Chapter 60
When I was a girl, imprisoned in the grim mill town to which my mother had taken me, I briefly had a friend who lived in one of the few grand homes.
A girl ensconced in a respectable family very unlike my own who used to grill me about terrible eventualities.
It was a titillation for her, a fun game to imagine such things.
Sitting on the floor cross-legged and smiling, she would ask: What if you were kidnapped, and you were locked blindfolded in the back of a speeding truck, what would you do?
What if someone had you pinned down, and they were tearing at your clothes?
What if… On and on it went. With a kind of ancient resignation, I would dutifully project myself into each scenario, knowing she was a fool, thinking but not saying—because to do so would have ended the game and marked me as unacceptably different—that there was nothing to do but submit.
Close my eyes and hope that death came quickly, the rape climaxed quickly, the bloody ripping of hair and tearing of delicate openings and the knocking out of teeth passed quickly, I became worthless quickly, so that whoever had me would tire of me and leave.
In Louise’s dimly lit living room, Tom was still shaking me, his face rough red, mine bloodless. “Say something!”
“Ida’s taken” was how I finally put it.
“What do you mean?” His face had clouded. “Taken where?”
How could I make him understand when it seemed so personal?
As though everything that had happened, the entirety of my life, had been carrying me here.
This exact moment, this room that had seemed like a sanctuary, that I had loved and now hated.
I felt an ancient dam abruptly give way. And then, at last, I began to wail.