There was a girls’ gym and a boys’ gym, but for field hockey, a ghastly sport required of all the girls, they had to trot past the boys, who whistled and cheered. The basketball coach, Coach Creek, was often there, standing in the big, open doors to the boys’ gym, legs spread, hands on waist, elbows out, looking like a Greek god. Men cut their hair very short then, but even so, you could see how thick and curly his hair was. You could see that the hair on his chest was also thick and curly, because the tank top the men and boys wore for gym was loose and low. It was fashionable to have a crush on Rudyard Creek, with his wonderful grin and perfect teeth. Kids didn’t get braces all that often, and perfect teeth were uncommon. But really, everything about Rudyard Creek was perfect. It helped, of course, that his team had an outstanding record.
The boys admired Coach as much as the girls did. Maybe more. His was the physique they wanted. The popularity. The style. The victories.
By sophomore year, Clemmie was aware that when she went down the hall in the gym wing, Coach had stationed himself just to look at her. She pretended not to notice, but all the other girls certainly did. “He thinks you’re adorable,” whispered one of the girls, and they all giggled, because the coach’s admiration was well placed. Clemmie blushed furiously and wondered how old the coach was, anyway.
When Pete had been on the team, having the bachelor coach over for dinner had seemed a fine way to cement a friendship among the adults, and maybe even get Pete more playing time, so Clemmie knew the coach slightly from serving him a meal. Her parents had thought the world of Rudyard Creek. But Pete was in college now, not good enough to play at that level. If he came home for a weekend during basketball season, he always went to a game at his old high school, sitting as close as possible to the team, waiting for, and always receiving, the coach’s special smile of acknowledgment: Yes. You’re one of mine. I remember you well.
Sometimes their dad went to the game too, and then he too received that special smile.
That semester, Clemmie had been deep in a lovely, rewarding crush. She still thought of Bobby sometimes, of how warm and splendid he had been, what their lives might have been. Her girlfriends had nudged her, smiled knowingly, whispering, “You’re in love,” and she knew that the boys teased Bobby about her, and she knew that he didn’t care.
When Bobby asked her to go steady, it was the most wonderful event of her life. She and Bobby even kissed, more than once, and she lay awake at night dreaming of him. She did not dream about sex because she hardly knew what it was. Children today knew what it was when they were in kindergarten; they even knew about erectile dysfunction. But when Clemmie Lakefield was sixteen, she dreamed about “making out,” which consisted of hugs and kisses, and perhaps, although Clemmie did not feel ready, getting to know each other above the waist.
Promiscuity in the 1950s and early ’60s was rare. The price to be paid was too high. Your only true goal was marriage to a good man, so you had to be good too, and that meant being a virgin until your wedding night. If you fooled around (a phrase that was so appropriate, because only fools did it), you could get pregnant. There was birth control in the form of condoms, but few girls could picture how that worked, let alone acquire such an item. The pill had not yet been invented. The only way to avoid pregnancy was not to have sex, and Clemmie, as far as she knew, was not acquainted with any girl who had actually “done it.”
That day, Bobby had passed her a note during biology class. It didn’t actually say anything. It just had a row of Xs and a row of Os. Sort of a nonliterate love letter, she thought, far more pleased with Xs and Os than any words would have made her. She tucked the note deep in her purse and planned where she would keep it so she would have it forever.
Which was when Coach gave her a ride home. She sat in the front seat, of course, on the wide bench. Seat belts were not yet common, and Clemmie had never used one. Coach asked her about Bobby, her favorite topic, so she beamed and listed Bobby’s great virtues and strengths. Coach made a peculiar remark. “I have more,” he said, in a husky voice that made her oddly anxious, and he drove down a street that would not take them to her house.
It was puzzling that he would not know the way. “Shouldn’t you turn right at this corner?” she said, feeling a little uncomfortable to correct a grown-up.
“We’re going to turn a different direction, you and I,” said Rudyard Creek, and suddenly the fine smile became an ugly smirk. Clemmie didn’t say, You’re frightening me. She didn’t say, Let me out now, right here. She had been raised, like all her friends, to believe that if you couldn’t say something nice, you should say nothing at all.
She would never have gone into Coach’s house, but he took her hand and insisted, and she did not know how to refuse any adult, let alone a man so respected in her family and school. A man she liked. A man whose admiration had increased her worth in school.
What happened next was short and brutal. Coach looked down at her with a terrible hatred while he was doing it and wild laughter when he was done, beaming down at where she was bleeding. He pointed to the bathroom, where she cleaned herself up, and then she had to accept a ride home with him. He let her out of the car a few blocks away, and she had to walk, and it hurt; it hurt all over.
Even after all these years, Clemmie could not bring herself to visualize the actual event. She had been so frightened, so shocked, humiliated, and appalled. What happened between her legs could not be whatever it was that married people did. The violence of Rudyard Creek, the hot, panting loathing of her at the very same time he was grinning, still frightened Clemmie in nightmares.
Clemmie did not tell her parents. There was no vocabulary. There was no appropriate time. Besides, in the 1950s, and right up into the ’60s, there was not usually such a thing as rape. A girl had agreed, or had encouraged the man, or been passively accepting. In any event, it was her fault. Had Clemmie used the word attacker, even her mother and father would have corrected her. Maybe especially her mother and father, who would be so ashamed of her behavior.
The second horror was that Rudyard Creek continued to show up in her life because she encountered him so often in the halls at the high school. In her memory, Rudyard Creek loomed over her short, little frame like a grizzly bear on a trail, his smile worming up and down her figure.
But the third horror, the one that changed and darkened all the years to come, was that when Bobby touched her, she flinched. She knew things she shouldn’t and had done things she shouldn’t, while Bobby was still a good person. Bobby, confused by her sudden coolness, moved on. His heart wasn’t broken; he just found another girlfriend.
She didn’t know what had happened to her own heart, but it didn’t beat the same, cherish the same, or hope the same. And the word innocent no longer belonged to Clemmie.
She didn’t know the word victim. In those days, whatever happened to you, you had asked for it.
And whatever happened to Clemmie today, in Sun City, she had asked for it. She had trespassed, taken the photograph, forwarded it.