I don’t mean how you got there and then how you got out, but the truth. The raw moments in the middle that no one actually wants to hear. The words that, once spoken, somehow make heads turn away, eyes wince, shoulders shudder, and no one really wants to talk to you anymore because you weren’t polite enough to skip the reality of it. I usually say life was really bad and now its way better. And I tell people they don’t have to think about the bad part because I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. That’s a lie. I do want to make someone uncomfortable. Like laying a knife to flesh and just pressing hard enough to get the blood seeping, telling the whole truth would be such a release. A rush! A moment away from the numbness of the “good life.”
It happens, this truth-telling urge, when I realize I resemble the woman on the napkin. You know her, right? Her face is painted “just so” and she read Harper’s Bazaar to find out what length dress to wear and how to cinch it so her waist would be most appealing. She’s perfectly coifed, dainty doily on her apron string, and her ten-fingered serving tray has a drink at the ready for her man. The napkin usually tells you what we wish she was thinking—some modern “fuck you!” to the system that she’s subscribing to. What I recognize in the mirror of the cocktail carpet is her eyes. They are marbles peering past whoever is in front of her. Marbles frozen in the snow white frost bite of the storms of life and avoiding the reality as to avoid the embarrassment of the blood dripping from her nose when he was finished with her. She wanted to be there, don’t let anyone tell you she had no choice—she made one. She just didn’t know that choosing the mayhem of mainstream meant swallowing her soul. Sometimes she tries to remind herself of who is locked way down there, but that’s what the pills are for. She uses TUMS, tranquilizers, Tanquery & Tonic, and whatever truth suppressors it takes to make it to tomorrow.
The truth is I fought to get out of that bedroom. There were pawns outside the door who wanted me out and those who wanted me in, but the teenage monster over my shoulder won. I don’t want to tell you he was stronger, but eventually the door closed and I was a sixteen-year-old rag doll flung to my place on the bed. Mother Mary stood on the dresser prayerfully but he knocked her out too. The reality is he talked to me. He tried to convince me it was his turn—I was just the neighborhood whore anyway. He explained, while his fingers pressed my wrists up and back, that if I hadn’t bent over and taken it for his friends so nicely he would have never noticed me. He said rumor had it I was scared of him but there was nothing to be scared of. During that moment when he was assuring me, his eyes were in front of my eyes and I will never forget their blackness—pupils as big as the brown God gave him. His cheekbones told me what his words and smile would not. There was no talking him out of what he had set his jaw to do. So I set my jaw too.
I turned my head and braced myself for his long tongue reaching for my neck. He licked me. In one swipe of spit, he stole that place that used to make me giggle when someone kissed it. He whispered to me—the kind of whisper that was meant for private, intimate moments I may never ever be able to enjoy again. My eyes filled, and I willed them not to spill. I held my breath while he told me that I liked it. I could see the window peepers behind my head when I looked away from him so I squeezed shut, but he wouldn’t have that either. Things had to be his way, so I faced him square on and gave up. I believed him when he told me that because my body reacted to his touch in a way that I prayed it would not that meant I wanted him. A rubber Barbie made to be molded to his fantasy, he removed my clothes.
