Chapter 6: Dark Days of Memories Past

Mel was worried. Tracy had drifted off into a world of her own, her hands turning her phone over and over, eyes glazed and staring at the floorboards of the truck, trapped in some part of her mind he had no access to. He found a wide pull off on the road and stopped the truck, leaning over to pull Tracy in and ask what was wrong. Tracy leaned into Mel, put a hand on his leg and took a breath. “I’m OK Mel, I’m OK. Just tripping, going back in time.” Her eyes came back into focus and she looked at Mel, then out the window at the scrub and pasture they had been driving past, and she again said as though to nobody yet straight to Mel’s heart, “Mel, I’ll tell you something. I’ll tell you something I’ve never told anybody else. Not my mother or my cousins or anybody. God, especially not them. But maybe I can tell you. Shit, I should tell somebody.”

Mel of course gave an affirmative, a kiss to her head, a hand down to touch hers. But he was shaken when Tracy looked back at him and said, “But you’ll still love me, right? You’re a big dork, really, but everybody has something they don’t want to face. You want to know about me eating a creampie? OK.” Mel tried to say yes, that he would always love her, and no, that she didn’t have to say a thing, but Tracy seemed in a zone, ready to open up to some part of her past and she had to get it out before it broke her. What you read below is in the first person, as though Tracy is herself speaking, but only because I think it sounds more real and includes the emotional pain that Tracy passed on to Mel.

As Tracy Remembers It:

“You remember Mel, back a few years ago, just after you moved into the neighborhood? My dad was with us back then but both him and my mom had drug problems. Both their families had pretty much written them off and we were about to lose the house, but my mom pulled back and tried real hard to regain her footing. She kicked my dad out and tried to go into rehab but in the middle of all that shit I had to go into foster care. Well, almost, because some friends of the family up north heard about it and agreed to take me in. Our own family didn’t want me, or couldn’t fit me in, and these other people said they had room to spare. To me it was for a hella long time, like the end of spring and all summer and into the fall, almost to Christmas. By the time my mom and I got back together I had missed my first part of high school. I didn’t do any school when I was up north, just living with these people, getting checked on every few weeks by a family member, maybe a phone call, maybe some social worker. I really can’t remember. For me it was just a big house, a new neighborhood, and a bunch of new people to get to know.”

All through this introduction of Tracy’s, she had been looking out the window, eyes glazed, living a memory, but then she looked back at Mel and said, “Mel, you ever live in a big family, like with brothers and sisters and other relatives?” Mel nervously said yes and no, a brother, but his father died just after Mel had graduated from high school and he only saw family maybe a few times a year. Tracy nodded and turned back to looking out the window, returning to the past and continuing her story. “I had a huge family, but they were always up north, or somewhere else like in Texas, not interested in me and my mom, so I only really grew up with my parents. Then all of a sudden I’m sort of adopted into the middle of this other new family, with a few older girls and boys, a few younger kids, some other relatives, all living in a few houses that adjoined one another with big lots in the back. It was scary at first, all these strangers, but after a week it turned out to be great. It was fun, like having an instant family, a neighborhood, other kids to talk to and play with. A week after moving in I couldn’t imagine anything better, even hoping my mom stayed in rehab so that I could stay there.”

“Then one of the older boys, I think he had just graduated from high school, told me he loved me. He took me out for ice cream, we went roller skating, went walking down by the river, and his sister said he was really serious, really loved me. And I was like a nobody, straight out of hell, and having this tall older guy tell me I was everything to him was amazing. I was in heaven. I had these new older sisters to laugh and gossip with, to share intimate stuff with. I looked up to them, trusted them, and all of a sudden they kind of expected that me and their brother would start sleeping together. Just a natural thing, you know? This isn’t the guy insisting I put out. This is the girls agreeing that we make a good couple and should share a bed.”

“OK, I had heard of girls sleeping with guys, whatever that meant, and so I went along with it. And do you know what? The mom thought it was great. Her son had found a beautiful young girlfriend and for a while she started treating me even better than her own daughters. The sex wasn’t so great, not at first. He just wanted to get off inside me and go to sleep, but when I complained to his sisters they told him he was being a jerk and gave us some advice, the older girl actually sitting us down and telling us how to fuck, like couples therapy. By the time summer hit we were doing it every day, different ways, and I even came to enjoy it.”

Then another one of the brothers, the one still in high school, says he loves me too, and the sisters say that I should at least give him a chance. So there I am, locked between two guys, going from one bed to another. I didn’t think anything of it, just thought it a normal thing to do while growing up. I learned lot, like about my period and birth control; how to tint my hair and how to keep a guy’s cock under control while he’s unloading in my mouth; the best way to adjust a bra and how to be screwed by two guys at the same time.” Here she gives Mel a sideways look and says, “No, you weren’t the first to ream me up the ass, fucker.” Mel gave her a smile, squeezed her hand, and she went on.

“Anyway, sex just became a normal daily thing. Then a friend of one of the brothers drops by, and we do it as a group. Well, sometimes the guy would just drop by and we’d spend the afternoon just having sex, and sometimes we’d drive somewhere, maybe grab a hamburger, go out to the river, and we’d hang out as a group and screw around until it got late. There were other girls, usually the oldest daughter in the family would be there with her boyfriend, but she always stayed with him. So, that was life well into the fall. And all the guys, all the boys, always spending a night or a day with them. That was just the way life was.”

“Then things changed later that summer, maybe late August. That’s when the brothers and sometimes their friends really started doing weird shit, like including the dog of one of our neighbors. I bet you know how it goes Mel. Ever watched porn? Watched a woman get fucked by a dog? Yeah, I did that, a lot, or at least it seemed like a lot. Lots of times in late summer they’d bring the dog over, have him lick me, have me try to lick him or jack the dog off, and then lay back on a couple of old mattresses behind the garage and let the dog fuck me. We tried to hide it at first, like it was a big dirty secret to keep from the adults, but the mom knew. We laughingly called it the “waterfall game,” because of the waterfall when the dog was doing me from behind. Really, me up on my knees and the dog humping and cuming so much that it all spills out and drips down to the ground. At first it was just for fun, something different, but the other girls never tried it, not with the dog. It hurt at first, the dog just pushing it in, ramming it in, just wanting to get off. But the worst part was the others standing around and watching, making comments about the waterfall. Then after the dog backed off the boys would take their turns and keep the waterfall going. I remember having to hose myself off, naked, right there in the back yard, before putting my clothes back on and heading in to shower before dinner or for bed. The mother knew. She knew.”