Novel: Filling the Cracks—Chapter One

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Welcome to the first installment of my novel, Filling the Cracks, posted exclusively here every Wednesday for the next twenty-five weeks! Check in every week for a new chapter.

Trigger warning: The following story contains topics that may disturb some readers, including child physical and sexual abuse, domestic abuse, substance abuse, violence, and suicide. Although there is no explicit sexuality or language, this is written for an adult audience and may not be suitable for children.

Chapter One

May 1984

Many things fell through the cracks in Coverville, never to be acknowledged or spoken of. Political bribes. Petty crimes. Spousal abuse. Affairs. Beth Clark’s home life was one of many taboos.

It all reeked like the acrid scent of tar that burned her nostrils. A work crew filled the cracks in the street outside her house. She draped the strap of her backpack over her shoulder and left her home. It was a bright, chilly May morning, and she waved to the workers before shuffling down the sidewalk toward her friend Lisa’s house, four bungalows down the block and across the street from hers.

Fixing potholes and cracks each spring was one of the few maintenance tasks the village of Coverville performed all year. It was an annual ritual. The rest of the year, this home to just over six hundred residents neglected street sweeping, repairing crumbling curbs, regularly mowing public spaces, and ensuring consistent trash collection. Nevertheless, the streets remained in good condition. Rumor had it that the owner of the company awarded the contract to repair the cracks and potholes around Coverville was the mayor’s cousin. That’s what Virgie told Gary, at least. Nepotism, Virgie had called it, although Beth didn’t know what that meant.

Coverville was like any other north-central Alberta village, featuring two intersecting main streets, one of which was an extension of the secondary highway that bisected the community. It had all the necessary businesses and organizations to serve the residents and the surrounding farming community, including two gas stations, a grain elevator and feed store alongside the railway line that ran through the village, a grocery store, a post office, two banks, and an Alberta Treasury Branch. There was also a strip mall housing the medical clinic with three family doctors and a dentist, the village council office, and the pharmacy next door. The Coverville Hotel featured a popular tavern on the main floor, the only watering hole in town, while a Chinese family restaurant occupied the neighboring space in the same building. Additionally, eight local churches preached against the sins occurring in that tavern and hotel. The village was home to elementary and secondary schools, welcoming hundreds of youth each weekday. It was a quiet, peaceful, often dull place to grow up, where everyone knew everyone else’s business—allegedly.

However, many secrets were kept in Coverville.

Lisa Jones, Beth’s best friend since kindergarten, sat on the front steps of her house, waiting for Beth to pass by. She skipped down the walkway to meet her, and they continued the half-kilometer walk through the center of the village to get to their school. In a few weeks, the girls, queens of the jungle at Coverville Elementary, would transition to Coverville Junior/Senior High in September, having a couple of months to prepare themselves to be at the bottom of the student pecking order again.

“What’s wrong with you?” Lisa asked, shaking her head of long, wild, caramel-colored hair at her friend. “You’re too quiet. Did something happen with Gary?”

Gary was Beth’s uncle, her mother’s unmarried mechanic brother. At twenty-five, he lived with Beth, her mom, and her younger brother Otto to help “pay the bills” after Beth’s “deadbeat dad” left. He often babysat Beth and Otto when their mom, Virgie, worked at the hotel as a server at the family restaurant connected by French doors to the tavern.

“Nothing different from usual,” Beth replied, but she avoided looking Lisa in the eye until Lisa pulled her off the sidewalk and lifted Beth’s chin to force her to meet her gaze.

“Was he at you again?” Lisa whispered, even though they were the only two within earshot of each other.

Beth shrugged a shoulder, blinking to hold back tears. “What else is new?”

Lisa sighed, wrapped an arm around Beth’s shoulder, and guided her back onto the sidewalk. They would be late for the first bell if they didn’t keep moving. “Have you told your mom yet?”

“You know I can’t. She won’t believe me.”

“Show her your crotch, and she will.”

Beth couldn’t help but snicker at that, despite the seriousness of the topic. Lisa had no filter, as Virgie described it—she expressed her thoughts openly. This was one of the qualities Beth liked most about her.

“Your mouth!”

“What about it?” Lisa asked, raising her chin. “It’s true. Let me tell my mom if you can’t tell yours.”

“No.”

“Beth, Aurora had the same problem at home. That’s why she lives with us now. Maybe you could come live with us, too.”

Aurora Gold—yes, that was her name—was the Jones family’s foster daughter. She’d lived with Lisa’s family for over a year. Before that, she’d been a prisoner in her own home with an older brother who enjoyed abusing her while their father videotaped it.

