It's Not Your Fault

"Don't cry Enid", he said anxiously. Awkwardly attempting to wipe away her tears.

"That wasn't fun! You said I'd like it. Well, I didn't!" she whimpered, pushing him away, tears fully released, washing down her pale face. "You said you love me! You hurt me!"

"I'll never do that again to you, I promise", he said, meaning every spoken word, struggling with himself for composure; needing he knew, to reassure her. To re-establish trust.

There was a strained silence, broken by her hiccoughing attempts to gulp back her sobs.

Then normal life resumed. Their respective school buses taking him off to his second year of high school. Hers to another small town located near the family farm, to her mid-elementary-school years.

Their mother was pleased with his recently-renewed willingness to attend Sunday sermons. Didn't know what had gotten into him to begin with, to stubbornly resist the family's weekly faith outings. Resented that her husband sided with the boy. When what he needed was a good smack across the face from time to time.

Sitting in the pews alongside the other pious-orderly parishioners, he was able, surreptitiously to hold his sister's hand and she did not, this time, rebuff him.

"Why're you hurting yourself like that?" her best friend gasped, recoiling in fear and disgust when Enid shared her new secret, shoving her sweater-sleeve up to reveal an angry, still-seeping slice on her upper arm.

"I'm not!" she denied. "I don't want to hurt myself. It feels good, that's all. It makes me feel good!"

"You're punishing yourself" her friend accused angrily. "You feel guilty. It's not your fault!"

Enid lifted her delicate blond head to appraise her friend. She shrugged, grimaced, fought back an odd smile. Looking straight at the other girl, she mimicked her concern, repeated mincingly: "It's not your fault", and then barked a sharp, bitter laugh. "What do you know, anyway? Think you're so smart? Got an answer to cure everything, haven't you?" And she walked away, leaving her friend incredulous, gasping for air.

"But I want to help you!" her friend shouted after her receding back.
Didn't ask you to, dummy. Don't want your bloody concerned help.

They'd known one another since they were eight, friends from elementary school. Spent their spare time together. No. That was true once, a few years ago. Not so much, more latterly. Erin had become detached, moody, uninvolved.

Her best friend was, in fact, her only friend. She was aiming for none.

Dr. Pearson keeps telling her she should talk, talk, talk. Talk about anything that enters her mind. Talk about her relationship with kids at school, with her teacher. Give him her impressions of their characters, what she liked about them, what she didn't. Did she even like her teacher? Doubt it. Casually, he said: talk about your family, your mother, father. How about your brother? Your other brother, the one your family took in? Him too. He wouldn't interrupt, wouldn't ask any questions. He'd just listen. Make no comment. Just there for her to kind of relax about things, get things off her mind. It would help, he told her. Help her to feel better ... about everything.

She had cousins, two girl cousins. Not cousins exactly, but close. Extended family. Her own age one, the other younger. Their father was her father's nephew. They didn't get along, never did. They thought they were superior to her because their father had inherited the better farm.

Her father had inherited their hardscrabble farm. The family, all of them, had lived in that rural neighbourhood so long the road was named after them. There were other family members on other farms, none as successful as the one owned and operated by her cousins' father, though.

But they did operate as genuine farms. Erin's father kept a few highland cattle, a goat, some laying hens, a donkey and an old swayback horse. He didn't do any farming, though. Erin's brother, now he was older, helped her father's nephew at his farm. It was located just up the road. Erin's brother's ATV was handy for getting around. He sometimes let her ride on it with him. But he preferred to be with his friends, racing around, rather than let her hang around.

That was outside. Inside their house, that was different, then he was approachable, amenable to her presence, teaching her things she might never have imagined left to her own devices.

Erin had developed a habit of telling people matter-of-factly, as though she thought they might be interested, that she hated her father. People rarely asked her why, just brushing it aside as a curious way for a young girl to speak of her father. A good man, well liked in the area. He worked at a factory to support his family. His farm was a farm in name only, not actually worked. But if anyone did pursue the statement by questioning her, Erin would reply "because he's mean to my mother".

Odd that, in most peoples' minds. Those who had some knowledge of the family. Erin's mother happened, as they knew from first-hand observation and rural gossip, a sharp, unforgiving whip of a tongue and she lashed her husband at every opportunity. He responded by shouldering it all. His shoulders, over time, became narrower and narrower, hunched, as though he could somehow protect his tender chest with its wildly beating heart from the onslaught that diminished his self-regard so irremediably.

Her friend, her best friend who lived a mere few miles' distant that sometimes slept over at Erin's house. As Erin had at hers, for they had been best friends, hadn't they? Her friend remarked to her own mother who questioned her that she had never noted anything out of the ordinary, he'd always been kind, and nice to her. She did mention Erin's mother's belittling tirades directed toward her husband. Thought little of it.

Her friend's mother thought how odd it was that the child who in her younger years would embrace her at every opportunity when she played with her own little girl, had become reserved, standoffish in the last several. Although, she noted also, she readily lost herself in the childish joy of being with a friend, doing things that friends, young girls, do together.

Dr. Pearson said softly, Erin, do you feel badly about what happened to you? Do you blame yourself? Don't, Erin, you're not responsible. You were a little girl when it started. Hardly knowing what was happening. Someone you trusted and felt comfortable with kind of disappointed you, didn't he? All right, you don't have to respond to that.

