I lay still, rigid, as her fingers moved in me, trying to feel as little as possible. I knew that somewhere there was a Joanne who would be appalled at what she was doing.

“Joanne, please stop,” I stated calmly, matter-of-factly. “You’re hurting me.”

“Don’t fight,” she answered, “and I won’t hurt you.”

“I don’t mean physically. I don’t care about that. I’d prefer you break my arm than for you to use me like this.” I tensed my twisted arm, straining against her. “Go ahead, break it. Just don’t rape me.”

Suddenly my arm was free. Joanne rolled off me to the far side of the bed. She had curled up, her back to me. I reached for her, putting a hand on her shoulder. She jerked away from my touch.

“Joanne?”

She abruptly sat up, her back still to me.

“I’m sorry, Micky…I’ve got to go.” She stood up, reaching for her clothes.

“Joanne, don’t go.” She was crying.

“No…I don’t know what…” She was fumbling with her clothes, trying to ignore the tears.

I rolled over to her side of the bed, then sat up. I reached out my hand to her.

“Joanne, I’m okay. Please don’t go,” I said. I never thought I’d see Joanne Ranson break like this.

She looked at me, at my outstretched hand. For a moment, she didn’t move, almost as if giving me time to reconsider, to reclaim my hand. I held it stretched out to her. Tentatively she reached out and grasped my hand.

“Don’t go,” I repeated.

She nodded, then slowly sat down on the bed, still keeping a distance between us. She sat still, silently staring ahead, occasionally wiping tears away with her free hand.

“I’m sorry,” she finally spoke. “I didn’t mean what I said. I didn’t mean any of it.”

“I know,” I replied.

“Do you?” She looked at me. “I hope to hell you do.” She moved next to me and put her arms around me. “I hope to hell you do,” she repeated, then laid her head against my shoulder. I felt her tears drip down my breast and fall onto my thigh. I held her, letting her cry.

“Oh, God, Micky, I’m so sorry,” she sobbed.

“It’s okay. I’m okay. I’m sorry for what I said.”

“I know you’re okay. I know that,” she said. “I don’t want to hurt you. I wish to hell I hadn’t.” She kissed me, her lips wet and salty from her tears. “I do care about you.”

“I love you,” I suddenly said. And if she hadn’t been holding me, I probably would have jumped up and ran. “I mean,” I qualified. “I care about you. I guess I love you, but…well, like a friend. I mean…oh, hell, I don’t know what I mean. I guess I mean what I said,” I finally finished, disconcerted and flustered.

“It’s okay, Micky. I love you, too,” Joanne stated simply. “Will you be all right?”

“Yes, I will,” I replied. Then, “Joanne? What happened?”

She tensed in my arms, then slowly lifted her head off my shoulders and looked at me. “Your cousin molested you, didn’t he?” she asked.

I had to look away from her before I could answer. “Yes. Yes, he did.”

She reached for me, turning my face until our eyes met. “What happened? Can you talk about it? Have you ever?”

“No,” I said slowly, answering the last question. “I never have.”

“Why not?”

“Not that important,” I shrugged.

“Just important enough to have never mentioned to anyone.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I replied, hearing my voice shake. “It wasn’t that bad.”

“No?”

“No. He just put a gun to my head and made me give him a blow job. I didn’t think he’d really pull the trigger, but…” My voice broke. “It wasn’t really that bad,” I got out. “Only a couple of times…” I started crying.

“Goddamn him!” Joanne spat out. “How’d he get a gun?”

“Uncle Claude kept it around in case of burglars. But their house was never broken into. I guess because of that gun,” I said caustically.

“Don’t say it wasn’t bad. Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t shrug it off like it didn’t happen. Because if it didn’t happen to you, then it didn’t happen to me and it’s not happening now.”

I remembered the leer on Bayard’s face when he said, “Let’s go to my room. I want to show you something.” I pounded the mattress. I think I hit Joanne in the thigh, but she didn’t say anything, just held me closer.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured to me. My fury subsided into uncontrollable crying.

I finally lifted my head, wiped my tears with my forearm, then used a corner of the sheet.

Joanne said, “Lie next to me.” She kissed me on the forehead as I curled against her.

She sighed and I felt the tension in her body as she said, “It was my father.” Her voice was soft, low. “Dad worked on the oil rigs out of Morgan City. He kept a small apartment there. My mother would meet him, to go drinking or whatever. They had a rocky marriage. She would leave him and us kids would stay with him.”

“How many kids?”

“Me. Tim and Tom, the twins. And Susie, my younger sister.”

“You the oldest?”

“Yeah. When I was ten, he started being nice to me, letting me do things the other kids couldn’t, stay up late, get a Coke. He wanted to be my friend, he said.” Her voice didn’t betray it, but her hand jerked, only slowly releasing as she continued talking. “He let me stay in his apartment with him, while the other kids were left in the room over the garage. One night…one night, he came into my room and told me that friends did things for each other. Sometimes they hurt, but real friends didn’t mind.”

“Oh, shit,” I said.

“Yeah. Shit. He raped me.”

“Joanne. I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t know that you could call it rape. I didn’t say no. I didn’t say anything. I wanted to be his friend. I didn’t do anything to stop him.”

“How could you?” I burst out. “How the fuck could you? Joanne, how could you even know what was happening? What the hell did you know about sex at that age?”

“Not much. Not enough to keep from getting pregnant.”

“What?” I burst out again.

“Fourteen and pregnant by my father.” Her hand tightened again.

“When I told him…that I thought I was pregnant, he denied it,” she said bitterly. “He said he knew what kind of slut I was. He’d seen the way I went after men. But he offered, since he was a friend,” she spat the word out, “to help me take care of it. If I didn’t tell anyone, he would take care of it.”

“Abortion wasn’t legal then, was it?” I asked, doing some quick arithmetic.

“No. It wasn’t. He called a week later, giving me an address and a time to be there. Since it wasn’t his, he wasn’t going to go with me. I had to learn to be a big girl and clean up my own messes.”

“Oh, Joanne…” I said.

“It was a back street. A dingy, ugly building on a back street. I remember getting on the table and feeling something wet under me, like they hadn’t cleaned it very well from the last person. Last woman. We were all women. There was one big, bright light that he focused between my legs. I remember that light…and the pain. God, it hurt. Then a curt dismissal, telling me to wear a sanitary napkin and to expect some blood. All those women with lowered eyes, cowering. The abortionist was a criminal. But we were criminals and sluts, too.

“I bled. And bled. I got home and snuck up the stairs to my room, hoping I would stop bleeding before my sister noticed. We shared the room.

“I guess I fell asleep. Or passed out. I woke to the sound of my sister screaming. I was lying in a pool of my own blood. My parents weren’t there. Bars, somewhere.

“One of the neighborhood women came over. I don’t remember whether Susie got her or she heard the screams. But I do remember some doctor in the emergency room saying an hour or two more and I would have bled to death.”