Swimming Sweet Arrow (12 page)

I knew then that I didn’t want him to touch me, but I didn’t stop him. I let him go on feeling me sideways, then I let him pull me up against him. He opened the zipper on my uniform and took my breasts in his hands, squeezing them through my bra.

“So, you need a good dicking down,” Kevin said.

I knew then that whatever kind of fantasy I had cooked up in my mind wasn’t going to come true. I made the movement to kiss him, because I thought if we could kiss, if we
could at least have good kisses between us, maybe it would be all right.

His kisses were dull and wet, and the taste of his mouth sickened me. But by then I did not know how to stop. He had taken off my bra, and my uniform was down around my waist. It seemed easiest to go through with it then, since I was the one who started it. I still did not know—it was not clear in my mind—that I should have done anything to get away from him: get down on my hands and knees, crawl naked through the woods.

Kevin Keel started by eating me, but what he did was more like ripping. Maybe that was when my skin began to tear—later I wasn’t sure. What I did know was that after he got done snarling into my cunt, he fucked me so hard I thought I could feel my skin pulling and breaking. I was so scared I wasn’t wet at all except from his spit. I tried not to move, tried to let him up my dry cunt.

He pumped into me awhile, then he said, “Good pussy doesn’t just lie there.”

So I pushed back against him and made noise. I thought if he came, it could all be over.

Instead it lasted a long time. When I started to cry, he said, “Is it sore?”

“Yes,” I said, but I would not look at him when I said it.

“I’m almost done,” he told me.

At the end, as he came, he slapped my face once, hard. Then he jerked out of me.

“Nice set of tits,” he said when he climbed off me.

I didn’t say anything. I was shaking and had trouble
pulling on my clothes. I didn’t even try to put my nylons back on, because of the burning between my legs.

Keel took me back into town, to Dreisbach’s, where I was parked. When I went to get out of his truck, he pulled me to him and kissed me.

“Sweet dreams,” he said after he wiped his mouth on my mouth.

I walked away without looking back. When I got into my truck, I couldn’t believe everything in it looked just the way it had when I left it that afternoon: the box of tissues, the crumpled napkins, my sweater. I sat a long time with my arms wrapped over the steering wheel, but stuff started seeping out of me and it burned, and I thought I better get on home.

I stood a long time on the back porch of the house before I could go in. I didn’t know why. Del still wasn’t home and there was no one to see me, but I just couldn’t bring myself to put my hand on the doorknob and turn it and go inside. But I made myself do it, just like I made myself wash between my legs, over and over, even though the soap burned and it hurt to pass the washcloth over myself. I washed my hair three times, not to cut through the grease of the kitchen like I usually did, but to get Keel’s whispers out of my hair. When I was finished, I could not smell him, but there was nothing left of me, either.

I did two more things before I went to bed that night. I washed my blood out of the skirt of my uniform, because it was already turning dark. There was not a lot of blood, and it wasn’t in blots like when my period began. This blood
stained the fabric in thin, red streaks. Then I ran the water until it was icy cold, and I soaked a washcloth in it. I took that washcloth back to the bed with me, and I lay with it between my legs until the heat from my body warmed it. When I was lying there I knew for the first time that June had told me only half the truth about Kevin. It wasn’t one of his friends who fucked her when she was ten—it was Kevin. It all fit. I didn’t let myself think anything else about it.

For the first time in days, I hoped Del would not come home. I didn’t hate him anymore. I just hoped he would stay away.

17

I
needn’t have worried about Del coming home. His mother called me the next morning to tell me he was in detox at the hospital in Deer Run. He had overdosed on alcohol and quaaludes, and had almost stopped breathing. The police had picked him up. As he wasn’t allowed any phone calls from the hospital, she was calling.

“I don’t approve of you two living together,” she said. “But I know you care for him.”

“I do care for him,” I said.

“Did you know any of this was going on?”

“I knew he was drinking,” I said. I didn’t think there was any point in telling her about the huffing.

