by Roxane Gay
I hung up before I had to listen to him say another stupid thing.
I joined my sister and Darryl and his friend on the tarmac. Carolina grinned and threw me a beer. “How’s the video clerk?”
“We’re through.”
Carolina threw her arms over her head and crowed. Then she was crawling up the windshield and standing on top of the cab and shouting for me to join her. Cooper reached into the truck and turned up the volume on the radio. We drank and danced on the top of that truck while the boys passed a joint back and forth below us. The night grew darker but we didn’t stop dancing. Eventually, we grew tired, and climbed down into the truck bed. We stared up at the stars, the night still warm. I wanted to cry.
Carolina turned toward me. “Don’t cry,” she said.
“We’re not going home, are we?”
She held my face in her hands.
I woke up and blinked. My eyes were dry and my mouth was dry. My face was dry, the skin stretched tightly. The desert was all in me. I sat up, slowly, and looked around. I was back in my motel room—the dank smell was unbearable. I grabbed my chest. I was still dressed. The door to Darryl’s room was open and Darryl was asleep, sprawled on his stomach, one of his long arms hanging over the edge of the bed. Carolina was sitting against the headboard, doing a crossword, her glasses perched on the tip of her nose.
“You didn’t sleep long.”
“How long have we been here?”
She looked at the clock on the nightstand. “A couple hours.” Carolina set her crossword down and led me back to my room. She helped me out of my jeans and pulled a clean T-shirt over my head. She washed my face with a cool washcloth and crawled into bed with me.
I turned to face her. “You should sleep.”
She nodded and I pulled the comforter up around us. “You keep watch,” she whispered.
My chest tightened. “Hush,” I said. “Hush.”
I stared at the ceiling, brown with age and water damage. Carolina started to snore softly. When I grew bored, I turned on the television and listened to a documentary about manatees off the coast of Florida, how they were on average nine feet long and how most manatee deaths were human related. When the scientist said this, the interviewer paused. “Man always gets in the way,” the interviewer said, ponderously.
We were young once and then we weren’t.
Mr. Peter drove for a long time. We were so little and so scared. That was enough to keep us quiet. When we stopped, we weren’t anywhere we recognized. He didn’t say very much, his hands clamping our necks as he steered us from the van into a house. He took us to a bedroom with two twin beds. The wallpaper was covered with little bears wearing blue bow ties and had a bright blue border. There were no windows. There was nothing in that room but the beds and the walls, our bodies and our fear. He left us for a minute, locking the door. Carolina and I sat on the edge of the bed farthest from the door. We were silent, our skinny legs touching, shaking. When Mr. Peter returned, he threw a length of rope at me.
“Tie her up,” he said. I hesitated and he squeezed my shoulder, hard. “Don’t make me wait.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, as I looped the rope around Carolina’s wrists, loosely.
Mr. Peter nudged me with his foot. “Tighter.”
Carolina started babbling, her voice quickly rising in pitch as I pulled the rope tighter. Her lips wet with tears, spit, spite. “Take me,” she begged. “Just take me.” He refused. When I was done, he tugged on the rope. Satisfied, he pulled me by my shirt. Carolina stood and held my hands. Her fingertips were bright red, knuckles white. As Mr. Peter dragged me out of the room, Carolina tightened her grip until he finally shoved her away. My eyes widened as the door closed. My sister went crazy. She yelled and threw her body against the door over and over.
Mr. Peter took me into another bedroom with a bed as big as my parents’. There was a dresser, bare, no pictures, nothing. Carolina was still yelling and hitting the door, sound from a faraway place.
“We can be friends or we can be enemies,” Mr. Peter said.
I didn’t understand but I did; there was the way he looked at me, how he licked his lips over and over.
“Are you going to hurt my sister?”
He smiled. “Not if we’re friends.”
He pulled me toward him, rubbing his thumb across my lips. I wanted to look away. His eyes weren’t normal, didn’t look like eyes. I did not look away. He forced his thumb into my mouth. I thought about biting down. I thought about screaming. I thought about my sister, alone in a faraway room, her wrists bound and what he would do to her, to me, to us. I did not understand why his finger was in my mouth. My jaw trembled. I did not bite down.
