Free What Lies Between Us by Nayomi Munaweera Page A

Samson comes out of the room, his arms filled, his eyes apologetic. In the garden he unloads his arms into the fire that swirls and hisses and leaps into the twilight, the scent of burning fruit and vegetable matter, and with it the magazines I have hoarded like gold. I stand there, my face heated from the fire. My chest is locked, but I don’t cry in front of them.
    Later that night, my face buried in my wet pillow, the quietest scraping at the door. Samson’s whisper: “Baby Madame?” I am instantly rigid with fear. Will he come into my room even? I have pushed the desk across it as I always do, but is he strong enough to push it aside? Am I not safe even here? If I scream, will my parents hear? He says through the door, “One book. This one was left. You keep.”
    And then pushed under the door like a talisman, corners burnt, flaking, a single magazine, Duran Duran, big-haired, defiantly eyelinered on the cover. I take it, ease back the burned edges. I will find a better hiding place for it. They won’t take this one thing.
    *   *   *
    Months later Amma must have felt something, seen something, because she comes to me one day as I am studying and says, “Darling.”
    â€œYes, Amma.”
    â€œListen, my love. This is important.”
    Her eyes try to hold my gaze, but I look down at my page. The letters are suddenly moving like ants, defying their letter-ness and falling into the chaos of insect-ness. I move my pencil over the paper, try to ignore her shadow falling over my page.
    She grabs my wrist, shakes it, my pencil still gripped inside my fist making faint scrawls over the number ants. She sits and stares at my face. “Has anything ever happened?”
    â€œLike what, Amma?”
    â€œWith boys, with a man? Has anyone done anything?”
    â€œDone what?”
    â€œLike … anything strange. Anything you don’t like?”
    I look down again. “No, Amma.”
    â€œOh, good. That’s good.” The words sigh out. Relief washing over her features, her ringed fingers moving through my hair. She bends and kisses me in relief. “Good, good. I’ll just go and order some tea then.”
    I go to my room. I lie on top of the bed, careful not to disturb the sheet. I am shaking, suddenly freezing as if plunged into the river’s depth. I pull the sheet over me. My teeth are still chattering.
    I should have told her. She had asked and I had lied. I had wanted to see her face relax into softness the way it did.
    At school I’ve heard the older girls saying that a girl who goes with a man is like a chewed-up piece of bubble gum. No one will want her again. No one chews used bubble gum. You just throw it away.
    I should be thrown away. Because here is the most terrible and secret thing. If I go to him, it is easier. Then I know when it will happen and how quickly it will be over and I don’t have to live with my heart in my throat. I don’t have to jump at every sound and have fear grasp me around the neck. It is manageable. In this way I can keep a part of myself. I can fly away into the sky while he is ripping me up. In this way the terror does not rush upon me like a wave, carrying me under, drowning me. In this way I can stay aloft, my head above the water, breathing.
    But even worse than this, sometimes when he runs his fingers through my hair, his nails against my scalp making me both wide, tingling awake and sleepy, I don’t want it to stop. And then the most evil thing in the world happens. Sometimes he presses his finger very lightly against me there, in the center of me, in the place no one must ever touch, and it feels like I am melting, like I am sweetly and softly dying.
    And then alone in my bed I remember how it felt. I rub against the bunched-up bedclothes, against my fingers, and it is nice and I like it.

 
    Six
    What happened in those last few weeks? It was the season of waiting for water. The