I’d like to feel that way right now. A glass wall. Like no one can touch me without getting cut.
I can’t explain this to Sammi. She’s got this tornado of anger behind her eyes that I see is building in the way she stirs the ketchup on her napkin with her straw.
* * *
* * *
Later, we’re walking down the hallway. Both late for class. Saying nothing. She doesn’t want to let me go, she says. Sammi is afraid for me, she says.
“You can’t pretend like this never happened, Ali.”
“I’m thinking that pretending will work really well, actually.”
“It’ll work until you get severe panic attacks and can’t leave the house and then have a nervous breakdown and they have to put you in a psych ward and you’ll be babbling about bananas and lobotomies. That sounds like a great way to live.”
She grabs my hand. Her unfiled nails scratching against my fingers.
“You have to promise not to make me talk about this—”
“Ever again? I mean—”
“You can’t push me.”
My face gets hot again. I might puke. I see her eyes busy and scared.
A hall monitor walks into the hallway. “GIRLS,” she says. “GET TO CLASS.” Hissing.
“She just threw up, so I’m walking her to class,” Sammi says.
“Oh, then where’s the note from the nurse?”
There’s no note from the nurse. The monitor knows this.
Sammi turns to me. She’s scared. Biting her rosy lips. She begs me to let her take a picture of my bruised shoulder later at her house, later tonight. Just for insurance. I say yes. Anything to make her happy. Anything to get her to stop asking me questions. She holds my hand, takes it tight, cupping it. Then she sings to me. Our song that we hate so much that it’s become our theme song. Journey. “Open Arms.”
“‘So now I come . . . to you . . . with open arms . . .’”
“‘Nothing to hide . . . believe what I say . . .’”
I’m trying so hard to be us. I’m trying so hard to be me.
I pull away first, but we both expected that.
11
BLYTHE
After school. Sean meets me at the gym before his practice.
“So? What did she say?”
I have so many responses to this question. One: Why do you care what she says?
We’re talking about a girl whose name I didn’t even know until three days ago and now I’m being asked to bring her into my most secret cave, C-wing, which is basically this school’s equivalent of a lioness’s den. There’s a part of me that wants to tell him to fuck off.
What did she say? She was funny. She was smart. She doesn’t deserve this. That’s what.
But this is Sean Nessel I’m talking about. Sean has had his flaws and his mistakes, like that time with Suki, and yes, all the other times with all the other girls. Isn’t it also true that no one is perfect? That’s not me trying to make excuses for him. That’s just me having empathy. Right? Isn’t everyone entitled to forgiveness? Look at how much he cares about Ali’s feelings. Isn’t that Sean trying to change?
“She didn’t say much. She’s kind of reserved. She snapped at me actually when I asked her.”
“Well, that’s probably good, then, right?”
“Just because she’s saying nothing happened now doesn’t mean she’s not going to say something later.”
“Well, can’t you just talk to her?”
“Sean, it’s not that easy. I mean. I am talking to her. It’s just going to take some time.”
“This is the only thing I have,” he says. He runs his hands through his hair, worried, but it comes off as super cool, like posed. And for a second, I think, how am I going to help him? How can I be in charge of something like this, something so perverse and weird? How do I make it so it doesn’t reek?
And then Sean stares at me, his eyes lowered. His eyelashes, so long and thick.
“I can’t stop thinking about it, B. I can’t stop thinking about how bad this could turn out.”
He coughs, a nervous cough, and takes a step in. So close to me.
“I need you so much right now, to help me through this. I don’t even want to run into her in the hallway because I think she’ll, like, spit on me or something. And I didn’t even do anything. It was an accident. The whole thing just got out of control.”
I look around and see people staring at us. Usually it’s not just me and Sean talking like this, so close, face-to-face. Me, Dev, and Sean? Yes. Me and Sean? No.
I pull him around the corner so fewer people can see us.
“Shhh. Listen. We have a plan. We’ll stick to the plan. Everything’s going to be okay.”
He nods, his face blank. I put my hand on his, gently, his hand, calloused and rough, scaly almost, and so I run my fingers over his knuckles.
In the gym, I can hear the volleyball team practicing. Girls in tiny shorts. Spiking balls over the net one after the other. Click-swoosh. Spike. Click-swoosh. Spike. Their sneakers squeal against the gym floor.
He places his hands on my shoulders and backs me up against the wall.
“What are you doing, Sean?”
He’s flustered. He shushes me. “Sometimes . . . when I’m with you . . . I . . .”
My face is hot. I can barely look at him.
“What?” I whisper this. “What?” Because I’m scared of what he’s going to say to me. So breathless, so on the edge.
“I need someone to set me straight. I feel like you can help me, B.”
I exhale like I’ve never heard better news. What could he have said otherwise? That he loved me? Sometimes when I’m with you . . . his soft voice, pulsing inside me. Anything could have come after that, couldn’t it? A declaration. Even a kiss.
And I don’t know what I would have done. I don’t know if I would have wanted to turn him away.
12
ALI
“I want you to ask me any questions you can think of before we get there,” my aunt Marce says.
