Thanks. I got an A. Why?
Non-fiction / A Summer Night
I am cutting myself tonight.
But, first, I have to take apart one of those pink-plastic razors. Then, I use that tiny blade to edge across my arm the feelings that creep forward with glistening tears.
One thin line that slowly eases red.
Then another. Quicker and with more force I drive the sickly silver blade through vulnerable skin. Another. And another.
I don’t count them. Why bother?
I just watch the blood rush from me, forming little beads that fill to their capacity before bursting and dripping, sliding down my arm. My eyes run over the familiar cuts on soft flesh as comfort, and longing, fill me to the core. The familiarity of my painted pain eases my mind for moments that are daunting, fleeting, slipping from my fingertips, but leaves me with a desperate longing. A longing for some sense of normalcy.
Disgust creeps its’ way into my head and I look away, a great rift of starry droplets coursing from behind blue eyes. I feel my shoulders heave and shake with the effort of holding lost sobs within my exhausted body.
I should take that blade to my tender veins. I should cut them deep and even. Deep enough to bleed so much it never stops.
Doesn’t stop until I’m gone.
But I don’t. I just look away in quiet, sick, heart-wrenching satisfaction. Then, one last shuddering inhalation brings my hand to the phone. Within moments I am dialing his number.
”Hey,” I say, quietly composing myself. ”Is it too late to go camping with you guys?” There is little hesitation with his reply, assuring me that it isn’t too late and that he would love me to go. “Cool, I’ll meet you outside at ten.”
Click.
I have half an hour to fully pull myself together and convince Marie, my thirteen-year-old sister, to cover for me. The last part will be easy; Marie is the best little sister possible. But, piecing me together is going to prove difficult.
Thirty minutes later I am pulling a sweater over short, sandy hair and dragging the sleeves down to securely cover the pain.
”You don’t exist tonight,” I whisper to the part of me that is only pain and fear, pushing it deeper into the farthest recesses of my apprehensive mind. Tonight, I am going to have fun. Tonight, the sadness will not creep its way into everything to taint laughs and smiles with a bitter mask and sickening flavor.
There is the quiet thud of my rubber-soled shoes into the soft dirt below my window and I pause for a moment, rooted there in the soft night air.
What am I doing? I ask myself.
I struggle for a moment, leaning against the cold wall, its touch reaching through my skin and into my core, with the decision of the month. My father will be on a drunken rampage if my absence is discovered. But, I need this. A night off. A night away from everything that is hell.
The should loses to the need, this time, as I ease my window shut. I can hear my father’s slurred words through his open window and I cringe, shying away from thoughts of his voice falling like a hammer, dropping the weight of his life in my arms, and blowing the smoke of his decisions into my already burning lungs. His mistakes are not mine to suffer for, and I wish that he would not put them in my lap as if I can some how take them back. As if I can some how erase them or make them cease existence. I want him to drink and smoke his life away and leave me to myself. I want to cry my own tears and bleed my own blood, unhindered by his life. Because he is supposed to be my escape. My escape from a naïve mother and a man that never fails to tell me how shit I really am. My father is supposed to keep me sane and safe. Instead he is tearing down what little bit I manage to maintain of myself.
With an over exaggerated sigh, I take a frustrated step forward, stomping the thoughts from my mind. I promised myself not tonight; it’s a promise I intend to keep.
His truck pulls up and my mask goes on. The usual ritual comes with ease and I trudge my way to the passenger side, my posture and gait the only possible clue to how my night has been. But, like most people, he will not pick up on it. That’s what I am counting on.
”Hey, how’s it goin’?” his voice is familiar and slightly annoying, rough and scraping, metal against metal. But, nonetheless, he is the good kind of familiar. And that is something solid.
”I’m fine. Looking forward to a night off, but fine.” I give him my Emmy award winning smile, that fake-but-no-one-knows-smile, and slide into the seat beside him, crushing his fluffy pillow between us, it serving as a wall between him and me, a barrier between his brain power and my real emotions. “What about you? How are things going?”
”Eh, pretty good. What do you want to listen to? Pick a station.” His hand falls away from the radio dial, gesturing mid-air for me to take over. Gladly, I do. “Could’ve guessed.” He says, with a laugh, as we settle into a Kenny Chesney song. His laugh, as odd as it seems, feels good to me. A person laughing around me is what I need. Maybe then I can learn to laugh, too, even when things are going all wrong.
We drive the rest of the way in silence, down the dark highway, passing cars with their sleepy red and yellow eyes, bending around a turn to watch the car before us blink away around another hillside all covered in browning vegetation and creature holes. Before too long we are pulling into a long dirt driveway of sorts. Everything is pretty dark, but I can see small, bright orbs of burning oranges. Everything else is pitch-black.
