Walking on Broken Glass

by Christa Allan

  “Well, we are all so glad you are taken care of. Aren’t we?” He smiled, and a few faces in my traitorous circle actually grinned along with him. “But there's the problem. You don’t get it, Leah. This isn’t about Carl. This is about you.”

  He looked around the circle, in a way that was obviously for dramatic effect. Performance Art therapy. “I don’t see Carl here. Do you?”

  “No,” I answered. I’m incredulous and confused.

  “Me either. Maybe if you call him, he’ll rescue you from all of us.”

  “What? You mean, call him on the phone? Why would I do that?” He’d baited me. I knew it, but I didn’t get it.

  “No, I mean call his name from right where you are.”

  “That's stupid. I’m not doing that.”

  “Yes, yes you are. You need him. And I want you to call him. Let's just see what happens.”

  He was never going to stop if I didn’t just do want he wanted me to do. Arguing with him wasn’t getting this over. “Carl,” I mumbled. Already I felt truly dumb.

  Dr. Sanders laughed. “He couldn’t hear that if he’d been sitting next to you. Try a little louder.”

  “Carl.”

  “Louder.”

  “Carl!” I shouted.

  “Well, he's still not here. Guess you’re not loud enough. Maybe if you stretched your arms out while you called him. That way maybe he’ll see how much he's needed.”

  I stared at him. A rolling heat traveled through my body. I felt anger and shame and confusion everywhere at once.

  “Go on. We’re waiting.”

  I reached out my arms into the empty space in front of me and shouted, “Carl!”

  He made me call Carl three more times, each time louder and louder until, with the last scream, my throat burned. Tears streamed down my cheeks until my neck was wet.

  Time four.

  I stood. This time, my now shaking arms were straight against the sides of my body. I looked at Dr. Sanders. I channeled every ragged piece of rage and humiliation left in me into what I hoped he saw reflected in my eyes and face. Fueled by a current that surged through my soul, I told him, “I’m not doing this anymore. Carl's not coming no matter how loudly I scream. He's not coming. And I’m not going to do what you’re asking me to do just because you think you have power over me. I’m not going to do it.”

  The room gasped.

  Dr. Sanders walked over, gently placed his hands on my shoulders, and said, “I’ve been waiting for you to do exactly what you just did.”

  I shuddered and sucked in air.

  Old things pass away. All things become new.

  A new life. Not just a new life within me. A new creation.

  “Don’t compromise yourself. Don’t ever, ever, ever compromise yourself. You’re all you’ve got.”

  Journal 11

  My life changed the instant Alyssa was placed in my arms. I gazed at my daughter through my mother's eyes and my grandmother's eyes and all the eyes before who held their children before me. Linked by the maternal cord of knowing how my mother felt holding me. The link of truly understanding how absolutely you had been loved.

  Two days later we were home. A family.

  Carl adored our daughter.

  And he adored me for giving her to him.

  I knew that for at least the first month, the doctor didn’t want us to have sex. That freed me to be affectionate, to remember the times when every touch did not have to consummate itself in the bedroom.

  Carl was patient.

  Until he wasn’t.

  The last night of week four, Carl expected me in bed.

  I was. So, when Alyssa awoke, I brought her into the bedroom.

  At the end of week five, Carl expected me in bed every night. When Alyssa awoke, I’d stay in her room and nurse her. Some nights I told Carl I heard Alyssa, and Carl would find me asleep in the day bed of the nursery. Carl didn’t understand and would ask me why he didn’t hear our daughter cry. I’d tell him mothers are wired that way.

  At the end of week six, when Carl expected me in bed, I expected to be just drunk enough to be there. When Alyssa awoke, I threw back the covers to get her.

  “I didn’t hear her cry,” Carl said and wrapped his arm around my waist to pull me back into bed.

  “Of course not,” I said. “You’re a man.” I put my hands over his to move them, so my body could catch up with my heart, which was already walking to her room.

  “If she was that upset, we would both hear her. She can cry for a little while. She’ll be fine. You need to pay attention to me for a change.”

  Carl never heard Alyssa cry. I heard her cry from the first time she whimpered. Carl touched me until Carl finished. I was just enough drunk to fall asleep.

  The next morning, Carl went to work. He thought I must have checked Alyssa during the night.

  I woke up very late that morning. I thought Carl must have checked Alyssa before he left for work.

  I opened the door to Alyssa's bedroom. Laura Ashley wallpaper. Handpainted murals. Pink and delicate and exquisite. Just like their daughter.

  I tiptoed to the white spindled crib. “Good morning, princess.” I picked up my daughter. Her body wasn’t warm. Her face was blue. Her breath was gone.

  Alyssa was dead.

  My scream reached into hell, and the devil laughed.

  My scream reached into heaven. God grieved.

  I couldn’t stand, or talk, or run. I stumbled and tripped and crawled like a rabid animal to the telephone.

  Nothing would ever be the same.

  I dialed 911. I couldn’t speak.

