My Dark Vanessa

by Kate Elizabeth Russell

  The video ends and I gather the pictures, dump them back into the box. That fucking box. Ordinary girls have shoeboxes of love letters and dried-out corsages; I get a stack of child porn. If I were smart, I’d burn everything, especially the photos, because I know how they’d look to a normal person, like something confiscated from a sex-trafficking ring, evidence of an obvious crime—but I could never. It would be like setting myself on fire.

  I wonder if it’s possible for me to be arrested for having photos of myself. I wonder if maybe this is me turning into a predator, if the way I get excited around teenage girls says something about me. I think about how abusive people are always abused as kids. They say it’s a cycle, avoidable if you’re willing to do the work. But I’m too lazy to take out the trash, too lazy to clean. No, none of this even applies to me. I wasn’t abused, not like that.

  Stop thinking. Let yourself grieve—but how can I grieve when there hasn’t been an obituary, nothing about a funeral, only these articles written by strangers? I don’t know who would even arrange a funeral, maybe his sister who lives in Idaho? But even if there is a funeral, who would go? I couldn’t go. People would see me, and then they’d know. Tell me what happened, they’d say. Tell us what he did to you.

  My brain starts to skip, my bedroom suddenly seems lit by a strobe, so I take an Ativan, smoke a bowl, and lie back. I always let the pill sink in before I decide whether to do another lap. I never go overboard. I’m careful, which is how I know my problem is mild, if I even have a problem, which I maybe don’t.

  It’s fine. The drinking, the pot, the Ativan, even Strane—it’s perfectly fine. It’s nothing. It’s normal. All interesting women had older lovers when they were young. It’s a rite of passage. You go in a girl and come out not quite a woman but closer, a girl more conscious of herself and her own power. Self-awareness is a good thing. It leads to confidence, knowing one’s place in the world. He made me see myself in a way a boy my own age never could. No one can convince me that I would have been better off if I’d been like the other girls at school, giving blow jobs and hand jobs, all that endless labor, before being deemed a slut and thrown away. At least Strane loved me. At least I knew how it felt to be worshipped. He fell at my feet before he even kissed me.

  Another cycle—drink, smoke, swallow. I want to be low enough to slip beneath the surface and swim without needing air. He’s the only person who ever understood that desire. Not to die, but to already be dead. I remember trying to explain it to Ira. Just a glimpse was enough to make him worry, and worry never leads to anything good. Worry makes people butt in where they don’t belong. Any time I’ve ever heard the words “Vanessa, I worry about you,” my life has been blown apart.

  Whiskey, pot, no more Ativan. I know my limits. I’ve got a good head on my shoulders, despite all this. I can take care of myself. Look at me—I’m ok. I’m fine.

  I reach for my laptop, replay the video. Teen girls writhe around in their underwear while faceless men guide their heads and hands down. Fiona Apple was raped when she was twelve years old. I remember her talking about it in interviews back when I was twelve years old. She spoke about it so openly, the r-word coming out of her as though it were the same as any other. It happened outside her apartment; the whole time the man did what he did, she could hear her dog barking through the door. I remember crying over that detail while hugging our old shepherd dog, hot tears that I buried into his fur. I had no reason to care about rape then—I was a lucky kid, safe and securely loved—but that story hit me hard. Somehow I sensed what was coming for me even then. Really, though, what girl doesn’t? It looms over you, that threat of violence. They drill the danger into your head until it starts to feel inevitable. You grow up wondering when it’s finally going to happen.

  I google “Fiona Apple interviews” and read until my eyes blur. A line from a 1997 SPIN article about the same music video makes me choke out a laughing sob: “Watching it, you feel as creepy as Humbert Humbert.” If I tug on any string hard enough, Lolita will emerge from the unraveling. Later in the article, Fiona asks the interviewer a series of questions about her rapist, her rape: “How much strength does it take to hurt a little girl? How much strength does it take for the girl to get over it? Which one of them do you think is stronger?” The questions hang there, the answers obvious—she’s the strong one. I’m strong, too, stronger than anyone has ever given me credit for.

