I reach back and take the thing off me. It’s a used condom. I shriek and jump to my feet. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I shout, and rush into the sea to clean myself off.
The first wave blindsides me and I go under. When I try to come up, I’m tumbled again and again. I need air, but I force myself to sink. I find the bottom and push myself off the sea floor as hard as I can. I break the surface sputtering for breath, grab for the shore, and stumble my way out before another wave can hit me. A few adults have seen me struggling and run over to pull me in.
“I’m okay,” I say. “I’m okay.”
My bathing suit is like a sandbag. I shake out grit, krill, seaweed. A pinkish rock falls to the ground around my ankles. Conrad is doubled over, laughing. I walk past without acknowledging him.
“It was a joke,” he says. “Lighten up.”
I grab my towel and my book, shove them into my bag. “You should go for a swim,” I say. “It’s a perfect day to drown.”
* * *
—
“You owe me a hundred dollars,” I tell my mother when I get home.
“Where’s Conrad?” she asks.
“Dead, if I’m lucky.”
“I’m making clam chowder for dinner,” she says.
* * *
—
In the morning, when I walk to the main house for breakfast, I find Jonas sitting outside on the deck. Conrad is inside at the table eating a bowl of cornflakes in his revolting brown terry-cloth bathrobe, reading Spy vs. Spy.
“Hey.” I sit down next to Jonas. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to say goodbye.”
“Oh.”
“We were supposed to leave on Saturday, but my mother caught Elias up in the dunes with some girl at the bonfire and, as she put it, ‘didn’t like what she was seeing.’ Otherwise known as my brother’s naked butt.” He sighs. “Anyway, we’re going back to Cambridge this afternoon.”
On the porch, Conrad puts down his comic and stops eating, spoon suspended above his bowl. I know he’s eavesdropping, but I don’t care.
“When does school start?” I ask.
“Like, two weeks, I guess.”
“Middle school, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow.”
“Yes,” Jonas laughs a bit ruefully. “Big Boy School.”
In all the days I have spent with Jonas, this is the first time it has felt at all awkward. The thought of school, of real life outside Back Woods—his in Cambridge, mine in New York—suddenly makes the difference in our ages seem huge, an unbridgeable gap.
“I know,” Jonas says, reading my thoughts. “It’s weird.” He rubs his toe into the damp sand. “I was thinking we could take one last swim across the pond.”
“I have to go into town with Anna and my mom.”
“Well then, I guess this is it.” Jonas stands up and puts his hand out to shake mine. “See you next summer.”
“Why don’t you kiss him goodbye?” Conrad calls from inside the screen porch.
“Shut up, Conrad,” I say, taking Jonas’s outstretched hand.
“Give him a big wet tongue kiss.”
“Ignore him,” Jonas says.
“You know what,” I say to Jonas, “I do have time for a quick swim. One sec.” I run and change into my bathing suit. Jonas is already swimming out when I get back. I dive in and catch up to him. “I’m sorry. He’s a complete idiot.”
“Boys his age have a one-track mind,” Jonas says.
I laugh. “You really are so weird.”
“It’s been a great summer, Elle. Thank you,” Jonas says, treading water in front of me.
“It was a pleasure,” I say. “One last breath-holding contest?”
“It’s not a contest if I always win,” Jonas says. “Though I’ll admit you’ve gotten marginally better.”
“Please.” I laugh. “I’m the state champion.”
“One, two, three, under?”
I nod.
We duck underwater and hold our breath. Then, without thinking, I pull him to me and kiss him.
* * *
—
I wait until Jonas has left before confronting Conrad. “Why do you do that?”
“Do what?” Conrad flips the pages of his comic, eats a last spoonful of soggy cereal. Milk dribbles from the corner of his mouth. I watch it run down his chin onto his neck like a bead of white sweat.
“Act like a pig.”
“You shouldn’t be hanging around with a twelve-year-old.”
“It’s none of your business.”
“It makes me sick.”
“Why do you care?”
