Do Not Become Alarmed(42)

They were in a bedroom. She had time to register its messiness, like a teenage boy’s room. And then she was face down on a bed and he was peeling off her shorts. She tried to kick him but he pressed her torso to the bed with one arm. She could barely breathe. He kneeled on her leg so her hamstring seized and cramped. She heard him undo his belt and his zipper.

“No!” she said.

He spread her legs, hard, and then there was only pain. It seemed to be ripping her apart. When she turned her head and cried out, there was the suffocating feeling of a pillow over her face, and the heavy weight of his body pushing her into the mattress again and again.

Then she lost track of time, and the next thing she knew another voice was swearing in Spanish. “Son of a bitch. What the fuck, Raúl.”

There was a stinging between her legs, and something sticky on her thighs, and she rolled painfully, trying to cover herself. George stood in the doorway. Isabel looked around the messy bedroom. There were clothes thrown over a chair, bottles and crumpled paper and trash on the bureau. Raúl lay on the other side of the bed, playing with his phone. She felt sick when she saw him. She pulled her legs up, edged away.

“She came onto me, maje,” Raúl said. “I swear it.”

“I did not.”

“She was wet as fuck,” Raúl said.

“I can’t leave you for five minutes?” George said, his voice high with fury. “I can’t go to take a shit? Do you know what you’ve done?”

“Had a first-class teenage fuck,” Raúl said. “Best sleeping pill there is.”

“I was trying to solve this!” George shouted. “You’ve completely fucked it up!”

“She was so ready,” Raúl said.

“She is a child!”

“I’m not a child.”

“See?” Raúl said.

“Just her saying that proves she’s a child!” George said.

Isabel looked under the sheet and saw blood on her thighs. “I have to throw up,” she said. She stumbled, half falling, off the bed.

She didn’t make it, but puked all over the rug.

“I’ll clean it,” George said, and he helped her to the bathroom.

She stepped into the shower and crouched under the water, and George left her there. She washed the puke out of her hair, and did a gingerly wash between her legs. It hurt. There was some blood but not a lot. She peed into the shower drain, watching the water between her feet become yellow and a little bit red. Then the water cleared and washed it all away. She pulled a clean towel around her shoulders like a tent, and sat hunched on the bathroom floor, trembling.

There was a knock, and George came in. “Are you okay?”

She stared up at him.

“My brother is a monster,” he said. “I’m sorry. Do you want to see the doctor?”

“No!”

“The doctor’s safe,” George said.

But she didn’t want any more hands, any more investigating. “I just want to go home.”

George closed the toilet and sat on the lid. He put his head in his hands. “I told you to stay away from Raúl,” he said. “I told you to stay with the little kids.”

She winced. “I was trying to help them.”

“This makes it so much harder. You understand that, right?”

“I won’t say anything.”

George laughed. “Yeah, right.”

“I promise!” she said. “I won’t let any doctors near me.”

“That will be proof enough.”

“You can’t keep us forever.”

“Yeah, I know.” He sighed. “Raúl says you were on the computer.”

“I wanted to send a message to my parents.”

“Did you?”

“I didn’t have time. Raúl came in.”

George looked at her, and she thought he was trying to tell if she was lying. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

“I want to go downstairs.”

“I don’t want you to scare the little kids.”

“It will scare them more not to see me,” she said. She didn’t know if that was true, but she couldn’t stay up here. She felt her stomach churn again.

George sighed. “I’ll go get your clothes.”

She put a cold, wet washcloth over her eyes. That was what her mother did after she cried a lot, to make the puffiness go down. George brought her yellow bikini from downstairs and she put that on first. Then she pulled on the too-big shorts, the cotton T-shirt. Her wet hair made the shirt stick to her back. Her legs were wobbly.

She walked down the hallway past a bedroom that was cleaner than Raúl’s, with a big framed baseball poster. George’s room. Then there was a bedroom that she could tell was the old man’s room, the father’s. It was neat, the bed was made, there were a few old leather books between bookends on the long low bureau. An upholstered chair with a little footstool.

Her legs shook on the stairs, but she made it to the bottom and slid onto the red couch beside Marcus. He was watching her, as usual. She knew her eyes were red. Penny had the cards back and they were playing Crazy Eights. How much time had passed? None? Had they heard her cry out? Had she cried out?