Hey! he said. Who’s that?
Alexandra darted upstairs and got into bed. The lights were off, and she pretended to be asleep.
The boys were shouting, angry that she’d been spying. She couldn’t make out what they were saying, but she hoped she hadn’t embarrassed Sam. The voices dropped in tone, their words broken by long pauses and then a longer silence.
The footsteps that began coming up the stairs were heavier than Sam’s. The door creaked, and someone sat on the edge of her bed.
Hey, he said, his words less a whisper than a sound like steam escaping from a radiator. He smelled of cigarette smoke and beer. I’m Sam’s friend.
She didn’t move. Downstairs, the boys were laughing again.
He was doing something near the floor. She cracked an eye. He was taking off his shoes.
You can’t sleep here, she told him.
What? He chuckled. I’m not going to sleep.
Then why are you taking off your shoes?
He popped the button on his jeans, slid them down his hips, and hesitated, looking unsure as to whether he should take them off.
Don’t undress, she said. She tried to push him off the bed with her foot, but he was big. If you want to sleep here, go to Sam’s bed.
He pulled back the covers.
I’m just going to lie with you. Sam said it was okay.
No he didn’t.
He did. I’m Gérard. We’re friends. Just relax. This will be fun.
No, it won’t. Get out of my bed.
She shoved at his chest as he pulled her against him, grabbing her breast.
That hurts. Stop it!
Sam said I could. He slid his hand inside her pajamas, between her legs. She thrashed, trying to kick him.
You stop it, he told her. I paid for this.
What?
I paid Sam. We made a deal.
Get off me.
He had an arm around her neck, pinning her against him, and as he pushed down her pajamas, she bit his wrist, the skin coming away under her teeth, her mouth salty.
He jerked back and punched her, her head digging into the pillow, lights flashing in her eyes, her cheekbone aching.
I didn’t want to do that, he said. I paid him forty fucking dollars. Now lie still.
Her body was tugged at, rearranged, and then he began to tear her in half. She knew the word for it, had been taught about it at school, but could remember nothing. His hand clamped her throat, and each time she tried to move, he squeezed and her temples throbbed.
He shuddered and gasped, and pushed himself off her, leaning into her throat. He pulled on his pants and shoes, and looked at his wrist as if checking the time. Crisse de bitch, he said before going downstairs.
Footsteps stomped outside. The car engine fired up and then faded into silence.
She slid her legs off the bed, put schoolbooks into her backpack, and picked up her clothes from the floor. She dressed and went quietly downstairs. Everyone was gone, but they could come back. In the bathroom, she found a sanitary pad for the blood. She washed herself, trying not to cry.
Three blocks away, she crawled through a willow tree’s overhang, into the hut-like space where she often hid to read. She lay down. As her eyes adjusted, the sky seemed to brighten through the branches, becoming golden. The leaves rustled near the ground, and a black and white cat she often petted peeked in. It rubbed against her, purring, and then lay, preening itself.
She woke shivering. The air had cooled, her body ached, and she forced herself up.
Before each cross street, she crouched and listened. Leading into the distance was a line of staggered lampposts: bright stitches against the dark.
At the library, she sat against the door and fell back asleep. She awoke to a pressure on her cheekbone and jerked her head away. Mrs. Ducharme stood above her, her fingers extended.
What happened?
Alexandra shook her head. Her bottom lip trembled.
Mrs. Ducharme led her inside, sat her in a chair, and spoke to someone on the phone. The police arrived. Coaxed by Mrs. Ducharme, Alexandra told them about the slingshot, the ball bearings, the attack against the couple in bed, the squirrels, Mr. Leclerc, the broken windows, the drug dealing, and then, as if the least important, the rape Sam had been paid for.
The day became a blur, and Alexandra dozed as people talked around her. She was taken to the police station and to a hospital. She met with a social worker. A nurse held her hand and explained what a rape kit was, and why it was necessary.
You can stay with Julie and me for as long as you want, Mrs. Ducharme told Alexandra after they met with a social worker. From now on, I want you to call me Colette.
