Full Disclosure Read online

  Being a rape survivor does not define me at all. If anything, what was ingrained into me was the expectation that I would not be believed if I ever asked for help. It’s why I keep highlighting this whole passage, my finger hovering over the Delete key. What stops me is seeing a bracelet on my right hand, a blue rubber one that I give out to people at events. In white type there is a quote from me: “Standing up to bullies is kind of my thing.”

  I may not always want to, and I may fear what will happen when I do, but I have to tell the truth. This is mine.

  *

  My mom kept stumbling into dead-end relationships with guys, and Wade would still come around to sit in the front room. That only ended when she started dating Sidney Kelley. He was really nice and had a good job. What was the draw for my mom? you might wonder. Well, he was also a raging alcoholic. He had four kids of his own already. A boy, Trey, who was a year younger than me, and a set of Satan twins, two girls who were four years younger than me. They lived with their mom, Carla. He also had a bonus baby, Hope, who lived with her mom. She was two years old and the reason he was no longer with Carla.

  I was told to call him Mr. Kelley, and that continued even after my mom married him when I was eleven and he became my stepdad. He moved in with us, and my mom found a new villain in Carla. “Carla’s such a bitch and she doesn’t want the kids over” was a constant refrain. Well, I wouldn’t want my kids in that filthy house, either. Team Carla here.

  Mr. Kelley drank all the time and would be falling-down drunk around the neighbors. Even in our increasingly trashy neighborhood, it was like Whoa. One time at home he fell into the picture window. He hit it with his head and it shattered but didn’t break. They taped it up and it stayed shattered all through middle school and high school. It stayed that way for ten years.

  In seventh grade, I met a girl name Myranda who was a year younger than me. I was walking by her when she mentioned to her friend that she wasn’t taking the bus because her mom was picking her up for a riding lesson.

  “Hi,” I said, immediately latching on to her. I may as well have said, “Hi, new best friend. You’re going to be my friend whether you like it or not.” She was woefully ignorant about the riding lessons, so I realized I needed to speak to a manager. Her mom.

  “Tell me about these riding lessons,” I said. “Where do you go?” This was pre-internet, and my mom knew nothing about horses. I needed to make this happen. I had her call my mom to tell her about it, and I started taking lessons with a trainer named Miss Cathy at four thirty in the afternoon every Wednesday. Myranda’s mom would pick us up from school and drive us out to the barn, and she would often take me home, too.

  For months, my entire week revolved around Wednesdays.

  A week before Christmas 1991, my stepdad Mr. Kelley told me he was going to pick me up that night when my lesson was over. He was getting his Christmas bonus and he was going to take me shopping so I could buy presents for people and myself.

  I sat in the barn waiting. Myranda’s mom came and lingered, twice asking if maybe she could just take me home. “No, thank you,” I said. My riding instructor, Miss Cathy, busied herself tending to a pathetic horse that had been returned that day. Her name was Perfect Jade, and she was rail thin and had clearly been abused since leaving the barn. She was covered in fungus and was so mangy, I couldn’t tell what color she was. She was mean from all her mistreatment, and Miss Cathy told me to stay clear.

  When Mr. Kelley finally showed up, he was shit-faced.

  “I’m not getting in the car,” I said. Miss Cathy came over and immediately took stock of the situation.

  “She can stay here until Sheila gets off work,” she said.

  “Come on,” he said.

  “She can stay here,” Cathy said, in the same tone she used to show a horse who was in charge.

  “Well, she’s been wanting a horse for Christmas,” he slurred. “So how much does a horse cost?”

  “Well, Chiffon’s eight grand,” said Cathy.

  “For a fucking horse?” he spit. I now own a fifty-thousand-dollar horse, but that would have been a lot then for Chiffon. Cathy made so much money off that horse, using it for therapy and riding. I know now if you have a horse you don’t want to sell, you put a price on it no one wants to spend.

