Chapter 17
The ship that arrived by freight lift was easily identified as a Firefly class ship, perhaps in better condition than Serenity. Jon was happy. Wilma was not.
“What a piece of junk,” Wilma said.
“Oh, this is much better than the Falcon,” Jon said.
“The Falcon can do point five past light speed,” Stacey said.
“Yeah, and it is always breaking down, and needs a good mechanic,” Jon said. “And we don’t need a mechanic?” Wilma asked.
“I can fix anything,” Dorothy announced. Everyone looked at her. “What? I grew up on a farm. It’s the nature of things to break down and you got to be able to fix them.”
“This is a spaceship, not a hay cart,” Wilma said.
“Oh, I would so love to make love in a hay cart,” Stacey said. “Doesn’t that sound romantic, Jon?”
“Is that all you think about?” Snow asked.
“Is there anything else to think about?” Stacey asked. “We should probably go,” Jon said.
“Go make yourselves comfortable while I do a walk around,” Wilma said. “A walk around?” Snow asked.
“She wants to make sure its flight worthy before we depart,” Jon said. “That gives us a little time, doesn’t it?” Stacey asked.
“Sure,” Jon said, taking her by the hand and leading her up the ramp. Stacey hesitated and looked to Snow. “Want to join us?”
“Really?” Snow and Jon said together. “It’s to save my life?!” Stacey said.
“That would so not work if I said that,” Jon said, thinking he might like to visit the world of “The invention of lying.”
“Well, I guess we have to, then,” Snow said, and took Stacey’s other hand, and proceeded up the ramp with them.
“Oz was never like this,” Judy told June.
“Depends on who is telling the story of Oz,” June said, and followed the three up the ramp.
निनमित
Rachel’s dress fell below her knees while standing, but when she sat, it came above the knees, and she didn’t bother adjusting back down. She gave no sign of caring or knowledge that his eyes caressed her thighs and calves. Her blouse wasn’t tucked in. Her hair was disheveled, as if she had just got up, and she was wearing her shades again.
“Would you like it darker in here?” Jon asked.
“Um?” Rachel asked, as if she had just realized Jon was here. She made sense of the words after the auditory event. “Oh. No.” She removed her glasses. Her eyes looked tired, slightly red. She wiped one and then rubbed the bridge of her nose while yawning, and then put her glasses back on.
“Drink much?” Jon asked.
“I don’t drink!” Rachel snapped.
Jon’s poker face hid the fact that he thought otherwise. He had to go with what the client told him. He turned his chair left then right, rocking.
“Please don’t do that,” Rachel said. “It makes me dizzy.”
Jon brought his chair back to center and held it. He clasped his hands.
“Aren’t you supposed to be like asking me questions or something?” Rachel asked. “What sort of questions do you suppose I should be asking?” Jon asked.
“I don’t know. Something therapy, like how’s your love life,” Rachel said. “You want to speak about your love life?” Jon asked.
“No, I am just using that as an example,” Rachel said. “Oh,” John said, and was about to add...
“That’s all men ever think about,” Rachel said, she crossed her leg and started kicking it.
Jon watched the calve muscles flexing through several turns before focusing elsewhere. “Your love life?” Jon asked.
“Sex!” Rachel corrected. “I can’t get to know a guy because sex always gets in the way. And hell, the guys I might be interested in having sex with never hit on me, because they’re too intimidated by my looks.”
“So, you do want to discuss your love life,” Jon said.
“No, I don’t,” Rachel said. “Why are we still talking about sex? You want to fuck me?”
“Actually,” Jon said.
“What?!” Rachel said, taking off her glasses. They seemed bloodshot and tired, the kind of eyes that came from drinking and poor sleep.
“Do I want to? Yeah, hell yeah,” Jon said. “Will I? No.”
“Why not? What’s wrong with me?” Rachel asked.
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Jon said, reassuringly. “But I don’t think that’s why you’re here.”
“So, you do sleep with clients?” Rachel asked.
“Sleep? Yes. Sex? Sometimes. I am a sex surrogate, I help people overcome all sorts of difficulties around sex,” Jon said.
“Like what?” Rachel asked.
“You’re interested in what sort of problems people might have that they would need a sex surrogate?” Jon asked.
