“Girl! You’re late again!” Stepmother said, walking into Girl’s room without knocking. “You were on the phone after we told you to go to bed, weren’t you?”
“I was talking to Jacob. We’re having problems,” Girl said.
“You are always having problems. I don’t know why you need a boyfriend. You need to focus on school. If you dated girls you wouldn’t have these problems.”
For years, Girl had been terrified that she would turn into a lesbian in her sleep and wake up to a life of lies and hiding and would be ostracized forever. Stepmother had known she was a lesbian since she was twelve. Mother always said that she was a “political lesbian” and it wasn’t until she got heavy into feminism that she became a lesbian. Girl thought being a lesbian was just about the worst thing that could happen to you, and she was strongly anti-feminist, just in case. Her boyfriend’s father, just like every guy she ever met, had asked her gruffly, “Do you ever think you’re a lesbian?” when he heard about her parents. No, she was not a lesbian, and no, if she was, it would not magically solve all her problems. She had enough girl drama with her best friend to know females were not any easier to get along with.
Stepmother walked out and Girl dressed quickly, rummaging through the discarded clothes on the floor. Girl had clothing crises almost every morning that required several outfit changes, but she never hung things back up, instead throwing them in piles of clean, dirty, and semi-clean laundry. Jeans and T-shirts went on easy that morning without ironing. Girl hated wrinkles so much she’d iron Brother’s clothes for him, back when he lived at home. He was gone now, had moved to Alaska to live with their father.
Stepmother walked back in, one hand behind her back and an odd look in her eyes. She looked calculating, sinister, slightly unbalanced. She was grinning but it wasn’t a happy look. It was a look that made Girl’s hair stand up on her arms and her leg muscles yearn to run. It was a look she was intimately familiar with since Stepmother started taking lithium.
“If you masturbated, you wouldn’t need a boyfriend,” Stepmother said. “I understand that you want sex, but you can do it yourself. I don’t know why your mother won’t talk to you about this, but someone has to.”
Stepmother brought her hands forward to show Girl a plastic torpedo the color of old teeth. Girl knew exactly what it was, and although catalogs listed it as a six-inch facial massager, ivory color, she knew better. Her brother had found their parents’ vibrator years ago in the nightstand table on Stepmother’s side of the bed and had showed it to his sister, but Girl wasn’t going to tell Stepmother that she had seen it before.
“Have you ever used a vibrator? Your mother likes it quite a lot. You could borrow it sometimes,” Stepmother said.
I have to get out of here, Girl’s brain screamed, but Stepmother was blocking the door. There was no escape.
“Just give me your hand. I’m not going to use it on you, I just want you to see how it feels.”
“No!” Girl pushed past Stepmother and ran for the stairs.
“I just want to show you how it works! You are being ridiculous!”
“You are not touching me with that thing! It was in Mom’s vagina!” Girl thundered down the stairs, one hand on the bannister and the other on the wall for balance so she wouldn’t fall. Stepmother caught up to Girl in the living room, the vibrator still clenched in her small, hairless fist.
“Stop acting like a child. I was just going to use it on your hand so you could see how it feels. I am a woman, there is nothing inappropriate about this. You are too sensitive. Don’t you push your issues with your father onto me,” Stepmother said. “I am nothing like your father. I have never, ever, done or said anything inappropriate. That’s your issue with your father. I am a woman, not a man.”
Girl shoved her bare feet into cotton boat shoes and grabbed her purse as she ran out the door, slamming it behind her.
Stepmother opened the door too quickly, banging it into the wall, her voice catching Girl before she reached the sidewalk. “There is nothing inappropriate about this! You are being silly!” Stepmother repeated, but Girl didn’t look back. School suddenly didn’t seem so bad now, even though she had left her book bag and hadn’t made a lunch. She ran the first block, then slowed to a walk and lit a cigarette. I cannot wait to leave this place, she thought, too angry to cry. The cigarette distilled her shame into resolve. I will tell no one about this, ever, she promised herself, but of course she told her friends when she got to school. It was proof that Stepmother was crazy—one more story to sum up why Girl needed to leave home.
Girl suspected that her mother would never believe her, or if she did, she’d say Girl was overreacting. Everyone always said that Girl was always overreacting. Girl knew that a lot of her friends had it a lot worse than she did. She knew what had happened wasn’t the same as being molested or raped. It made her sick and made her want to curl up and not let anyone touch her, hissing like a barnacle closing its shell when Stepmother walked by, but it wasn’t like Girl had been touched. I am just being too sensitive, Girl told herself, trying to believe it. She didn’t know how not to be too sensitive. But
