1978
It was September, a weekday, a school night. She had painted her toenails, brushed on mascara, covered with matte foundation the few spots of acne that dotted her nose. She wore pale summer jeans, a shirt she’d ironed herself. She thought there might be dinner, but when Craig picked her up he drove straight to the motel, swinging into a parking space beside a delivery van that looked as though it had been parked there for a while. He turned off the ignition, then switched on the car’s inside light. He reached forward, fishing for his wallet, packed in among the cassettes in the glove compartment, also for his lighter. His T-shirt clung where the vinyl seats had made his back sweat. He looked at Bobbie as though he were deciding whether to bother asking, then said, “You got any money?”
“Not much,” she said.
He sighed. He rubbed his hand beneath his ball cap, red, white, and blue with a bicentennial celebration logo across the bill. “What about cigarettes?” he said. “Any of them?”
He was twenty-eight, well over six feet, while she was a little package, a ballerina-shaped girl with sun-bleached hair, newly fifteen. She watched as Craig pulled at the contents of the glove compartment, coming out with old envelopes, batteries, a bunch of menus for takeout along with important things—his car registration, his checkbook—chucking it all onto the floor. She thought if he was asking for cigarettes, it must mean he was out of rolling papers. He didn’t like cigarettes and hated when she smoked. But sometimes—like now—he’d ask her for a couple. He’d tap out the tobacco in one of her Marlboros, tear off the filter, add his own leaves, then twist the ends to make a joint.
“You keep telling me to quit,” she said.
“Never mind. I found something.”
Cold light shone from a motel sign perched on a steel post high above them, huge and bright, with garish round letters like something from a comic book. She’d driven past this motel before, seeing it from the passenger seat of her mother’s car, the sign and a strip of neon lighting the words VACANCY or NO VACANCY. She didn’t know who stopped here or why. It was in the middle of the state. You’d think people would drive all the way to the city, D.C. or Baltimore, wherever they were heading. Stopping at a place like this had to be for purposes of exhaustion or drunkenness or another reason, like what they were doing here tonight.
“It’s thirty bucks. And we’re not even staying,” he said, a trace of disgust in his voice, perhaps to show what having her in his life cost him. Then he swung shut the car door and crossed the lot, his wallet bulging in his jeans pocket. She didn’t know what he kept in there that made the wallet so big. Not money, that was for sure. He’d buy her a Hostess Cherry Pie. He’d buy her a McDonald’s burger. He didn’t get her the things guys got their girlfriends, earrings or flowers. In her school, some of the girls wore liquid silver necklaces with nuggets of turquoise threaded at intervals, and he hadn’t bought her anything like that, though she didn’t know if she even wanted him to. Accepting a gift would mean something more, that she was his when she didn’t want to be his. She would have liked, however, to be someone’s.
She watched him disappear into the darkness beyond the streetlamps, and then reappear holding a key on a big wooden fob, the room number burned into the wood. He didn’t walk all the way back to the car, but stood on the cement path and told her to get out. She followed him through a narrow passage, past an ice machine and an exit sign. He had a long-strided, swaggering walk and she had to jog every few steps to keep up.
“I need to go home soon,” she said.
“I know.”
“I’ve got a test tomorrow.” Chemistry, the periodic table. She needed to have learned the shorthand symbols of the elements and, for some, their atomic weights.
He laughed. “I’ve got a test for you here first.”
The lamps in the room were on chains connected by thick eye bolts to the floor. The dark brown curtains, folded stiffly into exaggerated pleats, zigzagged across the windowsill. Had she looked behind the curtains, she’d have seen the air freshener in its coffin-shaped plastic case. An artificial floral scent lay heavy in the room, seeping into the dark brown wood and curtains, and the carpet with its geometric pattern.
She told him she needed the bathroom and he nodded, dropping onto the bed.
He said, “Hey, you look pretty,” and then watched her cross the room. “You listening? I just said you were pretty.”
“I heard you.”
“So what do you say when someone compliments you?”
“Thanks.”
