The lone exception fell when I was nine and our choir director announced a new music education scheme that meant medals would be awarded to top choristers. We saw them in advance, silver medallions on silky blue ribbons. The medal for head chorister was even larger and threaded on scarlet satin. That it was mine, should be mine, was as clear to me as the ribbon was bright. I was good. I could sight-read. I worked with a hymnal privately at home. Rehearsal was my favorite hour each week.
On the night before medals were to be announced, I got down on my knees. I moved away from my area rug and onto the hard floor so it would count more. I asked clearly, kindly. I felt a new presence as I prayed, as though my willingness to make a request opened something in my heart. I would be an even better Christian now, an even better girl.
Sunday morning we were gathered in our robes around the altar, and the director, smiling widely, slipped a blue ribbon over my head. She awarded head chorister to my classmate Elizabeth, a mild girl with sea-glass eyes who always sang a tiny bit off-key, and whose father was our parish priest. Standing right over us, he beamed.
“Well, of course Elizabeth got it,” said my mom, on the way to brunch. “Her dad’s the boss. Really, you can’t get worked up about stuff like that.”
The lesson was that, in some things at least, prayer is no match for politics. But I concluded that I had been remiss in my desire. I’d made a foolish request. If I’d been named head chorister, after all, the other girl would not have been. It was a zero-sum game, and my request therefore concealed a selfishness that could not be forgiven. This was why it hadn’t worked out. I had a jealous heart. I hadn’t noticed, but the Lord had. In the same way, I stood before that mirror in the second-floor bathroom of Brewster House, aged fifteen and almost unable to swallow, and determined that somehow my desire was to blame.
St. Paul’s School is an Episcopal school. The head of school is the rector, and for a century and a half almost all of the school’s rectors have been ordained priests. The rector during my time there, Kelly Clark, had previously been head of the divinity school at Yale. “In today’s dark and dangerous world,” Reverend Clark said, on the occasion of his 1982 appointment to St. Paul’s, “the graduates of St. Paul’s are summoned to a stewardship of light and peace.” School language soared in the direction of an Anglican heaven. Priests were our chaplains and teachers, and bishops served as trustees. Many were also the parents of my peers. When she sent me there, Mom sent me into her new world. In my files is the release form I signed, months after the assault, so the Concord Police Department could retrieve my medical records. My name is first, and below it, because I was a minor, is Mom’s signature. THE REVEREND ALICIA CRAWFORD she wrote in all caps, showing them who she was, who we were, and above all, who she imagined me to be.
Already, looking in the mirror, I knew this was a lie.
I’d like to think that it was an impulse to self-care that sent me to the infirmary to get checked out, but I know it wasn’t. Only a fool walked into what I had walked into. In my memory of the night, which I experienced in strobe fashion (bright still shots rather than a running tape), I saw myself held against one damp crotch by the arms of the other man. Disposable, flimsy. A damsel, a whore. I hated the girl who had done those things. The last thing I would do was align myself with her needs. I did not think I deserved to get better, but I was a girl with a firm sense of doom. The Crawford Curse was mine. Whatever was going on with my throat was only going to get worse—I could lose the ability to swallow; I could suffocate—and I needed help to make it stop. So after Chapel I cut left out of the door, away from the students and teachers streaming up toward the Schoolhouse, and headed along the brick path to the infirmary perched on the hill.
Already there in the little chairs (had they run up from Chapel, or skipped it altogether?) were a Japanese exchange student I recognized from my dorm and two third-form boys. In a different universe, I’d have gone to them and said hello, recognizing their homesickness through the flushed cheeks and tired eyes. But I was on fire, and contaminated; it was a kindness to them to keep my distance.
“There’s something really wrong with my throat,” I said.
The nurse took my temperature (normal) and told me strep was going around. She selected a tongue depressor. “Let’s have a look.”
There was no other way. I opened my mouth to let the horror out. I imagined everything I had suppressed coming at this small woman. A ball of spiders, a cup of maggots. Vile things were