  I called Carl. He heard the gasping, heaving, groaning. He recognized my voice. He called the police. He thought some intruder might have hurt us.

  I was alive. Alyssa was dead.

  Where was the intruder?

  When Carl got home I stared at him with eyes so full of hate I cried venom instead of tears. I beat his chest with my fists until they were bruised and swollen.

  Later, the doctor said it wasn’t our fault. He said Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is the leading cause of death for one-month-olds to one-year-olds.

  I told the doctor I didn’t need a leading cause of death. I needed my daughter.

  We left.

  I told Carl, “You killed her. You wanted to have sex more than you wanted me to take care of our child. I will never forgive you. You killed our daughter.”

  34

  My exit from Brookforest would be two days early.

  The staff allowed me to “trade” my weekend pass for the early out on the conditions that I leave with the name of someone from an AA meeting who would be my sponsor, commit to ninety meetings in ninety days, and have an extra session with Ron.

  Carl had no problem with the early release. Neither did I, but I knew the real reason, and I waited for Ron so he’d know too.

  I sat in the chair facing his desk, propped my feet on the edge, and rifled through the Jolly Ranchers basket picking out my flavors for the hour.

  “Shouldn’t you be eating a bowl of real fruit instead of those bullet-sized teeth breakers?”

  Ron walked in and dropped his backpack on the sofa. He pulled his cell phone out of his jeans’ pocket, pushed a few buttons, and set it on top of his desk pad. For a minute, he stood near his desk, head down, patting his pants pockets like he was waiting to be beamed up somewhere. “I think I’m ready now,” he said.

  “Are you talking to me or whoever's picking you up on that spaceship you’re waiting for?” His face scrunched so that it truly looked like a question mark. “I thought you were about to take off for a minute. You meditate standing?”

  “Oh, that. I guess nobody's usually in the office to watch me get ready for the day. It's my mental checklist pause—cell phone out, keys in, anything else I need to remember or want to forget—maybe it is a meditation.”

  I nodded. I remember school mornings. School keys here. Car keys there. Lunch. Coke Zero. Check. Check. Check.
Check. Breathe in, Mrs. Thornton. Breathe out, Leah.

  We volleyed the quiet between us until I was ready. Ron's invitation was obvious in his eyes. I trusted Ron, but even that didn’t push the terror away, terror that enveloped me in suffocating thick darkness. It pressed itself on me, its oozing hot breath on my neck. I’d carried it inside for years. Learned, over time, I could gorge it with alcohol until it would drop its hold on my spirit. My spirit. Hollowed out and stuffed with grief and fear.

  I had to summon it, confront it, and destroy it.

  Sober.

  The darkness stirred in me.

  It was time.

  Journal 12

  I am Leah.

  I was ten years old. I did not understand what happened that morning. I started bleeding. Watery red stains on the white towel. Bleeding between my legs. Something was wrong. Some place inside me twisted and cramped. I was scared I’d made this happen. Maybe I shouldn’t tell. But what if all my blood came out? What if it wouldn’t stop?

  I opened the bathroom door. Stuck my head out. “Mom? Mom? Can you come here?” Nothing. “Mom. I need to show you something.” My father hollered back. “Mom left for work. Hurry up in that bathroom. You and Peter are going to be late for school.” Whatever this was, I knew I couldn’t tell my father. Not about bleeding from there.

  I folded a clean washcloth to fit between my legs. Wrapped it in toilet paper. I begged God not to let me die. And I dressed and went to school. My teacher let me go to the bathroom before lunch. I flushed the bloody toilet paper. Rewrapped my wash cloth. I became aware of an odor I didn’t recognize. I walked back to my desk and wondered if the smell followed me. If Ben sitting next to me and Cathy behind me smelled it too. Musky like an animal smell. At lunch I stayed in the cafeteria. I read a book. I didn’t want to walk outside with my friends for fear the washcloth would fall out.

  Finally school ended, and I could go home. I waited hours for my mother. I didn’t call her at work; I thought I might scare her if she knew I was bleeding. I stayed in my room. Closed the door. Finished my homework. I told Peter he could play next door.

  She was finally home. I heard her car in the driveway. A battleship grey Rambler with no air conditioning. She was always so tired when she got home. I waited until she changed out of her dress and went to the kitchen to pour her glass of wine. Always red. Always in a bottle with a top that just unscrewed. She sat at the table with her wine and the newspaper. I told her I needed to talk to her.

  “What's wrong? Did you get in trouble at school? What did you do?”

  “Nothing, I promise. Something happened this morning. You weren’t here. I’m … I’m … I’m bleeding …” I pointed between my legs. “… there.” I still wore my navy blue pleated uniform skirt. Blood had stained the insides of my thighs. Half moons of red that I scrubbed off when I got home from school.

  She looked so angry. “You’re what? What did you do? You didn’t touch yourself there, did you?”

  “No. I swear.” Why would she think I’d do that, touch myself there? Why would I make myself bleed? I didn’t say anything because she now seemed angrier. I’d never seen her like this before.

