She puts down her pen and paper. “Are you saying that-”
I cut her off. “No. I’m not suicidal. I told you; I don’t feel enough to want to die, but I wish I was dead. I wish I’d died a long time ago, with Jerry. I wish he’d killed me, because I’ve done nothing but die slowly since. The pills don’t work, you know… They don’t make it have not happened.”
She sighs. “No one said they could.”
“I know. It’s just… Jack. He’s always been the only thing that mattered.” I start to cry and she hands me a box of tissues. I feel like an idiot, crying, blowing my nose in front of her, but I can’t stop it. I’ve always kept it in, never talking about it. Even with my other therapists. Maybe it’s Melinda or maybe it’s just that Jack was never in love before. He’s in love, I think, and the crying gets worse.
“Alana, tell me about him. Tell me about Jack.”
I’m not ready, though, so instead, I tell her about my stepdad.
10
A couple years went by and my mother got remarried. Jerry was nice at first. He would take us out for ice cream, help me with my homework, and bring my mom flowers and dinner when she had had a long week. It wasn’t real, though. It’s like he was just waiting, just biding his time, knowing, in the end, he would get what he wanted.
They were married less than a month before we really saw Jerry. Suddenly, the flowers stopped. And then, he started staying out most nights, coming home drunk. When my mom asked about it, he would get angry, hit her, bash her head into the wall, calling her a “whore” and a “nosy bitch.” They’d just gotten all these glasses for the wedding, and he broke them all within a few weeks. Only one was thrown in my direction; most were just smashed, but he did break one and slice open her cheek with it.
She wouldn’t leave. She just felt that, after my father, it was still better to have someone like Jerry around, because he didn’t touch me. And she was raised to think that a woman needed a man. So even though she started having to hide bruises, cuts, split lips, she felt she was being a good wife – and a good mother – because there was a man in the house. And he didn’t try to have sex with me. That became the simple deciding factor. Any man who didn’t rape her daughter was worth taking a few punches for. It happened, though. It just took longer.
He waited a while. When I entered my sophomore year, the looks started, but I was afraid of him, and I kept my mouth shut. I would see him staring at my ass, thinking things I knew he shouldn’t be thinking. But still, he didn’t touch me. A couple times he hit me, because I hadn’t cleaned up a plate or because there was too much dust on a table, but it was never sexual. I even stopped expecting it, thinking I would even take the violence as long as he never tried to do what my father had done.
We went on that way until Halloween. My mom was called into work, because there was some emergency. I was a little disappointed, since it was likely my last year to go trick or treating, but she told Jerry to take me. He grunted in reply, so I assumed that was a yes. She left and I started to get ready. I was going as a Pink Lady from Grease. I had no friends, so it wasn’t a group thing, but I liked musicals.
Although I was broken, I had actually started to heal. The summer had done wonders for me. After our first kiss, Jack and I had kissed a lot more, and he was my boyfriend. At school, he even held my hand. People made fun of us, but it didn’t hurt the way that it used to. They still said terrible things. They asked him all about my pussy, said I was a dumb slut, told me I would fuck anything, even a nasty killer’s kid. But when he took my hand in his, the words stopped stinging. Because they were only words. And someone finally saw something more in me.
I had started singing in choir. The teacher said my voice was pretty, that maybe I could be chosen for the select choral program, maybe even be in a musical. I didn’t get my hopes up, though, since I knew people didn’t like me. And I was still a little scared of being noticed.
It’s not like they didn’t notice anyway, of course. The guys, when they weren’t sneaking a brush of boob, would pass me notes telling me all the things they wanted to do to me. They’d stop me in the halls, and tell me that I should let them do what they wanted because everyone knew I was a slut. I never told Jack about the notes. He was going through a lot at home, because of his dad and the trial, and it wasn’t new. I just didn’t want to burden him.