  Mr. Kelley tried one more time to get me to go with him, and then finally gave up. “Well, here’s the money for your presents,” he said, handing me five hundred dollars cash. He got in the car and raced off.

  Miss Cathy went to the office to call my mom at work. “It’s a shame he didn’t ask about this one,” she said, gesturing to poor Perfect Jade. “I’d sell you that one for five hundred.”

  “Okay,” I said as fast as I could reach for the money in my pocket. “Done.”

  And so Perfect Jade was mine. I told my mom later that Mr. Kelley bought her for me. She confronted him about it the next day, but he’d been so drunk he didn’t remember what happened. No one was going to take my horse away from me.

  *

  When Miss Cathy gave me Perfect Jade’s papers, I knew it was meant to be. We had the same St. Patrick’s Day birthday, though she was two years older. She was an ex-racehorse, and because she was a Thoroughbred, her papers listed her bloodlines. Her grandfather was Bold Ruler, an American Thoroughbred Hall of Fame racehorse who was named 1957 Horse of the Year. His broodmare grandmother, Primonetta, was one of the top fillies in American racing in 1961, and when she died of a heart attack just shy of thirty-five years old in 1993, she was the third-longest-lived filly known to horse racing. Jade’s bloodlines were so good, I am sure they probably tried to breed her at some point and it just didn’t take.

  But looking at her when I met her, you would never know she came from glory. She had this pencil-thin neck with a mane that was so long. She had patches of hair missing from fungus, and what hair she did have was sun-bleached.

  Now I had a horse, but I didn’t own anything for a horse. I didn’t have a saddle or bridle, but I couldn’t put a saddle on her anyway because she was so skinny. With no padding, it would have just rubbed blisters on her. I had to fatten her up first, but I didn’t mind because I just wanted to be near horses, period. I became obsessed with her, leading her up and down the road like a dog to get her strength up.

  I loved her, but man she was mean. She would chase me out, snapping her teeth at me. If I went to pick up her back feet, she’d poop on me. I know that fucking bitch was doing it on purpose. Every time I’d turn my back she would bite the shit out of me and break skin.

  One time I was feeding her and she bit me so hard, I had enough. I grabbed her ear and I bit her back. “You see?” I screamed through tears. “That hurts!”

  It was a come-to-Jesus moment for us. After that, she never hurt me again.

  When her hair came in that summer, it was black and sleek. Jade had grown back to being a big black mare, all filled out. She was breathtaking. I started riding her and learned everything on that horse. I was able to board her at my boyfriend Jacob Bailey’s barn. The Baileys were a farming family, so they kept a barn down the street from their house, which was close to a river. I visited Jade just about every day. And Jacob. We were both thirteen and had started dating the summer between seventh and eighth grades. He was so cute—super Christian, with an extremely conservative family. He taught me how to clean a gun and how to ride four-wheelers. Every day he would ride his four-wheeler alongside me and Jade as we galloped in the sand along the river. He could just keep up with us. He even built jumps for me as I became interested in eventing. Eventing is the equestrian triathlon, with three disciplines in one competition. There’s dressage, which is considered one of the highest forms of horse training. Then cross-country, where you and your horse navigate an outdoor obstacle course. And finally, jumping, which is specifically about clearing fences.

  In December, I was at the barn cleaning Jade’s stall when Jacob got called home for dinner. It was freezing cold. Baton Rouge can still have
mild weather during the day that time of year, but it can dip down to the thirties and forties at night.

  “Your mom’s coming soon, right?” he said. We were both thirteen, but we looked out for each other in that way.

  “Yeah,” I said. She was supposed to be there at six o’clock. Six went by, then seven. I didn’t have a cell phone to call her, so I didn’t know if or when she’d show up. I was too embarrassed to walk over to Jacob’s house. I sat in the feed room, hugging myself for warmth.

