Afterward I shower, my high wearing off.
Hands not completely steady, I open the bathroom cabinet weighted with shaving balms and aftershaves. I listen for any mention of my name from the other side of the door, but there is nothing—just silence—so I relax.
Stashed and forced behind Shaun’s laundry basket is a copy of Asian Babes. I sense a slight postsex sting between my legs. A thudding ache in my gut, I open the magazine.
Flash.
“Oi. Kitchen sink. Is it true you lot can fire Ping-Pong balls outta your fannies?” Ross, the neighborhood bully, calls while balancing on his skateboard. “Well, is it?”
I ignore him and carry on walking. He sidles up beside me, a friend joining him. A racing bicycle this time.
Flash.
“—and that you lot shudder like Mount Fuji when you come?”
Both boys laugh. One pushing, one pedaling.
Flash.
I don’t have the heart to tell the ugly little fuckface that Mount Fuji is in Japan—that I am Chinese. That Fuji hasn’t erupted since 1707. But we’re all the same in your eyes, right? Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Filipino, Korean. All portrayed as submissive little dolls who enjoy folding our pants into perfect origami swans. The West’s idea that Asian girls are only good for cooking, cleaning, and fucking, while you bigots attempt to force a subservience upon us—a cement necklace—pushing us under.
I stop.
Flash.
“Bet your fanny’s as smooth as an egg,” Ross says. “Give us a look. We’ll give you a fiver.”
“Fuck you, fuckface,” I say, my voice small and shaking.
“Oh, it speaks.”
Flash.
Ella lets out an incredulous laugh.
Tick-tock—
—and I’m back. Paranoia finally seeking me out. Our earlier three-way now turned uncertain and cooled. Tick-tock. I stare down at Shaun’s copy of Asian Babes, remembering the acne-faced boys, their cruelty. How I feared they’d wrestle me to the ground and discover my pancake chest, my fanny sprinkled with hair, this image forcing me to run and climb a fire escape on the next block. They eventually gave up, skated and cycled away, but on the way down I’d caught my foot. My sweater tangled with one of the railings on the third floor. At the time I hadn’t felt any pain from the shock of the fall. Hadn’t realized my right ear was hanging off, blood trickling down my face. Twenty-three stiches later I looked like one of those wild rabbits that had had its ear chewed off by a fox.
“I think it looks kinda hot,” Ella said.
“Freak,” I replied.
Three weeks later an envelope full of dog shit was posted through my mailbox. A little gift, I knew, from the two acne-faced boys. A fiver stapled to the corner.
I throw Shaun’s copy of Asian Babes to the floor, suspicion in my gut that I might be satisfying some sort of Asian fetish. A simmering disquiet found in my eyes, green and watery, as I stare at the bathroom mirror. I organize his toiletries in alphabetic order to steady my nerves and hold up my hand, the one that just minutes ago had traced Ella’s perfect breasts while the other released Shaun. I stare at it for what feels like an age. Is something supposed to feel different now? Am I meant to act like we’re all just good friends?
No. Things are as they have always been. Same hand. Same girl.
Ella and I: best friends.
Shaun: the new guy.
Paranoia melting, I open the bathroom door, joining them again.
17
Daniel Rosenstein
“Hey, what are you doing here?” I say, opening the door, nerves mildly rattled.
“I thought I’d surprise you.” She smiles, handing me a square paper bag. Her eyes scanning the inside of my office.
I peek inside—the smell of warmed salt-beef bagel causing my mouth to water—and check the clock: 7:45.
My eyes widen. “Felicé’s?”
She nods. “Your favorite. Extra pickles.”
“You are sweet,” I say.
I kiss her softly on the cheek. How kind, I think. Suddenly, my mother’s voice fills my head: A woman who surprises you is a woman hoping to catch you!
I scrunch the paper bag closed.
“I have a patient,” I say.
“I know. Alexa. Eight a.m.”
