Innocents

by Coote, Cathy

  ‘Still,’ you said, walking me to the door, your hands clasped together, monk-like, in front of you, ‘at least he didn't suffer.’ You opened the door for me.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘At least, not any more than was necessary.’

  At home, I sat cross-legged on my bed, sketchbook open, drawing furiously. I drew Rachel, with angry, lewd strokes. I made her naked before me. Omnipotent, I wreaked vengeance with a pencil.

  As the afternoon melted into evening, I drew her kneeling, her forehead touching the ground, her arms pinned together behind her back. Her hair was dishevelled, about to escape the loose bun at the back of her head. Tendrils snaked, Medusa-like, around her ears. Her eyes were closed in pain. Her mouth was parted slightly, as though she were exhausted. I drew the long luxurious curve of her naked back with satisfaction. My eyes narrowed as I sketched in her buttocks and her legs, curled anyhow under her, as though she had been pushed to the ground with force and was too weary and dispirited even to fall comfortably.

  I was defending you, darling. I was punishing her for her derision, her harsh voice and mocking smile.

  The abuse of your kindness enraged me. My heart raced, thinking of that scornful crowd of vixens, watching you, laughter curling their lips, as you watched the cat, tears stinging your eyes.

  My homework lay neglected at the bottom of my school-bag. The light all drained away from my window, but I didn't switch the lamp on. I sat there, still and silent, as my white hands in my lap turned royal blue, then purple. I was watching the tortured image before me melt away into the darkness.

  T

  he next day, as I was walking through the teachers' carpark, your car pulled up, in a flurry of gravel, almost next to me. ‘Heya,’ I said.

  ‘Oh …’ You looked flustered as you slammed the car door. ‘Oh, hello.’ Fumbling with the boot of the car, you asked, ‘Your—er—parents weren't too upset about the dress, were they?’

  Ignoring your faux pas, I said : ‘Nah. I soaked it. It all came out.’

  ‘Still—’ You were extracting piles of manila folders and hugging them awkwardly to your chest as you shut the boot—‘you should be proud of what you did.’

  ‘Yeah, I am.’ On tiptoes, I reached up to your stack of folders, and took the top third for myself.

  ‘Oh.’ You went bright red. ‘Thank you very much, m'dear.’

  I liked ‘m'dear’. It had a slightly foppish ring to it which matched your endless supply of baggy-trousered tweed suits and your hair that hung in two lank flops. It was exotic, too; with an aroma of some strange English spice that fascinated me, used to smelling only the overwhelming chemical scent of spray deodorant on my body.

  I trotted along at your heels. I liked the way you strode along, like a flamingo on important business.

  As we entered the building, Kara came out. You nodded politely at her. ‘Morning,’ you said.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. I felt her blue eyes burning into my back as I followed you inside.

  After we'd entered your classroom and dumped the folders on your desk, you thanked me earnestly. As I turned to go, you said cheerily, ‘Well … I'll see you in class after lunch, won't I?’

  ‘Yep!’ I said.

  I sat and read through Maths. The myopic supply teacher never noticed.

  By recess, rumours about my blood-stained uniform of the day before had reached my friends.

  Walking through the stark concrete quadrangle, Laura wanted to know: ‘Did you have a little accident, yesterday?’

  This was the sort of scene I had been dreading for years. Heart-sunk, soul-scuttled, I turned to answer her. But now that the worst had happened, and I was unmasked as a freak, I did find a sort of stony pride to face her down with.

  ‘What?’ I sounded irritable, busy, as though I had other things on my mind.

  ‘I heard there was blood all over you.’

  ‘Cat's blood,’ I answered with terse truthfulness, ducking into the hallway.

  I don't know if she believed me.

  But from then on, my friends carefully distanced themselves. They said ‘Hi’ to me in the locker room, but then turned pointedly away to focus on more important conversations. They neglected to invite me to parties and withheld juicy bits of gossip.

  It was only to be expected. I knew I'd done wrong. I'd been weird. I'd sided with a teacher—a weird teacher, at that: one who made a stupid, laughable attempt to make himself likable—against Rachel and the group. But it still stung to be so suddenly declared unclean, unfit to associate with, when I'd worked so hard to fit in.