  Not that I’ve been raped. Not raped raped. Strane hurt me sometimes, but never like that. Though I could claim he raped me and I’m sure I’d be believed. I could participate in this movement of women upon women upon women lining the walls with every bad thing that’s ever happened to them, but I’m not going to lie to fit in. I’m not going to call myself a victim. Women like Taylor find comfort in that label and that’s great for them, but I’m the one he called when he was on the brink. He said it himself—with me, it was different. He loved me, he loved me.

  When I walk into Ruby’s office, she takes one look at me and says, “You’re not doing ok.”

  I try to raise my eyes to meet hers but make it only to the orange pashmina wrapped around her shoulders.

  “What’s happened?”

  I lick my lips. “I’m grieving. I lost someone important to me.”

  She brings her hand to her chest. “Not your mother.”

  “No,” I say. “Someone else.”

  She waits for me to explain; her frown deepens as the seconds pass. I’m usually so direct, coming into her office prepared with a handful of topics I want to touch on. She’s never had to pry anything from me.

  I take a breath. “If I tell you about something illegal, are you required to report it?”

  She answers slowly, caught off guard. “It depends. If you told me you murdered someone, I’d have to report it.”

  “I didn’t murder anyone.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  She waits for me to elaborate and it suddenly feels ridiculous, being so coy.

  “The grief I’m going through is connected to abuse,” I say. “Or things that other people consider abusive. I don’t think it was abuse. I just want to make sure you won’t tell anyone if I don’t want you to.”

  “Are we talking about abuse that happened to you?”

  I nod, my eyes fixed on the window over her shoulder.

  “I can’t share anything you tell me without your explicit permission,” she says.

  “What if it happened when I was underage?”

  Her eyes flutter, a few rapid blinks. “Doesn’t matter. You’re an adult now.”

  I take my phone out of my bag and hand it over, the article about Strane’s suicide already loaded. Ruby’s face darkens as she scrolls. “This is connected to you?”

  “That was the teacher, the one who . . .” I falter, wanting to explain, but the words aren’t there. They don’t exist. “I mentioned him once. I don’t know if you remember.”

  It was months ago, when she and I were still getting to know each other. Back then, at the end of sessions, she would ask me casual questions, like a cooldown lap after a long workout—where did I grow up, what do I do for fun—normal boring stuff. One week, she asked me about writing, about studying it in college, what age I really got into it. She asked, “Were you encouraged by any specific teachers?” It was an innocuous question, but it broke my face apart. Not from crying but giddiness—gasping, teenage giggling. I hid behind my hands and peeked out through my fingers while Ruby looked on, stunned.

  Eventually, I managed to say, “There was one teacher who was very encouraging, but it was complicated.” And when I said that, a heavier gravity settled into the office. It was as though Strane had used my body to reveal himself.

  “There’s a story there, then,” Ruby said.

  Still squirming, I nodded.

  Then, very quietly, she asked, “Did you fall in love with him?” I don’t know how I answered. I must have said yes one way or another, and then we moved on, talked about someth
ing else, but I was struck by that question. I still am. The implied agency—did I fall in love with him? I don’t think anyone I’ve confided in has ever asked me that. Only if I slept with him, how it started, or how it ended, never if I loved him. After that session ended, we didn’t talk about it again.

  Across from me, Ruby’s mouth falls open. “This was him?”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I know this is a big thing to spring on you.”

  “Don’t apologize.” She reads for a moment longer, then sets the phone facedown on the little table between us and looks me in the eye. Asks me where I want to start.

  She’s patient as the words drip out of me. I do my best to give a brief synopsis—how it started, how it continued. I don’t talk about feelings, about what it did to me, but the facts are enough to horrify her. Though I’m not sure I’d recognize the horror if I weren’t so good at reading her. She keeps it contained to her eyes.

  At the end of the hour, she calls me brave—for confiding, for trusting. “I’m honored,” she says, “that you chose to share this with me.”

