Tracing

“Are you ready to talk about it?” my therapist asks me for what seems to be the hundredth session in a row.

“No.”

“Are you ready to write about it?” She is pushing me and she knows that I hate this.

“Maybe.”

“It’s been three years,” she reminds me, even though I don’t need it.

***

I’ve tried forgetting, but my dreams won’t let me. I’ve tried writing about this before, but my memories are faulty. They are swarming with faded images that are swimming in my head, trying to reach the part in the pool that will allow them to put their feet down. To find stability. I make a list of everything I do remember. Of everything that I know happened for certain.

This is what I remember:

My legs trembled while I pulled down my bloody bathing suit bottom that was stuck to me. The bruises on my neck pulsated as pieces of memory started to form together in my head. I grabbed the bathing suit bottom and wrapped it with an entire roll of toilet paper, no one could ever know, I thought. My body started to cry for a shower or anything that would wipe off all of the dirt and mud that was all over me. My hair was tangled with twigs and clumped up grass, my thighs were bruised and bloody.

I turned the faucet and switched on the shower. As I ran my fingers through the running water, all I could think about was washing this entire day off. My right foot stepped into the trickling water that immediately turned brown. Mud started to gloss over the white tub, mixing in with the blood that was still pouring out of me. My limbs gave in and fell into the frigid water. Standing didn’t seem possible. I soaked my scratched-up body in the tub, the temperature set to the hottest possible. I needed everything to boil away. The warm shower hugged me tightly, as my knees hit my chest with my arms wrapped around them. The stinging pain on my chest was burning, the scratches and open gashes pierced until they went numb with the water.

I sat there, the way a dog sits waiting for food. I was waiting for something, anything to come back to me. I took the advice of anyone who has ever lost something before, “Where was the last place you saw it? What is the last thing you remember?” What was the last thing I remembered? I traced back to the beginning of the day, like a kid tracing a picture.

One shot.
Two shots.
Three shots.

Only three shots of tequila. Only three, I thought. I’ve had seven shots before and barely lost memory, barely lost myself.

Four.

Oh, yeah, I had that shot, too. But that’s all I had, I promise. So, where’d it all go wrong? Was it my fault? It was probably karma, so technically I brought this onto myself. It was my fault, I thought; he did say I needed it, or he wanted it?

Just four shots and a few inhales of weed. But, still, I’ve had double that and nothing. My body was used to it all, immune to the lightweight drunk that I was when I was younger.

I was immune to the toxic mix of weed and tequila that played nicely with each other in my throat and on my tongue that had no trouble shoving itself into the mouths of random boys and girls. I was immune, my tolerance stable and steady, or so I thought. This time was different. This time, I knew him. I knew his body, the surface of his stomach with abs perfectly etched out. The way his crooked smile showed his white teeth. And he knew me. He knew that I liked it rough, that I begged to be choked, to be hurt. He knew about my experience, my past, my body count because he made me tell him. He knew that I dreamed about girls, about guys, about my confusion, and that I’ve never gone all the way with anyone to know enough about my sexuality. So was it my fault?

I wore plain black shorts with gold trim and a loose black shirt that day. I didn’t care for the approval of everyone at the party. My shirt revealed my red bikini top, I liked it that way.

I made my usual rounds, saying hi to people I didn’t like, or cheerfully running up to people whose names I had forgotten. And yet, they always reminded me, even though they knew I was tipsy and would most definitely forget.

I saw him standing by the bar with his friends, and then I was there, too. We had stopped dating the year before.

“Here, for you,” he said.

“Oh, thanks but I can’t, my mom’s wedding is tomorrow and I need to be semi-okay and not completely hung-over,” I smiled.

“Oh, come on, I’ve never known you to be goody-good.”

I reached out to grab the shot because I was not going to turn down a drink. The tequila stained my throat, burning its way through my body. Something else lingered in my throat. Something that hurled my mind into a frenzy.

Five.

He grabbed my arm and my swirled mind followed him.

There it was, the shed that was hidden behind the house and the field of green, the house that was hosting us all, feeding us with alcohol and sun.

Nothing.

There was no memory after that except screaming and begging. The words poured out of the shower and shook me until I was left shivering. I heard myself over and over again.

“Stop it! What are you doing?”
“Ouch, you’re hurting me.”
“Please.”
“No.”
“Stop.”
“Please.”

Then, silence.

He left me there. He left me bleeding, cut up, and bruised. Lying in a dirty shed with nails sticking up in every corner and cracked wood laying on its side. He left me there.

There was a time, in ninth grade when his brother and I were best friends, inseparable, closer than chopsticks in their wrapper. My heart raced when he was around. When his towel covered only his bottom half and his muscles dripped with the steam from the shower. I remember his head nodding slightly as he slid into his room and shut the door. My best friend didn’t like that I had a crush on his brother, or that I walked by his room countless times because “I forgot something in the kitchen.” Even though we stopped talking in tenth grade, I didn’t tell my friend when his brother and I started dating years later.