Her brick rambler had white shutters and a front door with glass filigreed in the shape of vines. Blue crushed gravel surrounded the path’s round flagstones. There was no father here either.
When Julie arrived home, Mrs. Ducharme took her aside to speak with her privately. Julie came back and asked Alexandra if she wanted to share her room. Alexandra feared Julie would be jealous and resent the intrusion, so when they were alone, she said, You’re so pretty. If you had contacts and let your hair down, you’d be the prettiest girl in school.
Me? Julie said. I don’t have breasts. Then she giggled. Do you want me to put makeup on your cheek? I have a little. For pimples, you know.
Alexandra sat in front of the mirror. The bruise ran from her temple to her cheekbone, not quite a black eye as much as a crescent, like the night around the halo of the moon.
As Julie gently touched makeup onto her skin, the slight pressure of her fingers, the tickling caresses, made Alexandra sleepy again.
Later, while they were eating dinner, Alexandra’s mother arrived in her red skirt and heels, tripped on the flagstones, and shouted.
You little bitch! You ruined our family!
Mrs. Ducharme told her to go home, but Alexandra’s mother pushed at the door, one hand thrusting inside. Mrs. Ducharme slammed it on her wrist. There was a cry, and when the hand jerked back, she closed the door and snapped the lock.
The next day, Alexandra and Mrs. Ducharme went back to the police station, and she identified the older boy who had raped her. The police told her he couldn’t see through the one-way glass. Sam was in the lineup too, and appeared bored, cracking his knuckles. When the police asked which one was her brother, she pointed at him and turned away.
Over the months and the years that followed, Alexandra disciplined herself. She got straight As, did chores and anything else that she thought would please Mrs. Ducharme and Julie. Though Sam had been sent away to reform school and her rapist had gone to jail, she bought a jackknife and Mace. She wore clothes that hid her body. She studied her emotions, predicting their outcomes. She went to the gym, ran, exercised, and convinced Mrs. Ducharme to let her and Julie take self-defense classes. When a girl made fun of Julie at school, Alexandra put her in a headlock and held her until she apologized. Her newfound strength was intoxicating but also scared her. She never realized she could find so much pleasure in having power over another.
She didn’t see her mother again, and she returned home only once, a week after the rape, with the social worker to get her belongings. Her heart raced as she searched her mother’s drawers on impulse, hoping for a hint of her father’s identity. She found and kept only a blocky ruby-red plastic ring in a faded black box. A few months later, the social worker told her that her mother had moved in with a boyfriend and had signed papers making Alexandra a ward of the state.
At school, the counselor and nurse gave an assembly for the girls on how to protect themselves from rape. They told the students to stay in groups and dress modestly when walking alone. Hélène Lapierre, tall and blonde and the best student in the grade, raised her hand.
Why should we have to change our behavior and live in fea
r? Why aren’t you teaching boys not to behave like dogs? I shouldn’t be punished for how I dress.
The counselor stammered through an explanation about living in the world as it was and not how we wanted it to be. Hélène spoke over her, saying, The world changes. None of us are carrying rosaries.
After the assembly, Alexandra approached her and said she agreed. Hélène told her if she was interested in being more than an object, she had some work to do. Her parents taught at the university, and she loaned Alexandra battered copies of Friedan, Woolf, and de Beauvoir. Alexandra felt less alone in her fear and anger. With Hélène, she went to rallies against sexual violence and for women’s equity.
In the bathroom, Alexandra undressed before the mirror. She had muscles along her torso and over her ribs, thin, tight biceps, and lines in her shoulders. She had yet to go on a single date. While Hélène chose men who were boyish and often effeminately beautiful, those who caught Alexandra’s attention had nothing gentle about them. She ignored her desire, worrying that she’d become a feminist as another means of self-protection, and she wondered who she would be without her fear.
A few years later, she began university in Quebec City, at Laval, and studied law. She got an apartment with Hélène and two other girls. Julie went to the University of Quebec at Montreal with her boyfriend. She and Alexandra emailed, but their exchanges hardly extended beyond Julie’s talk of her relationship.
