The Girls I've Been(49)

Margaret’s quiet, and it’s not a waiting-quiet this time. I don’t know if I’ve thrown her or if she’s just adding this to her Nora’s fucked up file.

“I know it’s messed up,” I say.

“What he did to you is very messed up,” Margaret agrees, and when my face twists, she lets out a little sigh. “Oh.” And she can’t stop the sympathy leaching into it that’s more like pity.

She folds her hands together, leaning toward me. She wears an oversized moss agate pendant on a long chain, the way older, elegant ladies sometimes do. It glows against her gray sweater, and I can’t stop staring at it because if I don’t, I have to look at her and receive a truth I’m not sure I’m ready for.

“You defended yourself, Nora,” she says quietly.

“I’m violent.” She’s not normal. It echoes in my head.

“What was done to you was violence,” she corrects. “You met violence with defense. There is nothing wrong with that.”

When I don’t say anything, she continues, “Have you ever initiated a fight? I know you’ve been in a few. We’ve talked about them in the past.”

I shake my head.

“Have you ever engaged anyone that wasn’t in defense of yourself or someone else?”

I shake my head again.

“And you’re not going around school, conning people into throwing the first punch?”

“I mean, I could . . .”

“But you don’t.”

“No.”

“I don’t think you’re violent, Nora. I think that you react a specific way when you have no way out. Some people freeze. You fight. Neither of these reactions are wrong.”

I have to say it. I have to ask her. Because I’m scared. I’m scared that the flutter that I feel when Wes catches my eye for too long will turn into something else when he gets too close. When his hands slide around my waist or eventually under my shirt. I want to be able to have this. I want to have this. I want this to be the thing that isn’t warped or taken from me because of the girls before.

“What if I react that way with Wes? What if when we kiss, my body reacts like it’s bad instead of like it’s good?”

“If kissing is something you and Wes both decide you want, then maybe you start slow. Holding hands. Going on a date. Or hanging out. Whatever you kids call it these days.”

“We hang out all the time.”

“Good. Then you can talk to him,” she continues. “You said he knows you’ve been abused. Does he know about this part?”

I shake my head.

“Talking is important in any relationship. And you two talk a lot, right?”

“Of course.”

“Maybe the best thing to do is tell him you want to kiss him, but you need to do it in your own time. That way you’re not waiting for him to initiate anything and it’s not a surprise. Would that take some pressure off?”

I never even thought of kissing Wes first, but now that she’s suggested keeping the power in my hands, the possibility seizes hold of me. No breathless waiting for it to happen to me, but instead being breathless in anticipation because I could choose the moment.

“What if he laughs at me?” I don’t think he will. Wes is not like that. But it’s scary, thinking about being so blunt about what’s been unspoken and said in glances and barely there touches and bodies that get closer and closer each week, sitting in front of the TV.

“Then you’ll know he’s not a boy who deserves to kiss you,” Margaret says, and that makes me laugh, because she’s the kind of honest I wish I knew how to be.

We fall into a silence that’s not uncomfortable, but heavy. Like the air before a rainstorm: You can smell it on the wind, feel the possibility of the fall of water in the atmosphere, and then it just breaks and the skies open.

“How do I keep this from ruining my life?” I ask her.

“By doing exactly what we’ve been working for here,” she says. “Look at you and how you’re moving forward. That’s not ruining your life, Nora. It’s healing it. Seeing obstacles before they become roadblocks.”

I want to believe her. That this is just an obstacle, not a roadblock.

But I have lived so many lives already. Been so many girls. I’ve learned things from each of them. Katie taught me fear. Not of men. I already knew to fear them, because don’t all girls learn, in the end? I just learned faster and earlier than some, and later and slower than others.

Katie taught me a new fear. She taught me to fear myself. Because she was the closest to me I’ve ever played at being until Nora, and something about that drew Joseph in, didn’t it?

Once I finally find the words to ask her, Margaret tells me that nothing about it was my fault. That I didn’t do anything wrong. She repeats that he was a predator. That I trusted myself. My instincts. I reacted the right way for me.

So why do I still feel so wrong?

(She’s not normal.)

It’s an answer I don’t have. But I’m still looking.

I’ll keep looking.





Part Three





Freedom . . .


   (The Last 45 Minutes)