Silenced, page 4
I can see why you think that he told me, why you’d be afraid it’s that, but it’s not I swear.
I’ve been trying to figure out how he’s doing it to stop him.
Ask me something only I’d know if you need to know I’m me.
Rani?
I didn’t reach out because he made me. Think about it, Rani. He didn’t tell me a damn thing. So how else could I know?
Ranjani thought about it. She reread their text thread to reassure herself that, indeed, she hadn’t actually told Maia anything. There was no reason for the key to trigger. But Maia had found out anyway.
Maia was brilliant, everyone who worked with her knew that. She was also a badass. Her Casual Friday t-shirts said things like My Dragon Ate Your Patriarchy and The Bridges I’ve Burned Light My Way. Ranjani wanted to believe that Maia wouldn’t ever sell out another woman. She did believe it, as much as she could believe anything right now. But how else could she have known about both Ranjani and Abony?
Oh.
Why did you start working from home? she asked.
Exactly, Maia typed back.
Have you tried to report him?
Of course. I can’t, any more than you or Abony can.
Three dots again, and Ranjani braced herself to hear what the CEO had done to her friend, but Maia’s next text avoided the unspoken question:
I knew I couldn’t be the only one because, hello, Matt Lauer, Harvey Weinstein? I didn’t know how to find anyone else. But men are nothing if not predictable so I started looking for a pattern.
And Abony and I fit the pattern? Ranjani asked.
Yes, I can explain how. More important—I know what he’s doing and why he’s doing it.
I don’t care why. How do we stop it?
Don’t know that yet and not for lack of trying. But he just did it to someone else.
Ranjani moaned in distress. From the office?
Then even as Maia replied—Yes, not sure if you know her—Ranjani thought of last Friday. She tried to ask: Jo Miller, but hit send too soon and left off the question mark.
So you do know her.
We were supposed to meet Friday but she canceled, Ranjani typed. She’s out sick all this week.
Again—exactly.
So what…
Ranjani paused to figure out what she actually wanted to say or ask next. She’d been swept along by Abony’s determination less than a week ago and Maia was just as much of a force of nature. It would be easy to just finish the question: So what do you want to do? But then Maia would say what she wanted to do and if it was something bold or dangerous—something involving a new door—Ranjani would have to say no to it.
She deleted the phrasing that created a question and typed instead.
She must be so scared. I can reach out to her.
Good, Maia replied. Just be aware that I think her curse is like mine, not yours—it’s constant, not on a trigger.
Curse??? Ranjani added extra question marks for good measure this time, because now she felt lost. What was Maia talking about?
Like I said, I know what he’s doing and now I know why. Jo was the key to figuring out the pattern.
But you said you don’t know how to stop it.
Hoping we can work together to figure that out.
Ranjani choked on a humorless laugh.
Seriously? I can’t go anywhere new and you can’t leave the house.
You can come to my house, Maia said. You’ve been here before, remember? I hosted Wendy’s baby shower.
Yes, Ranjani remembered, which was a relief and a new problem, because now she had basically committed to reaching out to a colleague she didn’t know well to ask her if she’d recently been sexually assaulted—and by the way, had anything else awful happened as a result? Anything really, really weird? Ranjani thought of that ugly Bluebeard story and wondered wildly if the CEO could have turned Jo into a frog or a beast—weren’t those things that happened in fairy tales? But they happened to men, not women.
Okay, Ranjani said. Thanks for remembering that. Just give me a few days to get Jo and Abony to come with me.
Of course. Text me when you’ve picked a time to come. Simon can let you in.
Ranjani had met Maia’s husband Simon several times. He was shy and awkward and seemed relieved to be Maia’s sidekick in social situations.
Simon knows?
No way he couldn’t.
Did you tell him right away? I
Again, Ranjani hesitated and didn’t send, this time because she had too many questions herself and didn’t know which to ask, if any. Had Maia told Simon right away or only later, when she couldn’t hide some strange new behavior from him? Had it broken him, to know that she’d been hurt like that? Had he tried to report the assault himself? Was that even feasible, or did it make things worse?
Her alarm went off, reminding her to go back to her desk. Ranjani refastened her necklace, tucking the key away again.
You there? Maia asked.
Ranjani finished her last text with what amounted to an open question and a buried one.
Did you tell him right away? I haven’t told Amit. I wasn’t sure I could.
Maia’s reply took a moment to come in and was a longer block of text: Like I said, there’s no way Simon could NOT know what happened to me. I don’t think this guy cares if you tell someone so long as it’s not officially reporting him. He’s counting on us not telling anyone because we’re afraid they won’t believe us.
Three dots, then she added: But you could tell Amit! He loves you so much. He’ll believe you.
He would. Ranjani knew that. She stood at the corner waiting for a walk sign and craned her neck to take in the façade of her office building, all the way up to the top floor where the CEO’s office was. Was he in there now? The floor-to-ceiling windows flashed like mirrors and gave nothing away.
