twisting marks like curled ribbons. Dad sends me home after I ruin
two sheets.
That night, with a heavily wrapped wrist, I scratch out a journal
entry. I ask myself questions. Why didn’t he stop when I begged him?
It was like getting beaten by a zombie, I write. Like he couldn’t hear
me.
Shawn knocks. I slide my journal under the pillow. His shoulders are
rounded when he enters. He speaks quietly. It was a game, he says. He
had no idea he’d hurt me until he saw me cradling my arm at the site.
He checks the bones in my wrist, examines my ankle. He brings me ice
wrapped in a dish towel and says that next time we’re having fun, I
should tell him if something is wrong. He leaves. I return to my
journal. Was it really fun and games? I write. Could he not tell he was
hurting me? I don’t know. I just don’t know.
I begin to reason with myself, to doubt whether I had spoken clearly:
what had I whispered and what had I screamed? I decide that if I had
asked differently, been more calm, he would have stopped. I write this
until I believe it, which doesn’t take long because I want to believe it.
It’s comforting to think the defect is mine, because that means it is
under my power.
I put away my journal and lie in bed, reciting this narrative as if it is
a poem I’ve decided to learn by heart. I’ve nearly committed it to
memory when the recitation is interrupted. Images invade my mind—
of me on my back, arms pressed above my head. Then I’m in the
parking lot. I look down at my white stomach, then up at my brother.
His expression is unforgettable: not anger or rage. There is no fury in
it. Only pleasure, unperturbed. Then a part of me understands, even as
I begin to argue against it, that my humiliation was the cause of that
pleasure. It was not an accident or side effect. It was the objective.
This half-knowledge works in me like a kind of possession, and for a
few minutes I’m taken over by it. I rise from my bed, retrieve my
journal, and do something I have never done before: I write what
happened. I do not use vague, shadowy language, as I have done in
other entries; I do not hide behind hints and suggestion. I write what I
remember: There was one point when he was forcing me from the
car, that he had both hands pinned above my head and my shirt rose
up. I asked him to let me fix it but it was like he couldn’t hear me. He
just stared at it like a great big jerk. It’s a good thing I’m as small as I