shared the courtyard, stuffing a suspicious baggie into his pants pocket. She had frozen there as he looked at the pair of them. Bender paused just a moment, then shrugged and kept going, out of the courtyard and into the alley. With Terrence's advance arrested by Bender's appearance, she had pushed the distracted Terrence away and ducked down beneath his arm, bolting for the alley. Ignoring the stares of the other students, she snatched her bag and ran out and kept running until she could run no more.
"You know he's married, don't you?" Bender accuses.
"No, it wasn't like that, he said he'd show me... I didn't want..." she trails off, in anguish.
"He'd show you what?" His voice is dripping contempt. "What did you not want? You looked pretty close and comfy back there."
"NO! He tricked me, said he would show me how to stretch canvasses. Then he sort of trapped me, I wanted to get away but his arm was there." Tears start trickling down her cheeks. "If you hadn't come down then, he would have... I don't know what would have happened. I got away because you distracted him."
"Got away?" He seems to be considering this new interpretation of events. "You mean you didn't want to be there?"
"No, I didn't." She's crying harder now, wiping her nose on her sleeve. "He told me he'd take me to the back work room, where they stretch the canvasses. He told me all painters do it. He told me he'd show me how to do it, how to stretch a canvass. Then he... then he trapped me there. I couldn't leave, I couldn't move." She heaves great shuddering sobs, then tries to get herself under control.
"He tricked me," she repeats.
Bender rummages around in his coat pocket and comes out with a bandanna and uncertainly offers it. It is crushed and linty, and smells of marijuana. She puts it against her mouth, her face screwed up in pain at the memory of her helplessness.
"That sucks. I mean... what an asshole." He tries putting a hand on her shoulder, pats her. His awkward compassion helps. Her tears are slowing down and she blows her nose.
"And my painting is still there." Although she wonders if she wants it back, it seems tainted. She'd been so peaceful and content there, with a place to work. She had felt like a vessel channeling beauty from the world onto her canvass. Her paintings never lived up to her ideas, but chasing the beauty was, in itself, part of the beauty. Terrence had been encouraging, but was that real? Did he just want to gain her trust, his goal to corner her out there, take advantage of her? Because that's what he did, took advantage of her trust.
She's starting to feel pissed off. Terrence destroyed something for her. Dammit, she will get that painting back.
Bender seems to sense this change in mood, gives her one more pat. She blows her nose again.
"Thank you, Bender," she says and extends the bandanna to him.
She says, "Yuck," upon noticing all the snot. "Sorry, it's a mess now."
He gingerly takes it by the corner, evidently unsure what to do next. They both look at the crumpled cloth glistening with mucous. She finds a loose piece of paper in her purse and enfolds the bandanna in it, hands it over. He looks doubtful.
"You can wash it," she encourages him. He stows it in the pocket of his voluminous coat, still looking dubious.
She looks up at him.
"Thank you. Thank you for listening to me. Thank you for believing me."
He scrunches his shoulders up, looking very uncomfortable. Taking pity on his embarrassment, she punches his arm. Pretty hard.
"Hey, what was that for?"
"For making fun of Brian."
"That was weeks ago!" He's indignant.
She elbows him. "You still deserve it," she says.
Her sideways look tells her he has recovered his ordinary demeanor. She sets off across the field, away from the school, leaving him re-lighting his joint.
She decides to ditch the rest of the day. On her way home, she contemplates Bender. So he'd thought that about her all this time. She's glad she cured him of that misconception. That was actually the first time she has told anyone about Terrence.
The day Terrence had trapped her in the courtyard, she'd come home in tears to an empty house. Curling in a ball on her bed, she tried to force the incident out of her mind. But it kept coming back. How he smelled, the feeling of his hand under her shirt, the expression on his face. Her clothes smelled of linseed oil too, like his. She jumped up out of her fetal position and tore off her clothes. Her hands smelled of it, her hair smelled of it. Showering didn't seem to help, she smelled it everywhere. She dove under her covers but she couldn't escape the memory. It played out in her mind over and over again. She put on the Violent Femmes, loud, trying to drown out all sensation. When the album was over, she had calmed down. But the image of his face, the feeling of his hand, come to her at random times, fresh and painful as that first day.
And since then she hasn't been able to paint, or sketch, or even doodle in class.