Hook Shot (Hoops #3)(35)

I climb the stairs.

Inside, the church is modest and filled with empty pews. A makeshift paper sign on the wall reads “SUPPORT GROUP” and sports a red arrow pointing down. I follow a string of arrows leading to the basement, my heart clamoring with every step. When I reach the basement, two women walk past me, headed upstairs. One is sniffing, and the other is wiping the corners of red-rimmed eyes.

Dammit.

I finally work up the nerve to come in, and it looks like I’m too late. Maybe subconsciously that’s what I wanted.

“Can I help you?” a woman, maybe mid-thirties, with brown hair and kind eyes, asks.

“Uh, no. I . . .”

I’m what? A coward?

“I’m just, uh, lost,” I say, lying in church. “I thought the blood drive was down here.”

“It’s not until Saturday,” she points out with a slight smile.

“Yeah. I realize that now. I’m gonna—”

“I thought you might be here for the support group,” she interrupts, while packing paper plates and cups, putting away cookies.

She pauses in cleaning when I don’t respond immediately.

“I’m, well . . . like I said, I’m lost.”

We stare at each other, exchanging truth with a look, even as we skirt around it with our words.

“They were, too, when they first started coming.” She points up the steps where the two ladies exited. “Lost, I mean. It really can help to talk about it, even to strangers who have their own stuff—stuff like yours. To pull it all apart—find the pieces that don’t fit, toss them out, and get new and improved parts. Healthy parts.”

“Yeah, okay.” I turn to head back up the steps. “Well, good luck.”

“Maybe it’s good that you were late,” she goes on as if I haven’t already brushed her off and lied to her. “We could talk one-on-one your first time here.”

“Maybe another time,” I say, not even bothering to tell her she’s mistaken. “Have a good night.”

“You could tell me a little about yourself. A little bit of your story?” She pauses. “Or I could tell you a little of mine. It took me a long time to speak out, but now I do all the time. At first it was to help myself. Now it’s to help other people.”

“I’m happy for you, but I gotta get going.” I point vaguely north, the direction of my apartment, one foot on the first step leading back up and away from this conversation. “I live just a few blocks away.”

“For me it was my father,” she says softly.

I glance over my shoulder and meet her eyes. It’s not pain I see there, but the strength Iris mistakenly attributed to me earlier. This woman has it.

“It was my father who hurt me,” she says, and even though it’s not much above a whisper, it reverberates in the basement like a gong. “Do you have any idea how long it took me to say that? To admit it?”

I turn from the steps and stare at her, waiting for more. Needing to know someone got past this and could maybe give me a blueprint to do the same.

“It has taken my whole life,” she says, and I see some of the weariness in her eyes behind the strength. “For a long time, I didn’t even remember. They say God doesn’t put more on you than you can bear. Sometimes, neither does your mind. That’s self-preservation. The mind says, oh, she’s not ready for this, and hides it from us.”

She stacks the food and paper products neatly to the side on the table and sits in one of the chairs pulled into a small circle.

“But we can only hide or run for so long before the shit starts to show.” She laughs lightly. “Pardon my French in church, but somehow, I think God will excuse me. The things our minds do to protect us from unspeakable trauma may work for a long time, for years in some cases, and then one day, they just stop working. We deal or don’t. And if we don’t . . .”

Her words carry a warning—an urging to choose deal instead of don’t.

I remember huddling in Chase’s shower sobbing after perfectly good sex. I see my body curled into a ball, fetal, at the base of a hand-drawn tree in my closet. I smell the hair burning, the smoke curling around my memories. My peace of mind, up in flames.

Are you leaking, Lo?

Drip. Drip. Drip.

“I don’t know why now,” I say, sudden and without any context, but she seems to understand. “I’ve been fine. For years, I’ve been fine.”

“I was fine, too,” she says. “I’m Marsha, by the way.”

“Lotus,” I offer.

“Nice to meet you, Lotus. I’m a survivor, but also a licensed therapist. I run this support group for survivors of childhood sexual abuse,” she says. “So what brought you here tonight?”

“I‘ve been having some, uh . . . issues with sex. Things I’ve never dealt with before.”

“That’s not surprising. It’s where the injury took place, so for many of us, for most of us, our sexuality is affected. It is the thing that was deeply violated.”

“I thought I’d escaped all that. I’ve had sex for years and been okay. I mean, I put sex in a category, but I enjoyed it.”

“What was this category?” she asks, eyeing me closely. “Articulate it for me.”