The Nowhere Girls(25)

Silence does not mean yes. No can be thought and felt but never said. It can be screamed silently on the inside. It can be in the wordless stone of a clenched fist, fingernails digging into palm. Her lips sealed. Her eyes closed. His body just taking, never asking, never taught to question silence.

Data’s mind is a computer. He can wipe entire memories out if he wants to. Mistakes don’t follow him, don’t lodge themselves in his synapses and travel with him wherever he goes. His mistakes don’t involve parents and school and courts. His mistakes don’t make him stop talking for two weeks. They don’t live in his body. Nobody has to call Data a victim. No one needs to place blame. That does not have to be a part of his story.

But it is part of Erin’s story. Before she finally convinced her parents to drop the charges against Casper, the courts were ready to make the labels official, to proclaim her passive, a victim; to define her as powerless, unable to consent. Because of her age. Because of her Asperger’s. Even though she is a sentient being. Even though she had wanted something, at some time, whatever it was. Even though she can’t remember when she stopped wanting it. Even though she can’t remember telling him one way or the other. It’s true, he never asked. But is that job really his? Is it hers? And if the court says she was incapable of saying no, what does that mean for her capacity to say yes? Who makes these decisions? Who writes these rules and defines words like “consent”? Who decides what makes something a “rape”?

She cannot say the word: Rape.

That word does not sound true. It wasn’t rape, but it was something.

Unlike Data, Erin’s emotion chip is not missing. Sometimes it feels like she was accidentally programmed with ten emotion chips, and they’re all constantly malfunctioning.

There is no word for what happened with Casper Pennington. Erin has not been programmed with this knowledge. She does not know the word for what she is supposed to feel.





ROSINA.


“Erwin told me you have a new friend at school,” Rosina’s mother says as she scoops a cup of oil into a giant pan. “He says she’s a white gordita.” The oil sizzles with tiny bubbles.

“What, you have Erwin spying on me now?” Rosina says. Even at school, Mami has her in her clutches. It’s like her family has invisible chains attached to Rosina; as soon as she figures out how to break one, another shows up.

“Is this new girl strange like your skinny friend?” Mami grabs a handful of gelatinous raw pink chicken out of a plastic bucket and throws it into the pan.

“You don’t even know Erin,” Rosina says.

“I know enough to know she’s strange.”

Rosina tries to think of a witty defense, but Mami interrupts her thought process: “Stack those glasses,” she orders.

“Grace’s mom’s a priest. That should make you happy, right? She’ll be a good influence on me and you can stop getting Erwin to spy on me at school.”

“Women can’t be priests.”

“Pastor, minister. Whatever. Her family’s a bunch of Christians.”

“Christian is not the same as Catholic.” Mami squints at Rosina, suspicion and grease smoke in her eyes. “What is her church?”

“That big brick one on Oak Street. Grace’s mom is, like, the boss of it or something.”

“The Congregationalist Church?” Mami’s laugh hurts Rosina’s ears almost as bad as the tinny music that pumps through her neighborhood out of cheap radios. “That place is not even a real church,” Mami says. “Full of communists and homos.”

“No one says ‘homo,’ Mom.”

“Whatever,” Mami says, her favorite Americanism. “Venga. You need to learn how to cook. A woman must know how to cook.”

“You’ve made your opinion abundantly clear,” Rosina says. “But like I’ve told you five million times already, I don’t want to know how to cook.”

“But one day you will have your own family. You will need to feed them. No one will marry you if you can’t cook.”

“Do you even realize how horrible that sounds? You are so oppressed,” Rosina says, her voice rising above the sizzle of the frying chicken. “I don’t even like Mexican food.”

“Oh, you think you’re so much better than me? You’re so much better than your family?” Mami says, her eyes squinting the way they do right before she blows up. “If you’re so sick of us, why don’t you just leave? One less big mouth to feed.”

“Then you might have to actually pay someone to do all the shit I do for free.”

Mami takes a step forward but knocks her metal tongs on the floor in the process. As she leans over to pick them up, she shudders and lets out a tight squeal. Rosina rushes to her side.

“?Chinga!” Mami curses between clenched teeth, holding her back as Rosina helps her slowly stand up.

“Your back again?” Rosina says, arm around Mami’s shoulders.

“It’s nothing,” she says, cringing.

“You have to see a doctor,” Rosina says.

“I did,” Mami says, turning back to the stove, fishing a new pair of tongs out of a tray of clean cooking utensils. “All he did was give me a prescription for pain pills. He wants to make me a drug addict.”