In the Wilderness - Kim Barnes [89]
I cried. I pleaded my innocence and promised obeisance. I did not go to the party.
Perhaps because he seemed already to own me, or perhaps because my chastity with Luke had, finally, been perverted into something unimaginable, I didn’t resist his sexual advances. I separated myself from his desperate fumblings, numbed myself to whatever pleasure and emotion I might have felt. My only desire lay in pleasing him, in being whatever it was he needed me to be.
Often, after evening service my friends and I would meet at a local restaurant to drink 7 Up and eat fries sodden with ketchup. One night, because Tom was working late at his afterschool job, I left my parents’ car in the church parking lot (driving it a recently awarded privilege) and caught a ride to the cafe with two male friends from the church. We spent several hours talking and laughing with others our age, and I felt an odd exhilaration brought on by saying what I wanted to say without feeling Tom’s silencing gaze. I was still flush with my freedom when the boys dropped me off at the church.
Tom was waiting for me in his pickup. The boys must have seen as I did the set of his face: more than sullen, closer to fury.
“Do you want us to stay?”
“No. It’ll be okay. Thanks.”
They drove off slowly while I stood between my car and his pickup, wishing that I were back at the restaurant with its smiling waitresses and fluorescent lights. One lamp shone over the lot, illuminating a single corner with its glow. I watched moths flit across its beam, the shadows they cast huge and distorted.
“Get in.” His breath escaped out the cracked window and disappeared. I made my way to the passenger side, opened the door and pulled myself onto the stiff seat.
“So, did you fuck them?”
“What?”
“You heard me.” The whites of his eyes caught and reflected the light.
“I didn’t … We went for a Coke.” I kept my hand on the door handle, thinking I could make it to my car before he caught me.
“Bitch.”
“Don’t call me that. I didn’t do anything.”
“Whore.”
I shook my head. He’d called me names before—stupid, dumb, cheap when he thought I was flirting—but never had he used words like these.
“Tom, nothing happened. They gave me a ride, that’s all. Ask everyone else who was there. Ask …”
“Liar!” He lunged across the seat, pinning me against the door. He was strangling me, crushing my throat with his fingers.
“You slut!” He hit my head against the window until I screamed. Then, as though someone had dragged him backward by his shirt, he fell away, staring at me. In his eyes I saw horror, not at what he had done but at what I had driven him to do. I was monstrous.
I fumbled at the handle and fell onto the asphalt. The door slammed, the engine shrieked alive and he was gone. I listened to the squeal of his tires around corners, the sound growing more and more distant, finally fading away altogether, until all that remained were the sounds of the city.
I can hear the mill, I thought. There’s the train and the river. I didn’t care that someone might find me, ear pressed to the ground like a Hollywood Indian. I didn’t care that he might come back, or that my parents might be planning my punishment for coming in past curfew. This is what mattered—me, by myself, just outside the light’s perimeter, blending with the night.
No one knew what had happened, not even my mother, who may have read in my face some pain but did not ask, giving what she could by admonishing my coming in late with words instead of grounding. The next day, when Tom came to the door with flowers, I took them without smiling and placed them in a vase, then folded my hands in front of me and waited. I believed I loved him, and that he loved me. Why else would he have acted so passionately? Why else would it hurt so bad to imagine his absence? The high-necked blouse I wore to cover the marks on my neck also served as a reminder of subservient modesty. I would not anger him again, would not cause him to question my loyalty. If I failed to make him happy, as I had that night by consorting with