  Around eight, Jacob’s mother saw the barn’s lights were still on, so she sent Jacob down. She thought I’d left without turning them off. Jacob walked in and I held out my arms to hug him. He put his coat on me, and I kissed him. We started making out, and, as they say, one thing led to another. It was my choice, and I felt completely safe with him. We had sex on top of a deep freeze they used as a feed bin. It was the first time making love for both of us, and I was blessed and cursed that I had an orgasm. It sounds good, but do you know how hard it was to find a boy to do that for the next fifteen years?

  After that night, we fucked like bunnies. We would go up in the hayloft to have sex. It was always furtive and half-dressed. I don’t think I ever even saw his penis. His family was so religious that this was all wrapped up in sin.

  This went on into the summer before ninth grade, when we were found out. No one ever walked in on us, as far as I know, but his parents sat him down. They told him he could never see me again, and he followed their orders. They made me move Jade out of their barn and let me know that I was a piece of white-trash shit.

  This piece of shit had the straight As to get into a magnet school, so come ninth grade, I didn’t see him again anyway. Scotlandville Magnet High School, an engineering school with a focus on science and math, was about five miles from my house, but they would bus you out. It was better than going to my neighborhood school, where I probably would have been killed. I wanted Baton Rouge High because they were known for their arts programs in dance and writing, but they were full and on the wrong side of town.

  Writing was all I wanted to do besides ride Jade. English was my favorite subject, and I took creative writing classes. Later I would get into all the AP English classes and become editor of my high school newspaper. With my photographic memory and an eye for detail, storytelling came naturally to me. I would always finish my work early in class, and to pass time while everyone else finished tests, I would write funny short stories about me and my friends. They were basically scripts, embellished versions of what was going on in our lives. Exactly what I do now when I write scripts for films. Just like my high school friends, my friends know that they need to be careful around me. They’ll tell me something funny that happened to them, and they’ll recognize that funny look on my face as I press Record in my mind.

  “Oh, shit,” they’ll say. “I’m a script now, aren’t I?”

  “You totally are,” I answer.

  Back in high school, the star of most of my friend stories was my best friend, Elizabeth. We sat alphabetically in class, and her last name fell right after Gregory, so she was always right behind me from the first day of ninth grade. She had come from a small private school and knew absolutely no one at school, whereas I had moved with a crew. I turned around to say hi the first day and she was wearing a pale pink T-shirt that showed a row of cats walking from behind, their tails in the air.

  “I’m sorry, is that a line of cat buttholes on your shirt?” I asked.

  Elizabeth looked down, pulling her shirt out to get a better look. “I guess so,” she said.

  “Okay, we’re going to be friends,” I said. “Because you really need one.”

  Boy crazy and Catholic, she was the perfect wingwoman. She worked at McDonald’s all through high school, and I could always count on her to feed me free food when I was hungry, which was often. To this day, when Elizabeth and I are in the same room we are those two girls again, talking over each other about some boy and laughing. Thank God for those cat butts.

  *

  When I had to move Jade so abruptly from Jacob’s barn, I boarded her at Farr Park Equestrian Center. It became my real home. I got special permission from my high school to take a bus every day down to the LSU campus area, so I could then walk two miles south to go see her. I knew I’d lose Jade if I couldn’t afford to board her, so I started working at Farr Park, whether it was teaching kids at their summer horse camp or doing secretarial work in the office. I did anything to keep Jade with me.

  I began taking lessons with a trainer, Nancy Burba, and I worked off the payment by exercising her horses. On the weekends, we started doing horse shows. At one point, somebody offered me fifteen thousand dollars for Jade. That kind of money would have been life changing, but I didn’t think about it for even a second. “She’s not for sale,” I said. Besides, Jade wouldn’t let anyone else ride her, and she wouldn’t perform for anyone else, either.

  Never once did I fall off of that horse. Not one single time, which is a miracle, because it’s just a fact that you come off your horses. Whether they dump you or they spook, you come off. It’s not if you get hurt, it’s when. And how bad.

