My Dark Vanessa

by Kate Elizabeth Russell

  What would she do? It’s a question that’s more like a maze, one I can get lost in at the sight of any teenage girl. If her teacher tried to touch her, would she react the way she should, shove his hand away and flee? Or would she let her body go limp until he was through? I try sometimes to imagine another girl doing what I did—sink into the pleasure of it, crave it, build her life around it—but I can’t. My brain hits a dead end, the maze swallowed by darkness. Unthinkable. Unspeakable.

  I never would have done it if you weren’t so willing, he’d said. It sounds like delusion. What girl would want what he did to me? But it’s the truth, whether anyone believes it or not. Driven toward it, toward him, I was the kind of girl that isn’t supposed to exist: one eager to hurl herself into the path of a pedophile.

  But no, that word isn’t right, never has been. It’s a cop-out, a lie in the way it’s wrong to call me a victim and nothing more. He was never so simple; neither was I.

  Taking the long way back to the hotel lobby, I walk through the lowest level of the parking garage into the basement, past the din of the laundry room’s industrial-sized washers and dryers. The head of housekeeping stops me in the stairwell, asks if I mind bringing an extra set of towels to Mr. Goetz, the every-other-Monday businessman, in room 342.

  “You sure you don’t mind?” she asks as she hands me the towels. “He can be a sleaze to my girls, but he likes you.”

  Knocking on 342, I hear footsteps, then Mr. Goetz opens the door—shirtless and clutching a towel around his waist, wet hair, water droplets on his shoulders, dark hair on his chest, down the middle of his stomach.

  At the sight of me, his face brightens. “Vanessa! Wasn’t expecting you.” He opens the door wider, nods for me to come inside. “Can you put the towels down on the bed?”

  Hesitating at the threshold, I calculate the distance from the door to the bed and the distance from the bed to the credenza, where Mr. Goetz is using his free hand to open his wallet, the other still holding the towel. I don’t want the door to close, don’t want to be alone with him. I have to rush, lunging over to the bed and dropping the towels. I’m back at the door before it has a chance to shut.

  “Hold on a second.” Mr. Goetz holds out a twenty. I start to shake my head—it’s too big of a tip for something as routine as fresh towels, suspiciously big, enough to make me want to run. He waves the bill at me like you would a piece of food to a wary stray. Stepping back into the room, I take the money and, as I do, he runs his fingers over mine. Gives me a wink. “Thanks, honey,” he says.

  Back in the lobby, safe behind the concierge desk, I take the twenty and shove it in my purse, tell myself I’ll spend it on pepper spray, a pocketknife, something I can carry on me even if I never use it. Just to know it’s there.

  Then my phone buzzes: a new email.

  To: vanessawye@gmail.com

  From: jbailey@femzine.com

  Subject: Browick School Story

  Hi Vanessa,

  My name is Janine Bailey and I’m a staff writer at Femzine currently working on a piece about the allegations of sexual abuse at the Browick School in Norumbega, Maine, where I understand you attended from 1999 to 2001.

  I’ve interviewed a Browick graduate, Taylor Birch, who alleges she was sexually assaulted in 2006 by English teacher Jacob Strane, and your name was mentioned as another potential victim during my interview with Ms. Birch. Through my research, I’ve also received a separate anonymous tip regarding sexual abuse that allegedly occurred at the Browick School involving you and Mr. Strane.

  Vanessa, I would love to talk with you. I’m committed to writing this piece with all the necessary sensitivity, and want to prioritize the survivors’ stories while holding Jacob Strane and the Browick School accountable. With the current nationwide focus on stories of sexual assault, I think we have a real opportunity to make an impact here, especially if I were able to pair your story with Taylor’s. You would, of course, have control over what would appear in the article regarding your experience. Think of this as the chance for you to tell your story on your own terms.

  You can reach me at this email, or at (385) 843-0999. Call or text anytime.