  I spent some weeks as an outcast, hovering lunchtimes away in the library or under distant trees.

  My fury at my friends was vague and generalised. They were all guilty, as a crowd. Quietly, methodically, I went about the business of drawing exactly what I thought of them.

  I filled half a sketchbook, that week. Agitation kept me awake, long into the silences of the night.

  By Friday, discussions of weekend plans that flagrantly didn't include me had taunted me into an agony of restlessness. I ran home, through a sudden drizzle, kicking at stones, ripping the leaves from trees and shredding them with my fingers.

  I couldn't eat my dinner. Too many shapes—too much skin—came crowding in on my senses. There was no room for food. I made an excuse and retreated to my room.

  I suppose I must have seemed strained and distant enough to worry my aunt and uncle.

  I suppose that's why, after I thought he was in bed, my uncle came and tapped at my door.

  I suppose that's why, when I didn't answer, he opened the door and entered.

  I had crept along the corridor to the toilet. On the way back, I heard nothing except the rain swishing against the ground outside.

  I remember seeing my uncle leaning over my sketchbooks, his arms straight, his hands curled under the edge of the desk. I must have touched the door slightly. The hinges creaked, and he spun around in an instant, like a matador.

  His face was maroon with fury. Lumps like cellulite sprang up in his forehead. He strode across the floor towards me, pulling himself up to his full height.

  I cowered.

  ‘What is this?’ he demanded, thrusting his big body even closer to mine. I felt the cold smooth plaster of the wall against my back. I couldn't retreat any further. Across the room, I could see my pencil sketches lying bare to the air, open to any eye. I was struck anew by the careful lewdness, the clinical perversion, of the subject matter.

  I started to shake. I was a criminal engaged in a complicated felony. I had been found out and I would be punished.

  He lunged for me, his face swollen, eyes bulging hideously.

  ‘What are they?’ He grabbed me with both hands. His fingers dug painfully in below my collarbones. In retrospect, I think there was a kind of panic on his face, a frantic uncertainty, as though, having caught me by the shoulders, he was uncertain what to do with me.

  I couldn't say anything. Hot hysteria crept through my veins, flushing my face and neck. I shook my head, more to deny the situation than the crime.

  His voice was shrill. His moustache convulsed, caterpillarlike.

  ‘Did you draw them? Did you?’ I could feel his breath gusting over my face.

  I gave a spastic nod, closing my eyes so I didn't have to look at his ferocious, hostile face.

  Fury condensed in his hands. He shook me violently. ‘They're disgusting!’

  I knew that. Of course they were disgusting.

  ‘What kind of—’ he wanted to know.

  I didn't know what kind of teenage girl had files full of detailed sadistic fantasies, either. I trembled in his grasp.

  ‘You're an animal!’ Again, the hands contracted, vice-like. This time he lifted me completely off the ground, banging me back down like a sack of potatoes.

  An ancient reptilian panic awoke in me. I started to struggle, to writhe and bend. He gripped me more tightly than ever, making a fan of fingertip-shaped bruises across each shoulder
.

  The redness in my face overflowed into snivelling tears. They ran down my cheeks in an uneven stream. I snorted violently, wriggling every second.

  ‘You're an animal!’ he said, right in my ear this time. I turned my head, opened my mouth, and confirmed his accusation by sinking my teeth into his wrist.

  ‘Shit!’

  He let go instantly, clapping one hand over his wound. I didn't wait to see what would happen. I turned and fled, bumping down the dark stairs, sobbing incoherently. I fought with the deadlock on the front door till the cold metal bit into my hands, and flew, finally, out into the night.

  I came pelting, I came pounding. All the dogs of hell were on my tail. I couldn't see a thing. I ran with one hand up to shield my eyes, as though I were running into a dazzling light.

  Great sluglike droplets of rain collected on the leaves above and then unleashed themselves on me, like waterbombs. My little tears were all flooded away.