“Monica! That’s—”
“Confidential,” she finishes, placing a single finger to her lips. “Don’t worry.”
She hands me my diary and kisses my mouth, but I pull away. Sharp and punishing.
“You left it at home. I thought you might need it. Anyway, it gave me an excuse to surprise you.” She shines.
“Next time you decide to surprise me, please don’t,” I order.
I watch her face fall. I have hurt and humiliated her. Guilt yanks on my chest, the cruel bite of my words not dissimilar to my father’s.
Just as Monica steps back, Alexa appears. Her eyes pinned on her phone. She looks up momentarily and heads for her usual seat in the waiting area.
“I have to work,” I insist.
Monica notes my distraction and turns.
“Alexa?” she whispers.
My eyes remain fixed.
“She’s pretty.”
“Monica,” I say severely, gesturing toward the door.
As Monica walks past Alexa, their eyes scan one another. Monica flicks her hair. Her walk, I notice, has a little more swagger to it, is a little more assertive than usual.
I close the door and settle myself for the next ten minutes, thoughts of my father cast to the front of my mind. I picture him: a man of few words, yet a bully all the same. Hands like spades, long delicate eyelashes. A mass of contradictions navigating the world as though he were two separate beings. At home he tipped his hat toward tyranny, moods swinging at such velocity that my mother and I would sneak around like cowed dogs, but in the community he wore a hat of pride, reeking of goodness and natural leadership. One Christmas, when I was nine years old, I was forced to go with him to our local community hall, my small nail-bitten hands clutching a damp cardboard box of toys. Old toys. Toys that were loved, cared for, and played with by me, yet my father had insisted I give them away to our less fortunate brothers and sisters. Among the toys was an Evel Knievel doll that I was particularly keen on at the time, but no—that had to go too, along with my collection of Star Wars figures and my cricket bat.
When we arrived I had cried, clutching the box to my chest.
“Stop that,” my father ordered, his cheeks inflamed, “goddamn sissy.”
Mostly absent during my childhood, my father had little concern that his generosity came at a cost to his own family, which collectively was me and my mother, Katherine, Kitty to those who knew her well. I now understand that what we believed to be selflessness was actually my father’s fragile ego—university, after all, taught me something. His need to be loved verged on pathetic at times, his desire to fix, I suppose, not unlike my own. He was romantic, an idealist whose narcissism was disguised to look as if he cared, but really he reveled like a pig in shit when he felt needed and useful, and I suppose that was where my mother came in. She was adoring and lost. Unable to make decisions on her own. Without purpose, vulnerable, codependent, and therefore, in need of him. It had driven me up the wall for years.
“I’ll just need to run it by your father, Daniel,” she’d said.
“Well, okay, but I need an answer by tomorrow. It would make me very happy if you could both come.”
My father never made it to my graduation. He was busy. A large company merger had sparked interest, and not trusting anyone else to finalize the negotiations, he had insisted on being around to seal the deal. My mother wasn’t able to make it either, which I put down to flu and which she kindly agreed to, giving a tiny cough, congratulating me, then hanging up the phone.
It had been my father’s hope that I would join the family business. Make him proud by becoming the natural successor to the white-goods sales empire he’d built with blood, swea
t, and martyrdom. Instead, I elected for further education. Part of me wanted to fight him, reject him and his business by getting as far away as possible. Of course, he was furious when I told him, slamming the car door and leaving my mother sitting in the back, seat belt pressing against her burdened chest.
“Education is in the doing,” he shouted, “actually working! Not in some sodding campus for jumped-up little twats who sleep till noon, wanking over grades. For Christ’s sake, Daniel, grow a backbone.”
I was silent, fear crawling around my intestines.
“Bourgeois and bloody useless.” He huffed, his color rising.
The very idea of not having a backbone would implicate me as a flipperty-flopperty spineless man—a jellyfish, snail, tapeworm. My body unable to stand, let alone wank until noon.