Everyone knew that I wasn’t a virgin. I don’t know how they knew, but they said that they did. They said I was too pretty, that pretty girls were only good for fucking, and that they would show me how good fucking could be. The only person who didn’t talk to me like that, who never tried to touch me, was Jack. He’d glare at them, tell me to ignore them, but we were in the same place. He was the psycho and I was the whore.
Despite all the stories about us, we had never done more than kiss. He’d never even moved his hands lower than my shoulders, except to hug me or to hold my hand. We mostly saw each other in math and at lunch, even though we were boyfriend and girlfriend. We’d gotten lucky and been assigned the same math class again, but he’d never invited me to his house and I wasn’t going to invite him to mine. Not with Jerry there. On the weekends, when we weren’t busy, we’d still walk to the common and meet there, but our relationship was still innocent. And I liked it that way.
Jack was kind. He never had lunch money, so we would each bring in what we could scrounge up at home and then split my lunch as well. Sitting together in the corner of the cafeteria by the vending machines, sharing a stale bag of chips, was the best part of my day.
He was meeting me at the common for trick or treating that Halloween, so I was trying to hurry. All Jerry had to do was drop me off, because my mom didn’t want me walking in the dark, and then come back a couple hours later to get me. I was kind of worried, because he’d already started drinking when I’d come upstairs, but I figured I’d walk if I had to. If I was late, Jack would wait, and I was going more to see him than for candy.
Jerry was downstairs, watching TV or something, while I got dressed. The silky pink jacket was draped over my dresser, but I got the tight black turtleneck and poodle skirt on before I started to do my makeup. I wanted to look pretty, but not the kind of pretty the guys at school saw. I just wanted to be normal, a teenager, a girl with a messed up past but with maybe a hint of a future. I wanted Jack to kiss me again, because when he did, I almost felt like a real girl.
I didn’t hear the door open. I had the soundtrack to the musical on and Jerry was behind me before I could react. He took the lip liner from my hand and leaned in close. He smelled like booze, a lot of booze. His words were jumbled together, but it really didn’t matter. I didn’t even need to hear them to know what was going to happen.
He wrapped his arm, tight, around my neck and licked around my ear. “You’re getting really grown up,” he said.
I couldn’t do this again. Not on Halloween, not with choir, not with Jack in my life. The past had started to heal and even though the guys at school were vulgar and rude, I had lunch with Jack and I’d discovered a new talent. But this… I couldn’t do this. Memories of my father, his hands on me, him moving inside of me, they all flooded me and I tried to get free. Jerry pulled me roughly against him and, as I tried to scream, he covered my mouth.
“Let’s see what you’ve been giving to that boyfriend of yours,” he slurred.
He picked me up and carried me to my bed. I kicked my legs and clawed at his arm, but he was superhuman. He pushed me down and I tried to sit up. I started to scream and he hit me. Hard. Blood spilled down my throat and he hit me again and again until I couldn’t even see. It wasn’t even the tears; my vision was blurring and I was fading in and out of consciousness. When he pushed me down again, I couldn’t move. I felt his hands along my legs, the poodle skirt being shoved upwards, but my body wouldn’t react. I tried not to choke on the blood and the tears. All I could see while Jerry pawed at me were Jack’s eyes. I felt like I’d let him down, like I would never be good enough now. I’d
already been ruined, but twice? No one wanted a whore like me.
Jerry pulled a box cutter from his pocket. I didn’t understand and I was swimming in a distant reality. I didn’t even feel the pain as he sliced my thigh open. I could feel the wetness of the blood, but it didn’t hurt. I was numb, empty, broken.
“If you move, if you make a sound, I’ll cut deeper,” he warned me, “and I’ll cut you where it will hurt.”
He flipped me over and it was agonizing. He entered me, touching me and violating me in places I had never been touched, doing worse than even what my father had done to me. I tried to stay awake, to be present, because even though it was horrific, even though I didn’t want it to happen, I wanted to know what happened. But eventually, he had ripped me apart, cut me and torn me in places that would take a while to heal physically, but would never heal on the inside. I passed out, the blood from my thighs and where he thrust inside of me staining my sheets.
