Free Nothing but Your Skin by Cathy Ytak Page B

who said yes to me, so I wasn’t sure. I said no to the psychologist, then yes. So he asked again, “Did he force you?” No. “So, you were okay with it?” Yes. And then I waited for him to ask, “Were you the one who wanted to do it?” And then I would have said YES. But he didn’t ask me that question. That’s how it went, Matt.

    â€œAs strange as it may seem,” the psychologist said to my parents, who were waiting in the kitchen, “I believe that Louella agreed to go with this boy and to have sexual relations with him.” My mother said that it wasn’t possible, that I wasn’t mature enough, that I was incapable of making even a simple decision. So, no. It wasn’t possible.
    â€œLouella’s intellectual and decision-making abilities are limited,” he said. “However, she yells less than before and seems to be acclimatizing socially little by little. Her obsession with colors, which we’ve observed for several years, is nothing to be concerned about. At the special needs school, her behavior doesn’t cause any major problems. We know that she is very impressionable. It’s possible that she agreed to go with this boy and to have sexual relations with him. You know, normal or not…we never notice our children growing up.”
    My mother didn’t agree with what the psychologist said. She told him that he was wrong, that she knew me because she was my mother. I buried my head under the covers and didn’t listen to the rest. It was dark, and hot. It was almost like the sleeping bag on the lake.
    That memory makes me jump up inside, in my bed. I don’t care what other people say. I just remember us, us, us.
    I’m going to play back my memory. I’ll rewind to the beginning, because that’s how stories are told, from the beginning. They took away my right to play a part, so I’m going to take it back. I know that wherever you are, you’re doing the same thing, too, every night.
    The first time… I really like those words, the first time … The first time I saw you…see, my heart is already starting to beat again. The first time, you never know it’s the first time. You only realize it after, a little later on. The first time I saw you was in the evening, when the bus was taking me home, just like every day of the week when I go to the place I call the school for retards. I had on my mauve jacket and black pants, and my beige hat with two maroon stripes around the edge. You were getting off the bus. I hadn’t seen you get on, and normally, I’m the only one who gets off at that stop. I have to walk from the bus stop down a path that winds through the forest to our farm in the valley. Normally, it’s just me on the path.
    Actually, the first time I saw you, I didn’t see you right away—I just heard you. You were getting off the bus, behind me. I had said good night to the driver, and then I heard another voice say good night, and that’s how I knew there were two of us getting off the bus. I didn’t turn around. I put my backpack on my shoulders and I adjusted the straps because I don’t like it when the straps are too loose. I checked that my shoelaces were tied well, because it’s hard to retie them when it’s dark and you can’t see much. And I took the path, like I do every night, but this time, you were behind me. There was some hard snow and our shoes crunched on it. I heard you walking with big, sure strides, crack, crack , and I thought you would pass me. But you stayed behind me. I knew you were a man, and young, because I had heard your voice when you said good night to the bus driver. I’ve never liked people following me, so I turned around. You were walking a dozen steps behind me and you stopped, you looked at me, and then you looked at your feet, as if you didn’t know where to put your eyes. I started walking again, and you