Like Uncle Forrest, Momma believed she was always right and that her opinion was the final word. She was so adamant that she could convince me the color I was looking at was blue when I knew it was green. This often left me questioning my perceptions, and even my reality. But in these two situations my mother had clearly been wrong. She’d been wrong when she told me that no one would want to peek in a window to watch a nine-year-old take a bath, and she’d been wrong in thinking that Kay was really turning over a new leaf this time. It seemed that my mother wasn’t perfect after all.
chapter 17
I didn’t know how my absence had affected Pam because we never talked about it. But in the year since I’d been back from Ceres, she’d seemed to become more and more withdrawn from me.
We were both maturing. She was a year older than me, so she was eleven, and we seemed to have less and less in common as time went on. Since her mother stayed in bed most of the day, we weren’t the only ones left on our own—her two brothers, Dean and Peter, were too. And now that Pam and I were out playing in the yard more, we saw them more frequently.
Peter was older, already in high school, and Dean was younger than us by a few years. Peter was usually gone, doing things with his friends, but Dean sometimes hung around with me and Pam in the backyard. One day, we were all playing together when Peter came home and said he was bored. He asked us to come into his room, which was on the opposite end of the house from Pam’s room—closer to their parents’ bedroom.
Once we were inside his room, Peter suggested we play “strip poker.” I had no idea what this was, but I went along with it. I was thrilled that Peter would even pay attention to us, since he was a teenager.
Peter was still fully dressed but Pam and I had our tops off and Dean had his pants off when Mrs. Delis walked into the room. I was shocked to see her and felt horribly exposed and embarrassed.
“What in the world are you doing in here?” she asked, looking more surprised than angry.
Before we could answer, she said, “Put your clothes on right now. All of you. Pam, Peter, Dean, go to your bedrooms and wait for me there. I’ll talk to you later. Beverly, you come with me.”
I followed her into the dining room, where she directed me to sit at the large dining room table.
“I’m going to have to tell your mother about this,” she said sternly.
I became very upset and started crying. I imagined my mother hearing this and blaming me for what had happened. I remembered the way she looked at me when the twins’ mother had told her what I’d done. I knew she wouldn’t believe me if I tried to tell her that this time I didn’t start it. It was Peter. I couldn’t stop crying.
Mrs. Delis just sat there not saying anything. I think she must have been surprised at my reaction. Finally, I stopped crying and pleaded for Mrs. Delis to not tell my mother.
“Please, please Mrs. Delis, please don’t tell my mother. She’s going to get so angry with me. She’s going to blame me and it wasn’t my fault. It was Peter’s idea.”
And then I told her about Steve molesting me. I don’t know why, exactly, except that I wanted her to understand why I was so upset and why it was so important to not tell my mother.
It felt like we were two adults talking now, and in so many ways I was an adult. Mrs. Delis treated me with respect, and I loved her for it.
“Because that happened to me, she’s going to blame me. She’s going to say I started it,” I explained.
Mrs. Delis fell silent for quite some time. I could tell she was thinking about this whole thing very seriously. Finally, she said, “I won’t tell your mother about this. But I don’t want you coming over here anymore. Pam can go to your house, and you can see her at school, but I don’t think it is a good idea for you to come here.”
I felt tremendously relieved. But I also felt like a bad person again. Once again, I had been banned from a friend’s house.
I imagine Mrs. Delis knew the strip poker incident was Peter’s fault, since he was so much older than the rest of us. It would have been great if she had reassured me of that. But nevertheless, I had a good feeling about Mrs. Delis and the way she had listened to me and seemed to understand my dilemma.
Pam did come over to my house after school sometimes, but only on my mother’s day off. We’d play pick-up sticks and jacks on the cold concrete floor in my living room. Then, when the shadows started stealing the sunshine, I’d walk her halfway home. Her father also took us to his country club to swim a few times in the summer. But after the strip poker incident, nothing was ever the same between us.
Soon I met a new friend at school, another misfit. She wasn’t in my class but she was in the