“I don’t,” Conrad says. “But you’re embarrassing the family.” He stands up and gets in my face. “Did you let him get to first base?”
My mother and Anna walk past the house, heading to the car. “Put pears on the list,” I hear Mum say. “And minute steaks. Oh—we’re almost out of bourbon.”
“Did you let him finger you?” Conrad says.
I turn on him now. “I’m embarrassed to be seen with you,” I say. “You’re the embarrassment in this family. Not me.”
“Yeah, right.”
“It’s true. No one wants you here, creeping around in the bushes like some pervert with your disgusting blackheads. Why don’t you move back with your mom? Oh, right,” I say. “She doesn’t want you either.”
Conrad’s face turns a dark shade of red. “That’s a lie.”
“Really? What’s her number? Let’s call her and ask.” I walk over to the black rotary phone and lift the receiver. There’s a list of important numbers on a scrap of paper, thumbtacked to the wall. I scroll down it and find the number. Dial. “It’s ringing.”
“Screw you,” Conrad says, and runs outside. He is crying.
“Baby!” I shout after him.
In my hand I hear a tinny, faraway voice: “Hello? Hello?” someone is saying. I put the receiver back in its cradle.
* * *
—
Retribution for my cruelty to Conrad comes quickly. It begins with an itchy feeling under my eyelids. My throat swells. By late afternoon my face is oozing with blisters. I can’t open my eyes at all. The doctor tells us there is only one way to contract this kind of poison ivy: someone at the picnic must have thrown a vine-covered log into the fire when I was sitting in the path of the smoke, which carried the poisoned oil directly into my ears, my mouth, my nostrils. My mother has set up a camp bed for me in the darkened pantry. She covers my face and neck in wet cheesecloths soaked in calamine lotion. I look like the leper from Ben-Hur. She brings me cold chamomile tea and a straw. Puts a bowl of ice next to the bed. Swallowing is torture.
Everyone is in the living room playing poker. I hear wooden chips being tossed into the pot. Anna and Leo arguing about who had the better bluff. My mother laughs. Conrad laughs. My bandages are drying out, sticking to the painful sores. I try to call out, but my voice won’t work. More laughter. I bang on the floor with my foot, and at last hear footsteps approaching.
“Mum?”
“She sent me to see what you need.” It is Conrad.
“I need Mom!” I whisper. “My bandages are stuck.”
“Okay,” he says, but instead of leaving, he sits down on the edge of the bed. A bubble of panic rises in my throat. I lie there, helpless, and brace myself for whatever is coming.
“Get Mom!” I croak. I can feel him staring at me.
“Here,” he says. He peels the cheesecloth off my face gently and replaces it with a damp washcloth. “I’ll go get her.”
Anna calls out from the other room. “Conrad, it’s your turn!”
“Coming!” But he doesn’t leave. “I could read to you or something,” he says.
“I just need Mom.�
��
He stands up. His foot shifts back and forth across the gritty wood floor. I wait for him to go.
“I’m sorry about the rubber,” he says finally. “I don’t know why I did that.”
“Because you want everyone to hate you.”
“That’s not true.”
“Then why do you act like such a jerk all the time?”
“I don’t want you to hate me,” he says quietly.
“Kind of late for that, isn’t it?” Anna says from the door. “Stop bothering my sister, Conrad.”
“It’s okay,” I say.
“That’s because you can’t open your eyes, so you don’t realize he’s standing there ogling you like some creepy freak.”
I can feel Conrad go rigid.
“C’mon, lovebird, everyone’s waiting.”
“Stop it, Anna,” I say. “He wasn’t bothering me.”
“Fine,” she says. “Your funeral. And if you don’t come right now, Conrad, we’re dealing you out.”
“I’ll be there in a sec,” he says.
“Sorry about that.” I pause. “And I’m really sorry I said that about your mom.”
Conrad sits down on the side of my bed.
