In Her Skin(5)

And this is where I leave him.

*

Remembering past lives isn’t my only skill. Long ago, I learned I was good at using the ones right in front of me. Momma had a name for it: said I was an intuit.

Every time I switched schools, to avoid getting teased for my backwater accent or my short pants, I’d pick a certain girl—the girl whose laugh could leave you bleeding, the one who moved other kids around like chess pieces, the one teachers let get away with murder. I couldn’t copy clothes, or the smell of clean scalp, or a hard little chin. But I’d get good at the cool rhythm of her speech, her shuffle walk, her nonchalance. Eventually, it wasn’t enough to be on the outside: I wanted in. So I decided things. I thought she might be a late sleeper. That she liked salty over sweet. She tanned easy, and had a stripe of white underneath the woven bracelet on her ankle. The lines around both of us dissolved until I was looking through her eyes, and those eyes were fierce slits. When one of Momma’s boyfriends would block my way, I’d push past him, sweeping my shoulder like he’d shed something bad. If Momma limped from a kidney punch, I spat into the boyfriend’s scrambled eggs and coolly watched him eat. Momma’s scams were just games, games that I played along with because I wanted to, and I could stop at any time.

Inside the girl’s ferocity, I hardened.

*

I must have slept. New faces crowd the door. In Tent City, cheeks thicken from weather and booze, and eyes flicker. These faces are strange in their delicateness and their concern. I pull my dirty sleeves over my hands and slip down in my chair. Under the stares of these people, everything feels wrong: the distance between my eyes, the shape of my lips, the width of my pelvis. The excitement of a few hours ago has evaporated and I am scared. I don’t have Vivi in the flesh to observe, to know what she would do next.

Momma would tell me to remember when I was a soldier returning from battle. You’ve seen and done unspeakable things, she’d say, and now you are home.

I make my cheeks sag with weariness and my eyes light up with relief. It’s not the easiest combination. Momma would be proud.

A woman takes a careful step into the room, with Ginny and the detective behind. The woman’s face is unlined and her hair thins at the temples—she wouldn’t like that I notice this, is self-conscious about it—and her raincoat is tied at the waist, a plaid pattern that looks frumpy but means the coat is expensive and worth stealing. She has pale, wide-spaced eyes and a nose turned down at the tip, and the same hair as Temple, light-filled syrup, only shorter. Her mouth is tight, but there is movement underneath, like she’s turning thoughts over in it and finds them sour. She pinches her throat between two fingers, leaving pink. Taken together, these are not good signs. But I shouldn’t assume this is going to be easy. Hadn’t assumed it. Won’t assume it.

A man comes behind her, more obviously beautiful. Not how Wolf is beautiful, which is the kind of beautiful you look away from. The kind that gets carved and eaten by hungry men. This is the man who does the eating. This man is ravenous, a man whose shoulders dip and rise as he walks, who uses his whole long body to speak, though he hasn’t yet. He has a neat new beard because it is trendy, and it will be gone next week. I can see his arms through the sports coat, and the coat has been cut to do that very thing. The kind of man who could bang the babysitter but maybe doesn’t. Not because of what she lacks—they are not equals, these two—but because it is beneath him.

Ginny clears her throat. No one looks at her. She lumps her way forward, graceless against these people. Detective Curley hangs back, watching.

“Vivi?” Ginny asks. Not a statement but a question. My only ally in the room maybe isn’t an ally.

This was a mistake. I glance into the hallway, toward the bathroom: my escape to Huntington Avenue.

“Vivi,” Ginny repeats.

My head snaps. “Yes?”

Detective Curley pushes into the room, holding up his hand to silence Ginny. He wants to see my face. He wants recognition; proof. Because Vivi was nine, and Vivi would remember these people. But I’m not going to give the detective a full reckoning, because I’ve been through a lot in that shed. Enough to wipe a memory near clean.

I blink as if through fog.

The woman comes forward in a sweeping rush. “Vivi!” she says, breathy, and crouches beside me, her forehead wrinkling in happy layers. Excitement works for her: she is prettified. The man joins her, still standing; this is not a man who crouches. She searches my face as I search hers. It feels like a violation, those pale eyes over my face, but to look away is suspicious.

“Mrs. Lovecraft…,” Ginny starts.

Mrs. Lovecraft’s eyes are not for Ginny. “May I touch your hand?” she asks.

“Mrs. Lovecraft, we really don’t know the extent to which—the trauma…,” Ginny falters. Ginny is doing a terrible job setting boundaries, and the detective is getting madder. Even I’m mad at Ginny. Because none of this is by the book. It’s strange, to feel like a prize, a rare thing that a rich woman wants to touch.

I nod.

Mrs. Lovecraft places her cool hand on mine. “You are Vivi,” she whispers.

Mr. Lovecraft turns to the detective. “We’d like to take her home now.”

Detective Curley gets his back up. “That is not happening. We need to take statements. A rape k—”