emotion. “You know that doesn’t work.”
I
stared at him, my fear giving the scene an almost ethereal glow, like heaven
was waiting for me on the other side of this experience. Like death was close
at hand. Maybe he would kill me. He never had before, but I wouldn’t
have put it past him. Anyone who could do what he did to an innocent,
defenceless ten-year-old child had all the power of God, for all I knew. An
evil God. An all-powerful being who always got his way.
He
was walking towards me, pulling his belt from its loops. “I don’t want to have
to use this. You do as I say without making a fuss this time. Or you’ll feel
this, hard.”
I
stood up. He’d whipped me before and it had been a week before I’d been able
to sit down. I’d had to do my homework standing up. Miss Mills at the library
had asked me about it but I’d told her I fell off my bike. I didn’t have a
bike, but she didn’t know that.
“Take
off your clothes.”
My
hands were shaking as I began to unbutton my plaid blouse. It had holes at the
elbows but I’d patched them with an old blanket that was almost the same color.
Two boys at school had laughed at me and called me “trash”.
I
took off my pants, too, and my underpants. And I stood naked in front of him.
“You’re
too skinny, girl,” he said critically as he circled me. “I need to fatten you
up some.” I flinched when he touched my hair, which hung to my waist. “You
have the prettiest hair. So soft and blond.”
I
closed my eyes as his hand slid to my face, my neck, which he circled with his
fingers before gliding his rough touch to my shoulder. He touched the tiny
buds of my breasts with his calloused fingers. “Open your eyes,” he said.
“Unzip me, girl. You know what to do. Keep your eyes open.”
I
felt the bite of bile in my throat. I knew that taste, of horror and fear. If
there had been anything in my stomach, I would have wretched. I unzipped his
pants and took his cool, flaccid horribleness in my hands. “Run your fists up
and down me, like I like. Get me really hard.”
I
did as he asked, forcing my thoughts away from him. To the book I was reading,
about a girl who runs away from home and finds happiness.
It
didn’t take long. “That’s enough. Now go and lie on the bed.”
I
felt removed from myself, like I was floating above, watching my small, slim
waifish body perform for him.
“Open
your legs,” he ordered, gruffly excited. He was holding himself, working his
own body, feasting his eyes on my vulnerability. “Now touch yourself.”
My
eyes fell closed as I felt my fingers touch my secret place. And I screamed
when a jolting pain pierced the left side of my head. He was leaning over me,
his fist in my hair. “I said keep your eyes open. Look at me. Watch me.”
His
breath was foul, his hair dirty. It took every shred of courage I possessed
not to close my eyes and all my other senses to this routine nightmare.
It
was a thin comfort to know that he wouldn’t fully take me. I didn’t know why.
I knew he’d spent time in prison and I wondered if he’d done that before, to
some other girl, and been punished for it. He seemed content with this level
of torture: making me touch him and touch myself as he did what he did.
“Spread
your legs wider. Open. Use your fingers.”
He
stood between my legs, one of his hands found my own, touching me, moving my
fingers. His other hand was on himself. He was close to me, close enough to
touch me, to press against me but not deeply. His pace quickened and his face
began to contort with his pleasure. White foam spurted from him onto my
stomach as he grunted his relief. With his hand, he rubbed his foam onto my
skin as though to mark me, to stain me.
“There
you go,” he said. “Good girl. Just like you like it.”
He
zipped himself up, took his belt and began to leave. “Don’t