my hair were wet; my scalp was raw.
I thought it was over. I’d begun to back away when he seized my
wrist and folded it, curling my fingers and palm into a spiral. He
continued folding until my body began to coil, then he added more
pressure, so that without thinking, without realizing, I twisted myself
into a dramatic bow, my back bent, my head nearly touching the floor,
my arm behind my back.
In the parking lot, when Shawn had shown me this hold, I’d moved
only a little, responding more to his description than to any physical
necessity. It hadn’t seemed particularly effective at the time, but now I
understood the maneuver for what it was: control. I could scarcely
move, scarcely breathe, without breaking my own wrist. Shawn held
me in position with one hand; the other he dangled loosely at his side,
to show me how easy it was.
Still harder than if I were Sadie, I thought.
As if he could read my mind, he twisted my wrist further; my body
was coiled tightly, my face scraping the floor. I’d done all I could do to
relieve the pressure in my wrist. If he kept twisting, it would break.
“Apologize,” he said.
There was a long moment in which fire burned up my arm and into
my brain. “I’m sorry,” I said.
He dropped my wrist and I fell to the floor. I could hear his steps
moving down the hall. I stood and quietly locked the bathroom door,
then I stared into the mirror at the girl clutching her wrist. Her eyes
were glassy and drops slid down her cheeks. I hated her for her
weakness, for having a heart to break. That he could hurt her, that
anyone could hurt her like that, was inexcusable.
I’m only crying from the pain, I told myself. From the pain in my
wrist. Not from anything else.
This moment would define my memory of that night, and of the
many nights like it, for a decade. In it I saw myself as unbreakable, as
tender as stone. At first I merely believed this, until one day it became
the truth. Then I was able to tell myself, without lying, that it didn’t
affect me, that he didn’t affect me, because nothing affected me. I
didn’t understand how morbidly right I was. How I had hollowed
myself out. For all my obsessing over the consequences of that night, I