Girls Like Us by Gail Giles

push me down on the couch.
    “I don’t know what to do,” I tole her.
    “I do,” Biddy say.
    I look at her. I ’spect she might have one of them faces like a cat that done ate a bird. Her knowing that I’m just like her now.
    But she look like she did when she looked at those cold duck eggs Mama Duck left behind.
    “Do we gotta tell Lizabeth?” I axt.
    Biddy shook her head. Sad-like. “Better not. Nice as Miss Lizzy is, peoples change when they hear ’bout this kind of evil doing.” She shook her head again. “All of a sudden you’re dirty and they don’t want to get it on them.”
    I thought I’d gotten holt of myself, but I blubbered again.
    “I’m gonna put you in the shower. You wash till you feel clean. Run the water hot and use lots of soap.” Biddy lean into my face and made me look in her eyes. “I don’t think you’re dirty, but I know you feel like it. You wash till you feel some better. I’ll make coffee. You gonna drink it, and I’m gonna tell you what to do next.”

I made instant coffee. Sat on a stool at our counter table. Quincy took a long shower. I think she didn’t stop until the hot water run out. She came out wrapped up in her thick robe. She sat. Her hands was shaking so bad, the coffee slopped. She didn’t look at me.
    “You got to tell me about it. If you don’t, you won’t never be able to think of nothing else.”
    “I cain’t,” Quincy said.
    “You got to.”
    She shook her head. She still didn’t look at me.
    “I’ll tell you how it happened to me. I’ll tell first. Would that make it OK?”
    “I cain’t look at you and tell you what they done.”
    An idea jumped in my head. I jumped up right after it.
    “I can fix this.”

Biddy jump off her stool and run to her room. She come back quicker than a lizard’s lick. She slap a tape on the counter right in front of me.
    “Go in your room. Tell on this tape. And I’ll go tell on mine. Then we trade.”
    “Biddy, this ain’t gonna make it go away.” I open my bathrobe so Biddy could see HO cut into my chest and stomach. Not deep enough to kill me, just deep enough to make scars.
    “That say ‘Ho,’ ” I tell her.
    Biddy’s white face turnt plumb ghosty. “It ain’t true,” she say. “You don’t never go thinking it’s true.”
    I wrap my robe around and pick up her tape. Telling what happen or hearing her story wouldn’t make nothing be different. But if Biddy say I wasn’t no ho, I’d do anything she axt.

A boy named Dale come up when I walked out of school. He said I was the prettiest girl he ever seen. That I was sweet as candy. I smiled. Said I liked candy.
    He told me he had lots of candy in his daddy’s barn. He’d give me some. Maybe I’d give him a kiss.
    I wanted candy. Kissing him might not be bad. He stepped close. Picked up a piece of my hair. Rubbed it. He smelled of it. “Smells sweet, like flowers,” he said.
    I wanted him to kiss me then. I thought he liked me. I wanted somebody to say nice things to me. Not call me Retard.
    I went with him.
    I walked in his daddy’s barn. He shut the door. Put a board across to lock it.
    Boys came out of the shadowy part of the barn. The dark parts. Where I couldn’t see. They come rushing at me out of the dark. They grabbed me. Pushed me down on the hay. One held my arms. Another one held my legs. They pulled my shirt up. My pants down. They took off my underwear. Pushed it in my mouth.
    And they done it to me. Every one of ’em. Dale done it twice. They done other stuff too.
    Once they was done, they zipped up their pants. They laughed. They slapped each other’s hands high in the air, then low. Laughed some more.
    Dale looked down at me while I tried to cover myself and said, “Want some candy, Ho? I’ll give you more candy anytime you want it.”
    Then he spit on me.
    Then the other boys spit on me.

I finish work and put my apron in the bin that go out to the laundry. I was fidgety ’bout some stuff and wasn’t careful. I