When I woke up, I was dressed, and the sheets had been washed and changed. We never went trick or treating. My mom never even knew. He told her I’d gotten sick and puked all over my room, so he’d cleaned up after me and put me to bed. She thought he was turning himself around. He started buying her flowers again after that. Every night when he’d come home with carnations, he would wait until she fell asleep, and then he’d come to me. I grew to hate the smell of carnations.
I didn’t fight him. I knew what I was then. He whispered over and over as he did things to me that I was so beautiful. I wished he’d hit me, would cut me again, this time where people could see it. I wanted to be scarred on the outside like I was internally.
On Halloween, Jack waited at the common for three hours, before going home and giving up. He texted me twenty-three times. I didn’t reply until the next day, when I woke up, and I just told him I had been sick. He was mad, but we put it behind us. Sort of. Our relationship grew, but something broke that night after I’d abandoned him. I thought about telling him what really happened several times, but I never did. I wanted him to love me, to still think I was pretty, and I knew that if he knew what I really was, he would only always see the ugliness.
11
“He still doesn’t know?” Melinda asks.
I shake my head. “No. It was bad enough telling him about my father, but everyone got to him first. I always preferred him thinking I was just a shitty girlfriend, a selfish bitch. It was better than the truth.”
“How many secrets have you kept from him?”
“I don’t know. Over time? A lot. I never told him about Jerry; I never told him about the guys at school; I didn’t tell him about the party after Prom.”
“The party?”
I take the tissues back and ball them up in my hand. I start pulling the fabric loose, until they’re shredded. I don’t think I can talk about all of this, not today, maybe not ever.
“Alana?” Melinda says.
“It’s too much. I’ve relived enough today.”
She nods. “Don’t you think Jack would love you anyway?”
“Maybe, but I wanted to be loved as the girl he thought I was. I didn’t want to be loved out of pity.”
“Why do you love him?”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
She takes the tissue box away from me, now that the crying has stopped and I’m simply making a mess. “I mean, do you love Jack out of pity? You told me about his life and it sounds like he’s had his own share of trauma. Do you pity him?”
“No, of course not. Jack’s special. He’s complicated and moody and sometimes he’s impossible to love, but I won’t ever stop loving him. It’s not just that he was my first real kiss, my first real lover, my first boyfriend. He was my first everything, actually. My first friend even. But once that had faded, even after I had been with other guys, even after Dave, there was always only Jack.”
“We need to talk about Dave,” she says.
“I’m not ready.”
“Okay. What do you want to talk about?”
“Nothing?”
She smiles and gets up. I don’t know what she’s doing until she gets the tea out again. I wonder if the insurance company knows they’re paying for me to drink tea and tear up tissues. Still, I feel… sane in her office. Maybe it’s the plants. Maybe it’s the scratchy blanket on the back of the futon. Maybe it’s just her. But whatever it is, I have gone nearly half an hour without feeling anxious. I haven’t even looked for my pills. Even though I know I can’t take them more than prescribed (although sometimes I cheat a little), I have a habit of checking repeatedly to ensure that they’re there. Just in case.
She hands me a mug and I hold it tight. The heat leaks out, warming my hands, and I smell the chamomile wafting up into my nostrils. The steam makes little sparkles of condensation spread across my face, but I like it. I’m always cold, and like everything about Melinda and her office, the tea is comforting.
“I want to know why you keep so many secrets, Alana. From most people, fine, I understand. But why from Jack? Doesn’t he deserve to know?”
“I don’t know. I don’t like the person that I am. I like the person that Jack thinks I am.”
“And what’s that?” she asks.
“He thinks I’m wild. He thinks I’m loyal and a good friend and he knows I love him, but he thinks all the other stuff – the sex, the kinkiness, all of it – well, he thinks it’s fun for me. I don’t want to tell him how I really feel, because then I have to admit that sometimes I don’t like it. And he’d hate himself, because if he knew how I feel sometimes, he would think he made me feel that way.”
