I slump into the passenger seat of my girly little Sierra Pine Nissan Sentra and slam the door. The car rocks slightly as Damien drops into the driver's seat. The second his door is closed, a dam bursts inside me. I lean toward him and for the first time that day I let down my guard and admit how I truly feel.
"What a crock! X the perfect friend, the perfect father, the perfect son, the perfect Christian. If they only knew. If they only--"
"I never want to hear his name again." Damien stares straight ahead through the windshield and turns the key in the ignition. "It's X this, X that. X, X, X. I don't want to hear his name again. Ever."
I slump back in my seat. A door in my heart swishes closed.
This is not the reason Damien and I are divorced seven years later. It is only symptomatic of the breakdown in intimacy that was already begun years before X's death.
***
The night that X rapes me for the first time, I have a nightmare. In this nightmare, I am asleep. A sudden wind howls through the open window above my bed. The green curtains slap in the wind. I open my eyes to see mist streaming into my room from the window. It swirls and separates into a distinct form. The devil. He fills the room. He looms over me and laughs in my face. I feel his breath. "What you have done is a very bad thing." He cackles. "You are a bad, bad girl." He waggles a misty finger. "Come." He lifts me from my bed and carries me toward the window. I turn to mist and float through the screen into the night, under the ground, and down, down, down to the bowels of the earth. I transform into flesh again, and I feel the heat before I see the fires. The flames lick, lick, lick at me, scorching me alive. I scream. "No! No. No. No, no, no, no, no!"
In the waking world, my eyes snap open. Sweat molds my nightgown to my body. I leap from my bed and run through the dark to my door. The doorknob. Where is it? I run my hands all over the door, but the knob is gone. I can't get out. I bang my fists on the door. "Help!" I shout. "Mommy! Help me! Help!"
I hear a noise behind me and stop the banging. I turn around. The hallway light floods my room. My mother stands silhouetted in the doorway. "Kelly Ann! What in the world is the matter?"
In my terror, I have mistaken the sliding closet door for my bedroom door. I am on the wrong side of the room.
***
Now that X has raped me, he is no longer satisfied to just touch my private places. He is no longer satisfied to just take my hand and make me touch his private place. He wants to have intercourse every time we are in the same place at the same time.
Not that I know the word rape. Not that I know the word intercourse. I only know that when X touches me, I feel dirty and ugly and ashamed. When he fucks me, I feel dirtier, uglier and more ashamed. I don't know why I feel this way.
When no one is looking, X makes the fuck sign with his fingers and thumb. Then he points at me and at himself. I shake my head no. He nods yes. His eyes are alight. The corners of his mouth are turned up. I can say no all I want. In the end, he will get his way.
I try to hide when he comes over. I hide in the breezeway. I hide in the loft above the garage. I hide in the willow tree. But he always finds me.
If I fight hard enough, he cannot always get what he wants. But he is stronger than I am, so he can hold me down. Thrashing and kicking and slapping only wear me out. "Be careful," he warns. "If you leave marks I'm gonna tell on you."
"So? I'll tell on you."
He grins down at me. "If you do, I'll just say that you wanted it. I'll say you asked for it. And you liked it. Who are they going to believe?"
Other times, when he is done with me, he'll put a finger to his lips. "Remember, don't tell."
At school we watch a movie with a cartoon pony named Patch. Patch instructs us to not take candy from strangers. To never get in a car with a stranger. To never let a stranger touch us. "Neigh, neigh. From strangers stay away," he says. Patch says nothing about people we know. He never says what we should do if we are touched by someone our parents know and love and invite into our house.
One afternoon when I am fifteen, I head downstairs to the laundry room when X arrives and I start sorting and folding clothes. I don't ever do chores without being asked first. I am only doing laundry because I can close and lock the laundry room doors. But X figures out where I am, as always, and he is able to jiggle the pocket door and free the lock. He stands behind me and cups my chest. Anger foams up in me like the fizz at the top of a glass when I pour Coke in it.
Before I know what I'm doing, I whirl around to face him. I hear a sharp smack. It's only when X leaps back and clutches his cheek that I realize I have punched him in the face. I see the shock and pain in his eyes. I stomp past him out the door and up the stairs, smiling to myself. He doesn't try to touch me again that day.
No comments:
Post a Comment