“That’s better,” he said. “You’re welcome.”
The bathroom was a space with a narrow shower and a chipped toilet. She tried not to make too much noise when she peed because she didn’t want him to hear, but the walls weren’t much more than strong cardboard. She flushed with embarrassment, pressing her face against the wall tiles to cool her skin while above, somewhere near her, a mosquito hummed. When she came into the room again, she found him on top of the stiff bedclothes, his shoes and T-shirt off. He was grinning at her. She could see his medallion gleaming, and the extra belly fat, and the hair.
“It’s got Magic Fingers,” he said, dropping a quarter into a machine on the bedside table. There was the sound of a coin dropping, then a buzz as the mattress jiggled. “You going to stand there all night? If you are, how about you turn around and spread your legs? Just kidding.”
He had an erection beneath his jeans and he touched himself. She didn’t turn or move.
He told her to stop staring at the wall. “Come on. I thought we were going to have a little fun here. Don’t you want to have fun? Give me the matches. Get high or do something anyway.”
“It’s a chemistry test,” she said. “I have to stay on track. No smoking pot.”
“Suit yourself, Einstein. It’s pretty cool what you can do with a Bunsen burner,” he said, “but there’s other kinds of fire.”
“Don’t make fun.”
“I wasn’t. Come here.”
She looked at him, tilting her head to one side. He might have thought she was admiring him, but she was only wishing he was more tidy, had a better haircut, or a tan or something. She needed a part of him she could find handsome and focus on if she was going to do this. She looked at his hands with their broad palms and smooth fingers. The nails were healthy and he kept them trimmed.
“What are you looking at?” he said.
“You have nice hands.”
He laughed. He pretended he didn’t care, but she could see the edges of a smile. “I got better things for you to look at.”
He made a grab for her arm, but she moved suddenly, tossing him a fresh pack of matches that had been left by the ashtray. He looked annoyed that she’d strayed from him, but he scratched up a flame anyway, lit the joint, and dragged deeply.
“Do you love me?” he said. “Do you?”
“You always ask me that.”
On the far side of the room, a fleet of moths flew over and over into the ceiling light, banging into it, causing little pinging sounds when they met the shade and glass. She watched them now and wondered how they didn’t knock themselves out doing that.
“So what’s your answer then?” he said. “You love me or are you just messing around here?”
It seemed a nice question—do you love me?—but it wasn’t. Not unless she answered quickly and as he wished. “Please,” she said. She didn’t know what she was asking for. She felt his anger bloom with her hesitation, and wasn’t quick enough to stop it. “Please don’t—”
“I asked you a question!”
“Yes,” she said but she ought to have said this sooner. “Yes, I do…I love you.” There. It hadn’t been so difficult.
“Look at you, staring at bugs,” he said. He stuck the joint between his lips and rose from the bed, reaching toward the light where he scooped a moth into his hand. “Up close, it’s pretty ugly. You should take a look.”
She didn’t think it was ugly. She peered into his cupped hand and saw the moth’s soft wings and the mossy texture of patterns. “Moths can smell through their feet,” she said.
“Jesus, where do you learn this crap?”
“Just a fact.”
Suddenly he closed his fingers into a fist, crushing the moth so that when he opened his hand once again there was nothing left of the creature except its head and two broken antennae and a scribble of legs. “Moths are made of dust,” he said. “There’s another fact for you.” He rubbed his palm on the bedclothes, then plucked the joint from his lips, holding it out for her. “Relax,” he said, an instruction. “Smoke.”
She took a hit but she was worried. Not about getting caught but about whether he’d be too stoned to get her home safely and about the scent lingering on her clothes and her mother noticing. Especially that.
“How about we try something else now?” he said, his hand busy with his zipper. He was proud that his erection was so large, but it didn’t do anything for her. He liked to rub his dick on her breasts and face. He liked to run it up the crack of her ass and sometimes, to her disgust, put it inside there, too, though never for very long. He always behaved as though he were giving her something she really liked. But she couldn’t figure out why it was supposed to be good. It was good because he told her it was good.
