Believe Like a Child (6 page)

Chapter Seven

W
hen they reached Caterina’s car, Alessa was still sobbing. Her mother ducked inside the car quickly and settled herself. Checking her make-up in the rearview mirror, she continued her verbal assault.

“You see what happens when a woman is a bad mother? The way I see it, that woman killed her daughter! I should never have let you hang around with that Rhonda girl!”

Her blood boiling now, Alessa yelled back, “I love them both! And Zoe wouldn’t have let her brother rape Rhonda for nine years and pretended not to know!”

Caterina’s response to that was to backhand Alessa, making her lip bleed. “You little bitch!” she hissed. “You’re a fucking liar! Just you wait till I get you home! Then I’ll break your fucking head! My brother would never do anything to hurt you! You’ll burn in hell for talking such filth about him!”

Frightened by what she had just blurted out to her mother and the violent reaction it had provoked, Alessa sat in silence, until they got home. She wondered if she really would burn in hell, not for the accusations she had leveled at her uncle, but for the filthy acts she had been engaging in with him. Once they were in the house, she rushed to her bedroom and began to take off her clothes that were still wet and stained with Rhonda’s blood.

She had just stripped down to her underwear, when her mother stormed into the room holding her favorite weapon—the metal spoon. She charged at Alessa with such speed and force that the girl had no time to defend herself against the first blow to her bare thigh. Caterina pulled back the spoon and started to swing again. This time, however, Alessa blocked the blow with her hands and flinched as the spoon cracked across her knuckles. She flung herself on the bed, trying to shield her body as her mother’s blows landed randomly. One struck her on the side of her face, another on her ankle bone and several others on her back.

Having worn herself out, Caterina finally stopped, her hand dropping to the side with the spoon dangling from it. Glaring at her daughter, she screamed, “Now let’s see if you dare talk back to me again! If you ever say another disgusting word about your Uncle Danny again, I will kill you! And don’t even dream of going to that girl’s funeral either! You’re punished, until I give you my permission to go out again. Do you hear me?” With that, she rained three final blows on Alessa, screaming, “I’ll show you!” Then she turned and left her daughter’s bedroom.

Rosabella came in about twenty minutes later to see how her younger sister was doing and found her crying silently under the worn covers. She helped Alessa put on her pajamas, then gave her an extra sheet when she noticed her shivering.

Rosabella told Alessa, “I’m sorry about what happened to your friend. Mom is just fucking crazy. I can’t wait to get out of this house.” As Rosabella got Alessa settled she couldn’t help but notice all the fresh bruises from the metal spoon. Rosabella felt sorry for her sister, as she knew too well what a monster Caterina was and hated her for it.

The weeks that followed were hell for Alessa. As her mother had decreed, she wasn’t allowed to go to Rhonda’s funeral. She wasn’t allowed to go out anywhere at all. Just to school and back. Nor could she receive phone calls. Not that it mattered. Not a soul had tried to contact her—except for Zoe. When she called one night and asked to speak with Alessa, Caterina was not in a particularly genial mood.

“Listen, lady,” she spat out, “Alessa is not your child. Why don’t you call some of those boyfriends you have? Your daughter is dead, because you are a tramp. I don’t want you calling my daughter again. Call someone your own age.”

Alessa’s enforced stay at home meant that once again, her Uncle Danny had her at his mercy seven nights a week. He was becoming rougher with her as he got older, slapping her hard and pinching her nipples before he was fully aroused. Sometimes, he yanked cruelly at her hair or gripped her by the neck as if he were going to choke her to death. Her life descended into unrelenting darkness once more, tumbling down into the cold, bottomless pit from which she had tried pulling it up after she met Rhonda. Danny tortured Alessa mercilessly for having dared complain to Caterina about him. He laughed at his niece scornfully, reminding her that his adoring sister would never believe her. Her siblings were, by now, young adults and had moved out of the house as soon as they could afford to. Rosabella was the last one to go. The previous month, she had moved to a small apartment in Norristown that she was sharing with a friend. Alessa, however, had been grounded for months now and still wasn’t allowed out of the house, other than to go to school.

The weekend before her seventeenth birthday, their parents went off to Atlantic City. Shortly after they had pulled out of the driveway, Uncle Danny went into Alessa’s bedroom. He stood in front of her, dropped his pants, pushed his pelvis out and said, “Play with it.” She held his penis and began to whack him off. After a few minutes, he stopped her and said, “Blow me now.” When he was done, he looked down at her and said, “This is going to be a great weekend, don’t cha think?”

Alessa would have given anything to die. Nothing brought her more comfort than the thought of leaving this world. She hated her family, her very existence. Now she had to endure an entire weekend of that fucking bastard wanting to blow a load off several times a day. She hated him with a passion. She tried to focus on the good times she had enjoyed with Rhonda, thinking about the fun they had had and the memories they had shared. Rhonda had loved Alessa and believed in her. Now she was alone again, with nothing but her demons to torment her.

On the Saturday morning after her parents left for Atlantic City, Alessa went out to the kitchen, only to find her Uncle Danny gorging himself at the kitchen table.

“My friends are coming over tonight to play poker,” he announced with a gleam of anticipation in his eyes. “I expect you to be nice to them and not give me any shit.”

“I won’t get in your way,” Alessa assured him. “I’ll keep to my room.”

“No, you
won’t
stay in your room,” Danny told her. “You will be out here with us. I promised them you would be ‘nice’ to all of them. What I mean is, you will do whatever they want you to. Do you understand?”

“Are you talking about sex?” Alessa shrieked.

