One Night

She wondered if this night would prove to be as boring and uneventful as all the others in this small, mid-western town where her family had lived since her birth, and for years before. This was Saturday night, which did help to break the monotony, if only slightly. As she sat alone in her car,' which she had parked on Libby's Grocery Store parking lot, facing main street, she impatiently scanned the cars going by. This was all there seemed to be for her younger generation to do. She wished and waited for someone she knew, or didn't know, to stop and talk.

Someone did stop. She recognized him from somewhere, maybe a party or from one of the clubs on the outskirts of town. She really couldn't remember. Quite easily she convinced herself that he would certainly not be interested in her, with his flashy red Italian sports car and a body that could surely draw the attentions of even the most discriminating of women. As she lit another cigarette and tried to ignore him, she found her actions to no avail, for there he stood at the open window of her car. He greeted her and promptly invited her to a party at a friend's house; being bored as she was and also more than a little flattered, she accepted. Stepping into his car, she could hardly wait to tell her friends about this and to hear their sighs of envy.

At the party she found him and all his friends very easy to talk to and soon lost the uncomfortable feeling of being surrounded by strangers. As the evening wore
on, the other people began to pair off and to disappear into the dark areas of the large, two-story house. Not quite unexpectedly, considering what she assumed was going on with the others, he kissed her, a kiss long and sensual that sent her heart racing and caused an excitement she could hardly contain.

As he picked her up and began walking toward the dark recesses of the house, she tried to laugh, thinking he must only be teasing her. When he laid her down on the bed, she realized he was not joking, he was insane. Her excitement turned to fear, a kind of quiet terror she had never known.

Her strength was no match for his and as she cried out the realization of all those people hearing her and yet doing nothing to help was almost as sickening as what was physically happening to her. No amount of crying or fighting would stop him, so with all her remaining strength she crossed her arms in front of her to at least hold the upper portion of his sweating body away from hers.
"I guess you won, didn't you?"
"No, I didn't win anything, I only took what I wanted."
"Will you take me back to my car now?"
"Sure."

Alone again, within the silent confines of her car, the noise she heard came from her own mind. Emotions, thoughts and screams of protest and shame became unbearable. Focusing on one thought, to go home and wash away the physical evidence of this horrible night, she started home. Pulling into the driveway well past midnight she was grateful, for the first time, that her father worked the graveyard shift at the local rubber plant. Grateful for a thing that previously had been viewed as an injustice delivered upon herself and her father, designed to keep them from spending time together and from sharing each others lives.

What had happened this night she did not wish to share with anyone, least of all her father who, having only one daughter in the midst of two sons, looked upon her as his "little girl" to whom the act of sex should never be given, nor even thought of. Watching the bathwater swirl down the drain, she tried to push away the memory of what had happened just a few minutes earlier.

Years later the memory persists. Hidden deep within the recesses of her mind yet being pulled forth, instantly, when confronted with a violent scene on a movie
screen, by a man who appears to love her, by anything requiring her trust. No, time does not heal all things. She only hopes that someday the man who, by
such a simple act, damaged forever her ability to love and to feel safe, realizes what he has done and shares some of her guilt and pain. Maybe then she' can forgive, maybe then.