floor. When I opened my eyes, Mother and Shawn were facing each
other, Mother wearing only a tattered bathrobe.
I was yanked to my feet. Shawn grasped a fistful of my hair—using
the same method as before, catching the clump near my scalp so he
could maneuver me—and dragged me into the hallway. My head was
pressed into his chest. All I could see were bits of carpet flying past my
tripping feet. My head pounded, I had trouble breathing, but I was
starting to understand what was happening. Then there were tears in
my eyes.
From the pain, I thought.
“Now the bitch cries,” Shawn said. “Why? Because someone sees you
for the slut you are?”
I tried to look at him, to search his face for my brother, but he
shoved my head toward the ground and I fell. I scrambled away, then
pulled myself upright. The kitchen was spinning; strange flecks of pink
and yellow drifted before my eyes.
Mother was sobbing, clawing at her hair.
“I see you for what you are,” Shawn said. His eyes were wild. “You
pretend to be saintly and churchish. But I see you. I see how you
prance around with Charles like a prostitute.” He turned to Mother to
observe the effect of his words on her. She had collapsed at the kitchen
table.
“She does not,” Mother whispered.
Shawn was still turned toward her. He said she had no idea of the
lies I told, how I’d fooled her, how I played the good girl at home but in
town I was a lying whore. I inched toward the back door.
Mother told me to take her car and go. Shawn turned to me. “You’ll
be needing these,” he said, holding up Mother’s keys.
“She’s not going anywhere until she admits she’s a whore,” Shawn
said.
He grabbed my wrist and my body slipped into the familiar posture,
head thrust forward, arm coiled around my lower back, wrist folded
absurdly onto itself. Like a dance step, my muscles remembered and
raced to get ahead of the music. The air poured from my lungs as I
tried to bend deeper, to give my wristbone every possible inch of relief.