Read Online The Elegant Gathering of White Snows by Kris Radish - Free Book Online
Authors: Kris Radish
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wonder each time a door closes behind a baby how long it will be before they hear the door slam again and then those feet pounding across the kitchen floor. When a siren wails and we are home alone, we expect tiny pieces of our stomachs to pass into our throats. There is endless worry.
I hate to admit my special worry, the one that I carry within me when I watch them pulling down the edges of their bras, playing with eye shadow in the hall bathroom, or poring over the photos of the senior boys in the high school yearbook. That worry borders on becoming a consuming fear that is dangerously close to an illness.
I have no sons. No young man on testosterone overload to guide through these years. Maybe just that, the fact that I am a mother of daughters, has brought me finally to this place of walking women with our no-name tennis shoes from the sales rack at Kohl's. I think that only in the telling and the sharing of this story with the people I love the most, only then will this deep dark hole in my heart be filled with the light from the sun that I am knowing so well these days.
Of course there's Tim. My wonderful husband Tim. I have imagined telling him about Jeff so many times. We would be in the car holding hands or sitting on the couch with our backs pushed up against the middle cushion, and I would want to say, “Tim, there's something I have always wanted to tell you.” But words would never come, and I would turn to look at him in his old sweat suit, with his forehead that seems to slant toward the attic, and I would think about how much he loved me and how my telling might change something. Maybe he would love me less and everything that I had would change. Perhaps the secret had become such a part of me, I couldn't live without it.
I would always talk myself out of revealing my secret, and then it would feel as if that old place of terror would grow just a little bit larger and then I would say to myself that Tim is looking at me and he loves me, but he really doesn't know this one thing about me that has moved through my life like an attached shadow. And I would cry in the bathroom for betraying him with this secret, with the one thing that I have never been able to find the courage to tell him.
Something wonderful did happen when I first told my best friends the secret. It kinda felt as if something vile had busted loose out through my mouth. Like the top of a huge wall or a dam broke, and the water seeped through and the weight of the world rushed slowly off of my head, then my neck, then my shoulders until finally even breathing became easier. I can remember the moment as if it happened this morning.
When it actually happened was December 12, not quite two years ago, and all eight of us were drinking wine at Janice Ridby's house. Her husband was out of town on one of those cross country truck runs, and we used that as an excuse to have a get-together. We did intend to talk about books or the economy the first time or two that we held these meetings, but those conversations never lasted long. It was so much fun just to get together and not to be making crafts or something like that, which none of us like to do anyway. I had to have three glasses of wine before I even brought the rape up, and it wasn't even something that I had thought about doing. Maybe the reason was because Janice had already told us about her uncle, but suddenly right when the bowl of chips and salsa passed through my hands and into Susan's, I blurted it out.
“Hey,” I said fairly softly. “There's something I never told anyone that I want to tell you. Something that happened to me a long time ago.”
This announcement pretty much stopped everyone in their tracks because I hadn't ever shared much before.
“Well,” I started out again, hesitating because suddenly this huge swell of emotion washed over me and made me start crying. “Oh hell, I don't know why I'm doing this but I've always wanted to tell someone and you're all like
I hate to admit my special worry, the one that I carry within me when I watch them pulling down the edges of their bras, playing with eye shadow in the hall bathroom, or poring over the photos of the senior boys in the high school yearbook. That worry borders on becoming a consuming fear that is dangerously close to an illness.
I have no sons. No young man on testosterone overload to guide through these years. Maybe just that, the fact that I am a mother of daughters, has brought me finally to this place of walking women with our no-name tennis shoes from the sales rack at Kohl's. I think that only in the telling and the sharing of this story with the people I love the most, only then will this deep dark hole in my heart be filled with the light from the sun that I am knowing so well these days.
Of course there's Tim. My wonderful husband Tim. I have imagined telling him about Jeff so many times. We would be in the car holding hands or sitting on the couch with our backs pushed up against the middle cushion, and I would want to say, “Tim, there's something I have always wanted to tell you.” But words would never come, and I would turn to look at him in his old sweat suit, with his forehead that seems to slant toward the attic, and I would think about how much he loved me and how my telling might change something. Maybe he would love me less and everything that I had would change. Perhaps the secret had become such a part of me, I couldn't live without it.
I would always talk myself out of revealing my secret, and then it would feel as if that old place of terror would grow just a little bit larger and then I would say to myself that Tim is looking at me and he loves me, but he really doesn't know this one thing about me that has moved through my life like an attached shadow. And I would cry in the bathroom for betraying him with this secret, with the one thing that I have never been able to find the courage to tell him.
Something wonderful did happen when I first told my best friends the secret. It kinda felt as if something vile had busted loose out through my mouth. Like the top of a huge wall or a dam broke, and the water seeped through and the weight of the world rushed slowly off of my head, then my neck, then my shoulders until finally even breathing became easier. I can remember the moment as if it happened this morning.
When it actually happened was December 12, not quite two years ago, and all eight of us were drinking wine at Janice Ridby's house. Her husband was out of town on one of those cross country truck runs, and we used that as an excuse to have a get-together. We did intend to talk about books or the economy the first time or two that we held these meetings, but those conversations never lasted long. It was so much fun just to get together and not to be making crafts or something like that, which none of us like to do anyway. I had to have three glasses of wine before I even brought the rape up, and it wasn't even something that I had thought about doing. Maybe the reason was because Janice had already told us about her uncle, but suddenly right when the bowl of chips and salsa passed through my hands and into Susan's, I blurted it out.
“Hey,” I said fairly softly. “There's something I never told anyone that I want to tell you. Something that happened to me a long time ago.”
This announcement pretty much stopped everyone in their tracks because I hadn't ever shared much before.
“Well,” I started out again, hesitating because suddenly this huge swell of emotion washed over me and made me start crying. “Oh hell, I don't know why I'm doing this but I've always wanted to tell someone and you're all like
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