I’m sorry if the Bluebeard story freaked you out, Maia said, but you can see why you had to read it. When you get a chance later, read this too.
Ranjani saw that she’d sent a link to a different post on the same channel, but didn’t click on it until that evening as she was getting ready for bed. Then she read with the prickling sense that Maia had sent this particular story hoping it would make Ranjani angry, and she didn’t feel angry so much as scared. She turned off her phone and focused on brushing out and rebraiding her hair, then clicked off the light and slipped into bed. Amit was already half asleep, but he rolled toward her instinctively and slung one long arm over her waist, anchoring her to him.
Ranjani recalled the drive home from the doctor’s office when her mother had gotten her diagnosis, the silence in the car rising and pressing against them like a mass of yeasted dough. Finally, Shreshthi had said crisply, “I’m not afraid, Rani. I choose not to be afraid. As a surgeon, you learn to do this, because if you are afraid, you put your patient at risk. You become angry instead. You choose anger, not at your patient, but at the injury. It is a better way.”
Mami, Ranjani had thought, it’s okay to be afraid. But she had known better than to say so out loud.
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Question of the Day | Fairy Tales for Our Time
Fairy Tales for Our Time: “The Women Who Told the Truth”
submitted by legalprincess (member since 2015)
Once upon a time, a scholar (yes, children, a woman) learned that a certain man had been offered the scales of justice in the kingdom and would have authority over the laws of the land. This same man had once tormented this scholar such that she did not believe he could be trusted to always be just and wise. She left the tower where she studied, went to the king and court, and told them all that she knew of the man’s wickedness. Some of the courtiers were impressed by the scholar, but most refused to believe her. They said that women, even great scholars, were often mistaken about men’s intentions. So the scholar went back to her tower and the man was given the scales of justice, which he wielded for ill as she had warned.
Years went by, during which time other women of the kingdom sought out the scholar to tell her that they too had suffered at the hands of the same man, or other men like him. Many in the kingdom vowed that the next time a woman told the court what she knew of a man’s wickedness, they would be sure to believe her.
In time, another man was offered the scales of justice, and another woman—a healer—went to the king and the court and told them that when she had been a young girl and this man not much more than a boy himself, he had held her down and tried to kiss and touch her.
Women across the kingdom waited to see what the king and court would do, sure that this time the woman would be believed. Some at court were shaken by the healer’s story, but others were unmoved. This man too was given the scales of justice, and he too wielded them for ill.
The women of that land wondered if there was an enchantment laid upon their kingdom that kept those in power from believing the truth when it was told to them. They wondered too what it would take to break such an enchantment. They saw that it couldn’t be broken by a prince with a magical sword, a clever tailor, or a handsome youngest son—yet these were the only heroes permitted. The women vowed to continue to tell the truth about wicked men. They declared the scholar, the healer, and other women who had come forward to be heroes of a new kind. And they tried not to give up hope that someday they would all be believed.
AUGUST 1: ABONY
In line at Starbucks on Wednesday, Abony reminded herself that she could still afford to buy a damn coffee in the morning and handed over her credit card without blinking. It was $4.73, for God’s sake.
“Nope.” The barista shook her head. “He took care of it.” The girl jerked her head toward the high-top table in the bay window, where a man was busy dumping an appalling amount of sweetener into his cup and studiously not watching Abony’s reaction to his generosity. Abony had to wade through the pile-up of people at the sugar and cream station to get to the table and was at the man’s elbow before she registered that he was both young and extremely good-looking.
Okay, maybe not too young. The lines that crinkled around his eyes when he turned to smile at her looked like they might leave their mark when the smile faded, and there was a thread, just a thread, of silver in the hair at his temples and over his ears. He was dressed like all of DC, in a navy-blue suit and white shirt, but he wore the suit like he was used to it, not half-strangled to have a tie on, and his briefcase appeared to have been through a warzone and only barely survived.
“Thank you,” Abony said. “You didn’t have to do that.”
He stirred his coffee, still smiling at her.
“I do plenty of things every day because I have to,” he said. “I try to balance them out with things I want to do, like buying a beautiful woman a cup of coffee.”
He had nice hands, clean and square and long-fingered. No rings.
“Exactly how many sweeteners did you put in there?” Abony asked.
The smile became a grin. “Just enough to make it too damn sweet, which is the only way I can drink coffee. I hate the stuff.”
That startled a laugh out of her. “Then don’t drink it.”
He rolled his eyes. “And lose all my cred as a serious professional? Please.” Finished stirring, he wiped his hand on a napkin and held it out. “Jonathan Martin—Jon to my friends.”
“Abony, with an ‘a’.”
“Beautiful,” he said, then let go of her hand to smack himself theatrically on the forehead. “I’ve only been talking to you for five minutes and already I’m repeating myself!”
Abony pressed her lips together to keep from laughing again, only because he so clearly wanted her to, then saw his eyes drop to her mouth and felt herself flush.
“I have to get to work, Mr. Martin—”
“Jon.”
“Jon, I really do have to get to work.”
