My Dark Vanessa(84)

I wake to him getting into bed. My eyes fly open and I see the pattern of sunlight and shadows has shifted across the wall. When I stir, he stops, but when my eyes flutter shut and I don’t move again, he eases himself onto the mattress. I lie there, eyes closed, hearing and feeling everything, his breathing, his body.

When I wake again, I’m on my back, my dress bunched around my waist, my underwear off. He kneels on the floor, head between my legs, his face buried in me. His arms are wrapped around my thighs so I can’t move away. He looks up and locks eyes with mine. My head lolls and he keeps going.

I see my body from above, ant-small, pale limbs floating on the lake, the water now past my ears. It laps at my cheeks, almost to my mouth, almost drowning. Beneath me are monsters, leeches and eels, toothy fish, turtles with jaws strong enough to snap an ankle. He keeps going. He wants me to come, even if it means rubbing me raw. A reel starts to play in my mind, a parade of images projected onto my eyelids: loaves of bread dough rising on a warm kitchen counter, a conveyor belt moving groceries while my mother looks on, holding her checkbook, a time lapse of roots extending into soil. My parents washing the dirt from their arms, looking at the clock, neither one of them yet asking out loud, “Where’s Vanessa?” because acknowledging I’ve been gone too long will let in the first pinprick of fear.

When Strane moves up onto the bed and pushes into me, one hand guiding his penis, the reel snaps. My eyes fly open. “Don’t.”

He freezes. “You want me to stop?”

My head rolls against the pillow. He waits a beat longer and then slowly starts to move in and out.

The waves pull me farther from shore. The rhythm he keeps helps the reel start again, his steady in-out-in-out. Was he always this heavy and slow? Beads of sweat slide off his shoulders onto my cheeks. I don’t remember it being like this.

I shut my eyes and again see loaves of bread rising, groceries moving forever forward, endless bags of sugar, boxes of cereal, broccoli crowns, and cartons of milk disappearing into the horizon. Pick up some milk while you’re out? Mom liked that, asking me to run an errand for the first time. Maybe it made her feel better about letting me take the car. Everything will be ok, I’ll come back home safe. I had to; I was getting the milk.

Strane groans. He had been braced up on his hands; now he lets himself fall on top of me. His arms snake under my shoulders, his breath in my ear.

Between breaths, he says, “I want you to come.”

I want you to stop, I think. But I don’t say it out loud—I can’t. I can’t talk, can’t see. Even if I force my eyes open, they won’t focus. My head is cotton, my mouth gravel. I’m thirsty, I’m sick, I’m nothing. He keeps going, faster now, which means he’s close, only a minute or so left. A thought shoots through me—is this rape? Is he raping me?

When he comes, he says my name over and over. He pulls out, rolls onto his back. Every part of him is slick with sweat, even his forearms, his feet.

“Unbelievable,” he says. “This wasn’t where I expected my day to end up.”

I lean over and vomit onto the floor, the splatter-slap of sick hitting hardwood. It’s beer and bile; I’d been too anxious to eat anything all day.

Strane sits up on his elbows and stares down at the vomit. “Jesus, Vanessa.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I mean, it’s ok. It’s fine.” He pushes himself off the bed, pulls on his pants, and steps around the sick. Goes into the bathroom, returns with a spray bottle and rag, gets on his hands and knees and cleans the floor. I keep my eyes shut tight through the smell of ammonia and pine, my stomach still churning, the bed undulating beneath me.

When he climbs back into bed, he’s all over me despite my just having puked, and his hands smelling like cleaner. “You’ll be ok,” he says. “You’re drunk, that’s all. Stay here and sleep it off.” His mouth and hands take me in, testing what’s changed. He pinches my stomach where it’s grown softer, and my brain brings up a fractured memory, maybe only a dream—in the office behind his classroom, me naked on the love seat, him fully clothed, inspecting my body with the impartial interest of a scientist, squeezing my stomach, dragging his finger along the tracks of my veins. It hurt then and it hurts now, his heavy limbs and sandpaper hands, a knee prying my legs apart. How can he be ready again? The bottle of Viagra in the bathroom cabinet, puke crusting together a lock of my hair. Him on top, his body so big it could smother me if he weren’t careful. But he is careful and he is good and he loves me and I want this. I still feel torn in two when he pushes inside, will probably always feel this way, but I want it. I have to.



I don’t get home until quarter to midnight. I come into the kitchen and Mom’s waiting. She grabs the keys out of my hand.

“Never again,” she says.

I stand with my arms limp at my sides, messy hair and red-rimmed eyes. “Aren’t you going to ask where I’ve been?” I say.

She stares at me, into me. She sees everything. “If I did,” she says, “would you tell me the truth?”

*

I cry at graduation along with everyone else, but my tears are from the relief of having survived what I still think of as my penance. Our graduation is held in the gym and the fluorescent lights make us look jaundiced. The principal won’t let anyone clap as we walk across the stage, says it makes the ceremony too long and it isn’t fair that some students would get loud cheers and others might not get any at all. Browick’s graduation is on the same Saturday afternoon, and during mine, I imagine theirs: chairs arranged on the lawn outside the dining hall, the headmaster and faculty standing in the grove of white pines, distant church bells chiming. I walk across the silent stage to receive my diploma and close my eyes, imagine the sun on my face, that I’m wearing Browick’s thick white gown with the crimson sash. The principal shakes my hand limply, gives me the same “well done” he gives everyone else. The whole thing feels meaningless, but what does it matter? I’m not really here in this stuffy gym with the sounds of squeaking folding chairs and cleared throats, the rustle of programs fanning faces jeweled with sweat. I’m walking across the carpet of orange-dead needles, accepting hugs from Browick faculty, even from Mrs. Giles. In my fantasy she never kicked me out; she has no reason to think ill of me at all. Strane hands me my diploma, standing by the same tree where, two and a half years ago, he told me he wanted to put me to bed and kiss me good night. His fingers touch mine as he passes it to me, imperceptible to anyone else, but the thrill of it sends me airborne into the nothing-nowhere-no-one feeling I’d get when I left his classroom, red hot with secrets.