“I am wondering how you twist the boundaries of the therapeutic relationship to force people into having sex,” Rachel said.
Jon had his first inkling to the world paradigm she was in. “Has anyone ever coerced you into sex?”
“It’s not about me!” Rachel said.
“Oh, whew, that’s a relief,” Jon said. “I got the roles reversed again, Doctor.”
“I am not a Doctor. Why are you so difficult?” Rachel asked.
Jon nodded. “I am frequently told I am difficult, and not funny,” Jon agreed. “It is my hope that in interjecting some levity that the environment becomes more conducive to discussing unpleasant stuff.”
“Well, there is nothing funny about rape,” Rachel said.
“Would you like to talk about it?” Jon asked, even more gently. “No,” Rachel said. “I don’t like thinking about it.”
“And yet, this feels like a significant artifact in your psychic field,” Jon pointed out. “Nonsense. Hell, I can barely remember the first time,” Rachel said.
“Was it your father?” Jon asked.
“As if. My father was a saint. Really, he was a Church of God preacher, he and mom had separate, ‘I love Lucy’ twin beds, separated by the length of the room, and I was lucky to get a hug from him, much less a look. Hell, I am surprised he and mom had any kids, he was so anti touch,” Rachel said.
Jon put his chin in his hand, and leaned the elbow into the arm of his chair. She seemed angry, but he wasn’t sure if it was at the father, mother, both, or other, but she was still sorting it, her eyes moving left and right as if she were dreaming. It seemed important not to interrupt. She sucked on the right arm of her glasses, realized it, sat the glasses down, drew her legs up onto the couch and hugged her knees. The dress fell to her lap and he could see China. Yeah, there was no doubt he wanted that and more, but now his brain was trying to figure out whether she was aware of what she was doing or if was intentional. The behavior in itself wasn’t wrong, but it was communicating something. He was not sure if it was time to point out that this was a gesture that sent conflicting messages.
His decision was saved by her next statement: “Do you always make people feel like shit?” Rachel asked.
“You feel like shit?” Jon asked.
“You always answer a question with a question?” Rachel quipped.
Jon shrugged. “I am not sure what feels like shit means to you. Would you help me?”
“God! I have to explain that to you?” Rachel said. “What kind of crap therapist are you?”
“Well, I am new to crap therapy, and though you’re really not my first client to feel like shit, it would seem that if I am theraptizing crap, you feeling like shit seems appropriate.”
“What?” Rachel asked.
Jon was hoping that would have been better received. “Rachel,” Jon said. “Sometimes people feel like shit. Sometimes it’s appropriate. There are some shitty things in the world and I am not here to gloss over those things. Some things just flat suck. Babies with cancer suck. Dead puppies suck. Being raped, or a history of molestation, sucks. Sometimes people think their life is normal and don’t even know that it sucked, which is a whole nother level of suck, because they don’t understand why their life is not working and why they’re in my office. I think you know why your life sucks, but you really don’t want talk about it because it makes you feel like shit, and we don’t have to talk about it for you to get better. I am not one of those that says people have to dredge up the past and examine it.”
“Then why do you keep bringing up the past?” Rachel demanded.
Jon blinked away his confusion. He just went with her idea that he had brought something up even if he hadn’t:
“Sometimes the past brings itself up because the person is ready to work on it,” Jon said. “Sometimes the longer you go without dealing with the shit, the more likely you will feel like shit.”
“I don’t want to talk about it!” Rachel said. Jon nodded. “You ever walk on a beach?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Rachel demanded. “It’s a way of not talking about it,” Jon said.
“I hate the beach. Everyone is always staring at me,” Rachel said. The analogy he was going to go with suddenly seemed impotent.
“Old men staring at my breast and crotch,” Rachel said. “I look over my shoulder and a dozen heads turn away. Some don’t even turn their heads! Sunglasses or not, they stare so hard that their eyes leaves bruises on my flesh. Hell, even the women are looking at me. Some of them seem angry, like it’s my fault their lecherous husbands are looking at me. Maybe wives and women should fuck their men more so they don’t have time to go after children.”
“When did you start noticing the stares?” Jon asked. “Eight,” Rachel said. “Why are we still talking about this?”
