Lie Still

Epilogue

Not very often, I have a bad day.

I hear something on the news that reminds me. Of little girls lying in the dark, and running down hills as fast as their legs can, riding off on shiny, new bikes and standing at birthday parties with the arm of their killer’s son draped around their shoulders. Little girls who do not know what terrible things await them.

Of women lying on concrete floors and in the biting gravel of alleys, in soft beds and in fragrant, grassy parks, wondering how this could ever happen to them. How they could be careless enough to let that much hate and loathing and evil find its way into such an ordinary, safe life.

Of men with black hearts, making their plans for tonight or tomorrow or the next day. College boys who will spot a shy, pretty girl in the library and sit down beside her. Casual dates who will push that extra martini or glass of wine. Husbands who will slip into fresh sheets beside a terrorized wife pretending to be asleep.

I’m at the park under an ancient, leafy tree. Adam is in the stroller, wrapped in a pale yellow blanket, waving a fist at the sun spying at him through the leaves, catching the first breaths of spring, his mouth a perfect little O.

Today is a good day.

Still, I want to shout at the woman running by in pink jogging shorts, and the one tying her little boy’s shoe.

Tell your girls. Tell them, tell them, tell them.

Tell them to fight and scratch and yell his name. Tell them not to be ashamed. To break the necklace of women who’ve kept their rapist’s secret because they know him. Grandmothers and mothers, daughters and sisters, aunts and best friends. Century after century, decade after decade, year after year. Heartbeat after heartbeat.

In my hand, I hold a brush. I think of my own little girl, a rose that grew in a violent storm. Marked, some would say, from the moment of conception. On my good days and my bad ones, I choose to believe something different.

An easel is propped in front of me. My brush lingers over the canvas, stroking her hair, brown like mine. I curve her lips into a smile, sharpen the point of the steeple that rises behind her. I throw gold into the sky, green onto the earth under her feet.

I know I will never convince myself she is safe, until she tells me so.

My little girl is not running. She stands on the hill, waiting.

Hundreds of miles away, at the edge of a Kentucky forest, he’s watching.

She’s barely visible, playing an elaborate game of pretend under the sheets blowing on her mother’s clothesline. She’ll turn five tomorrow.

He sweeps low, dropping a gift at her feet.

A plastic ring.

It is old and dirty, but she can see the promise of a little sparkle underneath. She slips it on her finger and scrambles up, waving, as the crow soars higher and higher into the clouds, an inky smudge, until he disappears.