I start to tear up and lean my head over my knees. Aunt Marce rubs my back. “I know it hurts when you like someone so much. I know how much it hurts.”
She doesn’t know though. She doesn’t know all of it, and that’s not her fault. It’s mine.
* * *
Dr. Diaz tells my aunt that she doesn’t have to come in and that there’s a medical assistant. Is that okay with me? I nod. I don’t want Aunt Marce anywhere near this exam.
I sit on the table, trying to cover myself with the paper towel gown. My legs crackle over the waxy covering. Too much noise. I’m making too much noise.
Dr. Diaz knocks on the door and comes back in with the medical assistant who gives me this weepy smile. I wonder how many vaginas she’s seen today. It’s only morning. So one other vagina? Maybe two?
“Have you had a talk with anyone about condom use, Ali?” Dr. Diaz asks.
“Yes, I know I’m supposed to use them.”
“But what happened this time? Heat of the moment?”
I squirm. “You could say that.”
She asks about the Plan B. How am I feeling? Fine. Everything’s fine. She’s going to show me the speculum now, is that okay? Sure, I nod. The word speculum sounds like an electronica band. When she holds it in front of me, I realize it’s a metal clamp. A carpenter’s tool.
“That’s going in there?”
She tells me there’ll be a little pressure. That she’ll use lube to make sure it just slides right in. How she uses a heat lamp. She says it’ll feel like light pressure.
“Is this code for it’s going to hurt?”
Not hurt. There’s no hurt. Some people don’t even feel it, she swears. I cross my legs and wrap the gown around my knees. The panic in my stomach churns more, and I look over at the door.
“Look, Ali, if it makes you uncomfortable, we can do this exam over a number of visits. And if at any point you don’t feel comfortable, we can stop.”
“What do you mean ‘stop’?”
“I mean we can just stop right in the middle of the exam. I’ll take out the speculum immediately, and we can either start again or reschedule.”
This is hard to believe.
“And you’ll just stop?”
“I’ll stop right away,” she says. “That’s my promise to you. One that I will never break.” She looks at me with her dark brown eyes. She’s probably always had sincere, trusting eyes. Maybe it’s why she went into medicine, because people wanted her to take care of them.
“Do other girls freak out like this?”
“Well, it depends on the girl. Everyone’s got a different feeling,” she says. “For the record, I don’t think you’re freaking out. I think you’re a little nervous. You’re asking questions. And I love questions.”
But she’s lying. I’m totally freaking out and making a spectacle. I think of other girls and wonder if they sat perfectly still for their first gynecologist’s visit. If their visits were all easy with their moms right next to them.
I want to leave, but I feel like I’m stuck here forever in the prison of lube, heat lamps, speculums, and vaginas.
I cross my arms over the gown. I wish I were wearing my T-shirt.
I wish I were wearing my pajama bottoms with the kittens on them.
I wish I had a pair of zip-up pajamas like I saw at the store last week. The kind with the footies. The kind that snaps at the top so that no one can get in them.
I glance down at my fingernails. They’ve taken a beating over the past few days.
Dr. Diaz takes a long stare at me with her big, brown, trusting eyes and then rolls her little stool over to the table. It whirs in the moist air of the office.
“How about this? How about we don’t do the exam at all today? I can just do an STI swab. That’s all.” She shows me a long Q-tip with a wooden stick. It looks like the kind they swab your throat with at the doctor’s office. “No speculum whatsoever. Really, I want you to feel comfortable,” she says. “We want to be in control of our bodies, right? So you’ll come back when it feels right to you.”
Control is not a word that I can associate with right now. Right now I feel more out of control than I’ve ever felt in my life. Why is this? Because of Saturday night? Because of Sean Nessel? Her words bounce in my mind—they’re like a weird language I don’t understand. Control. Stop. Promise. Speculum.
I convince her that I just have a serious case of nerves. I’m good at convincing people I’m fine. This is something I’ve been doing since I was twelve.
I imagine just telling her. Right now, just like that.
I want to tell her about that night. How I lost my virginity to the boy I love.
Excuse me. Loved.
Obsessed over.
Stalked.
A boy whose face I decorated with flowers and hearts. The kind of boy I would have jumped off a rusty bridge with. Even if he left me in a pond floating with tires. Which he sort of did in a metaphorical way, didn’t he?
I shake my head. If I talk, I’ll cry. I’ll cry so hard I might not be able to end it.
My eyes water. I wind my elbow around my face. I suck in my cries, and my throat burns from it. I can’t hold in the tears though. It’s physically impossible. When tears are ready to explode, you just have to get out of the way. I heave into my elbow and it comes out like hiccups.
“Ali, what’s going on?” Her voice is low now, concerned. I can’t even see her because I’m hiding in the crook of my arm.
“I don’t know why I’m crying.” And that’s the truth. I don’t know. This shouldn’t be such a big deal. Maybe a weird deal. But not a traumatic deal.
“Really,