  Leaving her office, I wonder when I made the decision, if I arrived with the resolve to tell somewhere in my mind, if it was within my control at all.

  On the walk home, I’m propelled by the mania of confession, the sudden lightness that follows an unburdening. I sidestep a cluster of tourists, one saying to another, “I’ve never seen so many cigarette butts. I thought this place was supposed to be beautiful.” I think of how, throughout the whole session, Ruby treated me like a skittish animal ready to bolt, her carefulness an echo of Strane’s slow approach. How cautious he was, first angling his knee against my thigh, such a small thing that could have been an accident, then his hand on my knee, a little pat, a friendly thing people do to each other. Pat-pat-pat. I’d seen teachers give students hugs before, no big deal. It only accelerated after that, once he knew I was ok with it—and isn’t that what consent is, always being asked what you want? Did I want him to kiss me? Did I want him to touch me? Did I want him to fuck me? Slowly guided into the fire—why is everyone so scared to admit how good that can feel? To be groomed is to be loved and handled like a precious, delicate thing.

  Once I’m in the stale air of my apartment, the mania levels out and then drops as I take in the mundane mess of my unmade bed and kitchen counters covered in food wrappers, the calendar on my refrigerator that Ruby had me make months ago, each day taken up by some embarrassingly basic chore—do laundry, take out the trash, buy groceries, pay rent—things that probably come naturally to most people. If it weren’t for seeing these tasks written out plainly before me, I’d walk around in dirty clothes, live on potato chips from the corner store.

  The line of Polaroids stretches across my living room, the strawberry pajamas draped over the radiator. I wonder what level of crazy I’ve reached and how much further I could go, how many more steps until I become a woman who boards up the windows to live uninterrupted in the filth of her past. I told Ruby I’d already imagined this—him dying, how it might happen, how it would feel. He was twenty-seven years older; I was prepared. But I pictured him withered and helpless, gazing up at me from a deathbed. He’d leave me something real: his house, his car, or just money. Like Humbert at the very end, giving Lo that envelope stuffed with cash, a tangible payment for all he’d put her through.

  At one point during the session, Ruby said it seemed like I had so much built up inside me, I was ready to burst. She called my mind on fire from wanting to talk.

  “We’ll have to be careful,” she said, “and not do too much too soon.”

  But standing in my living room, I imagine what it might feel like to be reckless. My breath catches at the thought of what would happen if I spilled a line of gasoline over all this evidence, from thirty-two all the way back to fifteen. The wreckage I’d cause if I dropped a match and let it burn.

  2001

  It’s early June, the first sunny day after two weeks of rain. The blackflies are gone, but the mosquitoes are thick, swarming around us as we drag the swimming float across the yard into the lake. Dad and I sit on opposite sides, each with a paddle, guiding it past the boulders into deep water, where Dad attaches it to the anchor, takes off the buoy. We sit for a while on the float, Dad with one foot dangling in the water, me with my knees pulled up to my chest, shielding my old saggy bathing suit, its elastic rotted, the stretched-out straps knotted to keep them from falling down my arms. Onshore, Babe paces and pants, her leash tethered to the trunk of a pine tree. Neither of us is eager to swim back home. There haven’t been enough hot days; the water’s still cold.

  Staring across the lake, sunlight streaming in rays straight to the bottom, I can see the sunken logs left from a hundred years ago, back when the lake and the woods surrounding it were owned by a lumber mill. Closer to shore, sunfish guard their egg nests, perfect circles of sand laboriously cleared with their tail fins. Damselflies dart over the water, their long bodies fused, looking for a safe place to mate. Two of them land on my forearm, electric blue bodies, transparent wings.

  “Seems like you’re doing better,” Dad says.

  That’s how we talk about Strane now, Browick, everything that happened—evasive references. This is the closest anyone ever comes to mentioning it. Dad keeps his eyes on Babe back onshore, doesn’t look over to check my response. I notice he does that a lot now, avoids looking at me, and I know it’s because of what happened, but I tell myself it’s because I lived away at school for two years, because I’m older, because what father wants to look at his teenage daughter in a saggy swimsuit.