“Well, I’m certainly not talking about serving them coffee and donuts. I’m talking about being a nice girl and doing what they ask you to do. Nobody’s going to hurt you, for Christ’s sake! They just want to mess around a little. I want you to wear a tee shirt and panties tonight. That’s it. Nothing else.”

The room started to close in on Alessa as the reality of what was about to happen sunk in. Her legs went weak and she felt utterly defenseless. Her mind reeled, searching for an answer, trying to find a way out of this unimaginable situation. She thought for a moment of calling Rosabella, but what if her sister didn’t believe her either? Alessa went into her bedroom and sat on the edge of her bed. What was she going to do now? How could she get out of this mess? She did not reflect on how her uncle could do this to her. He was the devil himself. He could do anything to her and get away with it.

Then it came to her. She would sneak out and go to see Zoe. She would tell her everything. Zoe would help her decide what to do. Alessa got dressed and snuck out of the house while her uncle was taking his weekly shower. He was a disgusting pig who proclaimed that showering once a week was enough. That was the reason why there was a sweet, rotting smell about him all the time. Alessa ran the mile and a half to Zoe’s house.

She knocked frantically on Zoe’s door and had to wait for nearly ten minutes before it was finally opened. Her friend’s mother seemed a different person from the one Alessa had known. Zoe’s once-beautiful hair was matted and tangled in knots. There were dark circles under her bloodshot eyes and the skin on her cheeks hung loose, as if she had aged a hundred years. Her clothes were stained and almost falling off her thin frame. Zoe reached out and took Alessa in her arms. Then she broke down in tears. The two of them stood at the front door, clinging to each other desperately, as though the floor would fall out from under them, if either one of them let go.

When they finally separated just to look at each other, Zoe said, “God, Alessa, I miss her so much! I can’t go on without her. I swear I didn’t know he was married!”

Alessa comforted her by telling her how much she herself missed her friend and how, without Rhonda there, life sucked. Finally, Zoe brought Alessa inside the house. They sat at the kitchen table and talked about Rhonda and everything that had happened that terrible night which would change their lives forever.

Zoe said, “Your mother is a real cunt. I don’t know how you can stand her.”

“I can’t,” Alessa said firmly. “You have no idea how much I hate her.” She needed to tell her what was going on. She had kept it to herself for a long time and she had no one else in the world to turn to. “Zoe,” she began, “I have something to tell you. I’m really scared, because I don’t know how you will react and I wouldn’t be able to bear it, if you ended up despising me.”

Zoe looked at Alessa in bewilderment. “I could never hate you, Alessa,” she said gently. “You are a wonderful person. Rhonda loved you deeply. You are the only real girlfriend she ever had. She told me all the time how she had always wanted a friend like you. Whatever you have to tell me will be fine.”

There was no holding back now. “My Uncle Danny has been having sex with me since I was seven years old,” Alessa blurted out. “Now, things are getting much worse. My parents are away for the weekend and he is having friends over for a poker game tonight. He made it clear that I would have to ‘be nice’ to all of them once they arrived.”

Zoe’s face went completely blank for a few seconds. She wondered what she could possibly say to make this child feel safe. She wanted to make her feel like a normal kid her age. She wanted to help Alessa understand that she had nothing to be mortified about. Nothing of what had happened to her was her fault.

After a long pause, she asked, “Have you told your mother?”

“I tried. Twice. Once, when I was much younger and again, the night Rhonda died. Both times, my mother defended my uncle and called me a liar. I’m so scared, Zoe! I can’t have sex with them. They’re a bunch of old men. I’ve put up with my uncle for the last ten years. I just can’t do it, Zoe!”

Alessa was now crying bitterly. Her chest heaved with raw emotion as she grappled with the thought of what her uncle’s friends would do to her. Her tears welled up from deep inside her, from the very depths of her soul. Zoe took the girl in her arms and held her for a long, long time. Both were sobbing, Zoe for the loss of her daughter and the pain this young girl in her arms had endured and Alessa, for all she had been denied in her short life and for the suffering she had borne.

Zoe managed a weak smile. “You can live here, Alessa,” she told her.

This had always been Alessa’s cherished dream. She knew, however, that Caterina would come home in a couple of days and discover that her daughter had not only defied her orders and left the house, but run away from home and taken shelter with Zoe, of all people.

“There is nothing I want more in the world than to stay here with you,” Alessa said earnestly. “I wish you were my mother. But I know that when my mom comes home, this is the first place where she will come looking for me. She knows that Rhonda was the only person in my life, outside of my family. She will just make your life miserable, Zoe. In the end, I’ll just have to go back to living with her and my uncle.

“If only I could get away from here and live somewhere where no one could find me until I was eighteen! That’s just a year from now. After that, no one can tell me what to do. I would be able to come back and stay with you then, if you’d let me. I just need to get away for one year, Zoe. That’s all.” Alessa hesitated. “I can go to Philadelphia and live in the city for a year. I can get a job and find a small apartment. No one will need to know where I am and they will never think to look for me there.”

“You need to finish high school, Alessa,” Zoe reminded her.

“I can get my GED later. Right now, I don’t really care about a high-school diploma. I just need to get out of here before tonight,” Alessa pleaded.

Zoe searched for a different solution, but in vain. Finally, she said, “Okay. I want you to go into Rhonda’s room and pack her duffle bag with some of her clothes. Take whatever you want. Make sure you take her down coat, just in case. I’m going to run to the bank now and get you some cash to get you started. I also want you to take Rhonda’s cell phone. This way, you and I can keep in touch and I will be able to help you.”