“Lie down,” he whispered.
She did as she was told. Sometimes she thought perhaps there really was something wrong with her because mostly sex just hurt or stung. Other times she didn’t feel anything at all. He might as well be creating a soft friction on any part of her. Sex seemed a whole lot of nothing and this confused her, making her worry for the future. She was waiting for some change to occur, to acquire the taste. Like the day you finally like coffee after so often finding it bitter and undrinkable.
He turned her onto her belly and she felt the Scotchgard on the coverlet rubbing her face. She waited it out, feeling much the way she might if she were caught in a cold rain and had to march toward shelter. Just keep going, keep going, just keep going until—
Finally he finished. A few strong swipes and he rolled off her, sliding across the little puddle of sweat he left on her lower back. The bed springs creaked as he dropped onto his side. The vibration from the Magic Fingers was long gone and a stillness settled around them so that she could sense what the room would feel like after they had left—a collection of objects arranged on a rectangle of carpet.
She waited until she thought he wouldn’t mind, then pulled herself away and went to the bathroom to wash. She was careful with the door, lifting it so that the lock met the catch. Once inside, she clicked on the light. She didn’t trust the shower—there were rust marks along the trim and in between the plain square tiles the grout was brownish gray, like bark. She’d heard people got fungal infections from showers like these, and anyway, the water pressure would be weak. She decided to wash in the shallow sink, but even that worried her. She ran the water, then clotted a corner of the bath towel in her fist and rubbed soap along the enamel before rinsing it. The other towel she used first on her face, then between her legs, being gentle so that she didn’t make herself sorer.
When she came out, he was sitting on the bed, jeans pulled up but still unzipped, his jockey shorts digging into the ruddy skin of his upper thighs. His lips were dry, and he picked at a bit of loose skin there, then stood all at once, stepping into his shoes.
“You ready?” he said.
Why did he ask her that when she was wearing only her shirt and underwear? Anyway, the room smelled like pot. She thought she should open a window, brush the ash off the tabletops, clean out the ashtray so that there were no signs of drugs. The ashtray was a blocky square of brown glass with an indentation on each side to rest a cigarette. She picked it up and took it to the bathroom, dumped ash into the toilet and flushed.
“Now what?” he said.
She could see him in the mirror’s reflection, looking impatiently toward her while pinching down a loose end of a roach. She continued what she was doing, running water over the colored glass, letting the ashes slide down the sink drain. She rinsed it again, then held it up to sniff.
“Whatever you’re doing in there, you don’t need to,” he said. A match between his teeth, a paper clip in his hand.
“I’ll be just another minute.” She thought about school the next morning, and how many hours between now and the bus, and that she needed to shampoo her hair before then.
“You already look good,” he said. “I wouldn’t be with you if you were ugly.”
“I wish I had shampoo.”
“Your hair’s fine. Come on. I don’t have all night.”
Her hair was tangled with sweat. She thought, too, that he must have gotten his spit in it. She ran the ends under the faucet, tried to arrange it so that it looked okay. She heard him on the other side of the door. It was remarkable how he just pulled on his clothes and went. He didn’t mind what others found, or what was suspected.
“I’m going to the car,” he said. He went out, leaving the door open. A moment later, he called, “Hurry up!”
She wanted to check there was no stain on the bed, that she didn’t leave behind her comb or wristwatch or any little part of her things. She’d once read a book about how witches—not the ones from a hundred years ago but contemporary witches—could cast spells using only a few strands of a person’s hair or something that had been next to their skin. She didn’t want to leave anything like that behind. She didn’t believe in witchcraft, but she didn’t want any part of her left in this room or any room like it.
