The situation was more serious, however, when my mother called me out from my room in the days following the crime. I saw Mr. and Mrs. Simpson standing beside her in the den, and it looked as though my mother had been crying. The three of them directed me to a chair that had been pulled out from the table and stood in a semicircle around me.
“Honey,” my mother told me, “I don’t know how to tell you this. I can’t believe I’m even telling you this, but Lindy Simpson was raped.”
“If you know anything,” Mrs. Simpson said.
“We’re not accusing you,” Mr. Simpson said. “Your mother’s already told us y’all were inside, finishing supper. But, please, if you know anything.”
I sat there looking up at them, unsure of what to say, and then I heard a soft clinking noise in the kitchen. It sounded like someone was milling around in there, perhaps using a spoon to stir a cup of coffee or tea. I knew that my sisters weren’t home and, by this point, my father was long gone.
“Mom,” I asked. “Who’s in the kitchen?”
“Sweetheart,” she said, and before she could tell me anything else, a police officer in full dress turned the corner from our kitchen to our living room and leaned casually against the door frame, still stirring his hot cup of coffee. He was tall and well built and looked indestructible in his uniform. The shining badge on his chest, the thick utility belt and pistol he wore around his waist, it all sent a panic through me. I wondered how much information he could draw out of me if he tried. Not just about the crime, necessarily, but about my relationship with Lindy in general. About the way I thought of her so often that she had become a figure not only alive for me in my waking hours but active in my dreams as well. I sat up straight as the officer looked me over.
“Don’t mind me,” he said, and nodded toward the Simpsons. “Just answer their question. Do you know anything about this?”
I looked at my mother, who in turn smiled at me so gently that I knew I could say anything, in those years, and she would believe me.
“Honey,” she said.
“Lindy was raped?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she told me.
“That’s terrible,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “It is.”
I thought about this for a long time.
“But I don’t understand,” I said. “Who was she playing?”
This comment seemed to confuse the adults in that room to such a degree that they began shifting the weight around on their feet and picking at the lint on their clothing as if they were the guilty ones now, because they had said a thing to a child that the child was not ready to hear. The police officer shook his head, sipped from his coffee, and walked back into the kitchen. My mother then walked over and kissed me on the forehead.
“Thank you, God,” I heard her say. “Thank you, Jesus.”
The police officer left a card on our refrigerator door and asked us to call him if we thought of anything. He then thanked my mother for the coffee and patted me kindly on the shoulder as he and the Simpsons, like unfortunate salesmen, walked back into the heat of that brutal summer. My mother and I returned to the kitchen, where she took the policeman’s card from the fridge and studied it before slipping it into a drawer by the phone. She then took out a carton of eggs, some sugar, flour, and a mixing bowl, and began to make cookies.
Later that week I walked into my room to find a pamphlet about sex on my bed. There was no note attached to it, and when I opened it up a loose roll of condoms fell out. We have never spoken to each other about this, my mother and I, but I can remember her lavishing praise on me in this time. She made macaroni and cheese with every meal. She brought oranges to all of my soccer games. Things were remarkably good between us for a while, until she found a real reason to suspect me. It was hard for her, I suppose, to realize that committing the act does not depend on knowing the word.