“I am not sure. Tell me something you feel safe talking about,” Jon said. “There’s nothing safe!” Rachel said. “Everything is about sex.”
Jon sighed. “I am feeling frustration, Rachel. I want to honor your request of not discussing the elephant, but if everything is about the elephant, I am not sure how to go forwards.”
“I was raped! Is that what you want to hear?” Rachel said, tearing up. “I thought they were my friends, that I was safe, but they all fucking took a turn! They got me drunk, took me to the back bedroom, and fucked me, sometimes two at a time. They laughed about it. They videotaped it. Everyone in school knew. And a year later when the tape came out, everyone in the county knew. How can you not know any gossip about the hottest looking, cheerleader in the entire county being raped? How can you go to church with the same families of boys that raped you? How can you sit in church having flashbacks of the faces hovering over you? How can you live with hearing people say she got what she deserved? And that’s from my fucking parents! I can hear the men in church saying they wish they had a turn. Afterwards, the coach felt me up and try to force me, so I stopped going to school. My parents didn’t understand why I didn’t want go but I couldn’t tell them. And then, as if my life wasn’t fucking bad enough, turns out I got pregnant?! So, no matter what, I would forever be reminded of being raped. If I keep the child, it becomes the reminder. If I abort, the fact that I had a pregnancy and aborted is forever in my life. Medical people don’t let your forget that shit. Regular doctors and mental health doctors always ask how many pregnancies. As if that’s a fucking clue to my mental health! Do they ask men how many children they fathered? No! Maybe they should. That’s a fucking clue to their mental health life. Not had any kids? Really? Not having sex? What’s wrong with you? A hundred kids all out of wed lock and you’re not paying child support? What’s the fuck wrong with you? It’s a fucking sexist question and I hate it. Being pregnant is not a medical condition and it’s definitely not a mental health condition.”
The anger was clear, present, and uncomfortable, but Jon was glad it was out there. He had to fight his own urge to flee from it. Most of his transference though was not running, but the conflict between who she presented and what he saw: looking at her revealed a beautiful woman, and to him beautiful women were always loving and peaceful and powerful in his world, as opposed to an angry survivor. He only needed to point to any Victorian Secret model and show you an image of power, not just sexy, but someone who held confidence and poise and demanded attention. Sure, some of that was just nature of the advertisement and the doctoring of the photo and framing, enhancing, but that didn’t mean the models didn’t come to represent an archetype of power. He had spent a year making collages of women meditating, women in the lotus pose and or in the akimbo stance, like Wonder Woman, as a form of self-therapy. His ideal women were magically and spiritually endowed. You would be surprised how many ads display women surrounded by magical glows and power stances, showing them peaceful, a part of nature, and a force all until themselves. The disparity of this woman suffering before him clashed with his perception of her based on looks alone, which required him to move to a place he could truly reach her.
“You’re in pain and everything in life reminds you of this pain. The way people look at you reminds you. The professionals remind you. Your family reminds you,” Jon said. “Even the simplest pleasure, like going to the beach, has been robbed from you and reminds you of the pain. Of being assaulted. And the whole world goes on about their lives and going to church and school as if everything is okay, and you find all of them equally corruptible, hypocrites…”
Rachel began to cry, burying her face in her knees. “There is no safe place,” she said into her knees. She looked up. “I couldn’t even nurse my own child, because his sucking my breast reminded me of the rape, someone fucking me while two others held me down licking and sucking my breast. It’s not my sons fault but I can’t even touch him and I hate myself for that, too, and maybe I should have just aborted him or given him up for adoption, because maybe that would have made his life better.”
“But you thought you deserved this, and you felt obligated to care for something no one else might care for,” Jon said. “Maybe even though this was your one last chance for unconditional love, but instead you found a child that was needy and you couldn’t satiate it, which only made it hungrier.”
“I have fucked everything up. And it’s all my fault. If I had just listened to my parents… I snuck out against their wishes,” Rachel said. “This is my fault. I get what I deserve.”
“So, hearing the voices of the church members telling you that, hearing your parents say that, is really an echo of your own beliefs?” Jon said.