I step from my seat, wrapping a sweater around my slightly chilly form, and help him unload the white truck, which is seemingly smaller among the dark greens and blacks of the trees and sky surrounding us from all sides. I am introduced to a number of people who I will never remember, but at the same time never forget, and handed a beer. With no reluctance I pop it open, taking a sip. He sets the tent up while others get the fire going. The flames are gorgeous. Captivating, dancing, swaying with the summer breeze. I am lost, caught in the glow. The firelight is soothing, casting warmth across my face. The beer in my hand is also soothing, although the liquid is slightly warm. The glass bottle is cold, reminding me of my window in the summer when I press my face close to its cool surface. I look up, towards the late night sky, and I see pine needles, leaves, branches, patches of inky blue, all scattered and painted with pockets of smiling stars.
My focus comes back to the fireside, where the lack of chairs has found me seated on his bare knee. I ignore the gentle stroke of his hand on my arm, and quietly sip my fruity beer. I am here to have a relaxing time, not to deal with a flirty, sex-driven ex. My week has been too long, too hard, and too tear-filled. I just want to relax.
I feel the warm fire, the cool air, the smell of smoking, burning, charring wood. I hear his “I love you” and feel my quiet, nervous smile. Then, I do the only thing I can think to do. I tell him to hush and softly kiss his lips. I don’t love him back and it’s like one of those really sad-romantic movie scenes. He knows I don’t love him. I’ve told him over and over. But I kiss him anyway.
The biggest mistake of my life.
All the rest is a blur, up to the point I find myself in his tent, rocks jutting through the rough, sand papery floor material and into my back.
I laugh and tell him no. He kisses me again, a whispered please between. He goes for the button on my jeans.
I push his hand away, with a firm no…a simple “we’re just friends.” My words are ignored, lost as he pummels forward with a please and “you owe me” and “c’mon, I’ll be careful.” Fear creeps slightly toward the surface of the back of my mind, settling there like the cigarette smoke settles in my dad’s living room.
He doesn’t get it. I tell him no again, shoving him away as he comes forward. He pushes me back, telling me I owe him. He comes down, hard, on top of me and I struggle to get free, desperate calls escaping my lungs. He slaps me hard across the face. And then again, telling me to keep quiet. Or else. I am afraid, and so I am silent, tears escaping the corners of my eyes as he unbuttons and unzips my dark denim jeans. A half sobbed please blows from me and right through him. He tells me, firmly, to slide my jeans off. I hesitate, and his hand comes down hard, stinging my face and grazing my upper lip. My face burns and the taste of blood touches my tongue. I begin to sob as I slide my jeans off, and then my underwear. I receive another command of silence from him and he pulls my shirt off over my head, hurting my ears. I am not wearing a bra, and he smiles.
Then I hate him.
I try to shove past him and am pulled back, harshly deposited on the ground. His weight comes down on me again, hard and fast. He kisses my neck and gropes my breasts with his rough, uncaring, cold hands and I shiver and shake with gasps of desperate breath mingled with shuttering sobs. His other hand is busy undoing his shorts. Then, surprising me even though I knew it was coming, he drives into me, hard and quick. I hear myself let out a small cry, both in pain and in sheer outrage. I tilt my head back, eyes open, and silently pray that it will stop. That God will rescue me. But He doesn’t.
“I love you,” he fills my ear, his breath hot against my skin. He thrusts and I choke on bubbling sobs. All I can do is think of God and why He isn’t with me tonight. All I can do is lie there, cries rippling through my lungs and tears melting from my eyes. It goes on seemingly for hours.
Finally, he is finished and I am sore. My eyes burn, unable to cry any more, and my throat is tight from sobbing. Every muscle in my body aches and my vagina is burning and throbbing and raw, as if the first layer of skin no longer exists. My back is bruised, I know, from the rocks beneath the tent.
”This never happened,” he says, rising, dressing, leaving. I merely lie there for a long time, staring at the tents dark wall. Then, in anger, sadness, and regret, I pull a knife from my bag to retrace the marks on my arm. I stare at the blade, my mind utterly blank. My face feels sticky with dried tears and my upper lip is stiff and slightly swollen. My eyes, though they have adjusted to the lack of light, feel strained and they ache as I put the blade to my skin. I close them, then, and go by feel, pressing the now invisible blade into my arm, sensing how deep I can go, longing to go deeper but lacking the stomach to do so. I feel a warm liquid beginning to run down my arm, spreading, dripping, and cooling. I can see it with my eyes closed: the beads, the drips, the ebb and flow. The red. That deep, bright red that holds your gaze and doesn’t let it go until it is dried and crusty and your eyes are puffy-pink with tears.