Mr. Peter arched an eyebrow. “Friends,” he said. He pulled me to him. My body became nothing.
Later, he took me back to the other room. Carolina was slumped against the far wall. When she saw us, she rushed at him, barreling into his knees.
He laughed and kicked her away. “Don’t make trouble. Me and your sister are going to be good friends.”
“Like hell,” Carolina said, rushing at him again.
He swatted her away and tossed a box of Fruit Roll-Ups on the floor and left us alone. After we heard him walk away, Carolina told me to untie her. I stood in the corner, wanted to wrap the walls around us.
My sister studied me for a long time. “What did he do?”
I looked at my shoes.
“Oh no,” she said quietly, so quietly.
We fell into a routine—we’d explore Reno during the day and go to the airfield at night with Darryl. Sometimes, he let us play with equipment we had no business touching. As planes landed, we stood on the edge of the runway, arms high in the air like we were trying to grab the wings. After planes touched down, we chased after them like we could catch their wind.
Spencer never called, made no grand gesture to win me back. I didn’t care. Our parents were long accustomed to Carolina and me chasing after each other. Once they were assured we were safe, they sent us text messages every few days to remind us they loved us, to call if we needed anything. They didn’t understand us. They did not know the girls who came home after Mr. Peter.
One morning, I couldn’t sleep, and found Darryl, in bed, watching over Carolina, who was asleep. I crawled in next to her and he looked at me over my sister’s narrow frame.
It’s like he knew exactly what I was thinking. “I’m not that guy anymore,” he said. “I’m all grown up and I aim to be true.” He kissed my sister’s shoulder. I nodded and closed my eyes.
Every day, Mr. Peter came and made me tie up my sister. He took me to the other room. He took what he wanted from my body. Carolina went mad, always trying to reach me, always trying to make me tell her what happened. I couldn’t.
It was worse for her until Mr. Peter made her tie me up. I screamed until my throat bled. I spit blood at his feet. “We were supposed to be friends,” I said. “You promised.”
He laughed. “Your sister is going to be my friend, too, little girl.”
While she was gone, I threw myself against the door, bruising my body with rage, calling out her name. I knew too much. When he brought her back she limped over to me and untied my wrists. We sat on the floor. She said, “It’s better this way, more fair,” but she was crying and I was crying and we didn’t know how to stop.
After that, Mr. Peter came for us every day, sometimes more than once a day. Sometimes there were other men. Sometimes we lay next to each other on his big bed and stared at each other and we would never look away, no matter what they did to us. We’d move our lips and say things only we could hear. He bathed us in a little bathroom with a sea-green tub where we sat facing each other, our knees pulled to our chests. He wouldn’t even leave us alone to clean ourselves. He made our whole world the windowless rooms in his house, always filled by him.
The smell of the Blue Desert Inn was driving me crazy. The air was moldy and too thick. It covered my skin and my clothes a
nd my teeth. One morning I saw a cockroach lazily ambling across the television screen and snapped. I stomped into Darryl’s room and found my sister curled up in his arms while he smoothed her hair. I looked away, my face growing warm. I hadn’t considered that such intimacy was possible between them.
“I am not staying here for one more day.”
Carolina sat up. “I don’t want to go home.” The edge in her voice made my heart contract.
I was ready to argue but she looked so tired. “We can stay somewhere nicer.” I waved around the room. “But we’re not going to live like this.”
She poked Darryl’s chest. “What about him?”
“Aren’t you guys playing house right now?”
Carolina grinned. Darryl gave me a thumbs-up.
As we pulled out of the parking lot of the Blue Desert Inn, the sign read VAC Y.
The police caught Mr. Peter when we were fifteen and sixteen. His name was Peter James Iversen. His wife and two sons lived in the house in front of the house where he kept us. The authorities found videotapes. We didn’t know. Two detectives came to our house. Carolina and I sat on the couch. The detectives talked. We did not blink. They told us about the tapes; they had watched. I leaned forward, my forehead against my knees. Carolina put her hand in the small of my back. Our parents stood to the side, slowly shaking their heads. When I sat up, I couldn’t hear anything. The detectives kept talking but all I could think was people have seen videotapes. I stood and walked out of the room. I walked out of the house. Carolina followed. I stopped at the end of the driveway. We watched the traffic.
