Freeing Tara

         Both Tara and I were atheists. I have been for pretty much as long as I can remember, even as a little kid. There’s no particular reason; religion’s just never really made sense to me, and it never will.
         Tara, on the other hand, had more of a reason. She went through some pretty tough things. From the age of 10 until she was about 15, she was sexually abused by her stepfather. For the longest time, she was too ashamed and scared to tell anyone. But eventually, it came out.

         We were at a little party at our friend Erin’s house. This was a couple of months before we started going out, but I already liked her. Everyone was outside, just messing around and having a good time. All of the guys there thought it would be funny if we threw the girls into Erin’s pool. I thought it sounded fun, so I joined in.
         Once everyone gathered on the deck by the pool for lunch, all of us guys chose our targets and made our move. Unfortunately for us, the girls were on to our little scheme and tried to make a break for it. The girls scattered all over the yard, each followed by a boy. The chase was on.
         My target was Tara. She leaped off of the deck. When I did the same, I landed wrong and tumbled over, rolling a few feet. It only took a second for me to get back on my feet, and I was after her again.
         “How are you supposed to catch me if you can’t even stay on your feet?” she taunted from ahead.
         Tara wove through the few trees that provided cover for her in the yard, trying to lose me. But it wasn’t working. Slowly but surely, I was gaining on her. Seeing that the back door to Erin’s house – and the back door to her sanctuary – was open, Tara made one final sprint towards freedom. Unfortunately for her, this sprint was across open grass; there were no trees, shrubs, or anything of the sort for her to try to lose me around.
         I quickly closed the gap between myself and Tara. When I finally caught up with her, I wrapped my arms around her stomach and pulled her to the ground. It wasn’t a rough tackle, so the reaction I got kind of caught me off guard.
         “Owww!” she yelled.
         “Sorry!” I replied. I let go right away. I stood up and offered her my hand to help her up. She accepted. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t think I grabbed you that hard.”
         “Oh, you didn’t,” she said. “I’m just kinda sore there. I guess that fall earlier was harder than it looked.” She gave a weak little laugh, gently rubbing her left side.
         I remembered seeing her trip and fall earlier, so I shrugged the whole ordeal off. But something didn’t quite seem right.
         The weeks went by, and Tara and I became closer and closer. All the while, I was mustering up the nerve to ask her out. I’d been trying to bring myself to do it for the longest time, but I never managed to. The words were bouncing around in my mouth, struggling to break out and ask the simple question, “Will you go out with me?” But they remained locked in by a simple fear of sounding stupid.
         Erin knew what I was going through, and she offered me some great advice.
         “If you can’t get the words out, find another way to ask,” she said.
         So I did. One Saturday night, I showed up to her apartment door with a rose and two tickets to see Pride and Prejudice at the local movie theater. She’d been telling me nonstop how badly she wanted to see it. I inhaled deeply and raised my fist to knock on the door.
         And then I lowered it. Turning to walk away from the door, I thought, This is stupid. She’ll just laugh me away when she sees me.
         So, you’re just going to give up, then? I argued back. After all of this time wanting her, you’re going to give up when you’re closer than ever to actually asking her?
         Before the other half of this internal argument could reply, I turned back around and knocked on the door.
         No response.
         But wait, what was that? I thought I’d heard glass break inside. Fearing that there was an intruder, I twisted the doorknob and let myself in.
         “Hello? Is anybody home?” I asked the quiet apartment.
         “No more!” I heard from one of the bedrooms, followed by an angry-sounding deeper voice. The first shout sounded like Tara, and was followed by a scream of, “Get off me!”
         Obviously, Tara was in trouble. I glanced around quickly for some sort of weapon, found a large steak knife, and ran down the hall towards Tara’s cries. The rose and the tickets lay temporarily forgotten in the kitchen. I shoved the bedroom door open, and the scene I saw is one that will plague me forever.
