Marshmallows for Breakfast (51 page)

Click.
“Thing is, Kendra, I know what you're like. What you're really like. I've seen how you are,” he was saying. “I thought that was what you wanted.”

I'd pushed him away the last time he kissed me. I'd tried to tell him no this time. I tried to shake my head. I would have said no if he'd let me breathe. But he thought it was what I wanted.
Why? How could he think that?

“Hey, tomorrow, do you fancy going for lunch in town? I think the market's on. They've got some good stuff, you'd really like it.”

He was being so normal. Had I imagined what had happened? Had I gotten it all wrong? Did he say he'd kill me? If he could just be chatting, then maybe I'd got it wrong.

“You think about it, OK? You can bunk off lectures tomorrow, can't you? I'll drive you back in the afternoon.” He didn't move towards me again. “OK, I'm going to get some sleep. Night.” He rolled away and within minutes he was breathing slowly, deeply, asleep. I moved then. Slowly, carefully, I turned away from him. I couldn't move too much because
I didn't want him to wake up. To touch me. To talk to me. If I could, I would have gotten up and got dressed and gone home. But I wasn't sure where the train station was from here. I wasn't sure my legs would work. It was still black outside.

Click.
I could smell him. His scent was all over me. The room smelled of him as well. Smelled of him and reeked of it. What he'd done.

Click.
I hurt, deep inside. Not just where he'd hurt me but in my throat. He'd crushed my windpipe but it hurt deeper than that. At the center of my throat, right in the middle there was nothing but agony. As though someone had gouged out that area of my soul and left a deep wound that would never heal. I wouldn't ever be able to speak of this. At the center of myself I hurt. I wanted to put my hands over it, to soothe it, to stop the pain but there was no way to touch it. It wasn't a part of me that hurt, it was the very substance of who I was. Shame and disgust ran like rivers through my body. They ran into the hole in me. The hole at the center, the hole I could not soothe and I could not fill.

Click.
“Do you want to use the shower first?” he asked.

I started inside at his voice. I hadn't slept. I'd been watching the blackness outside the curtains, waiting for the sun to come up. The hours had crawled by and it didn't seem to get light forever.

I nodded.

“Cool, I'll go put the kettle on.” He leapt out of bed and bounded out of the room.

Slowly I got off the bed, gathered my jeans and T-shirt and sweater and jacket into my arms, crept out of the room into the bathroom.

Click.
I let the water run over me but couldn't bring myself to touch my body.

Click.
He'd changed the sheet and made the bed. The sheet sat in a puffy heap, like a giant meringue, in the corner of the room. He'd opened the curtains and allowed the light into the room.

Click.
I left his shirt, which was now missing all its buttons, neatly folded up on top of the sheet.

Click.
The house echoed with the quiet. The emptiness. What had happened.

Click.
The shower spurted to life as I made my way downstairs to wait.

Click.
“Did you sleep OK?” he asked as he went over to the kettle. I kept my eyes on the table, running my sight along the thin lines of the grain in the wood. Like walking a maze, I let my mind follow the lines to where they ended, then found new ones to follow from start to finish. “I slept like a log,” he continued to my silence. “Didn't realize Heidi had such a comfy bed. Lucky cow.” He got two mugs out of the
cupboard. Would Heidi mind that I slept in her bed? Would she guess what went on in her bed? “So, did you decide about lunch?”

He was staring at me, waiting for an answer. I heard the kettle click off, and the room still as he waited for me to speak.

“I…” This was the first time I'd used my voice since the middle of the night and talking through a bruised throat, a gouged-out soul, was agony. “I have to get back,” I said.

“Oh,” he said. Surprised. Genuinely surprised. Like he expected me to stay. Maybe he hadn't tried to kill me. Maybe the others had stayed. Maybe he really thought he'd done nothing wrong. Or was it that I was going crazy? “Are you sure?” he asked.

I nodded. One short movement down, no up.

“OK, if you're sure. I'll drive you to the station after this.” He settled a cup of coffee in front of me. White, one sugar.

“Thank you,” I said automatically. Because that's what you say when someone does something for you: thank you.

Click.
I didn't drink the coffee. Just like I didn't drink last night's coffee. It still sat on the bedside table, cold, with a web of milk skin on top. I didn't drink last night's coffee nor this coffee for the simple reason I didn't like coffee. Last night I'd been too polite to say so. At that moment, not doing something I didn't like seemed very important. Vital. It was the only control I had.

Click.
Nausea stirred inside as I sat at the table. I hurt. All over. Inside my skin. Outside my skin. Deep in my head. Deep in my chest. I hurt and I wanted it to stop. I wanted to be away from this place.

Click.
I knew he was watching me and I kept my head lowered, my eyes watching the coffee I wasn't going to drink so I wouldn't see what he was really thinking. If I saw triumph, the satisfaction that he'd gotten what he wanted, on his face, I might just possibly die. If I saw nothing, looked into his face and realized that it was just another ordinary morning of another ordinary day to him, I
would
die. I'd lose my mind and I would die.

Click.
He stood too close to me as I was buying my ticket back to Leeds. My teeth ached. I'd been unintentionally gritting my teeth, clenching them tight, so I could bear this and my teeth throbbed from the pressure.