“Well,” she finally said. “This sucks.”
A convertible sped by. There was a woman in the passenger seat and her red hair filled the air around her face. She was smiling, all white teeth.
“That bastard,” I said.
We went back into the house and said we wanted to see the tapes. At first the detectives and our parents protested, but eventually we got our way. A few days later, my sister and I sat next to each other in a small windowless room with a TV and VCR on a cart. Concerned adults hovered over us—a detective, some kind of social worker, a lawyer.
“Our parents can never see these,” Carolina said. “Not ever.”
The detective nodded.
We watched hours of black-and-white videos of the girls we used to be and what we were turned into. I held my hand over my mouth to keep any sound from escaping. After a particularly disturbing scene, the detective said, “I think that’s enough.” Carolina said, “Being there was worse.” When we were done I asked if the tapes could be destroyed. That was the one thing we wanted. No one would look us in the eye. Evidence, they said. As we walked out of the police station my legs threatened to give out. Carolina did not let me fall.
The criminal trial went quickly. There was too much evidence. Mr. Peter was sentenced to life in prison. There was a civil trial because he had money and our parents decided his money should be ours. We both testified. I went first. I tried not to look at him, sitting next to his lawyer, the two of them in their blue suits and neat haircuts. My words rotted on my tongue. Carolina testified. Between the two of us, we told as much of the story as we were ever going to tell. When she finished she looked at me, her eyes flashing worriedly. She stared at her hands, fidgeted. The courtroom was quiet, only the occasional shuffling of paper or a body shifting in the gallery. The judge excused her but Carolina wouldn’t move from the stand. She shook her head and gripped the rail in front of her. Her lower lip trembled and I stood. The judge leaned toward my sister, looked down, then coughed and cleared the courtroom. I went to my sister. I smelled something sharp, her fear, something more. I looked down, saw a wet pattern on her skirt, stretching along her thigh. She had wet herself. She was shaking.
I took her hand, squeezed. “This is not a problem. We can fix this.”
“Come with me,” the judge said. We froze. I stood in front of my sister and she buried her face in my back, her trembling arms wrapped around my waist. I did not let her fall. The judge’s face flushed. “Not like that,” he stammered. “There’s a bathroom in my chambers.”
We followed, warily. In the bathroom Carolina wouldn’t move, wouldn’t speak. I helped her out of her skirt and her underwear. I washed her clean as best I could with dispenser soap and paper towels.
A while later, a knock, our mother, whispering. “Girls,” she said. “I’ve brought a change of clothes.”
I opened the door, just a crack. My mother stood in her Sunday suit, a strand of pearls encircling her neck. I reached for the plastic bag and as she handed it to me, she grabbed my wrist gently.
“Can I help?”
I shook my head and pulled away. I closed the door. I dressed my sister. I washed her face. Our foreheads met and I whispered the soft words I give her when she locks up.
On the drive home, we sat in the backseat. Our parents looked straight ahead. As we turned onto our street, our father cleared his throat and tried to sound happy. “At least this is over.”
An ugly sound came out of Carolina’s mouth.
My father gripped the steering wheel tighter.
The new hotel was much nicer. There was room service and daily maid service and many amenities. While Darryl strutted around their room, Carolina and I sat on my bed, poring over a thick leather portfolio detailing the benefits of the hotel. There was a pool, Jacuzzi, and sauna.
While we studied the room service menu, I bumped Carolina’s arm gently. “What’s really going on here? No more bullshit.”
“I just woke up one day and realized we never left that town, and for what?”
“They have French toast.” I pointed to a bright picture of thick French toast, covered with powdered sugar.
Carolina reached for her purse and pulled out an envelope, the words DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS in the upper left corner. She smoothed the letter out.
“No,” I said, but it sounded like three words.
Her hands shook until she closed her fingers into tight fists. I started reading and then I grabbed the letter and jumped off the bed, kept reading, turned the letter over.
