From the Other Side of My Bed

24. The Roadtrip

It took me two days to speak about my rape.
I remember I was in and out from my sleep, thinking and thinking how I will tell them (Socorro and my dad) that I was raped.
How would they react?
I remember I opened my door to see if theirs was open, as they often left it open for me to walk in at any time. And it was opened so I went in and sat on the floor, and just... stared at them watching tv. They had no clue but Socorro frown when I wouldn't reply to their casual questions about my day. I decided to get up and leave.
I put a sweater on and leggings and went out into the night, to a nearby neighborhood which in it had a older lady I knew. I dated her son briefly and she was a nice lady so I kept in contact, so I thought (wrongly) I could confess to her what happened. She opened the door and the first thing she saw was the neck hickies and bruises. She brought me inside and listened as I let out everything, I contained for two days. I showed her the bruises and the handprints, I ever showed her the bites on my thighs. Horrified, she asked if I had told the police. Which I said no.
"Have you told your parents?" I shake my head no. "I'm scared."
And she just hugged me that night.

-

I didn't expect the next day to be what it became.
Not only did I change overnight, but my reputation was also marked for life.
I was no longer loved; I was a problem.

The next day, the lady came to my house and directly spoke to my dad about it.
Speak? I mean screamed.
She screamed at him how he dared to let something like that happen to me. That what kind of man doesn't protect and defends her daughter, his baby. She went off on him as he stood there perplexed. And he could barely understand what happened. And when he did, he looked at me in a way that I hated forever.
It didn't look at me with love, but with disgust.
"But what do you want me to do now if it's done already?"
That was his question after all. "I've lock doors, put up high walls in the yard, and she somehow escapes to God know where. What would you want me to do?"
"To look for your child! What if she wasn't here anymore to tell us her story? What if she would have had gone missing?"
Missing.
Missing.
Missing.
You have no idea how that stuck with me.
"I will do what is right and help this child because you can't even do so!" and then she left with that sentence ringing bells on my dad's brain.
Nothing scares more my dad than the police.
Immediately he pushed me inside, told my stepmom to pack up our things and do not answer the door anymore. Socorro, scared, asked me a thousand questions but when she saw the bruises on my neck, she knew.
She asked me to tell her the whole story, and I did.
I was scared, I didn't know what my dad was planning, and I'm brave now to say it:
I was deeply scared of my dad in that moment.
I was afraid of had caused something so bad that it would change our lives. And it did. It changed the course of our lives. People think rape is just unaccepted intercourse between man and whomever. That is, it. But it's not.
Rape changes lives for the worst.
It nearby broke mine. And the worst part is, the victim (like me) gets blamed.

Soon after, we heard a few knocks from our door and we, scared, looked carefully through the shutters to see and what I found was the parents of Nick.
I frowned and immediately opened the door.
His mom was there, and his dad was there too but, on the phone, probably calling the cops. "Madeline?"
I was speechless at seeing her, and she asked if she could come inside. I nodded despite what Socorro said about my dad, who was God knows where. Nick's mom sat on our sofa, and I sat on the floor, I stared at her, and she looked tired, worried obviously but mostly tired. "You need to tell me the truth: did this happened or was it made up?"
I was scared. That's all I remembered, being scared to talk.
Look what talking had made my life into.
"It happened. It happened after a so-called party he invited me to."
"Who?"
"Jovanni."
"Jovanni who?"
"I don't know his last name."
"Okay. Are you all, right?"
I shook my head and started crying. Of all the people who didn't deserve to see me like this, she was one of them.
She sat there in silence as the time passed by and then I thought of Nick and started freaking out. "Does he know?!"
"He wondered around about what the whole thing was, but after a while he gave up."
As he gave up previously about me...
I nodded and said good.
"Madeline, I want you to know that despite what happened, you will find a good life. I had always said to Nick you are a girl with a lot of problems, problems that will be gone as soon as you start to heal. I know that from my own experience..."
"So, you too..." and she nods.
Silence.

She then said they would be back when the cops came, and it should take more them 20 minutes. And they left.

-
I hate it when anyone, especially Jerome, slams the car door to close it. Because not only does it mean someone is mad at you, but also my dad being mad at me.
The number of times he slammed the door that day gave me a sort of PTSD that I cannot recover, even till this day. He never said it, but that slam said it all.
I wish he could have screamed at me, yelled at me, beat me, but his silence yet loud slams to the car made me curl into a ball in the back seat of his red corolla. He had made us back up our things in huge trash bags and threw them in the trunk as he would go up and down the house doing God knows what. I vividly remember taking my teddy bear, Violeta, and the picture of Nick and I at homecoming.
It was a framed picture, and I took it into my arms and wouldn't let it go, together with my teddy bear. The rest was clothes and my makeup.
Anyways, once we packed up, he took us to my aunt's (his sister) house.
I guess he had told her because she gave me the look that I know every survivor gets after people knowing about your rape; this sad, "poor you" look.
"That is to be a woman, dear. You just found out too soon... like I did."
My eyes were wide open when she said this, and I just stared at her.
"When your grandfather, my papa, died, your grandma went crazy. She was struck by grief just like your grandfather was struck by a bus. I, the oldest of the two little kids that were your dad and uncle, had the responsibility to take her to a mad house."
She never made eye contact with me, but me? I could just picture it how it all went down in her face. "It was just a clinic, and when they called me to an office, it was to ask for payment." I closed my eyes and I just hoped to die.
"I said I was poor, we were poor, we had nothing to pay for this. And he, the doctor said, but you do between your legs."
Imagine me, please, please, please! Imagine me, little 14-year-old, just raped, having to evacuate her house forcefully by her father, and made wait in the house of an aunt who will then tell her horrific tales of her own rape. And imagine this,

I didn't know what rape was.