She put the pillows back under the coverlet, wadded up the used tissues and stuffed them into the little trash can by the toilet. The ashtray she returned to its place next to the Magic Fingers box. There she found a quarter, left by Craig or by someone before him. Behind it, another coin. She pocketed the coins, then looked for others. Stooping down to check the floor, she saw what looked to be a roll of paper and thought Craig had dropped a joint behind the mattress. Then she realized it wasn’t a joint. It was money: a wad of bills wedged between the wall and the table. The bills were rolled loosely, held together by a fraying rubber band. Fifties. Where the lamplight hit was the west front of the Capitol and The United States of America in a little ribbon of letters above.
She almost called out to Craig. Her mouth dropped open, and she began to say his name but stopped herself. He was already at the car. He would not hear her.
It was difficult to say how much was there, but she knew a feeling she’d never held so much money in her hands before. It had a particular texture, a weight to it that was different from plain paper. There was dust on the side that had faced up, and a dryness to the outside fifty that told her the roll of bills had been there a long time. The rubber band had lost its spring and when she slid it off, it left gummy marks. She was alone now, the door still open so she could see the cement path outside and the glow of the big sign against the pavement. Anyone might see her but nobody was watching, and so she counted out the money.
A thousand dollars. She had never seen so much money. Wherever it came from originally, there was something wrong that it was here in the room now, and she did not think it belonged in her hand.
She decided she’d better leave it. She thought it was probably drug money and that the owners would come back at any second. She imagined the drug dealers there in the room with a gun trained on her temple. They’d say, “Lay it down,” then shoot her. As quickly as that, she saw the image in her mind—the blood oozing from her temple, her body crumpled and pale, suddenly naked again on the patterned orange carpet under the dense yellow light.
And she thought, too, that money like this was always tainted, and if she were to take it, she would be tracked down, and that wherever she ran, she would be unearthed. She had learned—no, she’d not learned this but felt it inside her—that objects held power, if not in themselves then from the people who understood their meaning. This money was bad, and by taking it she was moving toward something mildly criminal. Craig gave her the same feeling. With the secrets and the drugs and the sex.
The bills had a crisper side where the light had heated one side of the roll; she could smell the special ink used at mints, a smell like nothing else. She thought money was a unique element that should be on the periodic table. N for nitrogen, M for money. She would put the money back, she decided, put it all back. But she didn’t. She sat on the floor and looked up at the nightstand on which the bills now lay. Nobody had seen her enter, and if she were careful nobody would see her leave. The money was hers without consequence. It only required her to fold it into her pocket, just as she would a pack of chewing gum.
She heard the blare of the car horn now, her name being called. He would not call her Bobbie because it was a boy’s name, but always Barbara, which she hated. She pressed the bills out one at a time, flattening each upon the table. Then she rolled them into two small logs. She put one log of five hundred dollars in her right front pocket, the other in her left. She checked the night table for more money, opening the drawer and searching the corners, but there was none. Strangely, she felt relieved there was no more money, no further bills she would have to hide on her person and guard. There was, however, a Gideon Bible, and a notepad and pencil, and the way they were arranged felt to her like a sign, a suggestion from outside herself. There was something more she had to do.
She took the Bible out of the drawer, noticing its gold writing and hard cover and all the crowded words inside. Then she removed one of the rolls of bills from her pocket, placing it on top of the Bible’s cover. She peeled a leaf from the writing pad. She did not know to whom she was writing, some future girl in the same position in which she found herself, perhaps. She wrote, “If you need this, please take it.” She put the Bible back in the drawer beside five hundred dollars of the money, a solid half of what she’d found. When she left, shutting the door quietly behind her and following the path out to the parking lot, she felt differently about the money, as though giving half of it back had removed from the remainder whatever bad spell it had once possessed.
She walked to where the beams of Craig’s headlights glared into the night. She tried to look natural, like nothing unusual was happening, but it felt as though anyone could see the money straight through her thin jeans. Nobody was watching, but she imagined being seen walking out with the money. She imagined being looked at from some high, lit window. Even the night, with its warm breeze and the heat from the day still rising from the parking lot around her, felt newly alive with the threat of being discovered. She was sensitive to sounds, the buzz of the giant sign with its cold light, the whoosh of car tires overhead. On a raised section of highway above, the traffic shook the air.