One snowy evening, after drinks at a party, Hélène and Alexandra stumbled against each other as they took off their boots. The warm woolen smell of Hélène’s open jacket filled Alexandra’s nostrils. Alexandra put her arms around her. Hélène laughed and said, Pauvre Alex, t’es vraiment soule — you’re really drunk.
Their faces were enclosed in their hair, and Alexandra moved her cheek against Hélène’s, an electric gradation of feeling until the edges of their lips touched. She kissed her, just a soft pressing, mouth to mouth, breathing each other’s air.
Hélène pulled back, stroking Alexandra’s cheek with her thumb.
Alex, she said quietly, you like men. I like men. We don’t have to sleep with each other just because we can’t stand how they behave.
Over Thanksgiving, Alexandra went to Montreal to visit Julie and Mrs. Ducharme. She was in the Berri–UQAM metro station, on her way to visit a friend, when she saw the group of five young men. The saliva in her mouth thickened as if she’d inhaled dust.
Sam stood at their center. They were staring at something he was holding. He lifted his hand, and she flinched. He held up a playing card, his fingertips framing its edges as he showed the others its suit and symbol: a king in black, spades or clubs. The young men laughed. His sleeves were rolled up, a cross tattooed on the meat of his forearm.
The lines of the metro hall — white pillars and gleaming turnstiles — seemed to join with the nerves in her eyes. She hurried down to the platform as the blue train was gliding in.
Her ribs squeezed her lungs, a suffocating band beneath her breasts, a corset of bloodless muscle. Her brain was a nest of brambles.
The summer after her first year of classes, Alexandra stayed in Quebec City, waitressing in a restaurant on Rue Saint-Jean, practicing her English so she could serve tourists. She often walked the narrow cobbled streets of the walled old city, looking up at the apartments owned by the foreign rich who rarely resided there. In the late afternoons, she read on the Plains of Abraham or jogged along the grassy ramparts, sneaking glances at men as the river below fell into the shadow of the tor on which Quebec stood.
Hélène had left to travel in Europe, and when she came back, she told Alexandra stories about her hookups with Swedish, French, and Italian men. She bragged that she’d lost two weeks from her itinerary because she couldn’t bring herself to leave a lover in Madrid.
Alexandra never discussed how she loathed the men she was drawn to. Portrayals of violent men turned her on — soldiers, adventurers, fighters, frontiersmen. Once, after meeting friends at a bar, she’d almost gone home with a stranger in his late thirties, a former professional boxer whose stubble felt like sandpaper when they kissed. At a street corner, she bolted, not even saying goodbye. She ignored his calls, the small, frantic echoing of her footsteps enraging her.
She continued to excel at university and added courses in English. The more she learned about injustice — the de facto slavery of women in many countries, culturally sanctioned rape and genital mutilation — the more she focused on women’s rights globally. She felt reassured by the sense that there was something concrete to fix — countries where women couldn’t vote or drive — and that she could apply her ideas and save them. Her old love of exploration and adventure stirred in her. She began to crave movement, feeling restless at her desk and at home.
One night, after descending from the yellow glow of the bus, she found a letter in her mailbox. She’d never seen her name in his handwriting.
Chère Alexandra.
She considered that. Chère. Did he have the right to that word? How had he found her address? She felt as if he’d been spying on her. The return address was a base in Afghanistan.
I think of you often. It’s strange to dream of being children, playing, exploring, testing the limits of danger. I dream often here. I relive every detail of that pathetic little room, our tiny beds, the steep stairs with their wood worn so smooth we often slipped. In detention, I never thought about it. When I enlisted, it never crossed my mind. I wanted something I have no word for, that I can describe only as distance — danger, adventure, the unknown — but I wanted it so badly I didn’t understand what it was. I was just motion, like water running down a mountain. When I started training, in Canada and later at Fort Bliss, in Texas, I knew I’d made a mistake. I didn’t realize I’d have to obey others. I had no idea that discipline outweighed fierceness in the military, that chaos would be something I’d be trained to resist. If they’d told me, run in the forest, hunt each other, kill if you want, I’d have been content. If I didn’t do what they commanded, they weren’t going to kick me out — they were just going to punish me. And then I got it. I guess it’s like breaking a horse or training a dog. I realized that for all those years I was just an animal running free. I read books because books were a greater distance in which to run. If I didn’t like one, I found another. Through them, I was inhabiting stronger bodies, waiting for mine to be ready to take on the world. There were no consequences, just experience.
