I thought about my body, all the ways it had changed. I hardly knew what I
felt toward it: sometimes I did want it to be noticed, to be admired, but then
afterward I’d think of Jeanette Barney, and I’d feel disgusted.
“You’re special, Tara,” Shawn said.
Was I? I wanted to believe I was. Tyler had said I was special once, years
before. He’d read me a passage of scripture from the Book of Mormon, about
a sober child, quick to observe. “This reminds me of you,” Tyler had said.
The passage described the great prophet Mormon, a fact I’d found
confusing. A woman could never be a prophet, yet here was Tyler, telling me
I reminded him of one of the greatest prophets of all. I still don’t know what
he meant by it, but what I understood at the time was that I could trust
myself: that there was something in me, something like what was in the
prophets, and that it was not male or female, not old or young; a kind of
worth that was inherent and unshakable.
But now, as I gazed at the shadow Shawn cast on my wall, aware of my
maturing body, of its evils and of my desire to do evil with it, the meaning of
that memory shifted. Suddenly that worth felt conditional, like it could be
taken or squandered. It was not inherent; it was bestowed. What was of worth
was not me, but the veneer of constraints and observances that obscured me.
I looked at my brother. He seemed old in that moment, wise. He knew
about the world. He knew about worldly women, so I asked him to keep me
from becoming one.
“Okay, Fish Eyes,” he said. “I will.”
When I awoke the next morning, my neck was bruised and my wrist swollen.
I had a headache—not an ache in my brain but an actual aching of my brain,
as if the organ itself was tender. I went to work but came home early and lay
in a dark corner of the basement, waiting it out. I was lying on the carpet,
feeling the pounding in my brain, when Tyler found me and folded himself
onto the sofa near my head. I was not pleased to see him. The only thing
worse than being dragged through the house by my hair was Tyler’s having
seen it. Given the choice between letting it play out, and having Tyler there to
stop it, I’d have chosen to let it play out. Obviously I would have chosen that.
I’d been close to passing out anyway, and then I could have forgotten about
it. In a day or two it wouldn’t even have been real. It would become a bad
dream, and in a month, a mere echo of a bad dream. But Tyler had seen it,
had made it real.