The barista called out her order and Abony hesitated. She knew prolonging this conversation was a bad idea, but just now it was hard to remember why.
“I have to get to work too,” Jon said. He took a sip of his coffee and made such a horrible face that Abony had to stifle a giggle. “I’m a forensic accountant, which I’m only telling you because I want you to trust me and really, how can you not trust a forensic accountant? So I have to get to work and you have to get to work, but eventually we both leave work, and sometimes, almost every night in fact, I eat dinner. You?”
God, she was tempted. She must have looked torn because he pressed on and said the worst thing he could possibly have said, though of course he couldn’t have known.
“I promise to take you someplace worthy of those shoes.”
And Abony went cold and still inside, must have gone cold and still on the outside too from the look on his face. She turned her back on him, grabbed the coffee he’d bought her, and walked away. He’d almost had her, Mr. Jon Martin with his dazzling smile and his wit and his excellent hands. She might have agreed to have dinner with him. Thank God he’d reminded her why she couldn’t.
* * *
Abony’s shoes today were leopard-print pony hair with red-capped toes studded with spikes and three-inch heels. They weren’t even beautiful; they were ferocious. They made her calves pop and her butt sway when she walked and their heels didn’t give a rat’s ass about sore feet or twisted ankles. All they cared about was keeping Abony literally on her toes. Those heels were so sharp-edged and slender that they’d make excellent weapons in a pinch. As she pushed open the door of the Starbucks, Abony imagined stabbing one of those heels right into the CEO’s neck. It might ruin the shoe, but it would be worth it.
Out on the sidewalk she slipped her sunglasses on and started mentally going through her day: meetings all morning starting at nine, but only two in the afternoon, which wasn’t the worst line-up she’d ever had. She’d be able to grab lunch and would also have space at the end of the day to actually do some of the work those meetings would generate.
“Abony.”
She almost walked right past, but then heard her name again, more urgently—“Abony!”—and turned to see Ranjani rising from a nearby bench. Ranjani’s glossy black hair was braided to the side today, wrapped in red silk cord that matched her top.
Abony stepped out of the flow of pedestrian traffic. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
Ranjani’s pretty mouth twisted. “Is it that obvious?”
“I figured you’d had enough of me for a while after last Friday,” Abony said, biting her tongue to keep from adding and I don’t blame you, because dammit, she wasn’t going to apologize for trying to get them both free. “But here you are on a bench right between Starbucks and our building,” she went on, “and you’re not just taking time with your own drink. You don’t even have one.”
“I wasn’t stalking you or anything!” Ranjani cried. She sat down abruptly and started pleating her skirt in her hands. “And I don’t like coffee. I just figured most people from the office start their day here so it was a good bet you did too. I didn’t…” she faltered. “I could have texted you but—”
“It’s fine,” Abony said. “Scoot over.”
Ranjani slid down to one side of the bench and Abony sat down next to her, took the lid off her cup, and took a healthy swallow.
“You think he’s watching us right now?” she asked idly, which made Ranjani jump and clutch her braid.
“No! I mean—is he? Do you think he is?”
Abony shrugged. Since Friday’s debacle at the police station and the creepy text message suggesting—what? that what the CEO had done to her had something to do with fairy tales?—she’d been sleeping badly. Several times she’d jerked awake and lain still with her heart racing, half-convinced that her feet had been chopped off while she slept and that when she turned on the light she’d see red stains on the sheets.
Now she looked over and saw that Ranjani was pressing her whole body back into the bench, her eyes huge.
“I don’t actually think he’s watching us, Rani,” Abony said. “I just feel paranoid, probably the same sort of thing that made you try to meet me here rather than texting or calling. Wait—is that why you wanted to talk to me? Did you get that weird text on Friday?”
“What text?”
“It looked like it was from our IT alert system, one of those mass alerts that goes to everybody, but it was clearly just for me. Whoever sent it knew what happened—at least the part about the damn shoes.”
Ranjani peeled herself off the bench.
“What did it say?”
“It linked to a website,” Abony said. “Some discussion board about fairy tales of all things. Creeped me out.”
“I didn’t get the text,” Ranjani said. “But I know who sent it.”
“Him?”
“No.” Ranjani shook her head. “But it’s related to why I need to talk to you. Can I see the message?”
She held out her hand with such unexpected assurance that Abony scrolled to find the message and handed the phone over. Ranjani clicked and actually smiled when she first saw the Discord site header. Her face fell as she read the discussion thread, though, and she bit her lip.
“Wow,” she said as she handed the phone back. “I didn’t know any of that stuff, did you?”
Abony shook her head. “So who sent it to me and why shouldn’t I be freaked out?”
“Maia English, from IT. You know her, right?”
Ah yes, the ever-present assumption that HR knew everyone at the company. Abony rolled her eyes behind her sunglasses even as she registered that she did know Maia, had worked with her on several company policies and protocols around personal content on company computers. She’d also processed Maia’s work-from-home request at the end of January, though that wasn’t something she was at liberty to share.