“He has a lot of lessons to learn,” she said, and then she told me it was God’s will he didn’t die.

When I asked her what I could do, she told me I couldn’t do anything. He wasn’t allowed any visitors, not even her or his old man. She told me I could pray, and that she and Del’s dad were praying. I didn’t know how all the praying fit into the way Dels old man used to beat Del, but I didn’t get into it on the phone.

And though I did not believe in any of it, I did pray for Del to be all right. I didn’t pray for the one thing I really wanted —to take back everything that had happened with Kevin Keel. I knew I couldn’t have it, so I didn’t bother to ask for it.

BY THE
next afternoon it hurt so much I could barely walk or pee. I took down the small mirror we had nailed to the bathroom wall, sat on the bed, and held the mirror between my legs. It took me only a few seconds to find the tears that burned. One was on the small lip leading up to my clitoris. The place was swollen with black blood. The other tear was right at the bottom of my clitoris. Keel had split the bottom of that round button. They were small rips, but they ached and burned when I moved or when my urine hit the open skin. Who knew what was torn inside my vagina where I couldn’t see.

I took myself to the hospital in Ontelaunee. The nurse thought I was another VD patient and asked me to name my partners.

“He wasn’t a partner,” I said. “I don’t know his name.”

She left me alone after that, but before she left the room she did a funny thing. I’d left my panties on top of my jeans on the chair, and yellow and red streaks were showing. The nurse folded them in a way that all the mess wouldn’t show. I didn’t know who she was hiding them from.

The doctor gave me antibiotics and some cream for my vagina. He wanted to know how it happened.

“Things got carried away,” I said. “That’s all.”

“Do you want to see the police?”

“No, I don’t,” I said. I didn’t think he would have believed me if I told him I was the one who started it, that I was the one who chose Keel.

It was the truth. I had chosen him. I knew all the stories about him, and he was the one I went to. I knew he’d help me start any fire I wanted to start. At the time I thought I just wanted to hurt Del, but that was not all the truth. I wanted something for myself, too. What it was I couldn’t name. I kept wanting to call it love, but it was more like obliteration.

I knew that even then.

IT HURT
so bad to go to the bathroom that I hardly drank anything for the next few days. When I did pee, my urine burned the open places, and it was so sharp and hot that I could barely make myself stay on the toilet seat. I closed my eyes and pressed against the bathroom wall with my shoulder. As soon as I was done, I wiped everything away with a wet washcloth.

The whole thing scared me. I worried not just about the
pain, but also about everything being infected. I could not stop thinking of the black blood showing through my skin, the way that inner lip was swollen and bruised, and I could not stop thinking about the tear in my clitoris. I had a dream where I could see the cells in my skin. The cells were pink and egg-shaped. Sometimes they were small, and sometimes they were so big they took over the dream. When I woke up, I felt like I was going crazy with all the throbbing and aching in my body I made myself more upset by pinching the mirror between my legs again—this time with the bedside lamp aimed right at me. When I saw the mess, I could not stop crying. So I cried for a while, and when I did stop, I didn’t feel anything, just flat and blank.

I think I was crazy those few days. I broke apart. My head ached and my eyes burned all the time. I slept as much as I could and then I slept some more. I did not talk to anyone—not June, not my mom, certainly not Del. I don’t know how long my craziness would have gone on, but then something happened.

I was lying in bed, trying to sleep again after sleeping almost all day. I could not turn off my thoughts about my body, though, or about Del, and I felt like my whole body was clenched in fear. I didn’t know what else to do, so I started smoothing my own hair back from my face. I wasn’t pretending it was Del’s hand, but I wanted something to comfort me, and I tried to give it to myself.

And I guess I fell asleep like that, with my own hand at my face, because the next thing I knew, I felt someone
brushing my hair back from my face, and I thought,
Good, Del’s here and he understands.

I lay and let myself feel the brushing, and then I knew it wasn’t Del’s hand on my face but the wing of a bird. It was so light. I closed my eyes to better feel the softness, and that’s when I saw that it was an owl, and that he had his great wing over my face. All my worrying and crying was being brushed away, and I felt myself go calm beneath the feathers.