Living with Lisa’s family felt more like a dream to Beth than anything else. Two parents who didn’t drink excessively or fight, who showed love and respect to both Lisa and now Aurora. Having time and attention devoted to her seemed too good to be true. Good things like that never happened to Beth.

“You need to tell someone,” Lisa insisted. They climbed through the hole in the chain-link fence surrounding the schoolyard—the shortcut—and crossed the field of knee-high grass toward the playground and school building. “Keeping it bottled up will only kill you.”

It was true; once again, Lisa was far too observant for Beth’s comfort.

The first bell rang, and the girls had to run to make it through the side doors of their school before the supervising teacher closed them. Anyone arriving after that was marked late for the first bell. The second bell rang ten minutes later, at which point students were presumably in their classrooms and seated at their desks, waiting for their homeroom teacher to take attendance. Since they were too chatty when seated together, Lisa and Beth had been separated to opposite sides of the classroom by their teacher, Mr. Montague.

The first two blocks were Math, followed by Language Arts. Beth enjoyed all her academic subjects—she was exceptionally bright, receiving As on all her homework assignments, quizzes, and tests. Some of her peers bullied her, calling her teacher’s pet and nerd, but Lisa was always there to stand up for her when they tried anything at recess. They had each other’s backs. Their peers ridiculed Lisa for her lisp, and Beth wouldn’t tolerate that either, putting people in their places when necessary. Beth had even engaged in a couple of schoolyard fights to defend her best friend—the opposite was true as well.

Beth disliked non-academic subjects such as Art and Health. Though she excelled in them, she favored anything that stimulated her intellect over her imagination. Her imagination often led her to dark places that she found hard to escape.

Health class took place right before lunch break. Usually, the genders were combined for the course, but for the next couple of weeks, the topic was sex education, so the boys were separated from the girls. The boys remained in the homeroom under Mr. Montague's instruction, while the girls went with the school counselor, Mrs. Nestor, to her office, where chairs and tables had been arranged for them.

Beth and Lisa ensured they sat next to each other at one of those tables. They had no idea what they were about to learn, only that special permission forms had been sent home to their parents regarding the subject matter. If a student’s parent didn’t consent to their child receiving instruction, that student had to spend the period in the main office reading a book. Only one girl and two boys from Beth’s class of twenty-two students needed to go to the office.

“It’s the nineteen eighties, and people still don’t talk to their kids about sex,” Lisa whispered into Beth’s ear before the lesson. “Mom gave me ‘the talk’ a year ago.”

Beth smirked, holding back her comment that no one had given her the talk. After Gary started his regular nightly visits to her bedroom, Beth researched in the school library encyclopedias about what had happened to her.

Mrs. Nestor was in her fifties, with tightly permed hair that shifted from brown to steel gray and smiling eyes reflecting gold and green hues. She was friendly and gentle with the students at her school, and her office door was always open at lunchtime for students who wanted to stop by to chat. Beth often visited, finding comfort in having an adult to talk to who offered her more than thirty seconds of attention and wouldn’t criticize or become angry with her for the questions she asked or the thoughts and feelings she shared. Beth trusted her, and that was a rare thing. However, she hadn’t entrusted her with everything.

Mrs. Nestor pinned two large posters to a corkboard that displayed labeled diagrams of two young, headless nude bodies, one male and one female. A few girls chuckled nervously at the poster of the male body, but neither Beth nor Lisa was among them. For Lisa, her mother had bought a book about human sexuality and had gone through it page by page with her, explaining everything without guilt or embarrassment. For Beth, she regularly viewed the real thing in the dim light of her nightlight. Mrs. Nestor reviewed the diagrams and labels with the class, speaking in strictly scientific terms before asking if there were any questions.

“Yeah,” Lisa said, casting Beth a quick sideways glance. “Why don’t you show it when the guy has a woody?”

Nervous laughter erupted from the twelve girls present, including Beth. Yet beneath her laughter, Beth squirmed in her seat and blinked against the moisture that collected in her eyes. It was warm in Mrs. Nestor’s office, and she struggled to breathe.

“It’s called an erection, Lisa. I will address that in our next class,” Mrs. Nestor said, unruffled by the question. “Today, we’re simply studying human anatomy—our parts—and next class, we will discuss what happens when humans engage in sexual intercourse.”

“When they do it,” Lisa said in a stage whisper, eager to be heard.

Mrs. Nestor gave her a glance that indicated Lisa was crossing a line and should remain quiet. Not that it had stopped her in the past.