  She protected me, too. We were out galloping one day, riding through a neighborhood the city was starting to develop. It had been a while since I’d ridden back there, so I didn’t know that they had dug huge drainage canals, about twenty feet across. The grass had gotten tall, so we were going full speed and I didn’t see the new canal until two strides out. I felt Jade see it and I could tell she was thinking, Fuck it, I won’t be able to stop. She leapt into the air, clearing the twenty-foot jump.

  I was so scared that when I got to the other side, I got down from Jade. “Oh, my God,” I said, walking in a circle, kicking out my legs, which one second ago I was sure would be broken. “Oh, my God.” Jade nuzzled me and I looked her in the eye.

  “Good job,” I said.

  People who knew Jade’s history told me I saved that horse, but she saved me. Since I hated being home, if I hadn’t had the barn to go I would have just hung around my little crack neighborhood, smoking and drinking with the other kids my age. I was too busy going to horse shows on the weekends to spend time at the mall flirting with boys. I would see yet another girl who lived around me suddenly pregnant and say to myself silently, Can’t ride a horse if you’re pregnant.

  That meant that any guy who wanted to be around me had to make room for Jade. In my freshman year, I started dating Kris, a brown-haired tenth grader who was two years older than me. They’d held him back a year when his family moved over from Poland as a small child, but he was really smart, and his parents were biochemists at LSU studying carcinogens. He had a car and would drive me to the barn and all my horse events. Kris bought my first dressage saddle, so I could compete, and he would take pictures for me at all my shows. He was not going to get on a horse, but he bought a mountain bike so he could ride along with me and Jade. He taught me how to drive, and I’m actually a great driver because of him.

  And he taught me how to say what I liked in bed. “Do you like when I touch you like this?” he would ask me, genuinely wanting me to enjoy our time together. Whereas Jacob was so conservative, Kris would just walk around naked in his room, comfortable with his body. We didn’t do anything freaky, but we had a lot of sex, and more importantly, we could talk about it without shame.

  When I was sixteen, Kris wrote a letter to my mom telling her to put me on birth control. I had been too afraid to ask her. She was furious, but I heard her talking to her friends about it, saying she thought it was cool that he was honest and concerned about me. Two days later she thanked him and she put me on birth control. I have Kris to thank for my being able to enjoy sex without constantly worrying about getting pregnant and stuck in Baton Rouge.

  Yes, Kris was the best boyfriend, until he cheated on me. But I don’t blame him. We were high school kids and the girl, Camille, was really fucking hot. She had an Angelina Jolie look.

  I was wit
h my best friend, Elizabeth, when I saw them. We were in her car, driving to Coffee Call, a coffee shop on College Drive in Baton Rouge. It had been Kris’s and my place. And there he was, walking in holding hands with Camille.

  I sat there, my mouth open, when the radio DJ came on to present a song they’d just gotten in. Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know.” As Alanis sang, Elizabeth got more and more wide-eyed as I just stared at the café.

  “That’s a really good song,” I said when it was over.

  “Yeah,” she said, still looking at me like I was a time bomb.

  “So, I’m just gonna go in there and kill him,” I said.

  “Cool,” she said.

  I did confront Kris. I didn’t kill him, nor did I scream-sing my new favorite song at him. He admitted it, always honest, and that was that. But whenever I hear that song, my eyes narrow and I am right back at the Coffee Call.

  *

  I did a bank shot to sink the nine ball and glanced up at my dad. For the first time, he looked proud of me. I’d waited fifteen years for that.

  We were in a bar near his house on Thorn Tree Court in Miamiville, just outside Cincinnati. Susan had been making him spend more one-on-one time with me since middle school. He tried. We would run to Subway for an hour, but he just couldn’t relate to me. Now I was fifteen years old and mature enough for my age that we could finally relate.

  They knew him by name when we walked in but seemed surprised that he had a daughter. It was a little bar with several pool tables, and my dad’s a very good player. He started to teach me how to play, at first probably just to pass the time. But once he saw I was pretty good, he seemed more interested. He gave me money for the jukebox, and I went over but I didn’t know how to make the selection. I’d never seen one before.