“Does he?”
“Jack?” I shake my head and put the tea down. “Never. Jack would never hurt me. There have been times… but in the end, he cares. I know that he cares. I asked him to try most of the things that we’ve tried. The threesomes, some of the toys we’ve used, the dirty bathroom sex… I initiated almost all of it.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I wanted him to love me. And it’s the only way people love me.”
“So you didn’t enjoy it?” she asks.
I look over my shoulder, out the window. It’s getting colder. The winter is coming, and I feel like the chill reaches me through the closed windows. The parking lot looks like it’s waiting for snow. The trees are growing bare, and the world feels like it’s starting its annual journey into desolation.
Turning back to Melinda, I shrug. “I’m fucked up. That’s the problem. I loved it. The kinkier the better. I encouraged Jack to try things he was so nervous about doing. He’s not nervous now, but I’m the one who introduced that stuff. The first time I asked him to hit me… he freaked out. He was so scared of hurting me.”
“What kind of hitting?”
“Like whips and floggers. I like it rough. It’s because I’m damaged, isn’t it? Are you gonna write that down?”
She sighs and puts down her tea. I assume she’s going for her pen and paper, but she just folds her hands and looks at me. “Why do you think you liked it?”
“I don’t know. With Jack, I wanted to try it all, and when we did those things, they felt good. And I felt like that was what I deserved. I’m not the girl you make love to; I’m the girl you bend over and fuck from behind. And, physically, I can’t stop myself. I still get off on it, even when sometimes I end up crying once I’m alone again. It’s not normal. Normal people don’t like sex like that. Normal people have normal sex in normal relationships with other normal people.”
“You put a lot of stock in normal,” Melinda says. “You said you liked it. What’s wrong with that? Were you ashamed when you were doing it?”
“No. I’m never ashamed during. Even sometimes when I pick up guys in bars, I actually enjoy it. I like how it feels. It’s only after, when I realize that I’ve proven everyone right,” I tell her.
“Who? Who did you prove right?”
“Everyone who called me a whore. Because I am. I’m nothing but a dirty whore.”
I sigh. “A lot.”
“How many?”
“I really don’t know.”
“Well, I want you to remove your father and Jerry from the list. Because you did not have sex with them. What they did to you is something else entirely and we will deal that at a later time. So let’s start with Jack. There was Jack, and Dave.”
“Yeah. And four guys after Prom.”
“Okay, which you will tell me about next time.”
I nod. “Okay. And there have been a lot these last few years.”
“So for a while it was just Jack and Dave, except for Prom night. When did you start with the others?”
“When he went away to school and Dave left for Afghanistan. I was alone. And I was nothing. No one cared about me. I felt so… useless. And one night, I went to the bar, because I knew they’d serve me. And there was a guy there. I didn’t know his name. I still don’t know his name. But he bought me drinks and he kept telling me how beautiful I was and telling me how much he wanted to touch me. So I went home with him and I let him touch me.”
“And then you started doing it more?”
“Well, for that one night, I didn’t feel sad about Jack and Dave,” I tell her. “I didn’t feel abandoned. We had sex five times that night and I went home and slept for two days. I was so depressed and I felt horrible about it, but while I was doing it, I didn’t feel anything… except the base animal fucking part of it. And then, I just kept doing it.”
Melinda looks at the small clock on her desk. I can’t believe how easy she is to talk to, and I’m disappointed when she tells me she needs to stop for today. We make an appointment for the following week. When I get outside, I stand in the lot for a while, debating about heading to the bar. It takes me a solid fifteen minutes to decide and maybe if it was warmer out, I would have decided differently, but I head home instead. I don’t really feel like being touched by anyone but Jack. And he’s in the arms of Lily right now.
Blue Rose (A Flowering Novel) Page 5