  It was a low treacherous undergrowth that I ran through, stumbling on roots, catching my foot on traitorously curved low branches, bruising myself on treetrunks. I cried out in frustration when I fell onto my face. The mud sucked at my knees and elbows. It didn't want to let me stand again, but I dragged myself to my feet, lurching onwards, blindly.

  I didn't know where I was going. I just crashed on through.

  It was just luck that I ended up on the avenue.

  I didn't realise where I was, not for a few seconds. I only knew that the leaves and the sticks, the clutching witch's fingers, no longer barred my way. I folded my arms and lowered my head and charged onwards.

  There was asphalt under my feet and a fine spray of rain on my face. I yelped when my calf dragged against something sharp.

  I hopped for a few steps. I'd cut my leg. The cold rain stung the wound. I didn't care.

  I ran and I ran. The streetlights made weak puddles of light, which I avoided instinctively.

  I wasn't looking for your house. When I saw a looming dark ark to my left, some beast's instinct told me to seek shelter there. I must have recognised your car parked in the driveway.

  And that's how you found me, doubled over as though I'd been punched, hammering hysterically on your door with one muddy fist.

  A light went on somewhere away behind the door, and then it was open. Light flooded out all over me, and you stood there, the silhouette of an angel.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ you said. Or something like that.

  I couldn't speak.

  You took me by one wrist and led me inside.

  I was, suddenly, in some kind of beige haven, with soft gentle carpet underfoot and a reassuring sofa in the corner. There were tribal artifacts arrayed on some of the shelves, and books on others. Totem masks with big hollow eyes stared down from the walls.

  I'd woken you up, of course. You were still blinking away sleep. Your hair was everywhere. You'd thrown on a T-shirt and a pair of boxer-shorts.

  What I mostly remember is you holding me gently at arm's length, one hand on each shoulder. You stood in front of me, just peering down intently into my face, with your big green eyes.

  I had snot running down my chin. I was still shuddering with fear and strange hiccupping tears. I was conscious, now, of being very cold. I was all covered in little stings and aches. You seemed to sense this, and propelled me over to the sofa and sat me down.

  Turning away, you found a tissue and wiped my face carefully. The tissue quickly became sodden with rainwater and tears and snot. You screwed it up into a ball and dropped it unceremoniously on the floor. Then you wiped, very tenderly, at the corners of my eyes with one finger.

  ‘What's happened?’ There was a reddening at the corners of your eyes, and a fine glaze of tears.

  I must have looked pretty pathetic. You must have thought I'd been the victim of an assault.

  I couldn't say a word.

  I tried to speak, and couldn't. I let out one frenzied sob. I sucked the next sob in, with a slurping noise. I wiped my eyes with the back of one hand.

  ‘Oh, you poor little …’ Your face split open with pity.

  Then you did a strange thing. You took my wet teary hand in your two hands, and you pressed it to your lips. You inhaled deeply through your nose, and gave a sort of angry sigh. ‘Come on.’

  When I didn't move, you stood up, and replaced my hand carefully into my lap, like a man returning a valuable item he has been lent. ‘We'd better get you cleaned up.’

  And then you picked me up, one hand under my knees and the other behind my neck, the way a father picks up a sleepy toddler. It was such a relief not to have to run anywhere any more, to let my tired legs dangle uselessly over your arm. Your skin on mine felt hot. I shivered. My leg hurt.

  ‘You're freezing!’ you said, as we went off down the hall. Passing under the hall light, I scrunched my eyes shut, dizzy with distress. I had a headache.

  When I opened my eyes again, we were in a bathroom where everything was bottle-green or gleaming white. It was very clean and smelled of aftershave. You sat me on a wicker basket (it must have been your dirty-laundry basket) and stroked my face and arms and muddy legs with a hot wet flannel. Spots of blood dimpled the white floor. They smudged across the flannel as you moved it.

  Exhausted, I leant my head on the towel rail. Grabbing a green towel, you proceeded to pat dry my arms and legs. You said, ‘I'm going to get you some of my pyjamas. I want you to take this off.’ You tugged significantly at the hem of my uniform. It was filthy. Soaking wet, splodged with mud and spattered, near the bottom, with tiny droplets of my blood.

