I climb into bed and wait. Soon I hear my mother’s stockinged footsteps pause outside my door in the long book-lined hallway of our apartment. She should be wearing shoes. The old floorboards splinter and attack anyone reckless enough to wear socks in the house. A quick run down the hall, a skid, and a thin shiv of dark wood pierces your foot, too deep for tweezers. The soles of my feet are covered in tiny scars. By now I can perform the ritual myself: light the match, sterilize the needle until its point glows red, tear open a line of flesh above the splinter’s shadow. Dig.
Mum switches off the hall light as she passes my room. She hates wasting electricity. I wait for the shush of her bedroom door. In the living room Leo closes his book, pulls the chain on the old Ming vase lamp, shoves back his heavy wooden armchair. Their bedroom door opens, shuts again, more firmly now. Hushed good-night voices, water running in the bathroom, the soft crunk of the plastic rinsing glass being replaced onto the edge of the porcelain sink. I count the minutes. Listen for the creak of the bed as it takes Leo’s weight. My breath rises and falls. I listen to the shift of my cotton sheets. Wait. Wait. Silence has fallen. Careful not to make the smallest sound, I get out of bed, turn the door handle slowly. Still silence. I reach into the pitch-dark hallway and feel around for the light switch, turn the light back on. Wait. Nothing. They are asleep or too tired to bother. I close my door tight, climb back into bed, pull the covers up around my neck. I have done what I can. It’s always safer when the hallway is lit.
One night in October, a month after we got back from the Cape, I surfaced from a deep sleep. What woke me was a breeze on my thighs. I remember thinking I had kicked off my covers, but when I reached down to pull them up, I realized my nightgown had gotten scrunched all the way up, legs and stomach and breasts exposed. And there was wetness all over my panties. My period had come early. I wiped my hand off on my nightgown and was getting up to go to the bathroom when a thought occurred to me: there was no dark streak, no blood where I had wiped off my hand. I put my hand to my nose, confused. A strong bitter smell I didn’t recognize. A thick, gruel texture. And then I saw something move in my closet. Someone was in there, hidden in the shadows, the hollow darkness. I could not see his face, but I could see his penis, a fleshy white against the blackness, still erect. He was squeezing it, the last drops of semen glistening on the tip. I froze, paralyzed. Afraid to breathe. In the past three months, four women had been found raped and strangled to death in the city, and they hadn’t caught the killer yet. The most recent victim was only about eighteen years old. She had been found naked, floating in the river, hands tied behind her back. Carefully, slowly, I lay back down. Maybe if he thought I hadn’t seen him, he would leave without hurting me. I closed my eyes tight and prayed. Please get out. Please get out. I won’t yell. I won’t tell anyone. In the quiet inside me, I was screaming so loud that sound filled the void, a terror I could barely control. Minutes passed. Finally, a movement. The swing of my bedroom door. I allowed myself to open my eyes a crack, to make sure he was gone. Just as the door was shutting, Conrad turned around.
Outside my door I hear the smallest creak of a floorboard.
“Elle?” Conrad whispers my name, testing to make sure I am asleep. “Elle, are you awake?”
He opens the door and stands beside my bed in the dark. After a few seconds, he reaches down, pulls my nightgown up past my thighs, unzips his pants, touches himself. A soft, gummy sound. Lie in silence. Swallow. Don’t dare stir. I must pretend to be fast asleep. Conrad thinks I have no idea he comes into my room at night. Looks at me. Masturbates. As far as he knows, I’m dead to the world, completely unaware of what he is doing. I might as well have taken a heavy sleeping pill. And he must never know. As long as he thinks his visits are his secret alone, I can act normal, sit at the family dinner table with him, walk past his room to go to the bathroom. Because as far as I’m concerned, nothing has happened. Maybe if I had not been paralyzed in terror that first night, if I had screamed and yelled. But then it would be out there—the humiliation, the filth. When I woke up that night he had already jerked off on me, all over my panties. I had seen the tip of his penis. That part could never be undone, even with a scream. Everyone in my family would be stuck with that disgusting image in their heads. I would be tainted forever—an object of pity. So, I will carry the weight of this shame rather than tell on him.
I know my silence protects him. But it also protects me: Conrad is terrified of getting caught—exposed to his father, rejected forever. That is the one power I have. Whenever he comes too close to me now, I pretend to wake up, and he slithers out before he gets caught. Back to his rat hole. I am safe. I just can’t ever fall asleep.
Leo and Conrad are fighting. “Goddammit,” Leo is yelling. “I can’t take it, I can’t take it . . .” I hear the thud of a wall being punched. “It’s a disgrace,” Leo shouts. “Do you understand? Do you understand?”
“Dad, please.”
“Pick up this room!” More crashes, kicking.
I’ve just gotten home from my babysitting job and I desperately need to pee. I peer down the long hallway. Conrad’s bedroom door is wide open. It will embarrass him if he knows I’ve overheard, but I have to go past his room to get to the bathroom. I put my things down, hang my down vest on a coat hook, and tiptoe down the hall hoping to get by unnoticed.