“Aren’t you supposed to be telling me it’s not my fault?” Rachel demanded. “Would you believe me?” Jon asked.
Rachel was silent. “No,” she finally said. “I get what I deserve.”
“What do you deserve?” Jon asked.
“I have only known pain, that’s what I deserve. I am pain. I thought there was hope for me if the child was perfect, it would have to love me, but he has only brought me so much more pain. And it’s my fault. I didn’t give him any affection. I rejected him.”
“So, you felt unloved by your parents, because of their cold philosophy,” Jon summarized. “And, then gave that to your son.”
“To all of my children,” Rachel said. “I am pain, I only give pain. And so, when I discovered my son was fucking me, too, I just accepted that has final retirbution. This is my life. I did this to him, I deserve this, too.”
“You are having sex with your son?” Jon asked, not out of surprise, but for confirmation.
She was silent for a long moment. Jon experienced a knowing before she even spoke words, but the larger truth had yet hit him. “At first I wasn’t sure,” Rachel said, dreamily, eyes distant. “I was drinking and taking over the counter sleeping pills. I would wake up sore but I just ignored it. And then I started having these flashbacks of my son’s face hovering over me, like all the guys so long ago. And then one day, I woke up and had clarity, and it was like a light in the room, an intense blue light, and a sound like a trumpet, and I tried to resist, and he punched me and held me down, and told me if I ever rejected him again, he’d fucked his sisters. So, from then on, I was sober, and I just accepted it. It’s all my fault. My whole life is a nightmare and I can’t escape.”
“You want to escape,” Jon said. He didn’t have clue what else to say.
“Pff, my life, me, yeah,” Rachel said. “But I can’t. No one is going to take care of my youngest. She’s got Down syndrome. But you want to know what the worst part of it is? He makes me orgasm. How fucking sick is that! I don’t fight, I accept, I cum, he cums, and then he goes back to his bed.”
Jon steepled his fingers and touched his lips. He hadn’t expected that part, but he wasn’t surprised. Even rape victims are frequently confused by conflicting emotional and physical stimulation. The fact that one can be forced to orgasm doesn’t mean it is less than a rape, but more, reveals how seriously profound the violation is because it reaches that part that should be about joy and makes it confusing. He knew it himself, firsthand, too, well.
“Wait, you’re not going to tell CPS?”
“If we were in your world, I would be compelled…” Jon said.
“But I am not sleeping with him, he’s raping me!” Rachel said. “And the law won’t see me as the victim and I will go to jail, and no one in my family will take my youngest, so she will go to the state…”
“Yeah, they won’t see you as the victim,” Jon agreed. “And, the law there doesn’t make a distinction, I would just have to report and let them sort it out, but the truth is, I probably should, because if he is raping you, he is raping his sister.”
“No, no,” Rachel said, shaking her head. “The oldest one would kill him.”
“OMG,” Jon said. “Timothy, Stacey…”
“And Cindy,” Rachel said. “You know my children? You have already contacted the state?”
Jon suddenly couldn’t get the song, “Stacey’s mom has got it going on” out of his head. It was a fun son on many levels, but completely inappropriate on many levels, and with the twists in this family’s fortune, just kind of highlighted the facts, and it’s not like he himself hadn’t entertained thoughts of Rachel, and if he were in the song, he would be all over Stacey’s mom, too! “Rachel, I am not contacting the state. The state is gone. That world is gone,” Jon said.
“I don’t understand,” Rachel said.
“Where do you go when you leave here?” Jon asked.
Rachel’s face grew serious. She had to force herself to say, “I go home.”
“Where is home?” Jon asked.
“My home, on the farm, with my grandmother,” Rachel said. “Your deceased grandmother?” Jon asked.
Rachel was about to protest but she couldn’t. It was like she was having the realization that she was dreaming, but did not want to relinquish the dream.
“Out of all the people in your world, you felt the safest with your grandmother. The most understood,” Jon said. “And the farm brought you the most joy. Caring for the animals. Walking in the fields. The smell of earth. Grandmother working with her plants.”
Tears flowed down her face. “How could I not remember?’
“Sometimes when we wake from a really bad dream, it takes a moment to sort it,” Jon suggested.
