Images 44

Chapter 44

Iggy’s looking not that well as she looks at me and she looks at the cops and she sort of pulls herself up to where she’s sitting and she’s pulling her legs up. I sit beside her and she does this little lead against me and I slip an arm around her behind her back.

She’s quiet for awhile and just looking at her I can see her pulling away and getting distant like she’s lost inside her head.

“Iggy?”

“I was five…? I think when he first started…he’d tell me I was pretty…told me that I was special his perfect little girl.”

I’m feeling this sickening dread of what she’s going to say and I try to steel myself. Bite the inside of my cheek and clench my jaw.

“He liked bath time…”

“Lets get pretty for daddy.”

“Here honey you got to be extra special clean…”

“I though it was cleaning…I thought it was because…but he’d even then…he started just washing me there at first and then it was rubbing with his fingers….”

“Then…You want to be clean for daddy right princess? And I think I was seven almost eight when…let daddy clean you inside and out…that’s when his fingers went inside…”

Iggy shivered and went a little pale and these big fat tears went spilling out of her eyes and ran down her cheeks.

Her jaw’s trembling and I’m not sure that she even knows that we’re there.

“Here darling let daddy show you how to clean him inside and out…take it in your hands move them up and down….he liked that…that getting clean inside felt good…”

“Cleanliness is next to godliness…. He used to laugh and I never got it…never got it…got something else though…god want’s us to be clean inside it’s why he made it feel good…it’s why he made boy juices and girl juices good for each other…”

“Heh…heh…heh…heh…he made sure that I got lots and lots of boy juices…I was going to a healthy special girl…”

She retched a little at the memory…I’m livid, angry I’m not one of these people that’s rabid about her faith but I do strongly have faith of my own and for anyone to use God and say these things to sexually abuse a child…it’s wrong…it’s evil.

“He…he…he showed me that my body was made to be his…that he fit inside of me and that the way my girl parts gripped his boy parts was natural…it was the way that it was supposed to happen…”

“It hurt, oh it hurt inside it hurt…and there was blood…and…he said I needed his boy juice…that it’d make it all better that every time I was bleeding because I didn’t have his juice…I didn’t know…I didn’t know because…Momma never said nothing…she showed me later how to use pads but she never said nothing!”

“Jenna!? Why? Why wouldn’t she say something!? Why? She knew right? She was my mother she had to know, she had to know that he was doing these things! She had too right!”

She’s screaming it, and I’m not even sure that she’s really asking me or just asking period the Whole Big Why questions. I pull her to me and I hug her tight and she cries…and it’s not the sobbing bawling but that scream out cry of a dying heart and soul.

I have no answers as to why…My own Stepfather a man who loved me as long as I was the macho-soulless point scoring machine had raped his transgendered teen daughter…and my birth…well…Natalie she lost her meal ticket and doused me with gasoline and tried to light me on fire.

I have no answers to why there is such evil out there in the world and why so many of us are engulfed in it way too soon.

I do know that you have to survive, that you have to win and take back your life and shatter that mirror from hell. Yes the shards are still there and you might get cut again once in awhile but once you smash that you’re not looking that Hell in the face every second of everyday.

Maybe I’m still a jock but I can get over things, I have to beat them, I have to smash through even if I get cut up inside because I want to live my life, my life and I don’t want them or what’s been done to live my life instead of me.

I hold her through it and the officer, the lady cop asks. “Ingrid…is this your formal statement?”

Iggy nods….and chokes out a “Yes.”

She’s looking at us with tear red eyes. “I’m glad that I started bleeding…because it stopped after I started to grow breasts and get my curves. He got mean then, he never hit me but pushed me away and got angry for awhile at me telling me that I was getting fat and disgusting…”

The police nod… The male cop’s writing. “That’s important thank you Ingrid…it shows a pattern…that he’s got a type. You said he was only verbally abusive for awhile did he go back to normal?”

“He…he acted like daddy usually did but he never really touched me anymore…”

They looked at each other but just made some more notes.

My guts did a roll and a heave…

I think I know why and I’ve tears in my eyes just with the thought of it.

I think Ingrid’s too shell shocked and hurt from it to have ever clued into why.

