Walking on Broken Glass - Christa Allan [24]
“The universe accommodating me?” I asked. “It's about time. I’ve been accommodating the universe for most of my life. For somebody who isn’t a therapist that sounds like a lot of psychobabble.”
She laughed. “I guess you can’t work here for five years and not pick up some babble,” she said. “Universe later … you now. What do you need?”
“Today, I need to know that whatever I eat won’t make an encore,” I told her.
“And I want a drink. When am I going to not want a drink?”
Journal 5
I learned long ago to use compliance and submission to save myself. That to say no only postponed the inevitable. His demands, his accusations, or worse, his sickening pleas for solitary relief all led to revulsion.
I’d wake some nights, terrified by the crushing reality of the nightmare, by its unrelenting physical closeness. But sometimes it was not a nightmare. I ’d awake to his weight pressing on me, his hands groping under my clothes, which I often slept in as an irrational defense. None of it mattered—clothes, no clothes. He would be on top of me, and his goal was not ever waking me up—awake, asleep—like the clothes, they weren’t an issue. He wanted a body on which to press his own. I could feel even the mattress beneath me surrender to him.
There would be no stopping until he was spent. He never asked if I was awake. He didn’t speak. He wanted what he wanted, when he wanted it, and how. I pleaded. He pushed. I cried.
I remembered how my cousins would ambush me in the pool, knowing I couldn’t really swim. They would shove my head underwater and howl when I struggled. The harder I fought, the louder and deeper their laughter.
I used those lessons on those nights. I learned to perform—to act as if none of it mattered.
12
I spent the day like a human boomerang and traveled from one office back to the central station on the floor only to be sent out to yet another office. A seriously flawed system, it seemed, for psychological assessments.
While I schlepped around, subjected to everything from blood work to brain busters, I missed lunch. I headed back to the floor to alert Cathryn. I stepped off the elevator, but as I walked to the central station, I saw that I’d have to wait for her attention.
She and another woman, but one taller and wider, played tug-of-war over a backpack. The woman's hair looked like it had been caught in a blender. Wild strands poked out in every direction, some of them weighted down with colored beads woven on the ends. I definitely wouldn’t want to tangle with her. I stopped and debated if I should hang out in my room until the quiet signaled the storm had blown over. But I’d experienced enough hurricanes in New Orleans to know the eye of the storm seduced people into a false sense of security. My empty stomach growled, so I’d have to tolerate the drama if I wanted food.
“Theresa, the information we sent detailed exactly what you couldn’t bring here,” said Cathryn.
“It did not say anything about laptops. No cell phone, no iPods. That's all. Nothing about laptops.” Theresa wore enough rings, chains, and bracelets to stock a boutique jewelry store. Each back and forth tug between the two elicited a chorus of clinks and clanks on her wrists. Her well-ringed hands gripped one bag strap while Cathryn clenched the other. I wanted these women with me at Macy's One Day Sales.
I figured one or both of them would soon surrender, and I could resolve this hunger issue. My stomach now sounded like a small lawnmower. But I’d underestimated Theresa's persistence.
“Look, Miss, I know you have a job to do, but I don’t see how this laptop's a problem. Like I said, the brochure didn’t say I couldn’t have one.”
“It didn’t say you could,” said Cathryn. Her eyes bored tiny holes in Theresa's head.
“King Solomon had an answer for this,” I said and realized,