Samuel
Every few days, a new letter arrived, sometimes two at once, so that she had to order them by their postmarks. He described his boredom — hours in the desert, standing guard during meetings with village elders, riding in armored convoys, watching over a water project where it was so hot he struggled to keep the sweat out of his eyes and stay alert — but also the attacks, mortars coming into their camp, or RPGs fired down from the hills. The firefights sounded nothing like in films, he said. Incoming bullets snapped or whirred. He missed life in Texas, the clubs where the military men took off their wedding rings and went crazy with local girls. He thought constantly about a young Southern Baptist he’d dated and had anal sex and oral sex with night after night. She kept asking him to marry her before he deployed.
Americans are insane. As if God judges between the anus and the vagina, one Golgotha, the other Gethsemane. Who could believe in such a ridiculous divine anatomist? But if she’d cut off all pleasure, I’d have married her. I should throw this letter away, but I promised myself I’d write whatever comes to mind. I guess I’m saying that our desire doesn’t care how we go about getting what we want. There’s a part of our brain that judges how desire does its business, but it’s not as powerful. The guys here, they go crazy. When nothing’s happening, when we’re waiting and there’s too much downtime, they go after each other. Two or three guys will hold another guy down and pretend to rape him. They don’t actually rape him, but it’s not so different. It’s
our desire trying to find a release, and we’re barely in control.
Samuel
She read and reread his letters. She could hear his apology in every line. A friend wept over a dead soldier Sam hadn’t liked, and yet Sam himself cried at night, his fingers pushed into his mouth, for the grief of the friend. He tried not to hate the Afghans, their hennaed beards and hair, their toothless mouths, the women in burqas like ambulant socks, the ragged barefoot youths who fought and died too easily and the ones he never saw or thought he never saw and wished he did, who left the bombs in the road that blew their vehicles into the fields, turning them into shrapnel and incinerating limbs.
She never wrote back, unsure of what she should say. The stories she read in class about the brutalities inflicted on women made her feel that her own suffering was insignificant, that she still had to experience so much more to understand life.
The next summer, she took a job near Blanc Sablon, on the north coast of the Saint Lawrence, where the river opened into the gulf, just below Labrador and seventeen hundred kilometers north of Montreal. She’d seen the area on a satellite photo: thousands of square kilometers of stone pocked with lakes, scored with long striations from repeated cycles of glaciation.
As she flew in on a Cessna, the plane bouncing through the sky against surging winds off the gulf, she studied the shield of scoured stone and found herself thinking about Sam’s letters gathering in her mailbox, how her subtenant was collecting them in a grocery bag.
She was one of ten university students hired by the government to record the wildlife they saw. They were each given a station, hers on a rise overlooking the desolate coast, the planet so curved this far north that, wherever she stood, she felt she was at its highest point. The horizons ran in long descending sweeps, land and sea broken only by the occasional jut of stone.
The project’s goal was to compose a biodiversity map that showed the fluctuation of species due to climate change. She had a clipboard with a checklist: weasels, minks, otters, martens, fishers, wolverines, beavers, muskrats, voles, lemmings, rats, mice, shrews, moles, hares, porcupines, caribou, moose, muskoxen, lynx, coyotes, wolves, black bears, polar bears, and several types of foxes. She used her guidebook and binoculars, and put marks down whenever she saw geese or puffins, seals or falcons. She also had a canister of bear spray, an emergency whistle, sealed army rations, a large water bottle, and a walkie-talkie.
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