They go through the formalities of her pressing charges and go through things again. They don’t even say anything when I roll Iggy a joint of the pot that was left here from Billy. I get an eyebrow but I just light it and pass it to Iggy. “OV cancer.” There was just a nod and the male cop just went over and opened the window and that was all she said about that. And yes I still remember how to roll a joint. Not a user myself since school and the group home but I’m not going to dismiss it either.

There’s a bit of the legal stuff that I have to co-sign now that I’m her power of attorney and I make both of them a coffee and myself and Iggy a herbal soothing tea that worked okay for Taylor and I’m up there for awhile and I think Ingrid’s slipped into shock…she’s just pushed into the corner of the couch and wrapped in a blanket looking wrecked but more emotionally that than the cancer and hugging her tea.

I walk them out once we’re all done. “Thanks you two for everything call me when you’ll need us and if something else comes to light I’ll call you two.”

I get their cards given to me and each writes down their home numbers and cell phones on the back. “Day or night Jenna, the more we get to know, the better this investigation will go.”

“Okay, I want to know when there’s going to charges laid in this so I can get the restraining orders set in place…I don’t want him getting away because I tipped him off but I want him never to have contact with my daughter ever.”

“We’ll let you know when he’s going to be charged the CP won’t have a problem issuing the retraining orders as we serve him with the charges.”

“Are you going to go and arrest him?”

“We’ll need more evidence but we have probable for a cyber-warrant.”

“Cyber warrant?”

“It’ll legally let our sex crimes task force search his computers and accounts for child pornography.”

“Oh…yeech…”

“Yeah sick bastards but with them if it’s on his computer then odds are he has pictures…if there’s anything like that we’ll find it. We’ll turn his life apart Jenna…we will.”

I hug them both tightly. “Thank you two so much…” I wipe at my eyes and they do too a little even cops that have been doing this a long time…even they’re still effected by this shit…it never gets to where you’re numb to it. At least not with the good cops.

I head upstairs to check on Ingrid who’s still really messed up but getting lulled into sleep buy the weed she smoked and calmer thanks to the tea.

I could go back to work and I should but instead I go and get Giselle and some stuff from the main kitchen and I make sure she’s clean and changed after going to pot…okay…after I clean and get the kids toilet seat thing I go to the pot stash and I put in way far away from questing little hands.

And I get Giselle in the kitchenette with me as I start some late lunch for us. I give her a carrot and a vegetable peeler and show her how to use it. She’s really horrible at it given her age and it takes her forever to do it by pinning the carrot to the table and peeling it that way.

But I’m rewarded with their squealing laugh and he shouting “Dun!” and proudly holding up a carrot that’s eighty percent peeled and curved in on one side from her continuing to peel that one spot where she got fixated on for awhile.

Like any proud Mum it goes in the stew. I don’t sit her in front of the TV while I’m doing something. I keep her with me and give her something she can do. I talk to her; mostly it’s about making the stew but still.

I’m making beef stew with lots of garlic and a kiss of ginger in it for Iggy and I sneak other things in it too. You want to get your kids involved? Get them to press buttons while you handle the blade work. So some celery, onions and green peppers, and a sweet potato head into my food processor just because my daughter can hit the buttons, make noise do something and see things.

Mum’s the best toy ever.

I get everything cooking and simmering away turned down low and I take her in and sit on the floor with her and Ingrid watching us in a half doze as I get Giselle to introduce me to her toys.

She has this slightly stoned, slightly sad smile on her face. It’s the sad, deep hurt broken sad smile there that hurts my heart worse than when she was angry with me.

Now I know…what she did wasn’t right but just how messed up she was when she did this? Not even sixteen…just a few years from the bulk of her abuse…and I know she never got any help, not professional help.

Its a few hours later and everything’s nearly done and Taylor and Dad and Angie come in with Hunter and dessert, some of our bread rolls from downstairs and Taylor has double armloads of bags of kid’s things and so does Dad. Angie’s carrying the food the rolls and a cake that looks homemade and not one of mine.

I’m not sure at the very quiet on edge way Ingrid has going on as we set up for supper means but she’s not being bitchy or rude just quiet and hurt.

Lonely…and hurt maybe.

Okay…next…next is her ex and finding out whether she bolted like some of them did with Taylor or she shoved them away.