  Really hope to hear from you,

  Janine

  2001

  Winter makes everyone weary this year. The cold is relentless, nights dipping to twenty below, and when the temperature goes above zero, it snows—days and days of it. After each storm, the snow banks grow until campus becomes a walled maze under a pale gray sky, and clothes that were new at Christmas quickly turn salt-stained and pilled as the reality of four more months of winter settles in. Teachers are impatient, even mean, giving faculty feedback so harsh we leave advisee meetings in tears. Over Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend, the Gould janitor, fed up with us, locks the bathroom when a wad of hair clogs the shower drain for the millionth time, and Ms. Thompson has to use a paper clip to pick the lock. Students turn crazy, too. One night in the dining hall, Deanna and Lucy erupt into a screaming fight over a lost pair of shoes, Lucy grabbing a handful of Deanna’s hair and refusing to let go.

  Dorm parents are always on the lookout for signs of depression because a sophomore boy hanged himself in his room four winters ago. Ms. Thompson organizes a lot of themed activities to help us stave off the bad feelings: game nights and craft nights, baking parties and movie showings, each announced on a brightly colored flyer slipped under our doors. She encourages us to come by her apartment and use her light therapy box if we ever feel like we’re “getting the SADs.”

  Through it all, I’m only half there. My brain feels split, one part in the moment, the other existing within all the things that have happened to me. Now that Strane and I are having sex, I no longer fit in the places I used to. Everything I write feels hollow; I stop offering to walk Ms. Thompson’s dog. In class I feel disconnected, like I’m observing from a distance. During American lit I watch Jenny switch seats at the seminar table so she’s beside Hannah Levesque, who gazes at Jenny with wide-eyed adoration, the same expression I probably had all the time last year, and I feel a muted confusion, like I’m watching a movie with a disorienting plot. Truly, everything feels like a simulation, unreal. I have no choice but to pretend I’m the same as ever, but a canyon surrounds me now, sets me apart. I’m not sure if sex created the canyon or if it’s been there all along and Strane finally made me see it. Strane says it’s the latter. He says he sensed my difference as soon as he laid eyes on me.

  “Haven’t you always felt like an outsider, a misfit?” he asks. “I’ll bet for as long as you can remember, you were called mature for your age. Weren’t you?”

  I think back to third grade, how it felt to bring home a report card with a teacher’s note scribbled across the bottom: Vanessa is very advanced, seems like she’s eight years old going on thirty. I’m not sure I was ever really a kid at all.

  Twenty minutes before curfew, I walk into the Gould bathroom with my shower caddy and towel to find Jenny standing at the sink, her face smeared with soap. Living in the same dorm, she and I inevitably run into each other, but I’ve done my best to reduce the frequency, opting for the back stairwell so I don’t walk past her room, taking my showers late in the evenings. We’re forced together in American lit, but there I’m so focused on Strane that it’s easy to ignore her. The rest of the class barely registers to me anymore.

  So the sight of her in the bathroom wearing flip-flops and the same grungy bathrobe she had last year startles me so much, I reflexively start to duck back into the hallway. She stops me.

  “You don’t have to run off,” she says, her voice languid as though bored. “Unless you really hate me that much?”

  Her fingers rub her cheeks, massaging in the face wash. Her hair has grown out from the bob she had at the start of the year, enough now for a messy bun at the base of her slender neck—she used to act self-conscious about it, complained that it made her head look like a ball balancing on a straw, a flower on a stem. She acted the same way ab
out her skinny fingers, her size six feet, constantly drawing attention to the features I envied the most. Do I still envy her? I sometimes notice Strane watching her in class, his eyes tracing the line of her spine up to her bright brown hair. The little Cleopatra. “Your neck is perfect, Jenny,” I would say. “You know it is.” And she did know; she must have known. She just wanted to hear me say it.

  “I don’t hate you,” I say.

  Jenny glances at me in the mirror, a doubtful look. “Sure you don’t.”

