Free Hungry for the World by Kim Barnes Page A

nearly enlightened.
    Tom insisted that, as the man, it was he who should determine my boundaries, and one of those boundaries was that I could go nowhere without his attendance. If I could not be with him, Tom said, then he didn’t want me with anybody, and I could only see this as a manifestation of his affection: wasn’t this the way I had come to know all great love, through what it asked of me, through my adherence to the giver’s conditions? My father’s love, just like that of the Heavenly Father, necessitated that he guide and confine my behavior; I returned that love by concession and obedience. It was, I understood, for my own good.
    Yet who would I obey? If I went against my father, I was grounded, left without recourse; if I attended a high school football game or a church prayer rally without Tom, he became enraged, ranted that I was a whore, threatened to abandon me.
    Increasingly, my fear of Tom’s disapproval outweighed the threat of my father’s censure. I could, I believed, live without paternal love, but I could never survive losing Tom. What could I say or do that would prove to him my faithfulness, my allegiance? I pledged and promised, soothed him with words, touched him with my lips and fingers. I no longer thought of sin or damnation or even pleasure but instead wondered if this would be enough to win his tolerance and favor for a while longer, make him see that I was wholly his. Sex became something other, something more than a shared journey toward physical delight; it became a coin that I could use to buy back his approval.
    I believed I had given every part of myself to Tom, yet his jealousy increased, as did his policing of my attire and activities. He hectored and harassed, his anger turning more and more menacing until one night he wrapped his fingers around my throat and I thought he would kill me.
    Even then, it was he who ended the relationship, left me crying and hysterical, believing that I had not given enough, or taken enough, that somehow it was my fault that he’d turned mean. If I hadn’t worn that dress, talked to those other boys, if I’d stayed home like he’d asked—weren’t these the things I’d been taught would save a woman?
    My parents were relieved, but I felt an enormous loss, not only of Tom but of some part of myself. I had thought I would marry this boy, but now I was alone and no longer a virgin—a state that forecasted despair for any woman who hoped to win an honest man. I was “ruined”—I had heard my mother and grandmother pronounce it of other women—and I envisioned a life of sorrowful decay and abandonment.
    After Tom, there were other boys I believed I might love, and so I kept myself from them, thinking that to do so would shield my secret transgression and ensure their fidelity, win from them the respect and admiration such chastity attracted. Instead of approval, what my abstinence brought me was, at first, steady imploring, then anger and scorn. Why had I agreed to go out to a movie, for dinner, if I wasn’t ready to give something in return? I was a prude, a prick tease, not worth their money and time. Some part of me—that part that Tom had tended so well—believed them. It seemed that no matter which path I chose, I was doomed to rejection.
    ———
    T HERE WAS ONE BOY whose romance undid me, remade me, broke me into even smaller pieces. Thane was a raven-haired athlete with a good arm and fast moves on the field. He had a steady girlfriend, but it didn’t seem to matter. He offered a special kind of companionship: afternoons of television and popcorn; Saturdays spent sledding and drinking hot cocoa; evenings when he called for no other reason than to pick me up, take me to the park, and launch a new kite above the city.
    After the tyranny of my relationship with Tom, Thane’s childlike pleasure in the world and the fact that he demanded nothing of me was a gift. We were intimates but not lovers, and I cherished this, believing that