He picked me up in his Jeep, windows tinted even though it’s illegal in New York. He took me to random bars. His hands around my shoulders even though he knew that I didn’t like to be touched, not there, not like that. We drank and spoke for hours. We drove to Coney Island at the end of most nights, in the bitter November wind. We sat close to each other, warming our bodies up on a bench on the pier that stretched into the ocean. He knew how to touch me then, what I liked. We pretended to giggle when people passed by, but he continued to maneuver his way around me. We knew each other. But most importantly, he knew my boundaries. Not all the way. Never all the way.

But that was all before.

The tub was forgetting the muddy blood that surfaced but left a ring of it drying around me. My feet struggled to get up, my legs refused to stand; I couldn’t think about it anymore. My face was scrambled in the foggy mirror. The palm of my hand wiped away the heated mist that stuck to my reflection. Drops of condensed water dripped down my face, while the puddle of warm blood was cooling off in the bathtub.

I didn’t sleep that night. My head was swarming with thoughts, confusion, and guilt. Why was I feeling guilty? I thought. It didn’t matter how many times I turned over that night; sleep wasn’t going to come, and neither were the answers.

I got out of bed when the sun came out. My family was starting to get up and eager for my mother’s wedding. I got to the bathroom before them and made sure that there was no evidence left from the day before, that all of the blood was wiped away, like parts of my memory.

The pink flowers on my green dress were popped open, staring at my bruised body, asking me how I was going to wear it without the marks on my chest showing. My body was closing up, shutting itself down, but I had to get ready, I had to be at my mom’s wedding. I had to smile. The mirror showed a 21-year-old girl, one with bruises on her chest, and bags under her eyes. I didn’t know who she was and I didn’t want to know. I grabbed my sister’s makeup and started to gloss over my cuts and gashes. The concealer wasn’t my color, but I didn’t care. Everything needed to be covered.

“Are you okay?” my cousin asked me. She saw the heaviness in my eyes.

“Yeah, sorry. This is just such a big day; my mom’s finally going to be happy.”

“Want to get drunk?” her eyes pointed to the bar. We always did this, at every family function. We found ways to fill up our glasses with alcohol, so I said, “Sure.”

My body shuddered in the hot air. Every breeze that grazed my arms tormented me, pushing me back into my head, back into that shed. I grabbed the Champagne glass and filled it with tequila, so no one would notice. I wouldn’t be able to make it through the rest of the day, I thought. I checked to see if my bruises were still covered in the thick concealer, worried that the sun melted it even a bit. I wished it would cover my scattered memory, too.

My phone vibrated and his name popped up, throwing itself through me and pushing me to the ground of the shed all over again.

1 message

“Hi, are you okay?”

I thought about my options. I didn’t want to stay quiet, but I also didn’t want to tell. I knew that if I spoke out then my mom wouldn’t let me study abroad in Prague that fall semester. My trip was already planned, my bags were mostly packed, but I knew that she would just unpack them all and lock me in my room so that no one could ever harm me again. I didn’t like staying quiet, but I needed to, in order to get out. I knew that the blame would be put on me and that he would get away with it. There was no point in the telling, no use in putting myself through the process of justice, not after all of the stories I’d heard about people getting away with it.

I had to tell someone. I needed to blurt it all out because the heat coming from my body was making me queasy. But I didn’t. Not until days later when my mouth would only let out tears. My voice was trapped by the day, trying to recall what had happened even though I didn’t want to know. I called my best friend and asked her to meet me on the boardwalk. I needed her empathy, her presence, her wisdom of all things boys. I didn’t want to call anyone else, just her.

The chilled breeze from the ocean made it easier to breathe. My heart was about to jump out of me like a grasshopper. The pounding turned to soft bumps, easing up as the words came out of my mouth. I looked at my friend, tears scrambling out of my eyes, emptying the heavy bags. I told someone. I let it out into the world and couldn’t take it back.

“I was raped.”

It was out there with the chipped wood on the boardwalk, the misty fog that came from the ocean, and the air around me. I let it out into the world. My cup of ice cream started to melt over my trembling hand. My eyes finally met with hers and then quickly looked away. I couldn’t face anyone eye to eye, not yet.

I was about to open my mouth and let out a sigh of relief when she said, “Are you sure you were? Weren’t you drunk? And we grew up with him–there’s no way he could ever do that to someone, especially not to you.” Her eyes looked down at me.

***

When I finally told my therapist about the incident, her face burrowed into her cheeks. She sat up straight, legs untucked, and looked at me.

“I’m not ready to talk about it in-depth,” I said. “I’m still not ready,” I changed the subject quickly.

 

 

 

Photo by Heshan Perera on Unsplash