When I woke the next morning, I remembered everything. I knew I was probably just healing, but I could feel my pain was not nearly as bad, and it somehow seemed connected to the dream.

That was how I put myself to sleep for the next few nights: thinking of that great, soft wing. I puzzled over the dream — wondered what the owl meant, why he had come—but I did not puzzle over the feeling the dream gave me. I stopped worrying about my cells, and I let my body do its work. Something still ached inside of me when I thought of how I brought the whole thing on myself, and I still felt sick when I thought of Del and the new lie I’d have to tell him, but my body did not frighten me anymore. A piece of me had gone far away, but I was still there.

The needle in my brain stayed stuck on how I was the only one to blame for the mess, but one idea brought me some relief: if it was true that I was the one who chose Kevin Keel, it was also true that I was the only one who had to know. I knew I could take anything if I was alone, if it was just me who had to stand it.

18

A
FTER
five days, I could pee without crying, and I went back to Dreisbach’s. Once I got there, though, I didn’t know if I would make it through my shift or not. My stomach felt like it was a fist, and I dreaded turning and having to meet Kevin Keel’s eyes.

Keel never came in. Instead, my old man showed up at my tables. He was tanked.

“What should I get you, beer or coffee?” I said.

He thought for a second, then waved his hand in the air. “Get me coffee. I had enough to drink.”

When I came back to the table with two cups of coffee, my dad said, “Were you busy tonight?”

“Usual dinner crowd,” I said, and sat down. I put my elbows on the table and held my coffee cup up between both my hands. My dad sat back in his chair and curled one hand around his cup. He spent so much time outside his skin was deep red. I thought his eyes looked like cool water in all that fire.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “This place is a goddamn hole.”

I didn’t think he came in just to insult my workplace, but I didn’t know what he was doing there. Then I figured he just wanted to talk, because he said, “Yeah, shit, Vangie, I admire you coming back here night after night. It’s not easy coming back to a place you hate. Jesus Christ, I know that.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “It’s a job.”

“Are you doing all right, Vangie?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean are you doing all right? Are you okay here?”

I panicked for a second, because I thought maybe he somehow knew something about Kevin Keel, but then I looked at his face and saw he didn’t know anything. He was looped and he wanted to talk. That was all.

“I’m all right, Dad. I’m doing all right.”

“Well, I never see you anymore.”

“I’m okay.”

“Truck running good?”

“The truck’s fine.”

I tried to meet his eyes so I could nod at him, but he just kept staring off. He got like that sometimes when he drank. Forlorn. I’d been seeing the look for years.

“You don’t have to worry about me,” I told him.

“Ah, the hell,” he said. “I don’t have anything better to do.”

For a little while I let myself wonder what it would be like to have a father I could talk to, but I stopped myself. Still, there was something about my dad that I couldn’t deny. A lot of times when I was little, he was the one who came to find me hiding under the bed after I got yelled at by my mom. If I was crying, he’d tell me to stop, since it made my blue eyes all red. I didn’t know how he knew something was wrong with me that night, but he did. It meant something to me just to have him sitting there.

My dad and I sat together a little longer, not talking but just sitting. When I started to get customers again, my dad stood up, left me a five-dollar tip for his cup of coffee, and said,
You take care, honey.
Then he was gone.

AFTER THAT
one night, I never went back to Dreisbach’s. Whatever else I had to live through, I did not have to go through dreading Kevin Keel every day. Dreisbach’s was a good job, though, and I hated to see it go begging, so I called June up and told her to apply.

“They’ll need someone right away,” I said. “They’d be too big, but I could give you my uniforms.”

“What happened?”

“It’s a long story,” I said. “What do you think? Do you think you want the job?”

“It’s got to be better than sewing shirt collars,” June said. “But what are you going to do? Are you sure you want to quit?”

“I already quit,” I said. “It’s done. I’m going to hire on at the orchard.”