Free Dropped Threads 2 by Carol Shields Page A

Hiding. The parts of that night I couldn’t remember, she did. She was left to live what I couldn’t and she hated me for it. The Blacks were her way of making me know that if she had to bear it, then I had to pay.
    It took Hiding seven years to get my attention.
    My parents didn’t know the terminology for what he had done to me, just as I didn’t know it was humanly possible to do to a body what he had done to mine. My mother went to the rape crisis centre so she could learn what she did not know. She threw up in their garbage can. She and my father went through this without my knowledge and without sharing it with any of their friends or family. Later, some people thought it was shame that kept their secret. But it was love. Love for those daughters of friends and family who might be robbed of their freedom because of their parents’ fear; love for me, knowing that pity would have surely killed me, even as he hadn’t; and love for their son because they feared that learning of this so far from home would destroy him—that it should wait out the summer until he could see his sister face to face. Wrong or right to those who loved us and deserved to share in our pain at that time, they did it out of love.
    And that’s good enough for me.
    Sometimes during the Blacks, I would go out to bars to find men to rape me. I carried a large knife in my knapsack. I would wait for a would-be attacker to give me reason to use it. Hiding believed that I should have tried to defend myself that night. There was a window in your bedroom—why didn’t you jump out of it? There were hangers in your closet—why didn’t you use them? Or at the very least, why didn’t you fight him no matter how big or strong or armed or crazy he was because then at least you could SEE the scars of the maiming or at least be dead from FIGHTING rather than lying there like an idiot with the covers over your head, holding your breath, thinking he wouldn’t see you, he’d see an empty unmade bed because you were so thin and small and still .
    Stupidstupidstupid girl.
    Just before the bars would close, I’d ask the chosen man to drive me out to an abandoned stretch of the lakeshore, park the car and walk with me, miles from any signs of life. He would have to start . If he didn’t start, it wouldn’t count. He would start, I would say no, he would have to try to force me and then, only then, could I use the knife. He would have to insist—there wouldn’t even have to be a struggle, he just had to insist or it wouldn’t count. None of them ever did. They were nice men. They wanted my number.
    Doing it “right” means you’ll be okay. Not rewarded necessarily, just okay. Sometimes you’ll be told how to do something right, and the challenge lies in accomplishing the task. Other times the aim will be to determine what “right” means, then to do it. If you do it right, everything will be okay. And if you don’t, everything won’t be okay. But the problem is the assumption that what happens to you is within your control, that whatever you are doing, your choice determines the outcome.
    He orders me to hold the position. On my back, naked, pillow on my face, crowbar on the pillow, arms extended, legs in the air, he’s got me by the ankles and he’s jerking my legs around—I don’t understand what position he wants me to hold. He’s yelling at me and laughing at me because I look so stupid and finally he jerks one leg straight up HIGH and the other one bent at the knee. I’M GOING NOW. DON’T MOVE. DON’T MOVE OR I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU. If I don’t move if I don’t move, he will be gone and I will be okay. I won’t move. I hear the bedroom door slam. I hear him walk away in his big boots. I’m not moving. I’m sweating with the effort. My legs are shaking on the inside because I can’t let them shake on the outside or it won’t be okay. I’m not even breathing. I am still I am superman I can do it I will do it right and it will be