Chapter 13 Clara #3
I KNEW that girls bled the first time, but it hurt so much that it felt like something must have gone wrong.
That kind of pain could not be normal. But when he asked if I was okay, I told him I was fine, tried to shape my grimace into a smile.
I wouldn’t have believed me if I were him, but that was the thing about people—they wanted to believe whatever was easiest to accept.
Afterward, I was surprised at how small the bloodstain was, on the sheets.
The pain—and what had caused it—had seemed so much bigger than that.
I knew it was strange to feel disappointed, but a part of me wanted to see those sheets soaked in blood, something I could point to and say that’s what they did to me.
Tom and Des and my mother and the clerk at the desk who had handed me the key to the room, the woman who asked what floor when I got on the elevator, and pressed the button for me on the way up.
Zeg, when he bartered with me for some stupid trinket I had lifted and made me take less than half of what he would sell it for.
The bartenders and waiters who never even asked for my fake ID.
The man who only had twenty bucks left in the wallet I stole.
The girls at the spa who wouldn’t let me in to read people’s cards.
This whole failing town and its closed casinos, its empty parking garages, the ocean and bay that hemmed us all in.
I wanted a sheet bloodied enough to make everyone see how wrong it had all gone.
I slipped out of the room when the first hint of sunlight came through the blinds, my purse filled with the bills Des had told me to ask for up front.
I hadn’t slept at all and my body felt light and drifty, like I was moving through a dream, but the bones of my face ached.
A housekeeper trundled her cart down the hall and looked at the ground as I passed.
In the elevator down, I saw myself reflected in the gold panel of buttons—my eyes dark with smeared makeup, my face pale, my hair too bright against my skin.
I was wearing my dress and heels from the night before—I hadn’t thought to bring anything else.
I thought of Peaches and her little mesh slippers, and the way her face changed when she took them off and tied those straps around her legs.
As I cut through the floor, a woman eating a Danish at a slot machine looked up at me and sneered as I passed.
Whore, she was thinking. Hooker, slut. A dull throbbing had replaced the pain between my legs, and I tried to tell myself that when it went away, I would be able to forget everything that had happened the night before, the way you come back into yourself once a headache releases its grip.
But I knew it wasn’t true. I would never be able to forget how he looked at me.
Not with hatred or horror or desire, but like I wasn’t even there at all.
I waited for a jitney underneath a banner advertising a poker tournament—It’s July, Summer is just heating up—and was relieved when I got on that it was empty.
My skin felt feverish, and I leaned my face against the window’s cool glass until we arrived at the Tropicana and I could walk back to the shop.
On my walk, I passed a telephone pole with Julie Zale’s picture stapled to it.
The photograph had become faded, the ink ran in the rain, like mascara tears sliding down a face.
The paper was tattered and peeling away from the staples.
I wondered about her uncle, back in Baltimore now, probably.
Jumping at the sound of the telephone. Peeking in Julie’s old room to admire her trophies on the wall, the track medals hanging from nails above her bed.
I was sick of thinking about the girls I would never be: treasured, adored.
The girls from middle school, sipping their vodka and lemonade, flipping their hair.
That was how their wholes lives tasted—a combination of pink lemonade, vodka, and strawberry-flavored lip gloss—everything for them was sweet and exciting.
Julie still smiled out from her photograph.
I reached out and ripped the poster, shredded it until the paper was confetti in my hands.
I watched the pieces blow down the street, and a coldness moved into my body.
How stupid I had been to think that my visions and my tarot cards could get me anything.
The world wanted things from me, but they weren’t insights or answers.
It didn’t matter who I was, or what I might be able to see.
Look at how it happened with Tom—I had a glimpse of who he was, and still, I ended up underneath him while he drove himself into me, biting my lip to keep from crying out.
I had given my savings to Des for the back rent, and now with the money she had and the cash from Tom, we nearly had enough to cover what we owed. But in another month another rent check would be due. In three, four months, another eviction notice on the floor.
When I got home, Des was sitting in the kitchen. She must have been thinking the same thing—how the bills would continue to come, the demanding envelopes stamped in big, bold lettering. I already knew what she was going to propose. I had opened up a door that I couldn’t walk back through.