#88

I wrote this flash fiction piece during Patrick Kane's rape investigation, and it was published by the now-defunct FORTH Magazine in September 2015. It seems particularly relevant now, in light of the recent Blackhawks scandal.

---

#88

1.

After the news hits I take the jersey from my little sister’s drawer and shut it away for a while. She doesn’t understand why. My sister cries because she got the jersey for her birthday last month and she’s been wearing it nonstop. My sister is six years old has been carrying his name on her back, because she doesn’t know that it’s heavy.

There’s his signature on the white lettering. At the parade, he crouched down on his knees to give it to my sister. She hid her face in her hands, too shy to smile, and then he asked her name and she told it to him willingly, and then he asked if she wanted his autograph, and he gave it. We were all so overwhelmed that day but I remember being grateful.

I.

I was eighteen years old.

2.

My little sister cries when she sees his face on the news. He’s everywhere. She keeps asking me what’s that word mean, tell me and my mom yells, but I keep changing the channel because his face is drawn and his eyes have bags under them, and for a second before I remember, my heart goes out to him—and then it plummets.

II.

He was on the college football team. We met at Sigma Phi, my freshman year.

3.

In the alley near our apartment, there’s a homeless man collecting jerseys. He says they’ve been stacking up on the freeway underpasses, burned and abandoned in trash cans across the city. He says it’s a waste, so much scorn in his voice, and he rips some up for blankets, tears the name right down the middle. I want to say something but my voice feels too small. I give him a dollar instead because I can’t get the words out.

III.

He was a big star. I was nervous; it was my first college party. He kept refilling my cup.

4.

I watch one morning as they take down the cup shrine on fifth. The nameless furies. They destroy it all. It makes me think about how the people of New York pulled down the statue of King George. What’s the difference here?

The pictures are ruined. Mementoes trashed. They use the candles to catch his face on fire, which burns for days and then doesn’t burn anymore.

IV.

It was really loud.

5.

My colleagues don’t stand around a water cooler but they talk about it anyway. Once the kit comes back from forensics, once evidence gathers and the trial is set, it’s like the whole city catches something. Words like whore and gold digger and false accusations, contagious, they’re spit out left and right so that I know who’s contaminated. They’re all so angry that I can’t bear to hear it, that the shame rises up in my throat. It’s my first job out of college, so I’m careful; I say I’m busy when they ask for my opinion, and they don’t question it. But one of my older co-workers just laughs when they ask her, says, him? Honey, of course she wanted to. Who wouldn’t want to? Who wouldn’t?

V.

And I wanted to kiss him.

6.

My little sister wants to start to play for real. Not just me and her in our yard, but practices and Sunday games, the whole shindig. Mom always said she had to wait for a growth spurt, but my little sister grew three inches in the spring and this was supposed to be her year. There’s a rec team at the local center, and we’ve been saving for months to buy her gear. But when we turn up to practice she’s the only girl, in any age group, and the boys are staring. They’re shoving at each other and giggling, and as I look out there’s a sea of jerseys with his name on, the dads and the sons and the coaches alike, and my little sister turns to us like, well? Well?

VI.

When we got upstairs he went straight for my jeans.

7.

The papers have been reporting the same thing all week. My mom tuts as she reads them. In the media, the victim doesn’t have a name, except for bitch, or whore, or ‘accuser’ if she’s lucky. He keeps saying no comment but the police reports are leaking out. Every bruise, cut, and mark is scrutinized and second-guessed like too-abstract art.

“Silly girl,” my mom says, and I don’t ask what she means. There are holes in her story, say the news reports. ‘The accuser’s story,’ say the news reports.

VII.

I panicked. I pushed his hand away. I said hey, no.

8.

The first thing I do when the news hits is delete the picture of that night, last May, when I met him at a downtown steakhouse. The caption kills me, all hearts and exclamation points. But he’d been the perfect gentleman, and I’d been nervous. I’d interrupted him, coming in with his date, and she’d looked me up and down like trash on her shoes and deemed me no threat, but he’d been sweet to me. Kind. Grinning and laughing as I stumbled over my name, trying to put me at ease. He seemed like a dream to me then. Like a fairytale prince, like he could do nothing wrong, like a hero in a book I read once…

VIII.

And then he turned on me.