I cleared my throat, intestines unraveling. “I take it I get your approval then?” my backbone dared.
“Not in this lifetime,” my father said.
I chose clinical psychology. Not only did it sound good, but I was guaranteed to get laid. A predominantly female subject, with six girls to every boy as the average stat. I stocked up on Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Gloria Steinem, Germaine Greer, and other salty feminists, hoping to snare the opposite sex. Often seen wandering the grounds of Cambridge University with a copy of The Second Sex tucked under my arm, I carried de Beauvoir’s words around like a badge of honor, and to my surprise, it worked. Girls came and went, highlighting my fear of intimacy and the real reason I’d chosen psychology—I was completely fucked up.
Alexa hesitates. Her jade-green eyes drifting about the room as if cast out at sea in search of a life raft. Finally they settle, on me, my eyes. She blinks.
Eye contact for more than eleven seconds, Daniel Stern says, indicates that two people will eventually make love, fall in love, or fight. I take a guess our eyes will fall away on the cusp of ten, avoiding any such territory.
Nine, ten—she looks away.
I note her silk dress skimming the top of her knee. It is a carefully considered length of modesty. A perfect proportion for her gazelle-like legs and slender calves. Around her neck is a rose quartz heart tied neatly with a slim edge of ribbon that, I remember, she wore to our first session. Hair sleeked back into a delicate French twist. A nonchalant elbow resting on the arm of the chair. For a moment, I wonder who she is today, this elegant young woman.
I contemplate gently steering the conversation to our last session, when Dolly paid a brief visit, and then sit back, aware not to hijack the moment on behalf of my own curiosities.
Silence.
“I had a dream,” she finally says. “I know how you shrinks love a dream.”
I clear my throat.
“Feel like sharing it?” I ask.
She gazes off, her eyes melting as if reentering the dream. I’m aware of wanting complete silence. Even the tick of the clock feeling invasive, a prickling of anticipation edging me forward in my chair.
“There’s a child waiting in the shadows of a still village,” she begins, placing her hands between her thighs. “She’s lost, unable to find her mother. The Girl wonders where she can be and worries the river may have stolen her, taken her adrift to some other grassy bank. ‘Mother, where are you?’ the Girl calls out. Maybe the Tigers have her, she thinks. The Girl peekaboos but there is still no sign of her, or the Tigers. Abandoned and hungry, the Girl wanders over to the river, knowing its cool water could drown her in a second. She imagines holding large stones in both hands, her whole weight sinking among the circling tangerine fish. Then, removing her slip-on sneaker, she dips her toes and flicks. The river wobbling as she immerses herself. A sting of salt in her eyes. When she comes up for air, the Girl feels a tap on her shoulder from an orange paw. She turns, realizing it’s the one who wishes to define her as a whore and a slave. ‘My mother is gone,’ the Girl says, ‘and there’s no food in my bowl.’ The Tiger winds his muscular body in close.
“‘Then work. Earn your keep,’ he says. ‘Get on your hands and knees.’
“The Girl lowers herself to the ground while more tigers surround her, watching. Fire in their eyes.”
A pause.
“Bystanding bastards,” she adds.
Alexa leans back, exhausted, it seems.
“Quite a dream,” I say.
“I dream a lot,” she says. “It’s a gateway.”
“To?”
“Old stories. New hopes. It depends.”
“Any idea what it all means?”
She nods.
“We were at a party on Friday night,” she says, crossing her legs, “at Shaun’s house. Navid was there. Alexa needed to let her hair down.”
I look at her quizzically, in desperate need of an explanation.
She smiles.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m Oneiroi, I should have explained when I came in.”
Silence.
“Pleasure to meet you, Oneiroi,” I finally say, my mind catching up.
Aware of my confusion, she waits for me to tailor my thinking: I am now with another personality, Oneiroi, not Alexa. I wonder then how often one of the Flock has to do this—wait for singletons like me to catch up when a switch has occurred, how irritating and time consuming it must be for them all.