14
1982. January, New York.
I climb into bed and wait. Soon I hear my mother’s stockinged footsteps pause outside my door in the long book-lined hallway of our apartment. She should be wearing shoes. The old floorboards splinter and attack anyone reckless enough to wear socks in the house. A quick run down the hall, a skid, and a thin shiv of dark wood pierces your foot, too deep for tweezers. The soles of my feet are covered in tiny scars. By now I can perform the ritual myself: light the match, sterilize the needle until its point glows red, tear open a line of flesh above the splinter’s shadow. Dig.
Mum switches off the hall light as she passes my room. She hates wasting electricity. I wait for the shush of her bedroom door. In the living room Leo closes his book, pulls the chain on the old Ming vase lamp, shoves back his heavy wooden armchair. Their bedroom door opens, shuts again, more firmly now. Hushed good-night voices, water running in the bathroom, the soft crunk of the plastic rinsing glass being replaced onto the edge of the porcelain sink. I count the minutes. Listen for the creak of the bed as it takes Leo’s weight. My breath rises and falls. I listen to the shift of my cotton sheets. Wait. Wait. Silence has fallen. Careful not to make the smallest sound, I get out of bed, turn the door handle slowly. Still silence. I reach into the pitch-dark hallway and feel around for the light switch, turn the light back on. Wait. Nothing. They are asleep or too tired to bother. I close my door tight, climb back into bed, pull the covers up around my neck. I have done what I can. It’s always safer when the hallway is lit.
* * *
—
One night in October, a month after we got back from the Cape, I surfaced from a deep sleep. What woke me was a breeze on my thighs. I remember thinking I had kicked off my covers, but when I reached down to pull them up, I realized my nightgown had gotten scrunched all the way up, legs and stomach and breasts exposed. And there was wetness all over my panties. My period had come early. I wiped my hand off on my nightgown and was getting up to go to the bathroom when a thought occurred to me: there was no dark streak, no blood where I had wiped off my hand. I put my hand to my nose, confused. A strong bitter smell I didn’t recognize. A thick, gruel texture. And then I saw something move in my closet. Someone was in there, hidden in the shadows, the hollow darkness. I could not see his face, but I could see his penis, a fleshy white against the blackness, still erect. He was squeezing it, the last drops of semen glistening on the tip. I froze, paralyzed. Afraid to breathe. In the past three months, four women had been found raped and strangled to death in the city, and they hadn’t caught the killer yet. The most recent victim was only about eighteen years old. She had been found naked, floating in the river, hands tied behind her back. Carefully, slowly, I lay back down. Maybe if he thought I hadn’t seen him, he would leave without hurting me. I closed my eyes tight and prayed. Please get out. Please get out. I won’t yell. I won’t tell anyone. In the quiet inside me, I was screaming so loud that sound filled the void, a terror I could barely control. Minutes passed. Finally, a movement. The swing of my bedroom door. I allowed myself to open my eyes a crack, to make sure he was gone. Just as the door was shutting, Conrad turned around.
February
Outside my door I hear the smallest creak of a floorboard.
“Elle?” Conrad whispers my name, testing to make sure I am asleep. “Elle, are you awake?”
He opens the door and stands beside my bed in the dark. After a few seconds, he reaches down, pulls my nightgown up past my thighs, unzips his pants, touches himself. A soft, gummy sound. Lie in silence. Swallow. Don’t dare stir. I must pretend to be fast asleep. Conrad thinks I have no idea he comes into my room at night. Looks at me. Masturbates. As far as he knows, I’m dead to the world, completely unaware of what he is doing. I might as well have taken a heavy sleeping pill. And he must never know. As long as he thinks his visits are his secret alone, I can act normal, sit at the family dinner table with him, walk past his room to go to the bathroom. Because as far as I’m concerned, nothing has happened. Maybe if I had not been paralyzed in terror that first night, if I had screamed and yelled. But then it would be out there—the humiliation, the filth. When I woke up that night he had already jerked off on me, all over my panties. I had seen the tip of his penis. That part could never be undone, even with a scream. Everyone in my family would be stuck with that disgusting image in their heads. I would be tainted forever—an object of pity. So, I will carry the weight of this shame rather than tell on him.
