Girls Like Us by Gail Giles Page A

walk through the parking lot like usual, and somebody jump out from between the cars. Robert. He run through the cars and grab holt of me before my head tole my feet to run. He clapt his hand on my mouth and his arm ’round my waist and dragged me. His friend jump out his car and grab holt of my feet. They threw me in and Robert sat on my head so I couldn’t holler.
    Robert said, “Get goin’, Darrel.” The car went fast and Robert got off my head, but he put a knife to my face. “I can’t make you no uglier, but I can cut your tongue out and I can gut you like a fish. You want me to do that, Ho?”
    I shut my eyes and shake my head. I couldn’t do nothin’ but leak tears. Nothin’ else in my whole body worked.
    Darrel stopped the car. Robert say, “Darrel, I don’t know. She be too ugly to get me a stiffy.”
    “You got to get them pants off her ugly butt anyways, so put ’em over her head,” Darrel say.
    Robert look at me. “That might work. Her butt bound to look better than her face.” Darrel got out the car and come ’round the side. Robert open the door and both of them jerk my pants off, pull them over my head, and tied ’em tight.
    I felt the ripped-up places of the car seat sticking my bare skin. Robert got on me. He say, “You deserve this, bitch. No ho gonna dis me.” He shove in hard. It hurt me bad. He kept doing it, and he cuss in my ear the whole time. Calling me names.
    When he was done, he tole Darrel to take his turn. So Darrel did. He didn’t say nothing to me. I could hear Robert laugh.
    Then Robert shove my shirt up. He say, “This is so you remember what you is, skank.” He cut me.
    They got in the front seat and drove. They stop and dump me out. Robert say if I tole anybody, he’d kill me. Darrel say they friends would help kill me. They say the police won’t care ’bout no ugly ho. But they’d kill me anyway. Just because they could.

After we listened to each other’s tapes, I went to Quincy’s room. I sat on her bed. “You know they’re right, don’t you?”
    “Which part? Me being a ho or the part that they can kill me?”
    “I told you before you ain’t no ho. You got to believe it in your own head.”
    “I keep thinking I must of done sumpin’ made them think . . .”
    I didn’t let her finish. Quincy always talks real loud when she wants a body to understand. So I raised up my voice. Kind of hollered right in her face. “If you cook me dinner — and I don’t want to eat it — and you shove the food down my throat, then who’s the bad one? Me or you?”
    Quincy close her eyes and tears leak out. She wipe her cheek with the sash of her robe. Then she laughed. I thought she gone crazy.
    “How’d you get so smart? You cain’t even read.”
    I stared. Trying to figure out what was what. Maybe I needed to put her back in the shower. With cold water this time.
    Quincy nodded her head. “We gonna call the police and get that piece of trash arrested.”
    Quincy looked so happy. I hated to make her sad again. But I had to. “Quincy, you’re right. But other peoples won’t believe it. Police or nobody else care what happen to girls like us.”
    All the air seemed to go out of her. None of that Quincy-fight no more.
    “You right,” she said real quiet.
    “You can’t tell nobody.” I handed her another tape. “This will tell you why.”

I’m all mixed up. I feel one way, then I feel another, and then I don’t know what I feel or what to think or how to do. If it wasn’t for Biddy, I’d fly off into pieces. I took Biddy’s new tape and put it in the player. She stayed right beside me while I listened.

I got dressed. I threw my underwear in a ditch when I left the barn.
    When I got home, I told Granny what those boys done. She slapped me ’cross my face and called me Slut. Said I was no good like my mama. Told me I got what I deserved and to quit sniveling.
    She wouldn’t let me take a bath. Told me to sleep with the smell of rut so I’d learn to