The Tell: A Memoir

In the days following her revelation, Amy took solace in her family. However, she worried about how to protect her children from the kind of abuse she had experienced. She also felt the need for someone to validate her experience. She wanted to share her story, but she worried about how to tell those closest to her. She also didn’t want her friends and family to wonder why she had retreated into her “own world.” Amy confided in a close friend who put her in touch with William, a man who had a similar experience with a teacher and brought charges against his abuser. William’s accusations had convinced several other survivors to come forward, and the man was incarcerated. Inspired by William’s story, Amy decided to seek justice and validation. However, William warned her “that healing is a long road” and urged her to “address [her] own needs” (115) first. Amy brushed off this caution, confident that she could heal herself and seek justice at the same time. She was also surprised when William confessed that he hadn’t shared his story with many others because he was “still processing” his experiences. William’s story made her hopeful, and she told John that she was ready to find Mr. Mason. He agreed to help her organize a background check.

Amy “was in survival mode” (117) in the weeks following the revelation, “disoriented” by her recovered memories. She felt in desperate need of more support, so she confided in Rachel and Courtney, two childhood friends, hoping that they might remember details that would confirm her memories. Rachel first, had no useful memories of Mr. Mason. Courtney didn’t, either, but she began helping Amy to look for information about Mr. Mason. Amy wasn’t ready to hear about Courtney’s findings, but she appreciated her friend’s support.

Amy spent most of her time at home, trying to focus on her children as she anxiously waited for Mr. Mason’s background check to come back. One morning, as she and John were getting ready for a bike ride, John casually mentioned that he had received the background check, but there wasn’t “a lot to show” (121). To Amy, however, this was “earth-shattering news” (121), and she was furious with John’s lack of urgency. They left on their bikes, but partway through the ride, Amy began to shout at John and pedaled away from him as fast as she could. He let her have her space, and she eventually apologized. Back home, John told her that he couldn’t “be the middleman” (122) in her investigation. At first, Amy was hurt, but her therapist helped her to see that John’s boundary was really an “act of love.” He knew Amy “needed a different kind of help from what he could provide” (123).

Back home, Amy was disappointed to see that John was right: there was nothing incriminating in Mr. Mason’s background check. However, when Courtney texted to tell Amy that there was no statute of limitations on rape in Texas, she and John decided to hire a lawyer, and Amy scheduled another session with Olivia.

Amy had “always had trouble with boundaries” (125), especially with her work and with motherhood, pushing herself “past what was healthy” (126). This issue was on Amy’s mind when she got an email from James. Their relationship had remained “friendly” in the years after their contact, but now she suddenly wondered why she allowed a man who had raped her to continue being a part of her life. She deleted the message without responding. That night, she thought of all the times she had excused men’s “bad behavior” when they had hurt her, made her uncomfortable, or made inappropriate remarks about her body. With John, she felt safe enough to get angry, but when other men treated her badly, she tried to placate them.

Amy walked into her second MDMA session eager to discover new information. However, when the drug took effect, she was back in the middle school bathroom as Mr. Mason forced her to give him a blow job. This time, she wasn’t watching from the sidelines but through her own young eyes, and she could remember the sensations and emotions. When he looked down at her, she smiled at her abuser, hoping that he would “set [her] free” if it looked like she was “having a good time” (128). Next, Amy saw a new memory. She was a teenager, driving herself to a tennis game, when she saw Mr. Mason in the parking lot. He asked her to go with him “for old times’ sake” (129), and she followed him without resisting. 

Instead of wondering why she hadn’t resisted, the adult Amy was overcome by compassion for her younger self. She knew that Mr. Mason had a sense of absolute power over her, and she was doing the only thing she knew to keep herself safe.

Amy’s new lawyer, Cate, met with her at home on a weekend. Amy trusted her immediately and told her story. Cate warned that Mr. Mason could countersue for defamation, but Amy was sure that pursuing justice was the only way to move forward. The only thing that could deter her was possible harm to her children. Cate told her they would start an investigation to look for other possible survivors, and Amy suggested they look for her classmate Claudia and her coach, Bess Taylor. However, she begged Cate to be discreet; she still didn’t know how to tell her family, and she didn’t want them to learn of the investigation.

John planned a weekend getaway to the country, but Amy spent much of the time overcome with anger at herself and others. She was angry that she had hidden the abuse for so long and that no one had seen her distress and come to her rescue. She thought of her volleyball coach, Bess Taylor. She remembered her coach’s praise and the way she had made Amy feel “seen,” but examining her memories more closely, she realized that her coach was chronically overwhelmed and wondered if she had worked so hard to “spare her the discomfort of having to be a disciplinarian” (137). She remembered Coach Taylor talking to Mr. Mason and felt angry that the coach hadn’t been able to protect her. She felt “betrayed” by everyone she had trusted.

As the investigation in Amarillo got underway, several women who spoke with Cate’s investigators remembered Mr. Mason “as being ambiently creepy” (139), but no more specific instances of abuse were uncovered. Claudia, whom Amy had hoped would remember something, claimed to have almost no memories of middle school.

As summer ended and Amy’s children headed back to school, Amy was consumed by fear for their safety. She knew they “were in the best hands” (141), but they were still “so vulnerable,” and she worried that what happened to her could befall her daughters. After the recall of her memories, Amy began taking notes compulsively, needing to find concrete proof so that others would believe her. She worried that she would overlook some key details, so she wrote everything down and began recording her therapy sessions with Lauren.

Amy  tracked down Bess Taylor’s phone number, and they set up a time to talk. The conversation started with light reminiscing, but Amy began to sweat when Bess announced that she had warned Mr. Mason when some investigators began calling around and asking questions about him. She scoffed that the allegations must have been “bogus” because Mr. Mason was “amazing.” Amy went silent, and Bess correctly interpreted this as an admission of the abuse that Amy had survived. Distraught, Bess apologized for not helping Amy during that time. She admitted that she was also abused as a girl and “just hit the ground running” (146) after she graduated. While coaching Amy and her classmates, Bess was just 21 years old and struggling with the demands of her new job. Amy didn’t get the corroboration she hoped for, but she did come to a new understanding of abuse as “a tangled mess of shame and silence” (147). She understood how easy it was to look away from things people didn’t want to see.