My body gives a shuttering sigh, my naked form becoming sensitive to the cold as it nips at my skin, rolling over me and sinking. I relax my hand, allowing the knife to fall, with a soft thud, to the tent floor.
Six months later, I find myself waking in a cold, sticky sweat that clings to me, feeding off of my fear and anxiety. I can almost feel his presence as my eyes tear open and I sit straight up, eyes straining desperately in the darkness. My right hand flies to my arm, feeling for a warm and stickier substance.
Nothing. Only raised strokes, dried and healing, line my arm tonight. I was dreaming. He isn’t here. And he hasn’t been here in six months. But, if he isn’t here any more, why do I still hear him and feel him? Why do I still smell him, a now sickening mixture of deodorant and summer night?
And why, of all things, did God let this happen to me? For months, people have been telling me that everything happens for a reason. What reason is there in this?
With a groan I lie back down, my heart slowing and the sweat drying on my back and chest. I pull the covers over my head, hiding in its comfort and struggling to be lost in its cottony touch. I, for the first time since that night, contemplate praying. But, with anger still embedded in my heart, I apprehensively shake off any thought of that. Any thoughts of Him. Praying did nothing that night, and it will do nothing now. I groan again, remembering my promise of attending church tomorrow. What a messed up thing this is. I roll over, but do not go back to sleep. I am too afraid of seeing him again, too afraid of his touch.
Sunday morning finds me, of all people who are utterly lacking in faith, at a church, five rows back, standing, listening to the singing voices around me. But I am silent. There will be no worshiping on my end, and I am not sorry about this. Instead, I will just listen. And I do. I listen to the worshiping—great voices mingled with not so great ones—and to the sermon. I see everyone so involved, so caught up, so wonderfully wrapped up in smiles and in love. And, out of nowhere, I begin to cry. I remember how I used to know God’s love and tears stream down my face. I wonder how I got so lost, how I have been so unable to find my way back into His light. I may not have been perfect in faith before, but I had never been so far as I stand now. I cry because, for six months, I hated Him and despised anything that pertained to His love. Now, I can feel His love floating around the room, melting into and oozing from others in a glorious wave. I want to absorb His love, but I can’t. So I merely cry, silently and to myself, consciously wiping the tears from my pinking cheeks.
Twilight rises with the setting sun, and stars are winking at me through my open window, which pulls in the clear, crisp, winter air. It smells like rain and like mud. A favored mixture. I am caught in my thoughts, a twisted blur of words that make little sense together but are completely tangible one by one. I can hardly breathe with all the thoughts that keep passing through my morbid mind. I see flashes of me cutting, flashes of church, words of the bible imprinted, burned, stapled behind my eyelids. I see him and all his weight, all his strength and power over me, coming down and slapping me, kissing me, groping me, raping me. I begin to sob, pulling a razor blade from my drawer, watching the silver sliver glitter and gleam at me, absorbing the light from the lamp as it pools there, reflecting off the cold metal surface. And I see my bible, pages marked where I had tried to read but given up. I put the blade to my skin. Out of no where, I begin to pray. I pray like I have not prayed in months. I plead and beg for answers, and I sob, tears flowing down my cheeks in great torrents, swiveling and swirling and dropping from existence. And then, as if some great force has suddenly given me strength, I drop the blade into my trashcan. It hits the bottom, among gum wrappers and a plastic fork, with a quiet, defeated thud. I know that, even though I have the strength this time, I will cut again. At least this is a step in the right direction. I close my eyes, thanking God and finally realizing that there is a reason for that haunting summer night. That night happened so I would be able to put myself back together, piece by piece and bit by little broken bit. God allowed him to rape me so that I could turn my life around. So I could put away the razor blades and the beers, and open up my bible. So I could move through the issues of my father and come out a different, better person who doesn’t rely upon a sharp blade to ease pain and sorrow.
And so, with this all fresh in my mind, fluid and warm, I reach for my bible. I open its neglected pages and I begin to read.
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Robsmeyers reviewed Version 1 -
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This is an incredibly powerful and moving piece. It seems as if this was a paper you submitted and I’d love to know for what subject/class. If you wanted to go further with that, I as a reader would love for some (just a bit) of the gap in the timeline to be filled in. The flashing forward is quite effective, but it still leaves me a bit curious as to how your character survived that evening and why at that one most pivotal moment chose to start to heal. Good luck…
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Dragon_Master reviewed Version 1 -
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Very good. I liked the change from suicidal person to bible reader. Nice. By the way, what grade did you get on this paper?
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