Jennifer McHenry couldn’t get the images out of her mind:
her own burly step-father pushing into her as hard as he could every night for
god knows how many nights. Then there was the judge who only gave him a
ninety-day jail sentence because of his “service to the community”? Ninety days
could only last so long, but the psychological trauma was forever. Jennifer’s
eyes were lifeless, her frown was saggy, her posture was hunched, and her
emotions were dulled. She might as well have walked through this life as a
zombie.
She paid no mind to the other high school students around
her nor did she immediately wake up from her robotic trance when Martin Hitch,
the sex ed teacher, entered the room with a handful of books. Everything around
Jennifer was a blurry haze in her numbed out mind. Not even Mr. Hitch’s booming
voice saying, “Alright, class, listen up!” could startle her like it did the
other students.
The tall, middle-aged, crew-cut having teacher placed his
palms on his desk and drummed his fingertips while everyone in the class was
slowly quieting down. The fire in his eyes made him look like a hellfire and
brimstone preacher. Just one word could send electricity through the bodies of
those who disobeyed him.
“Now that I have your attention,” said Mr. Hitch. “I’d like
to begin by welcoming you all to sex education. You may think this is going to
be a fun-filled ride with plenty of pornographic thrills. But trust me when I
say this, there’s nothing fun about STD’s and pregnancies. Genital warts,
gonorrhea, HIV, there are so many nasty things that can come from sexual
contact. And don’t give me that unholy garbage about how condoms will save you.
They won’t. There’s only one thing that will save you in the end: just saying
no.”
Jennifer’s droning haze turned into a sniper sight of anger.
Her breathing sounded like soft growling and her eyebrows were tightly
furrowed. Oh, how many times she wished she could have said no to her
disgusting step-father. Two letters, one word, one syllable: no. Who was this
teacher to say that a simple word solves everything? Her fists clinched as she
heard his offensive oratory.
“That’s right, children,” said Mr. Hitch as he stood up and
started pacing sternly back and forth. “All you have to do is say no and it’ll
all be over. For those of you who say no, you can spare yourself from green
paste and a fishy discharge coming out of your genitals. Those who continually
give in? You’re just a piece of chewed up gum. And the more you chew gum, the
less flavor it has.”
The fist clinching became even tighter than before and
Jennifer’s head felt like it was going to burst like a bomb. Her heartbeat
sounded like someone smashing a bass drum. The fiery sensation running through
her body could turn this whole school into a matchstick, which lost its color
after one strike.
“You don’t want to be a chewed up piece of bubblegum, right?
You don’t want to be one of these fools who think that condoms and
contraceptives are the panacea of sexual diseases, right? All you have to do is
say no! Keep your pants on and never remove them!”
As the images of her step-father assaulted her mind like
kicks to the skull, Jennifer let out a thunderous scream before jumping on her
desk, running across the other students’ desks, and landing a flying knee right
against Martin Hitch’s temple. While the teacher fell to the ground and tried
to gain his wits about him, other students flocked to restrain Jennifer’s arms
and legs while she screamed every obscenity in the book. Those who dared get in
her way were met with vampire bites, soccer kicks, and boxer punches.
The other students began to back away when Martin stood back
up and yelled, “Quiet! Shut up!” The frightened pupils backed away even further
while Jennifer McHenry’s breathing intensified. Martin pointed an accusatory
finger at her and yelled, “You are out of control, young lady! Do you realize
what you just did?! You assaulted a teacher and now you’re in huge trouble, my
friend!”
“Trouble? Trouble?” said Jennifer in a trembling whisper.
“Yeah, that’s right! Trouble! Big trouble, at that! You’re
going to the Principal’s Office right now! You’re lucky I’m not calling the
cops on you!” shouted Mr. Hitch.
“Who’s going to call the cops on my rapist?!” screamed
Jennifer, turning her teacher’s authoritative anger into a somber frown. “I
never wanted that secret to get out. I know how the kids at this school treat
rape victims. You like to call us sluts and whores. You like to say we deserved
what we got. You blame us for the crime because of what we wore that day. Does
saying no solve everything, Mr. Hitch? I don’t think so! So I guess that makes
me a chewed up piece of gum!”
The suddenly defensive Mr. Hitch held his arms out to
control the distance between him and Jennifer. “Take it easy, Miss McHenry.
