CHAPTER ONE

Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay.
— The Book of Ruth

Early July 2009

“Ova deh,” I called out to Officer Smith, who was standing off to the side talking on her cellphone. I kept pointing into the clearing, hoping to get her attention. “A deh so it happen. Dat a weh it happen.” I was speaking Jamaican Patois, also known as Creole.

I stared into the tall Guinea grasses where the man with the gun and the beanie cap, wearing a bandana with a skull on it over his face, had raped Sasha and me. The threatening storm that had hung low and heavy on the day of the assault never came, so the area was exactly as I remembered. Cedar, pimento, macca-fat palm, and ackee trees framed the clearing and had stifled our screams; not that many people came into the bush anyway.

I shivered then, remembering the cooing of baldpate pigeons and the squawking of green parrots. The hand, his hand, that smelled like gasoline and marijuana. The breath, his breath, stale alcohol, and his body odour, like he didn’t bathe.

My being pushed down onto my knees. My being asked to …

I pinched my eyes shut and shook my head, forcing the vision to go away. “Mi did hav sum tings: things he stole,” I said to Officer Smith as she moved up beside me, her call having ended. “Mi waan luk.” I started to step into the clearing, but Officer Smith grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

“Yuh cyah disturb the crime scene,” she said. “Yuh hafi stan’ back and look.”

I wasn’t sure what to make of Officer Smith. The male police officers, who had come on this so-called “recreation” of the crime, sure made it clear they didn’t approve of me. One short round officer had eyed me up and down with a look on his face as if to say, “Yuh sick mi.”

I peered into the grasses for my phone, wallet, camera, money, and silver ring. I’d bought the ring in Ocho Rios. I wanted that ring back more than any of the other items. It was sterling silver and it had two steel bars across the front. I usually wore it on my index finger, but sometimes I wore it on my thumb, indicating to others in our community my identity: that I am gay. I felt the knot in my stomach tighten thinking of it. I bought the ring after Ana and I broke up for good. My body ached whenever I thought of Ana, because I still loved her. I wanted her back especially now, to hold me and tell me I would be all right.

It was all going to be all right.

Then my mind moved to Miss Campbell, a former tutor of mine with dark eyes she lined even darker in kohl. She only needed to look at me and draw me into her intense gaze. She had my full attention. She wore tailored tan and white cotton-blend suits, the pants of which would stretch real tight over her hips. Her ears she’d adorn in gold hoop earrings and she talked like every sentence was part of a poem. She told me she was a poetic justice campaigner, meaning she used poetry to advocate for change. Spoken word was her hobby. She made me come out to my parents before I was ready, but when I did, I bought that ring to celebrate, or to honour, or to just finally be. Daddy accused her of seducing me.

Oh, that summer … those days now seemed so much simpler. Ana and our breakup, Miss Campbell, the older woman. I was seventeen and she was thirty-two.

“You were alone?” Officer Smith asked. I jumped, startled. My entire chest cavity tightened again, this time thinking of Sasha and what I had seen those men do to her. Sasha had begged me on the bus ride home to never tell anyone she was there. “What’s the point of going to di police? Dem nah go do nutten. Dem a go mock wi,” she had said. Her lips were moving when she spoke, but Sasha’s eyes had stared out of her face, big and vacant. Her voice sounded like it was rising, limp and smoky, from the inside of a deep cave. The Sasha who had made me feel safe in the middle of hurricanes; that Sasha had left her body when the man, the men, raped her.

“Yuh were alone?” Officer Smith asked again.

“No, I wasn’t,” I managed to get out, knowing that unless Sasha came forward or I called her as a witness, the police wouldn’t press for her identity. I turned to Officer Smith: “I can’t see anyting on the ground but worms, ants, and grasshoppers,” I said, changing the subject. “The man with the skull bandana probably already sell mi tings he stole.”

“One of di men took yuh to a house afta,” said a voice coming up behind me. “Show us.” I turned quickly around. It was the short, round police officer wearing an expression of boredom. My face started to burn. I’ve been told my whole life that my level-headedness and calm made me appear older than I was. Although being an Aquarius, born on January 23, meant I was also, supposedly, forward-thinking and free-spirited. Regardless, inside, a storm brewed, always brewed, and it was set into motion when I felt anyone judging another person. There was a trauma there, that went way down into my belly. A wrong against me or anyone, I instantly saw as a wrong against all people.

Stifling my anger — I didn’t want him to know he had gotten under my skin — I said I would lead them to the house. I slipped into the back of Officer Smith’s car, while she and another policewoman from Spanish Town’s Centre for the Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse, known by its acronym, CISOCA, and the policemen milled around talking. I blocked out their voices, to listen to the birds and to settle my spinning thoughts.

In the bush, back here, it was quiet, not even the sound of wind could get through in parts. We were not far from one of the highways that connects St. Ann’s Bay to Kingston; a highway lined with tiny zinc-and-wood shops selling boiled corn, peanut cake, pink-on-top coconut cake, and gizzada. But in here, in the bush, there were no cars and buses swerving around potholes or honking at oncoming traffic. There were no women hawking roasted peanuts and candies from large wicker baskets. In here was silence, and I liked silence. I felt safe in silence. Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still, and know that I am God.”

* * *

“That sodomite in the car …”

My body twitched. I had zoned out, still tired, exhausted really, since the assault weeks earlier, but the short policeman’s words dug their way into my thoughts and brought me back.

“That girl in the car, she a suh? She funny?” he said. I rubbed my eyes and looked. All the police officers, including Officer Smith, were looking at me.

My face grew hot again. I clenched my fists so hard, my knuckles hurt. “I am not a sodomite,” I grumbled real low.