“So, it was all a dream?” Rachel said, hopeful.
“Yes, and no,” Jon said. “Dreams are more real than people acknowledge, with more lasting profound effects physiologically and emotionally, and waking life is more dream than people can even speculate.”
Rachel fell over sideways on the couch and curled up into the fetal position, almost sucking her thumb, and tears flowed. “Everybody knows.”
“Everybody knows,” Jon said.
“Cindy is Down syndrome because of incest and that’s why no one would take her. And my family won’t take Stacey because she’s half black,” Rachel said. “Hell, my family won’t take any of them. They hated I didn’t abort Timothy. They hated that I was involved with someone not of my race. They blame Cindy on my drinking. But it is incest that did it. It is all my fault.”
Jon sorted it in his head. “Cindy Down syndrome is not the result of incest or drinking alcohol.”
“She is retarded! That’s what happens when you get drunk and have sex with family!” Rachel said.
“That’s not true,” Jon corrected her. “ETOH syndrome is not Down syndrome. And incest doesn’t automatically make retarded children. Will some genes get amplified with incest? Sure. Some genes get eliminated. Hell, we wouldn’t have any of the dog species we have today if it weren’t for inbreeding. Now, excessive inbreeding does come with specific health problems, but incest does not result in Down syndrome, or even retardation.”
“So, what’s your explanation for her being retarded?” Rachel demanded. “Fucking nature,” Jon said.
“Uh?”
“Rachel, people don’t like to hear this, especially Bible belt folks, but nature and genetics is not fucking perfect! Nature fucks up all the time. That’s why we have so many eggs and sperm combination, so that we’re going to get it right most the time, but sometimes the results are just whacked. And people get really creeped out when gender gets fucked, because people are so superstitious about sex and gender. There are actually people who are born gay, normal genes, just gay. That’s life. It’s a little bit easier if their gayness is explained genetically, like a double x female who was born with male genitalia, and that person might get a pass and be allowed to have surgery and be transgender in the first year, but really starts messing people when they get down the road and turn out gay, but would have been okay with gender reassignment! An XY why male that is born with female genitalia, they happen, too, and they tend to be the best looking ‘females,’ because the proportions just, well, fucking nature. And they sometimes never figure it out, and if the men fucking them knew they were really male, well, they’d be in my office sorting it. And then there are the folks born with both sets of genitalia and parents blame themselves and don’t want to deal with this out fear and shame, so they usually decided to surgically whack one of them off, and then they worry that they picked the wrong gender because any ambiguous child play sets them all in a panic then they overcompensate to push their choice, and well, and all overcompensation does is set up doubt in the onjects mind which casues them to explore the possibility they are what everyone doesn’t want, and well, nature is just fucked! Yeah, I love nature, but I am not putting her on fucking a pedestal, because nature is not God. Family inbreeding doesn’t guarantee stupid children. Of course, if you have two really stupid people breeding, related or not, you’re likely to get more stupid. That’s just likely, but not a guarantee, and that’s also partly environment. You can take a potentially brainy child and lock him in a room and not nurture him, and he will be stupid. You can take a potentially stupid kid and surround him with stimulus and produce a better than average smart person. The one thing that tends to result in the best outcomes is love. And I can promise you this, Cindy is not the result of incest, or a lack of love. In fact, your protectiveness of her, wanting to care for her, is evidence of love.”
“She is retarded because of me!” Rachel insisted.
“OMG, Rachel, she is retarded because of fucking nature!” Jon said. “Genes misfired, didn’t line up, and you now have a zipper with teeth that keep the key from moving up and down the chain properly. Even if your life had been perfect, you still had a chance of producing a Down syndrome child. Cindy is the product of the affair you had, not incest.”
“The guy at the bar?” Rachel said more than asked. It didn’t take her long to sort because the list of consensual men in her life was very small. Like two.
“He’s not just a guy at the bar,” Jon said.
Rachel wiped her eyes, but remained laying on the couch. “Yeah, I knew him from high school. He said he had crush on me all those years ago.”
“Tell me more,” Jon encouraged.
“Not much to tell. He would meet me at the bar and after a few drinks he would take me to the hotel,” Rachel said. “It was my one night off from kids. I figured he was married, but I just didn’t ask questions.”