“What took you so long?” Craig said. He was sitting behind the wheel, the door open, window down. The inside light shined darkly onto his face. She could see his annoyance at her, at having to wait. Gnats pulled closer to the bulb and he waved them away like smoke.
“Sorry,” she said.
“You leave the key someplace?”
“On the table in front of the mirror.”
“You make it all tidy and clean like you’re the maid?”
She told him she was just being polite.
“That’s not polite, that’s stupid,” he said. He was a ram, angling his horns toward her. She knew to retreat, but a contrariness planted itself inside her.
“Why are you so nasty to me?” she said.
Sometimes, just lately, she could challenge him. Talk back. But he didn’t like it. He gave her a warning look. Then he said, “Stating facts isn’t nasty.”
“We just had sex—can’t you be nice?”
“Don’t call it sex. That’s trashy. We made love.”
HE HAD HIS own logic about when she was old enough, and she remembered how he used to stretch the elastic from her panties, peering beneath, assessing how much pubic hair she had, before declaring whether it was all right yet. The month she turned fourteen he said, yes, he believed she was old enough now. Had she not been “developed” enough they would have waited longer. And though he’d become impatient, he told her it proved he cared. She was educated into his code of ethics, shaped by his thoughts and by his steady assessment. She’d let him look.
He would pick her up from school, parking a few blocks away from the snarl of buses and the crowd of newly teenaged kids moving along the sidewalks with their notebooks and pencil cases and long swinging hair, slouching beneath the hot Maryland sun. He’d watch the procession of girls in their tank tops, their denim cutoffs. The car, an old Buick with a long bench seat in front, was hot. No air-conditioning. He’d leave the windows down and stretch out, his back against one door, his legs sprawled across the seat, and push open the passenger door with his foot when he saw her.
A year later, nothing had changed. He was still there. Not every day. Maybe once or twice a week. She’d look up through blurry sheets of hot air rising from the ground and see the Buick. She’d see him lazing in his car, the radio on, and she would stop suddenly as though she’d run out of sidewalk.
One afternoon, she saw him before he saw her. He had his head tilted at an angle and was facing away. She hoped if she kept walking, it would be possible to fade into the crowd, to hide and stay hidden. She had a load of books, her gym bag on a string, her new handbag with a separate compartment for her makeup, her pencil case, her little tube of strawberry-scented lip gloss. She scurried forward, trying to stay with the largest group. The sun was hot and she could feel her scalp going red with the beginnings of a sunburn. She allowed herself a glance back and saw him again, baking in his car like a toad in a can, unavoidable. A big wall that separated her from everything around her in one awful instant.
He wore teardrop shades, a T-shirt with the logo of the radio station where he worked across the front, baggy jeans over his heavy gut. He looked old, surrounded as he was now by the junior-high crowd. People would think he was her older brother. People would think she was related to him. People wouldn’t think he was her boyfriend, never that. In the surround of junior high, in the drench of afternoon sun, it was unconscionable.
The new handbag as well as the blouse she wore were presents from her mother. She didn’t want him messing them up. She had a lot of homework and he didn’t understand about homework. He didn’t understand about school at all. There was a lab write-up due for science and she would get detention if it was late and it would be late if she got in his car.
She told herself he wasn’t her boyfriend. He wasn’t anyone she loved. She didn’t have to do what he said; she could keep on walking.
She moved along with a group of girls. Swept up in the gentle arc of students, she glided away from the car. She thought maybe he hadn’t seen her, not yet. It was a risk. He mustn’t know she was running from him. She hoped the group she hid within did not thin, or turn toward the car, or somehow evaporate all at once so that she was left exposed. She kept a steady gait, gradually distancing herself from where Craig waited. She ducked her head low into her books, shoulder to shoulder with the others. Part of the group splintered, lining up next to a big yellow bus. His car was behind her now, and she was blocked by the crowd. He might be distracted by the heat, by the blinding sun. He’d not seen her in the first place—surely he would not spot her now. In a swift few steps she was suddenly through the bus’s closing accordion doors, and the driver prepared to pull out from the curb.
