Page 21 of I Can’t Even Think Straight
Best Friends—After School—Yiayia and Bapou’s Garden
Vass and I sit in silence on the swings
at the far end of Yiayia and Bapou’s garden.
Vass’s face is wet from crying,
but their tears have stopped streaming.
I want to tell Vass I feel bad for not realizing
something so serious had happened to them,
but I don’t want to make this moment about me.
I don’t know what to say.
I don’t know whether to ask more questions
or wait for more information.
Eventually, I say, “Thank you for telling me.
And, for what it’s worth,
you made the right choice
telling your mum first:
it sounds like she’s been amazing.
I wouldn’t have known what to do
if you’d told me first.”
I feel guilty admitting this,
but it’s a truth Vass knows about me:
I don’t deal well with stress.
I don’t think straight under pressure.
My two main adult role models,
Mum and Granny, don’t either.
Vass pulls a small packet of tissues
from their pocket, and there’s only one left.
I think of all the tears they must’ve cried
alone
and with Theía Estélla.
They dab their face dry.
“I thought my mum would blame me.”
“It’s not your fault, Vass,” I say gently.
“I know, but it’s not like I’m a virgin.”
“That’s beside the point,” I say too angrily.
I catch myself: I’m angry with the wrong person.
“He had no right to do that to you, Vass.
No one has the right to make you do anything,
regardless of what you’ve done before.”
“I know,” says Vass.
They hang their head and begin to cry again.
My whole body shudders involuntarily
the moment Vass isn’t looking at me.
It’s like I’ve been holding that shudder in.
I don’t want Vass to see
that I feel sick to my stomach,
that I fantasized about having sex with Adonis
at night when I zoomed in on that photo of him.
I feel guilty, disgusted, and confused.
As their best friend,
I wish there was more I could do to support them,
besides listen and reassure them
that it wasn’t their fault.
They’ve already told me
that after discussing it with their mum
they’ve found a sexual assault support group,
which they plan to go to,
and they’re on a waiting list for a therapist.
Vass tells me it felt like they left their body
while it was happening.
“It’s called dissociation,” they say.
They’ve decided not to report Adonis
to the police in Cyprus.
I worry about this.
I worry Adonis might
sexually assault someone else,
but I don’t feel it’s my place to say.
It’s Vass’s choice, at the end of the day.
I do my best not to think about Adonis.
Vass is my concern, not him.
I rest my hand on Vass’s back
between their jutting shoulder blades.
For a few agonizing moments,
we stay like this,
side by side on our swings.
When Vass stands,
I stand with them.
They turn and throw
their arms around me,
and cry even harder
into my shoulder.
I’ve never been
someone’s shoulder
to cry on before.
I recall how Granny
was my shoulder
to cry on recently.
Vass sobs and squeezes me tight.
I squeeze them back.
I rub their back.
“Ελα. Ε?ναι εντ?ξει, αγ?πη μου.
Ε?ναι εντ?ξει.”
Yiayia looks out
from the kitchen window,
but I don’t let go.
Yiayia and Bapou don’t say much,
even though we all speak the same languages.
If Yiayia and Bapou have opinions about us,
they don’t express them in Greek or English.