I know my silence protects him. But it also protects me: Conrad is terrified of getting caught—exposed to his father, rejected forever. That is the one power I have. Whenever he comes too close to me now, I pretend to wake up, and he slithers out before he gets caught. Back to his rat hole. I am safe. I just can’t ever fall asleep.
March
Leo and Conrad are fighting. “Goddammit,” Leo is yelling. “I can’t take it, I can’t take it . . .” I hear the thud of a wall being punched. “It’s a disgrace,” Leo shouts. “Do you understand? Do you understand?”
“Dad, please.”
“Pick up this room!” More crashes, kicking.
I’ve just gotten home from my babysitting job and I desperately need to pee. I peer down the long hallway. Conrad’s bedroom door is wide open. It will embarrass him if he knows I’ve overheard, but I have to go past his room to get to the bathroom. I put my things down, hang my down vest on a coat hook, and tiptoe down the hall hoping to get by unnoticed.
“Dad, please, I’ve tried. I just don’t get it.”
“Don’t get what?” Leo yells. “That Des Moines is the capital of Iowa? It’s geography, not rocket science. If you fail again, they will kick you out. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“There are no second chances here.”
“I didn’t flunk it on purpose, Dad,” Conrad says, so upset. “I’m just bad at it.”
“There’s no such thing as bad at geography. There’s only lazy.”
“That’s not true,” Conrad says, his voice cracking.
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“No, I—”
Leo spies me as I’m sneaking past. “Ask Eleanor to tutor you. She got straight As this semester. Eleanor, come in here.”
I stop, but don’t come in.
“I don’t need her help,” Conrad says. “I can do better, I promise.”
“Your sister does well because she has gumption. She works hard and respects our expectations.”
“I’m just good at memorizing things.”
“She’s not my sister,” Conrad says. When he looks at me, there is venom in his eyes.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I say.
“Leo?” My mother calls out to him from somewhere in the bowels of the apartment. “Can I make you a drink?”
* * *
—
My eyes are closed, but I can feel Conrad’s damp breath. He leans his face close to mine, looking for signs of life. I keep my breathing even, slow. He leans in closer now and strokes my hair. I stir; pretend to be on the verge of waking. He pulls his hand away and steps back into the shadows, waits to see if I will move again. I turn over onto my side and re-settle. It’s enough to unnerve him. As he is about to go, he says something, so softly I can barely hear him. But I do. “One of these days I’m gonna put it in you for real,” he whispers. “I’m gonna get you pregnant. And then who will they think is the perfect child?”
Vomit rises in my throat, but I keep it down. Don’t move a muscle.
April
The clinic is packed with women. Older women, young pregnant women. Three Puerto Rican girls sit opposite me. “Yo, mamacita,” one of them taunts. “You got a man friend?” and the others laugh. I stare at the orange plastic seat of my chair.
Outside, snow is falling, killing off the first of the cherry blossoms. My hiking boots are soaked through. On the walk from the subway to the free clinic, through the blooming snowdrifts, I almost lost my nerve. But I’m here now, waiting for my pink ticket number to be called, as if I’m at a Baskin-Robbins.
The nurse calls us in five at a time. I hand her the signed letter I’ve forged on my mother’s stationery, giving me permission to get birth control, since I am only fifteen. She barely glances at it before tossing it on top of a pile of what are probably similar letters. I am taken to a curtained-off area with the Puerto Rican girls and a pregnant woman. A counselor talks to us about the risks of birth control, the option of adoption, and then gives each of us a pregnancy test to take. The pregnant woman protests that this is a waste of a test, but the nurse explains that it’s part of the protocol. The three girls eye-fuck me the entire time. “What’s the matter, blondie? Daddy won’t pay for a real doctor?” I take my test into the bathroom and pee on the strip.
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