Beth breathed a sigh of relief when the lunch bell rang. The girls rejoined the boys in the classroom long enough to grab their lunch bags and then headed to the gymnasium to eat under supervision before they were forced to go outside to play until afternoon classes resumed. Beth ate quietly, listening to Lisa and the other girls joke about what they had just learned about health. She didn’t have much of an appetite, and instead of jumping Double-Dutch with Lisa and the others outside, Beth told the supervising teacher that she wanted to go to Mrs. Nestor’s office.

When Beth knocked on her open door, Mrs. Nestor had cleared the folding tables from her office and was sitting behind her desk, reading a book and munching on a sandwich. Her reading glasses rested on the end of her nose. She looked up, set the book down, smiled, and waved for Beth to come in and sit across from the desk.

“What would you like to discuss today, Beth?” the school counselor inquired.

Beth avoided Mrs. Nestor’s gaze, biting hard on her cheek to keep from crying. She didn’t want to seem weak or foolish while expressing what was on her heart. It was too important to blubber her way through.

“I need to tell you something,” Beth whispered. “It's something that happens all the time. I can’t make it stop. I need help.”

#

Gary Tremblay had come to live with Beth and her fractured family after her father packed a suitcase and left without a glance back. At that time, Beth was nine, and Gary was twenty-two. He worked as an auto mechanic apprentice at the only repair shop in the village, making a modest living. He helped his sister Virgie keep a roof over their heads and the lights on. He had affordable housing, and in return, he babysat his niece and nephew when Virgie worked overtime at the tavern after her shift at the Chinese restaurant ended each night.

He had visited Beth's bedroom from the first night after moving in. Initially, it had been only once or twice a month. However, after Gary gained confidence that Beth feared him and believed his threats if she revealed the visits, their frequency increased to twice or thrice a week.

She described in detail how Gary had gone from fondling to rape. Holding nothing back, the girl sobbed as she spoke, going through half a box of facial tissues. Gary told Beth that he was educating her on how to be a good wife to someone someday.

What he did to her wasn’t ‘education.’ She was bright enough to recognize abuse, which meant she was also smart enough to understand that the violent spark in Gary’s eye wasn’t fake; he would do all the awful things he promised if she told anyone what went on behind the closed door to her bedroom—just like she was now.

In three years, Beth had only dared to share the secret with her uncle with one other person. During a weekend camping trip with Lisa’s family to Lac St. Anne, under the cover of night, when she and Lisa were alone in their pup tent, Beth revealed the violations she had suffered. She’d sworn Lisa to secrecy. They were blood sisters—having mingled their blood through cuts on their thumbs—and as such, they would never break a promise made under that oath. However, that didn’t stop Lisa from constantly urging Beth to tell someone in authority who could help make these visitations stop once and for all. But Beth was too afraid. She understood how adults behaved, especially in her family. They covered each other's backs. No one would help Beth if she told anyone—and Gary would find out and punish her as he promised he would.

Sitting in Mrs. Nestor’s office and recounting every awful thing Gary had ever done to her was a daunting act that made Beth tremble from head to toe as she shared her secret.  The shaking persisted for hours afterward, throughout the remainder of the school day.

But just before Beth and Lisa left the school that afternoon for their walk home, Mrs. Nestor caught them in the hallway and said to Beth, “Don’t worry. I’ve taken care of everything. You’ll be all right from now on.”

On the walk home, when they were alone, Lisa asked, “What was she talking about?”

Beth couldn’t repress the smile that blossomed from her soul for the first time in a long while. “I did it. I told her.”

“You did?” Lisa’s face beamed, more radiant than the sun. “I’m so proud of you! So it’s over, right? You’re safe?”

Beth let out a nervous giggle. “I suppose so. I think I’m free.”

At the walkway leading to Lisa’s house, the friends embraced before Lisa hurried inside.

Taking a deep breath, Beth skipped to her house, through the rusty gate with its squeaky hinges, along the dilapidated picket fence, and up the crumbling concrete walkway to the side door. She opened it and stepped inside.

To her surprise, Virgie stood in the kitchen waiting for her instead of sitting in the living room watching her soap operas.

“Hi, Mom!” Beth squealed, noticing that her mother didn’t smile back. “What’s wrong?”

Virgie held one of her cork-heeled wedge shoes in her right hand. “You and me are gonna talk.”

#

Thanks for reading! Chapter Two will be posted next Wednesday here on my blog, so be sure to return next week. If you have any comments or questions, please leave them in the comment section below. Also, remember to subscribe to my newsletter and share this blog with your family and friends. Check out my other blog posts, also found here at paulinejgrabia.com. God bless and have a great week!

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