Esta didn’t answer. Colene looked at her, and caught a look of horror on her face. What was there about fixing a tire that bothered her? “Got a tire pump?” she repeated.
Esta found one. It was inefficient, but they took turns pumping until the tire was firm. It did hold air now. “And it shouldn’t go flat overnight,” Colene said. “Mine didn’t. It’s the easiest leak to fix, and it won’t puncture again soon, unless it’s really bad.”
“It went down in half an hour,” Esta said. “I barely made it home from school.” She seemed to have recovered from her horror of the tire repair.
“Well, then, you can try it now, and if it’s still solid after half an hour, you’ll know. You have time?”
“He doesn’t get home until five-thirty,” Esta said. There was a tightness about her that Colene picked up on. That would be the stepfather, and it was evident that the girl didn’t like him.
“Okay, let’s try it,” Colene said. She wanted the girl to see that the bike really was fixed, because that would indicate that Colene knew how to fix things. Then maybe Esta would tell her what was going on with that stepfather. Maybe it was just firm discipline, which nobody liked. But Colene feared that it was more than that, because of the girl’s repressed state and weird reactions. Slick wouldn’t have been concerned otherwise. Slick thought that maybe someone needed killing, and he just might know, because that was his business. So the job wasn’t done yet.
They wheeled the bike out to the street, and Esta got on and rode. For the first time the girl seemed other than hangdog; the breeze of motion tugged her reddish hair out a little and her green dress too. She almost had a little sex appeal as her thighs showed. A couple years’ development and competent makeup might do a lot for her. But first she would need a sizable attitude transplant. The way a girl acted, the way she felt about herself had a lot to do with how she looked. A homely face wasn’t necessarily a liability.
“It’s holding,” Esta called, pleased.
“Well, it’s too soon to tell. But it should be okay.”
They took the bike back to the garage. “Look,” Colene said. “Your Uncle Slick is worried about you. He thinks you’re suicidal, and since I’m suicidal, he figured I might be able to talk to you. I guess we missed on that. But I can tell that something’s bothering you, and I’d sure like to know what.”
Esta remained guarded. “Why are you suicidal?”
Would candor bring forth candor? It was worth a try. “I think I’m just a depressive type. But it got worse once I hit puberty. Maybe the hormones—I don’t know. But what happened to me didn’t help.”
“What happened to you?” This was good; the girl was showing interest.
“I got raped,” Colene said flatly. “It was supposed to be a party, but I was the only girl there, and these four guys—I had some of their drinks, and I didn’t know how to handle it, so I was pretty dizzy drunk, and they just did it, all four of them. I thought I’d never get the filth-feeling out of me, and I still feel like such a fool. My folks never knew. After that, well, things just sort of progressed.”
Now they were sitting on the step leading to the house from the garage, out of sight of the front. It was reasonably cozy. “I heard four men talking, once, about it,” Esta said. “I was lying on my bunk in the corner of the room and I guess they thought I was sleeping, but I wasn’t. They were friends of him.” She didn’t identify the last, but it had to be her stepfather. It was as if she couldn’t say the man’s name.
“Four men,” Colene said. “They—how old were you?”
“Six. It was right after Mom married him. She was in town, and he was baby-sitting me. I didn’t like him even then, but I knew I had to keep my mouth shut. So I was pretending to sleep. They had been helping him move stuff in, and then they sat down and drank beer and talked, and I just kept on playing dead. He was on the phone, getting something straight, so they were just waiting for him. But it was interesting, I guess.”
“You guess? Now I’m interested!” Because if Colene’s mention of the gang rape had triggered this memory, it might be relevant.
“It was about women. The men were all married, and I guess they didn’t much like it. The first one said that his wife was fat, so that the thought of having candy with her turned his stomach. She had been thin when they married, but then she ate herself fat, and he thought she must want it that way so he would leave her alone. So he went somewhere else for it. The second said that his wife picked a fight every time he mentioned it and wound up shutting him out of the house, so he had to go somewhere else too. The third said that his wife always said no, and if he got really tough about it, she suffered through it with such tragedy that he lost his taste for it, so he went away too. The fourth one said that his wife arranged always to be away, busy, or asleep, so he could never catch her, and he had to get it somewhere else.”
“I guess that’s what men say,” Colene said. “But let me tell you—”
“I know. But I didn’t know then. I thought those wives must be really stupid not to give their husbands what they wanted. I thought it was a box of candy they meant, and one wife got fat from eating it all herself, and another shut him out of the house so she wouldn’t have to share it with him. I thought they should get two boxes so each could have one. I really sort of sympathized with the men, because their wives were all treating them so bad. I knew how good candy was, and my mother never let me have much of it either. So I hoped Mom would let him have all the candy he wanted, even if I didn’t like him, so he wouldn’t be mad about it. Because I knew it wouldn’t be any good if he got mad. That was the way it was with Dad, and he finally left for keeps.”
“Candy,” Colene said with irony. “When did you learn what it was?”
“When I was seven. He—I think she gave him all he wanted, but he got tired of it with her. Then her job hours changed, and she was home two hours after he was. He was drinking—”
“I know how that is,” Colene said. “My mother usually gets home after my dad.” But the pattern seemed to have changed, because yesterday Colene’s mother had come home first. Maybe to spend more time with him.
“I don’t think so.”
Colene realized that something more was in the offing. “What did he do?”
“He—I can’t tell. He’d kill me. He said he would.”
Colene already had a notion. The way Esta had reacted to that tire repair—it was that oozing gunk from the tube! Sexual molestation—at age seven. That was something Colene herself had never suffered. This girl had reason to be unhappy! “So you didn’t tell your mother?”
“I—I tried to, after a year—”
“A year! This went on for a year?”
“Every day. But Mom said I was making it up, and she would punish me if I ever tried to tell such a lie again. She wouldn’t listen.”
Colene knew that this, too, was tragically typical. The woman might love her daughter, but she was part of the problem. “Esta, I’ll listen. Tell me.”
“But I don’t dare!”
Colene pondered ways and means, and came up with something she hoped would work. “Esta, I heard somewhere that depression is anger turned inward. You’re depressed. I think you have reason. I think you’re really angry, but you can’t let it out, so you just get worse. I’m suicidal. I know how it is. Tell me what it is that is making you so angry you can’t even talk about it. Only to me. I promise I won’t laugh and I won’t be angry. I just have to know. Because I think I can help you.”
The girl gained some courage. It was clear that she wanted to tell, and was waning with her fear. “He hurt me—”
“There,” Colene said, indicating her own lap.
“Yes, some. But mostly there.” Esta indicated her chest.