  I stood up as you left, and obeyed. I had to tug quite hard to get the obstinate, clinging thing over my head. Instinctively, I turned my back on the mirror.

  In a few moments, you returned with some blue flannel pyjamas, looking at the floor as you handed them to me.

  I got dressed. You stood with your arms folded and your back to me, a determined gentleman. When you turned around, you smiled.

  ‘I think you might need to roll those up a bit. Here.’ Kneeling down, you rolled the sleeves up and up, until you could see my hands. Then you bent right down, your broad back level with my knees, and did the same with the legs, until my pale scratched feet were exposed to the air.

  Racked with tiny after-sobs, I smiled wanly.

  You squatted by me. I saw the white arches of your bare feet. ‘Now,’ you said carefully, looking into my face, ‘have you got anywhere you can go tonight?’

  I shook my head.

  Carefully still, you asked, ‘Do you want to stay here?’

  I supposed so. I nodded.

  ‘All right then. Come on.’

  As though I were blind, you walked behind me, one hand on each arm, guiding me. We went awkwardly up the stairs and into a bedroom.

  ‘This is the spare room,’ you explained. ‘My brother and his wife sleep here, when they come.’

  There were cardboard boxes in rows on the floor, flaps open, spouting books. Against the window there was a double bed, like a display in a bedding shop. You tugged back the covers until a welcoming triangle of sheet showed. ‘Hop in.’

  I did, sinking back onto the piled pillows. Gently, you covered me up, pressing the blankets down against my shoulder.

  There was a wicker-backed chair by the foot of the bed. Yanking it across the floor, you planted yourself by my head.

  Clearing your throat, you said, ‘Right.’ You sat by my bed like a man constrained by an uncomfortable duty. You were restless. Your knees jigged up and down, up and down. I saw the dense yellow hairs foresting over your thighs.

  ‘Something's obviously …’ You nodded at me, at my battered self. ‘Well, you wouldn't be…’

  I watched you wrestle with words and then speak in plastic banalities. These cliches, you hauled painfully up out of the depths of your concern.

  To me, a fugitive in someone else's pyjamas, they seemed like jewels.

  You battled yourself, a man wrestling a boa constrictor.
You forced your eyes on me.

  Like a man confessing his sins, you said, ‘In some ways I wish you hadn't come here … to me, alone like this.’

  You stammered: ‘I mean, I coucoucouldn't ever hurt you …’ Then: ‘If I find out who's hurt you, I'll bloody well kill them!’

  So then you felt obliged to explain yourself: ‘I've always liked you, ever since I met you … You seem like a pretty amazing girl.’

  Silence.

  It wasn't enough. Your scruples demanded a clearer revelation. Your voice tore on ‘very’ when you said, ‘You're a very beautiful girl.’

  I saw you squirming before me like a insect pinned to cardboard.

  My darling, such an appeal to my vanity was impossible to ignore. I saw your midnight bird's-nest hair, and those big eyes, and nervous fingers.

  A new desire woke in me. I wanted you.

  I wanted you at that moment, when I understood how desperately you wanted me. I wanted you when I saw how you dreaded to touch me, fearing me broken. When I saw you pinching violently at the skin of your own wrist, leaving an angry red weal. I recognised the gesture. I'd done that to myself, trying to distract myself from the images I made.

  It seemed to me that you were punishing yourself for the most innocent of passions. You were charmingly, naively presuming yourself guilty of lechery, debauchery, debasement. How could you have the faintest clue? It was laughable that you should be parading your shame before me—a good man like you.

  So I, newly sainted, newly made innocent, reached for that agitated pinching right hand of yours, and I took it in mine.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ I said. The words and the gratitude were sincere. The virtuous big eyes I made were not; or at least they did not occur naturally. I put them there. ‘I really appreciate you doing … all this—’

  ‘Oh, don't be stupid!’ you pooh-poohed me. I had every right, it seemed, to expect your help.

  ‘No, I … it means a lot to me.’ The back of your hand glowed with blond down. I stroked it gently, with my thumb. Your hand tightened involuntarily around mine. It was almost a spasm. ‘You mean a lot to me.’