“You too.” She smiles.
“So who’s Navid?” I ask.
“He runs the Electra. Nasty piece of work, if you ask me—has the girls in a complete spin, competing with each other, fighting for his attention. At the party he told one of the girls, Annabelle, that he could set fire to her life at any moment. All because she dared think about getting a job at another club. He’s a complete psycho.”
“This is very concerning. Is Ella aware it’s not safe?”
“Kinda, she said she just needs enough cash so she can get her own place.”
“Do you believe her?”
“I’m not sure. I’m afraid she’ll get sucked in. It’s hard to give up work when you get used to a certain lifestyle. But I’m also worried the Electra is having more of an impact on us than we realized.”
“And this concern therefore finds its way to your dreams?”
“The royal road to consciousness.”
“You read Freud?”
“Sometimes.” She shrugs. “I got a few recommendations from Joseph.”
“Ever read The Interpretation of Dreams?”
She nods.
“So,” I ask, “what of the Tigers?”
“Perpetrators, aggressors.”
I wait for her to elaborate, my hand encouraging her to be rigorous with herself.
“My father, and Navid.”
“And the bystanding bastards?”
“Anna, probably.”
A pause.
“You think Ella could get hurt as you were? That Navid could do as your father did?”
“Yes,” she says, “and he’d enjoy it too. Psycho.”
“A sadist?”
“I guess.”
“Oneiroi,” I say, locking eyes, “a thought occurred to me.”
“Yes?”
“Does Navid know that Ella has a younger sister?”
Her face suddenly turns ashen. “I’m not sure,” she says. “I don’t think so.”
Reluctantly I find myself imagining the worst-case scenario, my breath quickening, my palms moistening.
“I think you’re in denial. Your friend couldn’t have chosen a worse place to work if she tried,” I say, “and you; you couldn’t have chosen a boyfriend more unwisely. He works for a man who thinks it’s okay to threaten someone’s life. Do you understand? The Electra is not safe. You are not safe. I say this because I care, not because I want to scare you. But I can’t be a bystander.”
She pulls down on her silk dress, her body now stretching. A switch, I tell myself. She allows her legs to drop and gazes at the lithograph while moving her neck from side to side. The ribbon necklace falling into the well of her collarbones.
“Alexa
?” I ask.
She nods.
I pause, attempting to gather myself yet again.
“There’s a lot of switching today,” I say.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to be sorry. It’s just an observation.”
Silence.
“Do you want to feel safe?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
“Why?”
“I may hate myself.”
I wait.
“I always have. Well, part of me always has. Since I was a little girl.”
“But you were not born feeling this way. Someone must have told you this or made you feel that way. And in turn you learned to believe it. Who was it?”
“My father.”
“Tell me something about him I don’t know already.”
“I made him into a god.”
I raise my eyebrows.
“He was the only person to give me any attention.”
“Not all attention is good,” I say. “He manipulated your attachment. A trauma bond.”
She looks at me, registering what it is I’ve just said.
“He called me stupid. A worthless piece of shit. And then he made me his whore.”
She looks away.
“So this man, your father,” I continue, “who you believe holds a monopoly on your self-worth, told you these things and you believed him. He visited you at night looking for comfort in his nine-year-old daughter. He was a perpetrator. Your tiger. A pedophile. A man who believed it was his right, because he could.”
“He told me he loved me.”
“Was that before or after he raped you?”
Silence.
“I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.”
Her head drops, eyes filling with a lifetime’s worth of tears.
“He was your father, but you were not his to own,” I say softly. “You were a little girl who had just lost her mother. His words were manipulative. They silenced you. A child with no choice. You had to believe him, otherwise what else did you have? But you’re no longer that little girl. You know the difference between right and wrong. And deep down you know you’re not bad, or stupid. Or a worthless piece of shit.”
The Eighth Girl Page 13