  I say nothing, stare down at the damselflies. I do feel better, or at least better than I did a month ago when I left Browick, but admitting it feels too much like moving on.

  “Might as well get this over with.” He stands, dives into the water. When his head pokes back up, he lets out a whoop. “Judas Priest, that’s cold.” He looks toward me. “You getting in?”

  “I’ll wait a few minutes.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  I watch him move through the water back to shore, where Babe waits, ready to lick the droplets off his shins. I close my eyes and hear the water lapping against the sides of the float, the dee-dee-dee calls of the chickadee, the wood thrush and mourning dove. When I was younger, my parents used to say I sounded like a mourning dove, always sulking, always so damn sad.

  When I dive in, the cold is such a shock that for a split second I can’t swim, can’t move, my body careening toward the green-black bottom, but then—the gentle pull back to the surface, my face turned upward, toward the sun.

  As I walk across the yard to the house, my stomach sinks when I see Mom’s car in the driveway. Home from work, she’s picked up a pizza. “Grab a plate,” Dad says. He folds his slice in half, takes a big bite.

  Mom drops her purse onto the counter, kicks off her shoes, and notices me in my swimsuit and with wet hair. “Vanessa, for god’s sake, get a towel. You’re dripping all over the floor.”

  I ignore her and inspect the pizza, globs of sausage and cheese. Even though I’m so hungry my hands are shaky, I make a face. “Yuck. Look at that grease. Disgusting.”

  “Fine,” Mom says. “Don’t eat it.”

  Sensing a fight, Dad moves out of the kitchen, into the living room and the escape of the TV.

  “What should I eat instead? Everything in this house is inedible.”

  She touches two fingers to her forehead. “Vanessa, please. I’m not in the mood.”

  I throw open a cupboard door, take out a can. “Corned beef hash that’s”—I check the date—“two years expired. Wow. Yum.”

  Mom grabs the can, throws it in the garbage. She turns, goes into the bathroom, and slams the door.

  Later, when I’m in bed with my notebook, writing down the scenes that never stop replaying in my head—Strane touching me for the first time behind his desk, the nights I spent at his house, the afternoons in his office—Mom comes up with two slices of piz
za. She sets the plate on my nightstand, sits on the edge of the bed.

  “Maybe we could take a trip down the coast this weekend,” she says.

  “And do what?” I mumble. I don’t look up from my notebook, but I can feel her hurt. She’s trying to pull me back into being a kid, back when she and I never needed to do anything, when we’d just get in the car and head out, happy to be together.

  She looks down at the notebook pages, tilts her head to see what I’m writing. Classroom and desk and Strane repeat over and over.

  I flip over the notebook. “Do you mind?”

  “Vanessa,” she sighs.

  We stare each other down, her eyes traveling my face, searching for the changes in me, or maybe for a sign of something familiar. She knows. That’s all I can think whenever she looks at me—she knows. At first I was scared she would contact Browick or the police, or at least tell Dad. For weeks, every time the phone rang, my body braced itself for the inevitable fallout. But it never happened. She’s keeping my secret.

  “If nothing happened,” she says, “you need to figure out a way to let it go.”

  She pats my hand as she gets up, ignores how I jerk out of reach. She leaves my bedroom door open halfway and I get up to shove it closed.

  Let it go. When I first realized she wasn’t going to tell anyone, I was relieved, but now, it’s started to flatten out into something like disappointment. Because the deal seems to be, if you want me to keep this secret, then we have to pretend it never happened—and I can’t do that. I’ll remember everything as hard as I can. I’ll live inside these memories until I can see him again.

  The summer stretches on. At night, I lie in bed and listen to the loons scream. During the day, while my parents are at work, I walk the dirt road and pick wild raspberries to cook in pancakes that I drench in syrup and eat until I feel sick. I lie in the yard, facedown in the crabgrass, and listen to Babe lope around in the lake, looking for fish. The spray of water droplets on my back as she shakes herself dry, her nose nudging the back of my neck as though to ask if I’m ok.