  “Did somebody else touch you there? Some boy at school? Is that it? You let a boy touch you there, didn’t you?” Her voice was strange. It came from deep in her throat.

  “NO, Mom. NO. I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t let a boy or anyone do that. I promise.” Why would my mother think these things about me?

  I remember backing away from her. So she couldn’t reach me. Just in case. I searched all over her face with my eyes. I wanted to find something familiar there.

  “Okay, okay. That's good.” She calmed down, like something in her unwound. She picked up the glass, bent her head to make her neck straight. She finished her wine and poured another glass. “Good girl.” She sipped again and raised her eyes to look at me over the top of the glass.

  I waited. I didn’t ask her if I might die. She wouldn’t have been so mad at me if she thought I was going to die from the bleeding.

  She slid her wine glass away from the edge of the table. “This usually happens when girls are older. You’re starting young. Your menstrual cycle is going to come every month now. That's what it's called. This blood means you can have babies now. You have to be careful. Don’t you let boys touch you or put things there. That's nasty and dirty. You understand me, don’t you?”

  I nodded. If boys didn’t touch or put things there, I wouldn’t have babies. Every month this would happen. I was not going to die from this.

  “Now, I’m going to the store to buy you a box of Kotex. You’ll need to start wearing them. Clean yourself good. And, Leah, you don’t need to go around telling people about this. Peter doesn’t need to know about this. Not yet. And I’ll tell your father.”

  She came home from the grocery, handed me the Kotex box, and said to keep it in the bathroom. “Well, Leah. You’re a woman now.”

  We never talked about it again . “It” meaning what happened that day: periods, sex, pregnancy.

  The night before Carl and I married, she told me, “It's going to hurt the first time. You might bleed a little. It doesn’t hurt after that. Maybe sometimes. You won’t always want to have sex, but men are different. They need sex. So you make sure he gets what he needs. That's part of being a good wife.”

  I stopped. Blinked. Where had I gone? I ran my fingertips along the braided edge of the chair's arms. I didn’t know if five minutes or five hours had passed. I dropped my head forward, side, back, side. My neck muscles tightened, relaxed.

  “When I was four, I had a tonsillectomy. I remember faces floating over me, somebody telling me to count, a black mask. Then I was gone. And then, I came back. Like seeing the world from a lens that opened wider and wider until the lens disappeared and only the view was left. That's how I feel now. Like I’m coming back,” I said quietly, holding on to the leathery arms of the chair as if letting go meant floating away.

  “You are coming back. The world's almost all in view,” Ron said. “Only one more lens to open.”

  I didn’t get it. Sex. Why it fascinated people. Why people risked their reputations, their families, their lives to have an affair. All that, for what? A few minutes?

  I was a virgin when I met Carl. I think he was, too. I don’t think he wanted to admit that. When we dated, I enjoyed kissing him and being touched by him. I know in today's world it sounds dorky, but I made him promise to wait until after we married.

  At first, I managed sex with Carl. It wasn’t awful. It was, I guess, like taking medicine. You know you need it. If you don’t take it, you’ll get worse. And if you hold your nose, it doesn’t taste so bad. And sometimes, you’d get surprised by medicine that actually tasted pleasant. But you couldn’t count on that every time.

  He liked having sex. He liked telling me he liked having sex. He liked surprising me with sex. Telling me to meet him at his office because we needed to go over some paper about one thing or another. I’d meet him only to find out I was the paper he planned on going over. Or we’d be at the ski lodge with his parents. I’d be curled up reading a book, settled in with my coffee, the fireplace. His parents would be in the kitchen concocting some new drink or dinner recipe. Carl would go upstairs. Two minutes later, he’d shout he’d forgotten a towel or his cell phone or whatever. I’d trot up the stairs with whatever he said he wanted. He never wanted what he asked for. He wanted me.

  He thought it was romantic. I felt ambushed. Eventually, I learned not to trust him. At first, he thought “no” was a flirtatious game, designed to make him want it more, a hard-to-get game. Eventually, he learned what it meant. He just chose not to hear it. Sometimes he did. Like when I’d have my period.

  After a while, I didn’t bother refusing him.

  If I did, he’d pout. If I said no for a week, he’d be terribly unhappy. And then he’d be upset about the messy office, or the dirty floors, or the boring meals, or how much money I was spending. If
I said no for more than a week, he’d be angry. He’d tell me I was selfish, frigid, dysfunctional. He’d throw the phone book into the bedroom and tell me to look up phone numbers of doctors.

  It was easier to just do what had to be done.

  Eventually, I learned a few strategies myself. Like my periods lasted longer. Like staying up late grading papers, reading. I’d force myself some nights to stay awake. If he fell asleep first, I won. I ’d fall asleep on the sofa. I think he caught on because then he told me he didn’t like finding me on the sofa in the morning. He wanted me to come to bed. I learned how to slide into bed as if I was water poured gently down the side of a tall glass. Some nights were better than others. It took practice. The secret was not moving. If I moved, the game was over. He’d know I was awake.