She didn’t know where the bus was heading—it wasn’t the bus that she normally took—but there would be no hope of getting that one. He’d be watching that one. She took a seat in back, staring down, away from the windows. If he hadn’t seen her yet, she was safe. She counted backward from twenty, waiting for the bus to move onto the road, and when it did she let her breath go, then began counting again.
The bus heaved to the stop sign, took a left, everything happening slowly and with a lot of engine noise and a lot of noise from all the kids in the seats in front of her. They headed down a narrow lane that wound through a housing development, little terraced houses all crushed together behind identical rectangles of grass. She listened to the rumble of the bus, felt it glide and roll. It had come along at just the right moment; it was a magic carpet, carrying her away. She gazed out the window at the tidy circles of houses, some with bikes in the yards, some with clay pots of flowers, and thought about him, back at the school, growing more agitated in his car.
By now, the crowds of kids would have thinned to nearly nothing. He’d be sitting up, straining his neck to find her in the rearview mirror, coming up the sidewalk late. She was often late and he’d be annoyed, thinking how she was haphazard and disorganized. Eventually, he would conclude she hadn’t been in school that day and he’d stew about how he was always telling her that if she wasn’t going to be in school on a particular day, she should let him know and save him the drive over and sitting in the hot sun.
Once he figured out she wasn’t coming, he’d begin driving to the house where he knew he was sure to find her. He’d prepare a lecture about how she should be more considerate, maybe get so pissed off with it all that he had to pull over to the side of the road and stick his bong between his knees. He’d light whatever seeds were still in there, or push the flame of his Bic down on some little leftover hash pebble, take a hit to calm down. It’s what she drove him to.
Out where she lived were tall, unkempt trees, the dead ones leaning on the ones still growing, and he’d stop there, searching for her mom’s car or any sign of life from inside the house. If he saw the car, he’d leave, his tires crunching slowly over the gravel until he got to the main road. She’d hear from him that night or the next day by phone, worried about her. Worried angry.
It was bad enough that way, but worse if her mom’s car wasn’t there and he came looking for her, banging on the doors and windows of their split-level. He’d search for her in her bedroom closet, or the green bath of their olive-colored suite, or even under the laundry. She had hidden in all those places before, but when he found her, she would pretend she hadn’t been hiding. It was the only way to keep things steady. She couldn’t bear for him to be angry with her, to be disappointed. Now she was on a bus and didn’t even know where it was going, or how she was going to get home, or if.
She thought maybe she could call him that night when he was on the air, when she knew he couldn’t come find her right away, and say, “You can’t get me at school anymore. My mom knows.” She could say that her mother threatened to call the police, that she was forbidden to see him, that she was grounded. She was sorry, she’d explain, but it wasn’t her fault. She was too young, nothing she could do.
The thought of her mother really finding out was too much for her. It scared her more than anything. He knew that. And because he always seemed to know when she was lying, there was little point in trying to convince him that she’d told her mother. He’d only call the house and speak to June, gauging her response. Of course, her mother would be as warm as ever to him, and then he’d know Bobbie was lying. The big problem—one of the big problems—was how much her mother liked Craig. June thought he was a kind of older brother for Bobbie, the sibling she’d never had. For this reason, and perhaps others Bobbie could not yet imagine, June would get into a conversation with him. She’d tell him exactly where Bobbie was, then hang up and feed the plants none the wiser while Craig set out on his hunt.
On the bus, she worried about what he would do if he found out she’d avoided him. It was already hot, another scorcher marking the unusual weather they would endure all summer, but it wasn’t the heat that caused her to writhe and sweat and crane her neck to get more air. It was what would happen if he found out she’d run away from him. The thought was too awful, and just as she was feeling at her worst about it, even a little sick, she looked out the window and saw—she couldn’t believe it—his dark gold Buick. He was following the bus, drawing up alongside it, then tucking in behind, trying to get her attention. If he was here now, he’d been here all along. He looked up through the top of his window and caught her staring down at him. He saw her, saw her right now. She could make out his words as he yelled through the windshield. She imagined how loud he was, his voice bellowing so that anyone hearing the car pass would think he was on his way to kill someone. On his way.
