Chapter 30

I awoke the next morning with a sore mouth, mostly my split bottom lip. I still didn’t know what had happened. One moment I had been happy, going on a date to the movies, and the next I was vomiting and walking home in tears. The evening was a foggy blur to me. Well, everything after I drank those screwdrivers at the party. I remembered bits and pieces of it, like trying to remember a dream, but mostly I remembered Butch’s slap. He had hit me! A boy hit me. I hated him!

I didn’t have much appetite at breakfast. In addition to my mouth hurting, my stomach was queasy and my head pounded. The worse headache I ever had. Even the roots to my hair under my scalp hurt. Unable to look at the uneaten scrambled eggs on my plate, I sat in the kitchen with my elbows on the table, my eyes closed, and my face buried in my cupped hands.

“What’s the matter?” my mother asked.

“Just tired.”

“Why? You didn’t get home late. Are you coming down with something?”

“No, Mommy, just tired.”

“By the way, last night you rushed upstairs so fast we didn’t get a chance to talk. How was the movie? What did you see?”

I hadn’t seen a movie. I had gone to a college party and got drunk. I forced my suffering brain to remember what movie I had intended to see and told my mother.

“How was it?” my mother asked.

Shit! Now what?

“Okay,” I said.

“Just okay?” While I was thinking of an answer, she thankfully changed the subject. “I need you to bring something to our new tenant.”

My hands slid off my face and I stared at my mother. I was finally going to meet him. But at that moment I hated college boys. They were mean.

“Do I have to?” I asked.

“Stop whining. I just need you to run down there and give him the extra keys to the apartment. I found them while cleaning. Daddy forgot to give them to him when he moved in.”

I forced the rest of my breakfast down, trying my best not to have it come back up, and went upstairs to put on a little makeup. I may have hated college boys, but I wanted to look good when my new tenant saw me. After all, he was a boy. I applied a little extra makeup in the area near my bottom lip where I thought it was a little bruised from the slap.

While walking to the apartment beneath my house, I wondered what the mysterious boy looked like. Was he a nerd or a jock? Tall or short? Handsome? I hoped he was handsome. Maybe all college boys weren’t like those at the party. But maybe they were. I decided to be careful as I rang the doorbell and waited.

The door opened. An old man with round glasses and black hair sprinkled with some gray stood waiting for me to say something.

“Is your son home?” I asked.

“I don’t have children. Can I help you?”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Who are you?”

“Julie from upstairs. Who are you?”

“I’m Mr. Rigolini.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I live here.”

I was stunned. “Oh, I didn’t know.” And then before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “But you’re old!”

Mr. Rigolini smiled. A warm smile. “I guess to you, fifty-five is ancient.”

Now I was flustered. “No, I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that our last tenants were young with a baby. They couldn’t afford anything else.”

I slapped a hand over my mouth. As soon as I had said that I wanted to crawl into a hole. But Mr. Rigolini smiled again.

“I’m alone now and wanted a small place.” Sadness filled his eyes. “My wife recently passed away and I didn’t want the bother of taking care of the house we lived in.” His eyes watered. “The house also reminded me of her and I couldn’t bear it.”

I stood there not knowing what to say. Now I knew why my mother had said he had been through enough and not to bother him. Me and my big mouth. I shuffled my feet with my head down.

“So, Julie, what can I do for you?” Mr. Rigolini asked.

I held my hand out with the keys on the upturned palm. “These are the extra keys to the apartment. My mother told me to give them to you.”

Mr. Rigolini plucked the keys off my palm and smiled. I liked seeing the smile more than the sadness.

“Thank you, Julie,” he said. “Anything else?”

There was nothing else to say so I said goodbye and went to Debbie’s house. She wanted to hear all about my date. I didn’t exactly tell her the truth. I told her we went to a party instead of the movie, but not what happened at the party. I told her I tried a screwdriver, telling her it was an alcoholic drink, and that it made me sick. And when I vomited, I asked my date to take me home. I also told her that I didn’t like Butch and wouldn’t go out with him again.

I had a burning need to tell Debbie more. About how I was treated and that a boy hit me in the face. It was eating me up inside. I wanted to scream. To cry. I had to tell someone. But I couldn’t tell her about it. I was too embarrassed. Humiliated. But holding it in was agonizing. Like suffocating in a room with the oxygen being sucked out while the walls closed in all around me. It was a secret I didn’t want to keep. Not like when I hadn’t told Debbie about the sex I had with Joey and Mr. Russo. I wasn’t ashamed of that. I simply wasn’t ready to tell her about that part of my life. But this was different. This was one of those moments people go to therapy for. But I had no one to go to. Debbie was my best friend, my confidant, yet I was too ashamed to tell her. Once again, I wished Mrs. Russo was still living beneath my house. I could have confided in her. And she was so smart about boys. She would have helped me understand.

But Mrs. Russo was no longer part of my life. I was on my own.

“By the way, where’s Gina?” I asked.

“She’s mad at me.”

“Why?”

“Because we both went on a date last night and—”

“Oh yeah. How was your date?” With all that was going on in my mind, I had forgotten.

“It was good, but Gina is mad at both of us because we can date and she can’t. And last night both of us had dates.”

“Screw her,” I said.

“Julie!”

“Well, it’s not our fault. It’s her parents. She can’t blame us. So how was your date? You went miniature golfing, right?”

“Yeah, we had fun.” Debbie frowned. “I couldn’t get through that windmill, though. You know the one.”

That’s what Debbie was upset about with her date? Putting a ball past the rotating blades of a fake windmill? If she only knew how horrible a bad date was she wouldn’t be complaining about her golf ball bouncing off the windmill blades.

“Know what else?” Debbie said excitedly, pulling my attention back to her.

“What?”

“He kissed me.”

“Where?”

“On the mouth.”

“I meant where were you when he kissed you?”

“We got done early so we had to wait for his mother to pick us up. We walked around holding hands. He held my hand the whole time. Isn’t that dreamy? And we ended up behind where the food is sold and were alone. It was dark there. That’s where he kissed me.”

At that moment I envied Debbie’s innocent excitement. Was I growing up too fast? She probably wouldn’t even had gotten onto Butch’s motorcycle. Maybe I was to blame for what had happened.

The next day, I went to school as usual. As I walked through the halls, I kept one eye on where I was going and one in search of Butch. I was terrified. What if he hit me again? My lip was still split from the slap at the party. But Butch was nowhere to be seen. At least I didn’t see him. Was he watching me from a hidden place? Fear hung over me like a weight. I even brought it into the classroom even though I was safe from him there. But I no longer felt safe anywhere. I was constantly afraid and couldn’t tell anyone.