Probing, he's always probing. Sometimes she feels better, most often not. But everyone says it's therapy, it'll help her, she's got to continue going to see him. He's a nice man. She doesn't mind him. But really, what's the point? There's just no point to all of it.

On her 12th birthday her brother took her into town, in their father's pick-up. He wanted, he said, to do something special for her. He knew how much she wanted pierced ears; he'd cleared it with their mother. Excitement! You bet, she really, really wanted pierced ears, so she could wear gold hoops. She wanted neat, symmetrical gold hoops. And that's just what he got for her. She hugged him, her face radiant. And his face, looking fondly down at her, happy for her.

As far as their mother was concerned, it was a display of worldly vanity; the limit, as it happened, to which she would agree. She would allow Enid to wear short-sleeved tee-shirts, but only so long as she wore long-sleeved hoodies over top. Her mother needn't be informed that, at school, the hoodies came off in the classroom, even through the winter months.

She had nothing to hide, anyway, unlike most of the other girls. She remembered a birthday party at her best friend's house a few years back, when she and the other invited girls had gone for a dip in the pond out back behind the house. When Mrs. Haig came out with a camera to take some shots, she had impulsively pulled down the top of her bathing suit, and posed in an exaggerated position, much to Mrs. Haig's consternation. The other girls were giggling, hiding their faces behind their hands. Now if they'd done that ... she was the only flat-chested girl there. So, big deal.

By then someone else had joined their household, a young man whose parents had disowned him when he hit rock bottom, addicted to drugs and alcohol and living on the street. From whence her mother's church had salvaged him, given him temporary shelter, encouraged him to take advantage of addiction counselling, and then proudly produced him at a gathering of the faithful as yet another symbol of Christ's merciful redemption of feeble humanity. Her mother had sat straight up to attention, her eyes riveted on the bashful young man. Inspired, her mother had offered the youth, through their pastor, a permanent home with them. Erin's father was appalled, fearful, his faith not as deeply entrenched in the restorative capacity of agape.

"We've got a developing girl at home!" he protested.

"What!" his wife shot back. Questioning the judgement of her Christianity. "He's redeemed himself", she barked. "More than I can say for you ... think I don't know about those bar stops?" She needled him about his "bad habits", his "sinful ways", his lack of contrition when she found him out.

"He'll need to be shielded from your influence", she huffed. "But as good Christians this is our duty. I've pledged to take him in, can't retract, what would everyone think? How would that make us look?"

In the end, the argument was hers to triumph, always was, and he mutely acceded. In the end, the young man, several years older than their natural son, proved his gratefulness, mollifying Enid's father's unchristian doubts. While earning him additional contempt. Was that remotely possible? Why yes, it was.

Enid's mother's generously capacious mental storage where she meticulously filed all of her husband's failures, incapacities, incoherent responses justifying his existence and her misery, proved more than equal to the task.

Enid, suspicious of her new 'brother' (she was severely schooled to regard him as an older sibling) soon relaxed in his presence. He was an introvert, unlike her 'real' brother, but quietly courteous, helpful to a fault. He even went out of his way to sit with her after dinner and help her with her math and science and geography homework. She was grateful. He had a neat sense of humour, leaning heavily on dryly casting aspersions on himself. She became very fond of him.

And so did the entire family, finally. Although Enid's father would wince every time his wife reminded him bitingly that the job the young man eventually found paid more in salary than his own hourly-waged one, helping her to begin decorating and furnishing the old house rather more graciously than they had long been resigned to.

A year and a half later, the grateful young man left, to strike out on his own, to reap opportunities awaiting him in Toronto, as a budding, ideas-rich entrepreneur. Six months later, Enid, accompanying her mother by train, visited their lost sheep in prison where he had been remanded awaiting trial for dealing drugs.

It was on their way back home again that Enid casually mentioned to her mother that she knew all about sex. It was no mystery to her. Her mother turned in her seat, regarded her daughter with an air of disbelief, lifted her hand and slapped her face.

"It's true, Mother", Enid said. And guess who? My brother. Not once, not twice, but over and over and over again. She watched her mother's face blanch. "Steve....?" her mother burbled. Enid laughed. She twisted her fingers. Wondered why she was doing this. What was wrong with her? "No, not Steve, Mom. It's Kevin."

Her mother turned away from her, stared out the window at the moving landscape. A heavy silence moved between them and Enid felt she could feel her mother's ... furious anger toward her. She would blame her. She knew she would.

"Don't tell your father", her mother finally said, turning back to Enid, pleating her own fingers in her skirt. "I'll look after everything", she said. "Are you all right? Poor kid, all this time..."

"It's all right, Mom. It's all right" she said softly back to her mother. And then she began to worry. "What'll happen now?"

"I've got to think", her mother said. "We'll work this through, somehow. Did you ... did you ... provoke him, your brother? Did you do something to ... make him do this?"

"I don't know. I love him. He loves me, he said he loves me."

"He's your brother!" The agony in her mother's voice startled her.

"What's going to happen to him, Mom? Can we kind of forget what I said? Maybe I'm not serious. Maybe I'm making all this up. Mom?"

"No", her mother said, heavily. "We can't forget it. Have you had your period?"

Later, at home, when her mother was busy in the kitchen. That's when she informed her father. She still doesn't know why.

Enid hates this about herself.