“Don’t freak out,” Carolina said.
I kicked the air. I set the letter on the nightstand and started banging my head against the wall until a dull throb shot through the bone of my skull.
Carolina closed the distance between us and grabbed my shoulders. “Look at me.”
I bit my lip.
She shook me, hard. “Look at me.”
I finally lifted my chin. I have spent the best and worst moments of my life looking my sister in the eye. “You brought us here to hide,” I said. “You should have told me the truth.”
Carolina leaned down and dried my tears with her hair. She sat next to me and I saw her at eleven years old, throwing herself into the mouth of something terrible so I would not be alone. “This is the truth—he knows my address and he sent this letter and that means he can find us. I don’t want to ever go back there,” she whispered. “I don’t ever want him to find us again.”
The jury awarded us a lot of money, so much money we would never have to work or want. For a long time, we refused to spend it. Every night, I went online and checked my account balances and thought, This is what my life was worth.
My sister and I went to work with Darryl. We sat in the backseat as he drove.
“You girls are awful quiet,” he said, as we pulled up to the airfield.
I held his gaze in the rearview mirror. I wanted to say something but my voice locked. Carolina handed him the letter from Mr. Peter. As he read it, Darryl muttered under his breath.
When he was done, he turned to look at us. “I may not seem like much of a man, but that SOB isn’t gonna hurt you here, and won’t find you, either.”
He carefully folded the letter and handed it back to Carolina. Right then I knew why she found her way back to him.
While he worked, my sister and I lay on the runway between two parallel lines of flash
ing blue lights. The pavement was still warm and the ground held us steady. Our bodies practically glowed.
Mr. Peter was up for parole and Mr. Peter was a changed man. Mr. Peter needed to prove he was a changed man and to prove that Mr. Peter needed our help. Mr. Peter found God. Mr. Peter wanted our forgiveness. Mr. Peter needed our forgiveness so he could get parole. Mr. Peter was sorry for every terrible thing he did to us. Mr. Peter couldn’t resist two beautiful little girls. Mr. Peter wanted us so bad he couldn’t help himself. Mr. Peter was an old man now, could never hurt another little girl. Mr. Peter begged for our forgiveness.
We were young once.
I was ten and Carolina was eleven. We begged Mr. Peter for everything—food, fresh air, a moment alone with hot water. We begged him for mercy, to give our bodies a break before they were broken completely. He ignored us. We learned to stop begging. He would, too, or he wouldn’t. It did not matter.
Carolina pulled the letter out of her pocket and held the corner to the open flame of a lighter before tossing the burning letter into the air. We lay down on the runway, holding hands. The flame burned white, then extinguished. The ashes slowly fell to the ground, drifting onto our clothes, our faces, our deaf ears, our silent tongues.
Water, All Its Weight
Water and its damage followed Bianca. Every time she looked up. Everywhere she looked up. Water stains, in darkening whorls, curling across the drywall or fiberglass panels, filling them with rot and mold. Fat droplets of water fell on her forearm, her neck, her forehead, her lower lip.
In the gym, one of the fiberglass panels over the free weights had finally broken. The dissolved mush lay in a neat pile on the floor. There was a ladder beneath the empty space, an open toolbox. No repairman was in sight. She got on the treadmill, started running. Bianca’s muscles stretched away from her bones and she fell into a comfortable gait. A droplet of water on the back of her neck, then another. She looked up, held her stride. A new stain slowly spread across the panel. She continued running.
Later, at work, Bianca sat at her desk and ate a sensible lunch—a turkey sandwich with mustard, lettuce, and tomato. Above her, the ceiling panels had long since rotted into something dark and unrecognizable. Her small office was filled with a dank smell that clung to her clothes for hours after she left work each night. Fortunately, Bianca was very good at her job. She worked efficiently. She worked fast. She was lovely to look at, wore the wet look well. After she finished her sandwich, she wiped the crumbs from her hands and turned to face her computer monitor. Bianca typed and typed and typed, her fingers making quick work. She ignored the picture of her ex-husband on the corner of her desk. She should have removed it months ago but she wasn’t going to let his countenance get off that easily.