  I wonder if she would be hurt if I said I don’t really feel anything at all toward her anymore. That I can’t remember why losing her friendship had felt like losing the world, or why that friendship seemed so profound, never to be repeated. Now, it only strikes me as embarrassing, like any other outgrown phase. I think of how wrecked I was when she started going out with Tom and he began appearing everywhere, sitting with us at every meal, waiting outside our algebra class to spend the two minutes it took to walk from one building to the next with her. I denied being jealous, but of course I was, both of her and of him. I wanted it all—a boyfriend and a best friend, someone to love me enough that nobody could weasel their way between us. It was a pulsating, monstrous wanting beyond my control. I knew it was too much to feel, let alone show, yet I couldn’t stop it from letting loose one Saturday afternoon, screaming at Jenny in the bakery downtown, crying like a toddler throwing a tantrum. She’d promised we would spend the day together, just us, a throwback to the pre-boyfriend days, but within an hour Tom appeared, pulling up a chair to our table and nuzzling his face into her neck. I couldn’t take it anymore. I snapped.

  That happened in late April, but the anger had been brewing within me for months, which explained Jenny’s lack of shock, her immediate response like she’d been waiting for my dam to break. As soon as we were back in our room, she said, “Tom thinks you’re too attached to me.” When I asked her what that meant exactly, “too attached,” she tried to shrug it off. “It’s just something he said.” I didn’t care what Tom said about me; he was just some boy who barely spoke, his band T-shirts the only interesting thing about him. But it killed me that Jenny deemed it something worth repeating: “too attached.” The implication of what being too attached to another girl might mean made my hair stand on end. I said, “That’s not true,” and Jenny flashed me the same doubtful look she gave me now. Sure, Vanessa. Whatever you say. I didn’t argue further; I shut down, stopped speaking to her, and we fell into the silent standoff that had held until now. Deep down, I knew she was right; I did love her too much, and I couldn’t imagine ever stopping. But less than a year later, here I am, not caring.

  She leans over the sink, rinses off the soap, and pats her face dry as she says, “Can I ask you a question? Because I heard something about you.”

  I blink, jarred from my memories. “What did you hear?”

  “I don’t want to say it. It’s really . . . I know it can’t be true.”

  “Just tell me.”

  She presses her lips together, searching for the right words. Then in a low voice, she says, “Someone said you were having an affair with Mr. Strane.”

  She waits for my reaction, the expected denial, but I am too far away to speak. I’m watching her through the wrong end of a telescope—the towel still pressed to her cheek, her flushed neck. Finally, I manage the words “That’s not true.”

  Jenny nods. “I figured.” She turns back to the sink, sets down the towel, and picks up her toothbrush, turns on the water. In my ears, the sound of the tap amplifies to an ocean. The bathroom itself seems to turn watery, the tiled walls undulating.

  She spits into the sink, turns off the tap, looks to me expectantly. “Right?” she prompts.

  When had she been talking? While brushing her teeth? I shake my head; my mouth flops open. Jenny studies me, something unspooling behind her eyes.

  “It is kind of weird,” she says, “the way you always stay in his room after class.”

  Strane starts appearing everywhere, like he’s trying to keep an eye on me. He shows up in the dining hall and watches me from the faculty table. He’s in the library during study hour, browsing the bookcase directly in front of me. He walks past the open classroom door during my French class, stealing a glance at me each time. I know I’m being surveilled, but it also feels like being pursued, oppressive and flattering all at once.

  One Saturday night I’m in bed, hair damp from the shower, homework laid out before me. The dorm is quiet; there’s an indoor track meet, an away basketball game, and a ski meet at Sugarloaf. I’m dozing off when the sound of a knock jolts me out of bed, my books falling to the floor. Throwing open the door, I half expect Strane to be there, for him to grab my hand and lead me to his car, his house, his bed. But there is only the lit-up hallway of closed doors, empty in either direction.

  Another afternoon he asks me where I went during lunch. It’s five p.m. and we’re in the office behind his classroom, the rest of the humanities building now empty and dark. The office is barely bigger than a closet, with just enough room for a table, a chair, and a tweed couch with threadbare arms. It had been full of boxes of old textbooks and long-gone students’ papers, but he cleaned the room out specifically for us to use. It’s the perfect hideaway—two locked doors between us and the hallway.

  I tuck my feet up onto the couch. “I went back to my room. I had bio homework.”

  “I thought I saw you sneak off with someone,” he says.

  “Definitely not.”