Jon nodded. “Tell me more.”
“That’s it,” Rachel said. “No, there’s more,” Jon said.
Rachel stared into her memory, sorting it, and the sudden realization nearly made her vomit. Anger replaced that, followed by horror and shame. “He was one of the guys who raped me, way back at that party. OMG! My whole fucking life, I have just been used. Why can’t I have a normal life?!”
“What’s a normal life?” Jon asked.
“Not being raped and then not being fucked by the guy who raped you!” Rachel said. “Not fucking the guy who raped you and treating him with love and hoping he might one day really be with you. Surely you know that much.”
“Rachel,” Jon said gently. “Here is something you need to carry. There is this thing that comes with trauma, called re-enactment. A person traumatized generally puts themselves in situations similar to the first so that they can try and find a different response. This is done at the unconscious level.”
“So, you’re saying it is my fault,” Rachel said, sitting up.
“You’ve been saying it’s your fault,” Jon said. “I am not using the word fault.”
“But you just said…”
“What I said is there is this thing that comes with trauma, which could offer you explanation for your trajectory,” Jon said. “You could also add to that, you experienced trauma in a time where people did not treat trauma, and most of society went out of their way not to talk about rape, and your family was more embarrassed about the rape than treating the rape, which always baffled me about the Christian ideal of love, sorry, tangent, anyway this is just one more thing in a complicated equation that might help you understand your trajectory. You were not responsible for the rape. And, I think if you sort it further, bar guy was slipping you more drugs, because that’s his thing. And, now this bit, this is just fucking blind luck… He is Timothy’s father.”
“No fucking way!” Rachel said. “He was doping me? There was no need to? I would have fucked him anyway.”
Jon sorted that. Did she miss the part where bar guy was also Timothy’s father? Because there was more interesting things there, at least to Jon. The fact that he sought her and found her because he had intentions of re-victimizing her. He moved his entire family just to be near her, yes, he was married, and from the family and church associates, was probably the most respectable, nice guy ever, and yet, he had this obsessive compulsive stalking side of him. He was also a professor and fucking his students, so he wasn’t like a stupid guy, except sex made him do really stupid things.
“I hope he is burning in hell,” Rachel said. “You’re angry,” Jon said.
“Are you fucking kidding me? Of course I am angry. He is a fucking rapist…”
“And all rapist should go to hell,” Jon said.
“Absolutely!” Rachel said.
“Timothy should go to hell,” Jon said.
Rachel’s face paled, and was horrified. She sat up. “No, that was my fault. You can’t blame him for my sins. Is that where he is? Is he in hell? I should be in hell, not him. Why am I here?! I don’t deserve any of this…”
“Okay, Rachel. Slow down. Breathe. That’s it, breathe,” Jon said. The only hell’s that exist are the one we create for ourselves.”
“I need to help him. No one else will help him,” Rachel said.
“Rachel, your first job is to heal yourself. There is no hell, there is only therapy.
Everyone in the world is in therapy,” Jon said. “Even Timothy?” Rachel asked. “Even Timothy. I got him,” Jon said.
Rachel grabbed a pillow and hugged it, bringing her knees up into it, again, rolling to the fetal position, and sobbed into the pillow. The sobbing was a mixture of rage and relief and years of unspent emotional cleansing. Jon sat there with her, just giving her the space to be, in the presence of another, without judgment, only love. And it dawned on him, Harry was Timothy!
OMG, fucking A! Oh, and the girl with fuck face, that was Stacey! Oh, fuck, and fuck face himself was the son of bar guy. Oh, how fucking convoluted the world was, is! Jon lamented, almost too exhausted to continue. He didn’t bother to wipe his eyes. It was appropriate to expel water under such circumstances. Impossible not to.
“You said there is no hell, only therapy,” Rachel said. “This is not what I was taught.”
“Nor I,” Jon said. “We were taught in disposable people, in a culture that everything is used and discarded.”
“Why would God want me to have therapy?” Rachel asked.
Jon shrugged. “Maybe because God knows the people who experienced the most evil, the ones who made the most God awful decisions, who had the hardest lives, those will be the ones that learn how to love the most. We learn to love the best.”