It’ll be okay. I seriously didn’t know you were the victim of sexual assault.”
“It’s not the kind of thing I go around advertising on a
daily basis, you sick bastard!” shouted Jennifer.
“Hey, hey,” said Mr. Hitch in a calm voice. “You’re going to
be alright. You obviously need to see a counselor. We can hook you up with one
after class is over.”
“I’m already seeing one,” said Jennifer with tears cascading
from her eyes. “No matter how many times I talk about it, no matter how many
treatments we do, no matter how many pills I take, it’s not going to make it
all go away! I still see his face every night! I’m going to see him a lot more
once he gets out of prison!”
A depressing hush fell over the classroom with neither
Jennifer nor Martin knowing what to do. The two of them just stared at each
other with bloodshot eyes. And then one by one, students quietly shuffled
toward the door and exited the classroom. In a matter of seconds, the only two
left in the room were Jennifer and Martin, still staring each other down, still
at a Mexican standoff.
The tension was cut when Martin inched closer to his pupil
and said in his softest voice, “Truth be told, I didn’t choose this curriculum.
You see those books over there? They were given to me by the board of
education. They were the ones who thought teaching abstinence was a good idea.
As far as what I said goes…” Martin drew a deep breath. “I, uh….I was told to
do that. I’m following orders. If I don’t follow them, I could lose my job and
then I’d have no way to feed my family.”
“Bullshit! You’re a liar!” sobbed Jennifer.
“Jennifer, you need to trust me on this one. I’m being
honest with you. If you don’t believe me, you can look in the text book on the
top of that pile.”
The shaken student dragged her feet to her teacher’s desk
and picked up said book. It was a hardcover book. It was heavy. It felt natural
in her hands. She turned around and smacked Martin over the head with it,
knocking him unconscious. She then assaulted her teacher’s desk by slamming the
text book against it.
Only then did campus security storm into the classroom and
try to hold her still. No matter how big and strong they were, Jennifer still
bit down hard, she still kicked like a warrior, and she still punched like her
fists were made with granite. All of the rage and all of the pain was
accompanied by images of her step-father pushing inside her over and over
again. The wet ending made her feel like butcher’s meat. And then her vision
blackened as the last of her violent energy surged out of her body.
She could have stayed asleep forever if she wanted to. A
dreamless state of mind was better than the fucked up nightmare she lived every
day, now made worse by Martin Hitch’s speech about chewed bubblegum. Jennifer
purposely kept her eyes closed for as long as she could before slowly opening
them to a world of whiteness.
She awakened to find herself in beige pajamas while laying
on a comfy bed surrounded by white walls. “Excellent. You’re awake,” said an
elderly Indian woman in a white lab coat.
“Where…where am I?” asked a weary Jennifer McHenry.
“You’re in a safe place, Miss McHenry. The Principal was
adamant about taking you to juvenile hall, but your sex ed teacher waved him
off. He told me everything that happened today. You caused a lot of injuries in
your rage. But there’s something more to this than a simple attack. You have
something on your mind that won’t let go of you.”
Tears welled in the teenager’s eyes as she said, “What the
hell’s going on with my brain, Doctor? I can’t do my homework, I can’t eat, I
can’t sleep, I can’t pay attention in class…I can’t do anything!”
The doctor placed a sympathetic hand on her patient’s and
said in the softest tone, “I know how hard it is for you. But unless you allow
us to help you, we can’t find out what’s going on aside from the rape story. It
may not be as simple as Post-Traumatic Stress. It could very well be
schizophrenia you’re experiencing. If that’s the case, then managing your
symptoms will be much harder than anticipated. But the most important thing you
remember is…it’s not impossible. It’ll take time, but we have all the time in
the world. Get some rest, dear. Treatment starts tomorrow morning.”
Once the doctor stood up and left, the door was closed
behind her and Jennifer was alone with her thoughts. Actually, she wasn’t
completely alone since there were nurses standing guard in case she had a
mental health emergency. But for the first time in a long time, she welcomed
her aloneness. She used this opportunity to have conversations with herself.
They appeared to be quick whispers to the nurse’s outside, but in her world,
every word meant building towards the big day tomorrow. And the big day after
that, and the big day after that, and the big day after that. The road to
recovery would be long an exhausting, but it would be traveled nonetheless,
even if she had to walk her way to the light at the end of the tunnel with
blisters on her feet.
