My Dark Vanessa(87)

So I tell Ruby it was complicated, that maybe “kicked out” isn’t the right way to describe it. I tell her the story: the rumors and meetings, Jenny’s list, the last morning with the packed classroom and me standing at the chalkboard. I’ve never told it with such detail, don’t know if I’ve even thought about it this way before—chronologically, one event leading to the next. It’s usually fractured, memories like shattered glass.

At a couple points, Ruby interrupts me. “They did what?” she asks. “They what?” She’s appalled at things I’ve never paid attention to before, like how Strane was the one who pulled me out of class for the first meeting with Mrs. Giles, the fact that no one reported it to the state.

“What, like child protective services?” I ask. “Come on. It wasn’t like that.”

“Any time a teacher suspects a child is being abused, they’re mandated to report it.”

“I worked in child protective services when I first moved to Portland,” I say, “and the kids who ended up in that system had been through actual abuse. Horrific stuff. What happened to me wasn’t anything like that.” I sit back, cross my arms. “This is why I hate talking about it. I end up making it sound way worse than it actually was.”

She studies me, deep lines in her forehead. “Knowing you, Vanessa, I think you’re more likely to minimize than exaggerate.”

She starts talking in an authoritative tone I’ve never heard before, practically scolding. She says it’s humiliating what Browick forced me to do. That being instructed to demean yourself in front of your peers is enough to cause post-traumatic stress, regardless of anything else I went through.

“Being forced into helplessness by one other person is terrible,” she says, “but being humiliated in front of a crowd . . . I don’t want to say that it’s worse, but it is different. It’s severely dehumanizing, especially for a child.”

When I start to correct her use of “child,” she amends herself: “For someone whose brain wasn’t fully developed.” Then she meets my gaze, waits to see if I’ll challenge my own words. When I don’t, she asks if Strane stayed on at Browick after all that, if he knew what happened in that meeting.

“He knew. He helped me plan what I was going to say. It was the only way to repair his reputation.”

“Did he know you were going to get kicked out?”

I lift my shoulders, unwilling to lie but unable to say yes, he knew, he wanted it to happen.

“You know,” Ruby says, “earlier you described this as something he didn’t have the power to protect you from, but it sounds like he was actually the cause of it.”

For a moment my breath gets knocked out of me, but I recover quickly, shrugging like it’s nothing. “It was a complicated situation. He did the best he could.”

“Did he feel guilty about it?”

“About having me kicked out?”

“That,” she says, “and making you lie, take the fall.”

“I think he thought it was unfortunate but something that had to be done. What was the alternative, him going to prison?”

“Yes,” she says firmly, “that would have been an alternative, and it would have been a just one because what he did to you is a crime.”

“Neither of us would have survived him going to prison.”

Ruby watches me and there’s a shifting of gears behind her eyes, the marking of a mental note. It’s more subtle than scribbling on a notepad the way a TV therapist might, yet still detectable. She observes me so closely, puts everything I say and do into a larger context, which of course reminds me of Strane—how could it not? How his eyes bore into me during class, constantly calculating. Ruby once told me that I’m her favorite client because there’s always another layer to peel back, something else to unearth, and hearing this was as thrilling as hearing, You’re my best student. Like Strane calling me precious and rare, Henry Plough saying I’m an enigma, impossible to understand.

She asks then what I think she’s wanted to ask me all along. “Do you believe the girls who accused him?”

I don’t hesitate in saying no. I flick my eyes to her face, catch her fast-blinking surprise.

“You think they’re lying,” she says.

“Not exactly. I think they got carried away.”

“Carried away how?”

“In this hysteria that’s going on,” I say. “The constant accusations. Like, it’s a movement, right? That’s what people are calling it. And when you see a movement with so much momentum, it’s natural to want to join, but to be accepted into this one you need something horrible to have happened to you. Exaggeration is inevitable. Plus, it’s all so vague. These terms are easy to manipulate. Assault can be anything. He could have just patted them on the leg or something.”

“But if he was innocent, how do you make sense of him taking his own life?” she asks.

“He always said he’d rather be dead than live life branded as a pedophile. When these accusations came out, he knew everyone would assume he was guilty.”

“Are you angry with him?”

“For killing himself? No. I understand why he did it, and I know that I’m at least partially to blame.”