  He settles into the other end of the couch, pulls my legs onto his lap, and plucks a paper from the to-be-graded stack on the table. We sit in silence for a while, him marking up the papers and me reading my history homework, until he says, “I just want to be sure that the boundaries you and I have established are holding strong.”

  I eye him, unsure what he’s getting at.

  “I know how tempting it might be to confide in a friend.”

  “I don’t have friends.”

  He sets his pen and paper down on the table and takes my feet in his hands, rubbing them at first, and then he wraps his fingers around my ankles. “I trust you, I do. But do you understand how important it is that we keep this secret?”

  “Duh.”

  “I need you to take this seriously.”

  “I am taking it seriously.” I try to pull my feet away. He squeezes my ankles so I can’t move.

  “I wonder if you really understand the consequences we’d be hit with if we were exposed.” I start to speak. He cuts me off. “Most likely, yes, I’d get fired. But you, too, would be sent packing. Browick wouldn’t want you here after a scandal like that.”

  I shoot him a skeptical look. “They wouldn’t kick me out. It wouldn’t be my fault.” Then, not wanting him to think I necessarily believe this, I add, “Meaning technically, because I’m underage.”

  “It wouldn’t matter,” he says. “Not to the higher-ups. They root out any and all troublemakers. That’s how these places work.”

  He keeps going, his head tipped back, talking up at the ceiling: “If we’re lucky, it wouldn’t go any further than the school, but if law enforcement caught wind of it, I’d almost certainly go to jail. And you’d end up in some foster home.”

  “Come on,” I scoff. “I would not go to a foster home.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “You may forget this, but I do actually have parents.”

  “Yes, but the state doesn’t like parents who let their child run around with a deviant. Because that’s what they would brand me as, a so-called sex offender. After they arrested me, their next step would be to make you a ward of the state. You’d be shipped off to some hellhole—a group home of kids fresh out of juvie who would do god knows what to you. Your whole future would be out of your hands. You wouldn’t make it to college if that happened. You probably wouldn’t even graduate high school. You may not believe me, Vanessa, but you have no idea how cruel these systems can be. Give them a chance an
d they’ll do everything in their power to ruin both our lives—”

  When he starts talking like this, my brain can’t keep up. It feels like he’s exaggerating, but I get too overwhelmed and lose track of what I believe. He can make even the most outrageous things seem feasible. “I get it,” I say. “I’ll never tell anyone as long as I live. I’ll die before I tell. Ok? I’ll die. Can we please stop talking about this now?”

  At that, he snaps out of it, blinking as though he just woke up. He holds out his arms for me to crawl into and cradles me against him. He says “I’m sorry” again and again, so many times the words stop making sense.

  “I don’t mean to scare you,” he says. “There’s just so much at stake.”

  “I know there is. I’m not stupid.”

  “I know you’re not stupid. I know you’re not.”

  The French classes take a weekend trip to Quebec City. We leave in the early morning, boarding a coach bus with plush seats and little TV screens. I sit by a window halfway back and dig my Discman out of my backpack, put in a CD, and try to appear like I don’t care that I’m the only one without a seatmate.

  For the first two hours, I stare out the window as the bus drives through foothills and farmland. When we reach the Canadian border, the landscape stays the same but the road signs switch to French. Madame Laurent shoots up out of her seat at the front of the bus and calls for our attention. “Regardez!” She points to each passing sign and prompts us to read them out loud. “Ouest, arrêt . . .”

  Somewhere in rural Quebec we stop at a Tim Hortons for a bathroom break. There’s a pay phone out front and I have two prepaid phone cards in my pocket from Strane with instructions to call if I get lonely. The receiver in my hand, I start to dial when Jesse Ly walks out of the Tim Hortons, wearing a long black coat that fans out around him, practically a cape, followed a ways behind by Mike and Joe Russo, who smirk, nudge each other, and don’t even bother lowering their voices as they make fun of him. “Check out the Prince of Darkness,” they say. “It’s the Trench Coat Mafia.” They don’t call him gay, because that would go too far, but it feels like that’s what they’re really making fun of, not his coat. Jesse’s face, his tipped-back chin and clenched jaw, shows he can hear them but is too proud to say anything. Dropping the phone receiver, I hurry over.