It’s Tuesday morning. We’re going to an emergency visit at my aunt Marce’s gynecologist in Jersey City. Marce told her I had unprotected sex, so I need an STI test. It’s my first time seeing a gynecologist and I know I should have so many other thoughts right now, but I seem to be fixated on all the women who have been in her office. All the mothers and the babies. All the vaginas.
“Are adult vaginas the same as teenage vaginas?”
Marce smirks. Gives me a quick look.
“Less pubic hair,” she says. “Pubic hair is like a gift that keeps on giving as you get older. It turns gray too.”
“No. It does not.”
“I am here to tell you, my darling, that it does. Sprouts of gray.”
I plunge right into an image from when I was little. Of my mother’s massive pubes. She was the kind of parent who walked around nude a lot. That was just her thing.
I called her pubes a gorilla for years, which she always laughed at. They would pop up in the bathtub when she’d soak there for what seemed like hours. And then I’d sit on the floor painting my little kid nails, nail polish all over my fingers, waiting for her to come out, and her gorilla vagina with all its dark curly pubes would hang down, dripping water all over the floor. Her vagina needed a separate towel.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve told her to trim it up, and she accused me of being a bikini-line fascist. “Women are supposed to have hair down there, Ali,” she said.
We’re at a stretch of road near the New Jersey Turnpike that runs along the plume-filled wetlands, and Aunt Marce pulls over. The plumes are these giant feathery tusks. In the distance, a steel bridge crosses over a railroad track. Trucks whiz over the bridge at full speed. Train tracks run side by side with the water. I don’t understand this part
of New Jersey at all.
“Ali, I love you and want you to listen to me,” she says.
“Just say it.”
“Say what?”
“That I’m a whore. Or that I’m a slut. Or that I’m stupid.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything like that, Ali. I would never say anything like that to you.”
“Then why would you start a sentence with a ‘but’ clarification. ‘I love you, but . . .’”
“For the record, I said ‘I love you and want you to listen to me.’ There wasn’t one single ‘but.’” She shifts her hands on the steering wheel. “What happened the other night? I’m just trying to figure out what happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why did you go up to the bedroom with him?”
“I can’t believe you’re saying this to me. Are you blaming me now?”
“No—” Her voice is getting higher, defensive. “I just want to figure out what’s going on.”
“Then you would know why I went up there!” I lower the car window. The dry wind moves through my hair. “I wanted to have sex.” I replay the whole thing over in my head. Going there with the intent to see Sean Nessel. Taking those drinks. Walking up those steps. Part of me wants to tell her.
“Honey, Sean Nessel—and let’s forget the part that happened in the bedroom—he was someone who was unattainable. Someone you kind of fantasized about.”
“I didn’t see it that way. In my mind, I knew him very well.”
Except I didn’t at all.
“But there’s more than that. For your first time, you want to have sex with someone who you love and care about. Not just a onetime thing at a party. When you’ve been drinking.”
“Who says it was my first time?”
“Ali.”
“Okay, fine. Fine.”
I slump deeper into my seat. Stare out at a mall in the distance. Something giant. More wetlands removed for it. More birds gone.
“Maybe there’s an emptiness inside. Maybe there’s something that you’re trying to fill up that empty space with.”
She’s talking about my mother, I know. She wants me to do the messy cry. But I won’t do it. I can’t do it right now.
“Sometimes when we have an emptiness that’s so great, we try to stuff it up and fill it up. And I think that’s what you did by having sex with that boy Sean.”
I’m dying to say: yeah, I filled it up—with Sean Nessel’s dick.
God, I’m disgusting. I’m just disgusting.
“I can’t do this with you right now,” I say. I can’t do this because she doesn’t know the full story. She doesn’t know what he did. How he held me down.
I start to tear up and lean my head over my knees. Aunt Marce rubs my back. “I know it hurts when you like someone so much. I know how much it hurts.”
She doesn’t know though. She doesn’t know all of it, and that’s not her fault. It’s mine.
* * *
* * *
Dr. Diaz tells my aunt that she doesn’t have to come in and that there’s a medical assistant. Is that okay with me? I nod. I don’t want Aunt Marce anywhere near this exam.
I sit on the table, trying to cover myself with the paper towel gown. My legs crackle over the waxy covering. Too much noise. I’m making too much noise.
Dr. Diaz knocks on the door and comes back in with the medical assistant who gives me this weepy smile. I wonder how many vaginas she’s seen today. It’s only morning. So one other vagina? Maybe two?
“Have you had a talk with anyone about condom use, Ali?” Dr. Diaz asks.
“Yes, I know I’m supposed to use them.”
“But what happened this time? Heat of the moment?”
I squirm. “You could say that.”
She asks about the Plan B. How am I feeling? Fine. Everything’s fine. She’s going to show me the speculum now, is that okay? Sure, I nod. The word speculum sounds like an electronica band. When she holds it in front of me, I realize it’s a metal clamp. A carpenter’s tool.
“That’s going in there?”
She tells me there’ll be a little pressure. That she’ll use lube to make sure it just slides right in. How she uses a heat lamp. She says it’ll feel like light pressure.
“Is this code for it’s going to hurt?”
