X looks in death as he did in life. Boyish and beautiful. The dark lashes are still as long as a girl's. His cheekbones are Johnny Depp chiseled. The only thing that looks off is the odd smirk on his lips. It reminds me of the Red Devil on his shirt that awful day.
Part of me wants to cry, but not for him. I want to cry for me, because I never confronted him about what he did to me. I never got an admission of guilt from him, never received an apology. These would not completely heal the wounds he gave me. But they would allow me to transfer to him the guilt and shame I have carried all these years for the terrible things he did to me.
Another part of me wants to scream obscenities at his corpse. I fantasize about smashing his coffin to bits with a baseball bat.
My husband interrupts my fantasy by gently elbowing my side. I look up to see X's mother approaching. "Kelly," she says, and pulls me against her. She sobs onto my shoulder.
"I'm so sorry," I say. And I am. I am sorry she lost her son. No mother should have to bury her child.
She pulls back and looks at me, then at X. "I wish you two were kids again. You played so good together. You were friends. You were such good friends."
Good friends? Is that what people believe? We were not friends. We were never, ever friends. I want to scream this truth out loud, right here, right now. But I look at X's mother's grief-ravaged face and say, "Yes. Yes, we were."
***
X stands behind me in the bathroom now. His hands brush my body all over. I meet his eye in the mirror just long enough to see the familiar glimmer. At nine years old, I don't possess a word in my vocabulary to define this glimmer. I only know that when it is there, I am afraid. By the time I am twenty I will see that same glimmer in the eyes of other men, and I will have many words to define it: lust, desire, longing, craving, hunger, want.
I slip out from beneath his hands. Without really thinking, I sprint for the door to my parents' room. I run through their room and into my bedroom. I slam the door and sit in front of it, resting my head on my knees. Then I realize the futility of my actions. My door does not lock. I am on the top floor. If I jump out the window I will land on the cement patio. I'll break bones. I feel him pushing against the door, hear him pleading for me to let him in. I push back for a while, but soon grow tired. I give up and crawl out of the way. The door whiffs open.
I turn my back to him, flipping book pages back and forth. I'm too nervous to pretend to read. His finger unties one side of my tank top. I mentally flog myself for not choosing a different shirt to wear. He peels back the top of my shirt on one side and slips his hand over my chest. I hold my breath and stare down at the pages in front of me. He turns my head and his tongue is in my mouth. It tastes sour like pickles. It flops like a fish. When he pulls away, he says, "Let's fuck."
Fuck? What is fuck? He sees my blank expression and explains, "It's what people do when they love each other. It's how you make babies."
He curls the fingers and thumb of one hand to make a circle. He pokes one finger from the other hand in and out of this circle. "Fuck," he says.
I am even more confused by this hand gesture. But I don't have time to think about it because he is pulling my hand. He wants to take me back to the bathroom, where he can lock the doors, in case my brother and sister wander upstairs.
For the second time that day, I give in. It's better sometimes to just let him have his way, get it over with. Except he always comes back for more.
Inside the bathroom, the doors locked, X instructs me to lie on the floor. I lie on my stomach and he tells me to roll over. He pulls down my pink plaid shorts, then my blue-flowered Sears panties. He promises it will not hurt. Then he pulls down his running shorts and white Hanes. I look up at the ceiling. My face is inches from the toilet.
I feel a slight pressure, and then nothing. X moves over me, talking the whole time. "Does it hurt?"
I shake my head no.
He frowns. "It should hurt a little bit."
I tense. He promised it wouldn't hurt! I keep my eyes on the ceiling, listening through the open window to cars passing by. I imagine myself flagging down one of these cars and riding away to someplace where X will never find me. Someplace safe. I feel myself leaving my body. My body is empty, hollow. I float up to the ceiling and watch my empty body being fucked. And my floating self drifts away out the window, never to return.
Later that night, after X has gone, I take a long hot shower. I stand in front of the mirrored shower doors and study my wet naked body, looking for evidence of what I have done. I am transparent, my sin glowing through my skin. Anyone who sees me will know my sin. I have no name for it, but I feel it. I know it. What I have done with X is a terrible, terrible sin. I fall to my knees and whisper, "Forgive me, God. Please, please, please, please forgive me. I'm sorry, God. I'm so, so sorry."
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