Another Excerpt of Gaia's Hands

Trigger warning -- this excerpt deals with PTSD/rape. The description is not from a salacious point of view, but from traumatic memory.

This is an excerpt from Gaia's Dance, which I don't know if it should be in the book even though it survived three edits. But it mixes trauma, magical realism, and relationships, and may be a quintessential part of the plot, even though it's a sideplot:

On his way to Jeanne's house, he rode past throngs of students drinking in costume or just drinking. He swerved around a pony keg that had rolled out into the street. Past downtown, he rode his bike under a tree full of birds flocking for migration south. Jeanne had called them starlings, but their frenzied voices mocked him. Josh imagined them as the tengu, bird kami, of Japanese folklore and hoped they would protect him. 

Josh arrived in front of Jeanne’s bungalow, a cream-colored cottage with brown trim, the landscaping brown and desiccated by the frost. He remembered her saying that the trees in the back hosted islands of lush edible growth – vines, bushes, creeping greens, all dormant now. Her koi pond slept, dreaming of spring. 

He rang the doorbell. Jeanne, pale and weary, let him in and shut the door behind them. He stood in an apricot living room with burgundy and gold accents. “Pick a seat”, she said tersely. He chose one on the wood-framed couch, leaving enough room for her if she wanted to sit. She stood.

“What’s wrong?” Josh breathed, his stomach clenching. “I’ve missed you." 

“Oh, Josh,” she fretted. “I’ve been really busy lately.”

“You have never been too busy for your friends. I worry about you.” And about me, he thought. And us, even if you don't think there's an ‘us’.

“There’s a lot going on –”

 “Did I do something wrong? You act like you don’t trust me.” He remembered seeing her flinch that day in September when she shied away from talking about her past. He searched his memory to see if he had ever been aggressive, had ever overstepped his bounds.

“You don’t understand. It’s not you I don’t trust, it’s me.” 

Around her, he saw snow fiercely blown by the wind. He stood up, faced her, close enough to touch but not touching her. "What do you mean, you don’t trust yourself? I trust you.” As she shook her head, he realized he had said the wrong thing. He took a deep breath and started over. “Could you tell me what you don’t trust yourself with?”

“I don’t trust my judgment. Not when it comes to getting close to people.” She shivered as the snow billowed around her in the warm room.

“Why not?” He would not allow her to walk alone in the blizzard. 

"I've let the wrong people into my life. Over and over, because I wanted attention,” Jeanne murmured.

"Don't we all want attention? Love?" 

"Not when people hurt you with it ..." Her voice broke. Her eyes swam with tears. “Not you, Josh. Just …”

"Who was it, then?” Josh winced; he spoke too loud.

“Something really bad happened when I was young.” Jeanne's voice was small, barely audible.

“Tell me. Please.” Josh took a deep breath against the churning of his stomach.

Jeanne responded in a soft monotone, “It was a sunny day in March.  The phone rang at four in the afternoon. My sister Clarice was at Eastern, and my parents worked Saturdays. I thought the call was for one of them. Instead, it was for me.

“My neighbor Malvin called. He had two little girls, 4 and 6, with platinum blond hair and pretty blue eyes. I used to go over with my sister and help her babysit them, so the girls got to know me pretty well. He asked me to come over and do the girls’ hair so he could get them portraits at the mall in Champaign. 

“I knocked on the door.  I remember I felt this chill across my shoulders despite the nice weather. I didn't understand why. There were people Mom didn’t let me visit, and she never let me have male babysitters growing up because she said she didn’t trust them not to hurt kids. But Mal and the kids — they weren't strangers, they were neighbors.

“Mal let me in. He seemed nervous. His hair looked sweaty and greasy, and he smelled of beer, and something didn't sound right about the way he talked — he sounded like he read off a script. He wouldn’t really look at me. He told me the kids were in the back room. By the time I realized that I didn’t hear the girls, he pushed the door open and shoved me in.

 “I trusted Mal. I trusted him; heck, I helped him with the kids all the time. The kids weren’t there, they were with their mother, and he and his friend told me they had a different game in mind.

“I won’t tell you, not even you, all of it.

“When they had finished, they threw me out of the house and I ran home. I saw blood and slimy streaks in my underwear, bruises where fingers had dug into my arms. I felt pain, shrieking pain, where those two men had no business going. So much for being a virgin till marriage.

“Oh God, I didn't do anything,” she cried.  “Mal and his buddy said things to me: ‘Hey, fat girl, let me see your tits. Do fat girls put out? Are fat girls easy?’ I didn't even know what they were talking about, never heard the words before. But they showed me, and it hurt. I tried to stop them, I tried, but I couldn’t.

“They laughed when I screamed. That hurt me the worst — my neighbor laughed when I screamed.

“I buried the clothes; I scrubbed away the evidence so my parents would never know.”

Josh felt weak, vaguely ill. He remembered the drunk woman at the house party, and how scared and ashamed he felt. Multiply that by a hundred, and maybe that was how Jeanne felt. Age thirteen, two men, no way to fight them off. Only powerlessness and pain. Too much darkness, too much, and he could do nothing to redress her past. He knew that he could only give comfort. He took a deep breath to center himself, then caught and held her gaze. “You didn’t cause it.” His hands rubbed up and down her upper arms to try to remove the chill that had nothing to do with ambient temperature.

“No I didn’t,” Jeanne breathed through tears, “I’ve come to believe that. It took a long time.”

“Not just the assault.” He couldn’t bring himself to say rape. He had to keep his composure for her. 

“Don’t blame your judgment either.”

“I trusted Mal – “

“Your parents trusted Mal. You believed your parents. We believe our parents at that age. Your judgment told you to run when your mother’s guidance told you everything was ok.”

“Oh, God,” Jeanne paused, then broke out in sobs, “Oh, God, you’re right. I never trusted Mal. He looked like a rockstar, but I could feel something mean about him.“

Jeanne crept into his embrace and cried, and they walked through the blizzard together.

***************
Now, that you're at the bottom, a question: would you like to read this book? It's likely going to be something I self-publish on Kindle, but my readers deserve to get a free copy, which I can send to you.