Not hurt. There’s no hurt. Some people don’t even feel it, she swears. I cross my legs and wrap the gown around my knees. The panic in my stomach churns more, and I look over at the door.
“Look, Ali, if it makes you uncomfortable, we can do this exam over a number of visits. And if at any point you don’t feel comfortable, we can stop.”
“What do you mean ‘stop’?”
“I mean we can just stop right in the middle of the exam. I’ll take out the speculum immediately, and we can either start again or reschedule.”
This is hard to believe.
“And you’ll just stop?”
“I’ll stop right away,” she says. “That’s my promise to you. One that I will never break.” She looks at me with her dark brown eyes. She’s probably always had sincere, trusting eyes. Maybe it’s why she went into medicine, because people wanted her to take care of them.
“Do other girls freak out like this?”
“Well, it depends on the girl. Everyone’s got a different feeling,” she says. “For the record, I don’t think you’re freaking out. I think you’re a little nervous. You’re asking questions. And I love questions.”
But she’s lying. I’m totally freaking out and making a spectacle. I think of other girls and wonder if they sat perfectly still for their first gynecologist’s visit. If their visits were all easy with their moms right next to them.
I want to leave, but I feel like I’m stuck here forever in the prison of lube, heat lamps, speculums, and vaginas.
I cross my arms over the gown. I wish I were wearing my T-shirt.
I wish I were wearing my pajama bottoms with the kittens on them.
I wish I had a pair of zip-up pajamas like I saw at the store last week. The kind with the footies. The kind that snaps at the top so that no one can get in them.
I glance down at my fingernails. They’ve taken a beating over the past few days.
Dr. Diaz takes a long stare at me with her big, brown, trusting eyes and then rolls her little stool over to the table. It whirs in the moist air of the office.
“How about this? How about we don’t do the exam at all today? I can just do an STI swab. That’s all.” She shows me a long Q-tip with a wooden stick. It looks like the kind they swab your throat with at the doctor’s office. “No speculum whatsoever. Really, I want you to feel comfortable,” she says. “We want to be in control of our bodies, right? So you’ll come back when it feels right to you.”
Control is not a word that I can associate with right now. Right now I feel more out of control than I’ve ever felt in my life. Why is this? Because of Saturday night? Because of Sean Nessel? Her words bounce in my mind—they’re like a weird language I don’t understand. Control. Stop. Promise. Speculum.
I convince her that I just have a serious case of nerves. I’m good at convincing people I’m fine. This is something I’ve been doing since I was twelve.
I imagine just telling her. Right now, just like that.
I want to tell her about that night. How I lost my virginity to the boy I love.
Excuse me. Loved.
Obsessed over.
Stalked.
A boy whose face I decorated with flowers and hearts. The kind of boy I would have jumped off a rusty bridge with. Even if he left me in a pond floating with tires. Which he sort of did in a metaphorical way, didn’t he?
I shake my head. If I talk, I’ll cry. I’ll cry so hard I might not be able to end it.
My eyes water. I wind my
elbow around my face. I suck in my cries, and my throat burns from it. I can’t hold in the tears though. It’s physically impossible. When tears are ready to explode, you just have to get out of the way. I heave into my elbow and it comes out like hiccups.
“Ali, what’s going on?” Her voice is low now, concerned. I can’t even see her because I’m hiding in the crook of my arm.
“I don’t know why I’m crying.” And that’s the truth. I don’t know. This shouldn’t be such a big deal. Maybe a weird deal. But not a traumatic deal.
“Really, everything’s fine,” I say. “I’m just shaken up and dying from heartbreak like Ophelia, that’s all.” I smile. Everything’s fine. Everything’s fine. If I keep saying it, it’ll eventually be true, won’t it?
She asks me to lie back on the table because she’s going to do the swab and that’s it and I do, but I tighten my knees together and pull the paper gown over my thighs. She’s wearing little glasses now and glides her chair over to my feet. She places my feet in the stirrups and tells me she’s going to open my legs. I feel the silliest and weirdest I’ve felt in a long time.
Dr. Diaz’s hands separate my legs. Gently. She’s very gentle. She tells me when she’s going to touch me. I stare up at the turquoise parrot mobile that spins in a perfect circle above my head.
I close my eyes and get dizzy with all these weird images of people bending over and lifting their legs like they do in the Kama Sutra and Sean Nessel unzipping his jeans.
It’s possible that I’m a fake. That I duped Sean Nessel into thinking I was experienced. That I was complicit in what happened to me. That I was ready to drink vodka and go upstairs. That I was ready to take my clothes off. Maybe it’s my fault.
“Okay, all done,” she says, and closes my knees together, then hands two thin tubes to the medical assistant, who walks out of the room with them. Dr. Diaz covers my thighs with the paper gown and helps lift me so I’m sitting up.
“Sometimes you think you can love someone, but then they show their true selves,” she says. And I nod, her voice going in and out, mwa-mwa-mwa, like the absent grown-ups in Charlie Brown. “You’re entitled to the same confidentiality protections as an adult. Anything you tell me stays in this room, okay?”
Something Happened to Ali Greenleaf Page 7