         Tara was lying on the bed, pinned down by her stepfather. Both of them were completely naked. Signs of a struggle were everywhere. Tara’s clothes were strewn all about. Her panties sat at the edge of the bed, the hem ripped half off. A smiling family portrait of Tara, her mom, and her stepdad now took residence on the floor, buried in the shattered glass which had once neatly covered it when it had lived on the wall.
         I froze in utter shock. This was the last thing I expected to see. Tara’s red, puffy eyes bored straight into my heart. I’d never seen anybody look so scared and helpless.
         “Jake! Help me!” she yelled, choking on her tears. Mr. Remsaid turned to look at me, saw the knife I wielded, and knew that it was over. He practically rolled off of Tara onto the floor and came up holding a pair of his boxers in front of his crotch. Apparently, now was the time for discretion.
         Meanwhile, Tara ran past me, covering herself with her hands, and dashed into the bathroom. I could hear the sobs coming from within.
         “It’s not what it looked like!” Mr. Remsaid claimed.
         “Shut up!” I returned. Real witty, I know. But I had other things on my mind than a good comeback line. I had no idea of what to do. I couldn’t stand there forever. Something had to be done. The nearest phone was in the living room, but I couldn’t use it to call the cops because I knew I couldn’t let him out of my sight for a minute. He was close enough to disarm me if I was ever off my guard. And somebody had to see if Tara was all right.
         All of these options ran through my head at lightning speed. Finally, a solution presented itself.
         “Police! Drop your weapon!” I heard from the front door. I turned to look and saw two cops with their guns trained on me.
         I slowly set the knife down and said, “The guy you want is in there!” I pointed into the room, and the cops slowly made their way down the hall, their weapons never wavering. The first cop went into the bedroom to see what was going on, and the second stayed in the hallway with me.
         “Who’s in the bathroom?” he asked me, noticing the light spilling from beneath the door.
         “Her name is Tara,” I replied. “That guy was about to…hurt her, but I heard them fighting from outside and came in to make sure nothing was wrong.”
         As it turned out, one of their neighbors also heard them arguing and called the cops. When Mr. Remsaid was cuffed, Tara opened the bathroom door and walked out, now dressed in a lavender bathrobe. Physically, she was okay. Emotionally, she was traumatized. We were taken down to the police station to make our statements. I told them everything that had happened. So did Tara.
         “My mom left for some big business meeting in Atlanta, leaving me alone with him. I begged her not to go, but she didn’t listen. She didn’t know what was going on, so I can’t really blame her.
         “He’s been doing this to me for 5 years, and every other time, I just took it. This time, though, I decided that I couldn’t just let him hurt me anymore, and I fought back. It was pretty much useless, though. Fighting him just seemed to make him enjoy it more. He took his clothes off, tore mine off, and pinned me down on the bed. That’s when Jake walked in and scared him off.”
         Once she heard what her husband was doing to her daughter, Mrs. Remsaid (she’d made the grave mistake of taking his last name when they married) rushed back from Georgia, apologizing profusely to Tara for leaving her baby alone with a monster. She divorced his ass, and he was eventually convicted of 1st degree criminal sexual conduct and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Maybe there he’ll get a little taste of what he dished out. I’ve heard that inmates don’t tend to like guys that hurt kids.
         Needless to say, there was no Pride and Prejudice that night.
         Even though she was now free from the abuse, Tara never really fully recovered. Before it all, she was quite religious, full of faith. But once the abuse began, her faith slowly began drifting away, until she was left hopeless and unconfident. Since then, she’d never been able to believe in any sort of god. Or herself, for that matter.
         “What kind of god would allow something like that to happen?” she’d asked me. I really couldn’t give her an answer.
         In some strange way, all of that had brought the two of us closer together. I didn't end up asking her out, because I never really needed to. Our relationship just sort of happened. I've read that a traumatic situation can bring two people closer together than a lifetime of friendship, and I guess that was true.
         Her emotional scars always showed, even if they did fade a little. I suspect that they’d still be there even if she’d lived to be 1,000 years old. That didn’t stop me from trying to help the fading, of course. Every day, I reminded her of how beautiful, smart, and just overall incredible she was. She always denied it, but I still think it helped for her to hear it.