Click.
I thanked him for inviting me to the party, for the place to stay, for the lift to the station. I was polite, had been brought up properly. He nodded. In the seconds that followed he leaned in to kiss my mouth good-bye and I snatched my head away, jerked my body back. Anger, confusion, upset crossed his face. Acceptance crossed my mind: it
had
happened. My body's instinctive reaction told me so. I wasn't going mad, this wasn't another ordinary day, I had been damaged. “I'll call you,” he said as I turned towards the gate. He never did, by the way. But the terror that he would stayed with me until I moved out of that house.

Click.
The scenery dashed past the train window, a blur of green and houses. A series of smudges that put distance between me and the middle of the night.

Click.
My calmness broke when I shut the front door behind me. The house was empty and I ran to the bathroom. I threw down my bag. I tore at my clothes. Frantically, desperately I ripped at them. I wanted none of them to touch me. I wanted nothing to touch me. My hands slipped over the bath taps. It was a student house, only a bath. It filled so slowly. So slowly. But then it was full enough. I sat in the bath, ran the small white bar of soap over myself. The soap but not my hands. I was too disgusted to touch my skin.

Click.
After a few minutes, when it wasn't working, when I could still smell him on me and feel him against and inside me, I dropped the soap, leaned forwards over my knees in the bath. I didn't cry. I sat bent forwards, as much as possible of my curled fist stuffed into my mouth so I could scream and no one would hear. So I wouldn't hear.

Click.
We sat in the pub, everyone talking and laughing and joking. The world didn't stop. I don't know why I expected it to, but it didn't. Why would it? Meg and Elouise were on top form, they were like a double act and I couldn't help but laugh. It was there, at the back of my mind. Hovering over my shoulder, dancing on the edge of my consciousness, but I forgot for a while. I didn't think about the jeans, T-shirt, bra, knickers, sweater, and grey and white jacket stuffed into a plastic bag and hidden at the bottom of my wardrobe, waiting to be thrown away when the bin men came next week. I didn't think about the internal bruise on my throat that made it hard to swallow. I didn't think about the agony
that circled my lower body. I didn't think about the urge to stand up and scream.

Click.
For the first time in my life I prayed for my period to start. I prayed that I wouldn't get pregnant. That I wouldn't have to make that choice. I didn't realize at the time that because of that night I'd never get pregnant.

Click.
The nurse who drew my blood for the HIV test had a kind face and cold hands. She was my mother's age, but white with short brown hair. She was gentle when she pricked my skin. She'd been impressed that although I'd told her about my fear of needles I hadn't flinched, I hadn't tensed. She asked me why I wore six layers of clothes when it was summer. When I told her I was always cold, she hadn't looked convinced. She looked like she wasn't convinced by me at all. “If you ever want to talk, I'm always here during surgery hours,” she said. “Simply make an appointment.” I thanked her and went to leave. At the door, she stopped me from turning the handle. “Kendra, even if you can't talk to me, find someone. A friend, a relative, anyone. Even call a help line. Just talk. It's important.”

“That's just it,” I replied with a shrug. “I have nothing to say.”
I have no words to describe this so I have nothing to say.

Click.
Some days I would tell myself it was just sex. I'd been lucky with Tobey because he was a man who respected me and loved me and treated me as though I was another human being. This time had just been different. It was just sex. Even as I was telling myself that, I knew it wasn't about sex. It was violence. It was hate. It was his rage that he'd pushed
onto me and into me. Most days I wouldn't think about it at all. And even as I wasn't thinking about it I knew his rage had infected me.

Click.
College became a struggle. Socializing became a struggle. People became worried about me. My grades fell. I went to the doctor and he diagnosed depression. Told me I should drink less alcohol, eat more fruit and vegetables. “Take up exercise, as well, young lady,” he said. “Looking better will make you feel better.”
Looking better?
I wanted to say to him.
I have no idea how I look because I haven't so much as glanced in a mirror in months. I cant bear to see myself. To see the words
stupid
embroidered into my features and
victim
carved into my eyes.
I bucked up my ideas. Pulled off the biggest acting performance of a lifetime to finish college with a better-than- average degree and to let the world think I was normal.

Click.
The flashbacks began almost straight away. They take me back there, and I feel it all over my body. His voice in my head, his body next to mine, the terror in my heart. They haven't gone away but I've found that moving or doing something else or focusing on the present stops them in their tracks. I think—I hope—they'll go away one day.

Click.
I did have sex again. It was five years later and he was nobody special or important. He was like every other man since then: I'd date them for a while before things got physical. We'd always go out on dates to public places—never stay in—and I'd always let them know I didn't do sleep-overs. I always went home. I'd learned to drive in that time
so I didn't drink and always drove home. When we did have sex I'd never remember it. I'd pretend to be there. I'd pretend to enjoy it. But I always switched off, stepped out, removed my mind so my body could go through with it.

Will was different. I liked him. My body and mind responded to him. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted him to kiss me. I didn't do it because I was dating him and that's what you do when you date someone. I wanted him to touch me, to hold me, to kiss me. I wanted to make love to him. To have sex with him. Since I was twenty I hadn't responded to a man like that. Since that night, I hadn't known I was capable of
wantingmy
body to be that close to a man's. You can't tell people that, can you? You can't say: “I know that married man is special, that I do have a connection with him because for the last twelve years I've not had a man kiss me without me tuning out and pretending I like it. I know I love him because all of me wants him.”