Free Precious by Precious Williams

first one I can remember. She’d go out shopping and to the hair salon and Denny would babysit me. I’d sit there doing my colouring and he’d play Boney M records and read magazines filled with pictures of ladies.
    I still see him. Denny. I see him all the time, especially at night. In my nightmares. Nanny has never understood why I wake up screaming at least once a week. And I’ve never told. I see Denny’s teeth, which are huge. I hear his laugh, which is surprisingly soft, like a sheep bleating or something, the sort of laugh you could wrap yourself up in. He has strange tastes. He likes to slice up cucumbers length-ways and dip them in salt before eating them. He likes to sit me in his lap and lay kisses all the way up and down my arms.
    He kept saying, ‘You look just like a little version of your mother.’
     
    ‘Feel it then,’ says Eddie. ‘Touch it.’
    ‘OK then,’ I say. My voice sounds like it’s coming from far away, like it’s not coming from my own body.
    I lie on my side, staring bleakly at the bedroom door behind Eddie’s head as he slowly manoeuvres my numb hand up and down and up and down the length of the thing inside his pants. I have not even a shred of willpower.
    The feel of Eddie’s prick inside my hand, this rhythmic movement, makes memories of being much younger, much smaller erupt from where I had buried them long ago. Denny, my mother’s old boyfriend, wore these weird jeans that had buttons instead of a zip, which I found strange. When he pulled those jeans down and I saw – for the first time – the horribly wrinkly sacs hanging down against his thighs, everything started fading in and out of focus, like a flickering TV screen.
    Fragments of images. A bush of wiry hair smashing against my mouth. Feeling myself choking. Hearing myself spluttering. All this happening in broad daylight right in my mother’s parlour, which meant, despite how disgusting it seemed, it must be normal. Normal, like a baby drinking milk from a bottle or sucking on its dummy, maybe. Normal like Dr Gillies putting one of those little wooden sticks down my throat so he can look at my tonsils. Normal.
    I remember a scream caught in my throat like a too-big particle of food. I remember gliding into a dark place where I held my breath and clenched every muscle so fiercely that even my tongue was rigid. Then the little girl they still call Anita shattered into tiny bits and the broken pieces flew into space and nothing much was left of her at all. Except numbness. And nightmares. And the ability to pretend to be OK.
     
    Now I think to myself: I’ll do whatever Eddie asks. But I won’t do anything: I’ll let him do whatever he wants to do. As long as I keep completely still and just lie here and do not take part in this, and do not think about what is going on, then this is not really happening to me. Not the real me, the precious and untouched part of me I keep protected inside like an unborn baby. My body’s a nasty dish-rag that I can evacuate whenever I want and return to only when I absolutely have to.
    ‘Eddie,’ I say, still not daring to look up at him. ‘Do you like me?’
    ‘Yeah,’ says Eddie. ‘I do like you.’
    But even though I try to separate myself from what is happening to me, a sneaky, traitorous part of me wants to be liked, wants to know that Eddie wants to do this because of me, not just simply because I’m there and it’s something to do.
    He tries to slip his other hand inside the waistband of my jeans, but the jeans are skin-tight and there’s no space between denim and flesh. He moves my hand faster inside his pants. Then he gives me a smile that’s like a ray of unexpected sunlight. In the dim light Eddie’s green eyes seem to glitter a bit, like marbles. I know I’m not supposed to be letting him make me touch him like this but his approval of me feels good. I shut my eyes. If I don’t actually see his thing it’s as though this is not happening.
    And then the