'Just hold on to me, huh?'
Her voice was very small against me. She sniffled, laughed a little.
'I... I think I've got a screw loose somewhere, you know? So please
just... hold on?'
I did hold her.
And then a little later I heard her sigh.
'God, I'm fucked up!'
'You want to tell me about it?'
She laughed again. It was weighted with sadness.
'No.'
'Tell me anyhow.'
For a moment she was very still. My hand found the warm bare flesh of
her shoulder where I'd torn the shirt. Her breathing was calmer and
more even now.
'He hasn't done anything fora longtime now. I'd almost forgiven him.
Both of us.'
She paused, thought a moment. Her voice turned colder.
'No, I hadn't. That's a lie.'
'Who? Who are we talking about?'
'My father.'
She turned her head away from me slightly so that it rested just below
my shoulder and stared out through the windshield. Clouds had parted
for the moon again just moments before and now I saw snail tracks of
tears across her cheeks, bathed in cool white light, dissolving the tan
into something pale and famished-looking.
'He drinks. A lot. You're not supposed to do that when you're
vice-president of a bank. So he drinks at home where there's nobody
there but us to see.
'My mother would go out. Clubs and meetings and all that, the kind of
thing that's expected of a wife in ... her position. Because he
couldn't manage his end of it. Get him around liquor, and he's drunk.
So he stayed in. With us, me and Jimmie, my little brother. Maybe she
just wanted to get away from him. I don't know.
'He's not a bad man. He's not mean. Even when he's drunk, he's not
mean. Just weak, and foolish. She's very smart. Intolerant, and
disappointed, I guess. They should never have married at all. But
where she comes from, you get married. You just do.'
She glanced at me once and then looked away, shaking her head.
'I'm not doing so good at this.'
'Go on.'
'When I was thirteen ... I guess you could say he raped me.'
I waited. I could feel something clog my throat. I think I'd half
expected it. I felt the sudden press of the inevitable. Itwasas
though the car sat underneath a bell jar and we were in a perfect
vacuum, with everything extraneous sucked out of it and us except this
one moment in time, this one event.
Figure this if you can:
It was then that she seduced me utterly.
I waited. I don't think I so much as blinked. Perhaps a car went by,
playing over us with its headlights. I know I saw her very clearly.
'I was in the tub. I still liked baths then. 'We were never very big
on privacy. I'd left the door open. I looked up and saw him standing
there, and I knew he was drunk. You could always tell. He looked bad.
Very bad. I wasn't angry. I felt sorry for him. I watched him
looking at me and I didn't yell and for a while I didn't move or say a
word. He'd seen me naked before, but this was ... different. I was
already a woman by then. I knew. I really knew. And I felt bad for
him.
'I got up and wrapped a towel around me and walked past him. He didn't
touch me. He didn't say anything. I went into my bedroom and closed
the door. I remember looking into the mirror for a long, longtime.
'I read for a while until I got sleepy and then I went to bed. I could
hear him rattling a round downstairs in the kitchen. I guess he was
drinking some more. But I couldn't sleep. I'd get close and then I'd
drift back and I'd hear him again.
'How can I say this? I... wanted him to come in. I used to think I'd
willed him there. He was so obviously, so terribly unhappy. And I
I watched the tears come, watched her fight them to submission before
they could take hold of her again.
'... and I loved him. He was my father. He'd never harmed me.
'I heard his footsteps on the stairs and then the door opened and then
he was next to me on the bed, and he was making these sounds and he
smelled of whiskey. The smell was bad and the sounds were bad, like
someone hurt and frightened. His hands felt so much bigger than I
thought they would.
'He stroked my hair and my cheek. He put his hand on my breast. I was
wearing pyjamas. He pulled the bottoms off me. I was sea red, the way
he looked. I asked him to stop. I told him I was sorry, like a little
girl who'd been bad. 'I'm sorry,' I said, over and over. I was crying
by then. But he kept on touching me. He wasn't hurting me but I was
scared, really scared, and I started yelling for him to
stop and yelling that I'd tell, I'd tell my mother, and over and over
saying I was sorry
'So then Jimmie came into the room. Rubbing his eyes. Adumb little
kid, eight years old, half-asleep, wondering what all the commotion's
about. And there's my father with his pants half-off, and there's his
sister bare-assed in bed with Daddy's hand between her legs, and
there's blood ... all over the sheets, all over my legs. Blood I've
just seen for the first time now.
'He ran out of there so fast it scared me worse than I already was, and
my father, I remember he just groaned like I'd hurt him bad or
something, only it was worse than that, an awful shuddery sound. But
he rolled off me. And I... I went after Jimmie.