“Dad, please, I’ve tried. I just don’t get it.”
“Don’t get what?” Leo yells. “That Des Moines is the capital of Iowa? It’s geography, not rocket science. If you fail again, they will kick you out. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“There are no second chances here.”
“I didn’t flunk it on purpose, Dad,” Conrad says, so upset. “I’m just bad at it.”
“There’s no such thing as bad at geography. There’s only lazy.”
“That’s not true,” Conrad says, his voice cracking.
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“No, I—”
Leo spies me as I’m sneaking past. “Ask Eleanor to tutor you. She got straight As this semester. Eleanor, come in here.”
I stop, but don’t come in.
“I don’t need her help,” Conrad says. “I can do better, I promise.”
“Your sister does well because she has gumption. She works hard and respects our expectations.”
“I’m just good at memorizing things.”
“She’s not my sister,” Conrad says. When he looks at me, there is venom in his eyes.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I say.
“Leo?” My mother calls out to him from somewhere in the bowels of the apartment. “Can I make you a drink?”
My eyes are closed, but I can feel Conrad’s damp breath. He leans his face close to mine, looking for signs of life. I keep my breathing even, slow. He leans in closer now and strokes my hair. I stir; pretend to be on the verge of waking. He pulls his hand away and steps back into the shadows, waits to see if I will move again. I turn over onto my side and re-settle. It’s enough to unnerve him. As he is about to go, he says something, so softly I can barely hear him. But I do. “One of these days I’m gonna put it in you for real,” he whispers. “I’m gonna get you pregnant. And then who will they think is the perfect child?”
Vomit rises in my throat, but I keep it down. Don’t move a muscle.
The clinic is packed with women. Older women, young pregnant women. Three Puerto Rican girls sit opposite me. “Yo, mamacita,” one of them taunts. “You got a man friend?” and the others laugh. I stare at the orange plastic seat of my chair.
Outside, snow is falling, killing off the first of the cherry blossoms. My hiking boots are soaked through. On the walk from the subway to the free clinic, through the blooming snowdrifts, I almost lost my nerve. But I’m here now, waiting for my pink ticket number to be called, as if I’m at a Baskin-Robbins.
The nurse calls us in five at a time. I hand her the signed letter I’ve forged on my mother’s stationery, giving me permission to get birth control, since I am only fifteen. She barely glances at it before tossing it on top of a pile of what are probably similar letters. I am taken to a curtained-off area with the Puerto Rican girls and a pregnant woman. A counselor talks to us about the risks of birth control, the option of adoption, and then gives each of us a pregnancy test to take. The pregnant woman protests that this is a waste of a test, but the nurse explains that it’s part of the protocol. The three girls eye-fuck me the entire time. “What’s the matter, blondie? Daddy won’t pay for a real doctor?” I take my test into the bathroom and pee on the strip.
My mother thinks I am spending the day with Becky, going to see Victor/Victoria. She even gave me money for popcorn and a soda. I want to tell her the truth, beg her to save me, but I can’t do that to her. It would break her heart, destroy her marriage. She’s so happy with Leo, and I am stronger than she is—strong enough to carry this. It is my responsibility. I was nice to Conrad, I let him in the door. “It’s your funeral,” Anna had said that poison ivy night. And she was right. Now everywhere I go, I’m trapped by the weight of his body, his moist breath, his smelly hands, his hideous fleshy parts.
We are ushered from the information session to a changing room and given paper dresses. “Take everything off, leave on your shoes,” the nurse tells us. There is a line of women in thin paper dresses and heavy snow boots sitting on a long bench waiting their turn. It is two hours before my name is called, and the nurse brings me into an exam room.
The doctor has a mask over his mouth. I never see his face, just his distracted eyes.
“Please ask the patient to get on the table and put her feet in the stirrups,” he says to the nurse.
“I just need a prescription for birth control pills,” I say.
He turns to the nurse. “Did you explain that she cannot get medicine prescribed until we examine her?”
The nurse nods and gives me an impatient glare. “Of course, Doctor. She signed the forms.”
When I climb up onto the table, I feel my dress tear. How will I get back to the changing room without exposing myself? I lie back and let the nurse place my wet boots into the metal stirrups. It is hot in the room, but I can’t stop shivering.
There’s a knock on the door.
“Come,” the doctor calls out.
A young Asian man in a white coat enters the room.
“We have a medical student here from Kyoto studying our birth control methods. You don’t mind if he observes?” the doctor says. He beckons the man over to the end of the table, ignoring the look of horror in my eyes. Hands him a mask.
The man gives me a formal bow, arms tight by his side, before putting his head between my legs and looking at my vagina.
“Interesting,” he says. “The hymen is still intact.”
“Yes,” the doctor says. “This will feel cold.”