Sweat beaded her upper lip. She could feel her shirt growing damper. She could feel her pulse on her tongue. His face was washed in anger, his hair wet with sweat. She lip-read the swear words, feeling a rush of fear. Her throat suddenly hurt like she’d swallowed cardboard. She was trapped. She looked at the rows of covered bench seats on the bus, green nylon stretched and fraying at the corners, the aisle between them covered in a rubber mat with thinning tread. The bus windows with their latches at the top, the big square window in the rear that opened out for emergencies. She didn’t know how to escape; he had her in a moving cage.
She got off with the last passengers. The road blazed with sun; she could feel the heat of the tarmac through her sandals and see the bubbles of tar erupting like tiny volcanoes across a scar in the road from last winter’s pothole. He had parked behind the bus, his car angled up on the curb. He was waiting there, sure that she’d come back to him, and she did. All the way over, slinking to his car, watching that dark, steaming road cooking in the heat, she walked. She heard the school bus rumble down the road away from her. There was no one else now, just her and Craig. She pushed her feet forward, trying not to look up to where she knew she’d see him behind the windshield, glaring at her. The engine, now off, tapped out a tickticktick as it settled. He didn’t move from the car. He was waiting for her. The door swung open. He was going to do something bad. She stopped outside the car and then felt his hand yank her wrist, pulling her inside. She dropped like a piece of fruit from a tree, falling limply into the seat beside him. There was a flash of glare from the sun, and a rise in temperature as she hit the car seat, but all she noticed was his hold, like a big claw at the base of her skull, and his words, spoken from deep in his throat. “I’m going to slap your face,” he said.
All this happened last year, but she had relived the moment many times since. How she’d squeezed her eyes shut, preparing herself. How she’d thought about the machinery of the body and what can break. She had crouched beside him, readying herself for the blow, hearing a noise inside her throat and feeling the pain of his grip on the roots of her hair. It had felt as though he could at any moment push his fingers right through her bones, crushing her.
But then something else, too, something that punctured the deep awful moment before he struck her. It was a bell sound, a little jingle bell, and it was such a promising joyful sound, almost as though from another day or time, another life even. She’d opened her eyes. The bell sound was coming from outside but she couldn’t turn her head to see that far; he still had her head clasped in the vise of his hand. He was ready to hit her. That hadn’t changed. She looked at his face, his heavy features, full of color and pulsing with anger. He had his arm back, his grip tight; he was going to let go a swing. Staring into his readied, open hand, she felt fear in the form of acid heading north from her center. She sniffed, her nose running. Her neck felt small in his hands. She could not move away from the pressure on her head, or stop her wild staring at his open hand; she was pinned between two sides of him. She didn’t think she could talk, but she did. She tried. The jingle bell was sounding and she heard it closer and closer. “There are people coming,” she whispered. “I can hear them.”
Two little terriers at the end of their leashes, their collar bells tinkling, guided by an elderly couple, one of whom had a walking stick. They took a long time waiting for one of the dogs to finish sniffing the ground beside the car, then to round his back and defecate. They were in no hurry, this couple, and by the time they’d moved on, Craig had eased up his hold on her, so that it only hurt a little bit.
He pushed her away.
“Goddamn! What was that, a game?” he’d hissed. “You better grow up, Barbara!”
She watched the couple and their dogs, now in the distance. The gray heads bobbed, the walking stick tapped, keeping with their steps. The terriers burst forward on their leashes. She wished they would come back. The sound of their shared footsteps, of the dogs’ toenails on the sidewalk, the jingle bells, and the way the couple turned toward each other and away, intent on their conversation, was comforting. They seemed to carry with them everything good in life, and she’d wished they would come back or that she could follow.