I just knew I had been hurt badly.

Who fucking those that, dude?
I'm so furious at them, not me anymore.
That child needed to be consoled, not to be more broken in!

Deep breaths.
Deep breaths.
It's the past now.

Anyways, my aunt went on.
"He stood up as I ran to the door, but it was locked. He premeditated this. And once I tried to jump from the window, he caught me. After it was over, and me, with blood dripping from my legs, I got my mother out of that mad house. I was just a girl. No father, no mentality stable mother, just two hungry mouths and eyes that stared at me, not knowing what to do. Your uncle was just 1 and your father was about 5. I had to support them, and I did my best until my mother got better enough, but I never told her what happened."
We sat in silence after that.
Soon after Socorro and my dad came back, and came back with a Plan B.
Socorro put the pill in my hands and told me to swallow it to avoid any pregnancy that asshole may had left. And it was all just... too grownup of me. And I think I said.
"isn't that what you were intending to be, a grown up? Well, this is what grownup is."

-

They spent the whole night planning what to do about this.
Which landed on the choice to move back to Guatemala.
I honestly didn't think much about it, I felt aimless and loveless so to think about how drastic the change was... too much for me. Even now I feel overwhelmed to write a whole chapter about how that long 5-day road trip went. Because it wasn't pretty. I had to leave everything I knew behind and look at the world in a different way. That spark of magic was flickering, and I desperately held on to it.

The road trip plan was to pass by New Mexico, then to Texas at first.
I hated both places because I think it was still winter-like weather and all the trees leaves had fallen and the place looked like a petrified forest. It was like passing by a whole lot of ghost towns and we even stayed in a hotel where a deserter had taken up the place after scaring the owners away and was now benefiting from the hotel. I didn't know about this; all I remember was my dad not sleeping that night by being watch if that man decided to come bother us. Which never happened.
Off we went again, but toward San Antonio, Texas.
It was surreal the way freeways are. They are this colossal thing which is almost tangled all together and it was hard not to get lost in it. It was still winter-like weather there and plants look dead as I remember clearly. And the food was huge.
Everything in Texas is huge.

Then we arrived at the bordered of Matamoros and U.S.A.
I will always remember the night before we crossed the border. Because that night, as I sat on the bed, my dad came and pointed a finger at my face and threatened me.
He said, "If you decide to open your mouth again, or we are stopped on our way there and you speak up, I will leave you here, in the desert, to fetch for your own. Don't ever think I will come back for you or think you are my daughter; you'll be disowned. Is that clear?"
Crystal clear.
..
...
....
.....
You are my dad. You were supposed to care for me when wounded, but you chose the side of my rapist, and covered his crime because it was your crime too to neglect me. You never cared. You cared more to save your ass off.

.
..
...
....
Anyways,
Matamoros is a very dangerous place, often patrolled by the U.S in both Mexico's side and their territory in case people were traffickers. We saw it on the news during that time about how they found two bodies beheaded on the side of the roads in Matamoros and my dad, daredevil as he is, didn't gave two fucks.
He proceeded to go there.
Honestly it was an out of this world experience to pass by there because the floors weren't concreted but instead just dirt which created a cloud of dust around us and it went on like that for miles and miles until we noticed a big pickup truck behind us.
Bro, fuck that.
We were scared like a motherfucker, it either was the border patrol or the narcos who roamed around that area. But either way, nothing came from it. The car disappeared after we entered Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas.
Ciudad Victoria was nice, very festive and well adored by its people because the streets were never dirty and had some spicy food.  We would stay in questionable hotels back then, even motels if we didn't have a way to find a decent hotel, and my dad always took away the remote from my hands because I knew they had porn playing all along in the tv. The motels often had a sofa so I would sleep there while they stayed on the bed. We weren't too picky.
From Ciudad Victoria, we then headed to Tampico.
I hate this part of the story, because that's when I lost my childhood teddy bear Violeta in a gas station while we were passing by Tampico. I cried so loudly; Socorro tried holding me but somehow that's when I discovered I had an aversion to physical touch. I freaked out and pushed her brusquely away from me and then I looked at her, scared for my life but she lovingly said it was okay, that it was just a teddy bear. But it wasn't. It represented my childhood, the last bit of magic and innocence I had. But it was gone now.
Like my innocence and purity.
I was ruined now.

Anyways, we headed toward Veracruz which was my favorite part of the whole trip. It's so vividly bright and cheerful there, full of colors and the houses are different hues and the skies were the bluest. No clouds in sight. The trees had actual brightness to them, and the flowers smelled. It was just so beautiful up until we headed to Chiapas, our last stop before entering Guatemala.
By this time, it had taken us 4 days to get there, and Chiapas wasn't a great thing, I barely remember it. But what I remember was that when we entered Guatemala, we succumbed to this mass greenery of monster trees and tall grass, the bluish mountains and the smell of roses was vibrant to the nose. I was in awe to see how beautiful it was still. The streets were the same, the signs were the same and the farmers and washwomen with kids by their side still wave hello to you as you pass by made my heart rejoice.

It made me hope that what United States hurt, Guatemala would heal in due time.