Free I'll Scream Later (No Series) by Marlee Matlin

away from me.
    “Please stay, I’ll be right back.”
    He heads to the bathroom. I don’t know what’s happening. What’s wrong? What’s wrong with me? Everything’s wrong.
    “No, no, it felt good, I just needed to finish myself off,” he murmurs.
    I don’t know what he’s talking about. I don’t understand.
    “Now let me make you that omelet.”
    He does, while I go clean myself up. There is bleeding, I hurt. I want to leave.
    “Here.” He smiles. He sets the plate down in front of me.
    I eat an omelet, made with eggs, and powdered onions.
    He takes me back to school.
    We slip away again on other days to have sex. When his wife isn’t there. When his wife is there.
    “No, no, no, no, don’t!”
    “It’s fine, it’s okay. I’ll take care of you.”
    One time his kids, still babies, are in another room. Severaltimes after class is dismissed, he has me stay late. He grabs my hand and puts it on him. Other students and teachers are still in the halls outside. He feeds off the danger. It’s part of the thrill. He gets bolder. I think he’s crazy.
    This goes on for most of the school year. In the spring, he tells me he’ll give me a passing grade though by now I’m failing every test I take in his class.
    I don’t care. I tell him I don’t want to see him again. I have a boyfriend now. He says okay. There is no hesitation, no attempt to convince me to continue seeing him.
    I finish the class. I get a passing grade. I don’t tell anyone for years.
    About ten years after high school, my best friend, Liz, was driving us around. Suddenly she says, “I have a confession to make. I kept this a secret even from you…[the teacher] molested me.”
    I was stunned. “Me, too,” I said quietly.
    It turns out there were even more of us.
    Some years later, when Liz heard that he was still around, still doing this to his students, she got in touch with the school and told them everything.
    The school administrators gave him the choice of resigning immediately or they’d turn things over to the cops, she was told.
    He left that day. Disappeared. Silently.

12
    Y OU NEVER KNOW in life what sustains you, helps you ride out the bad times, until you have bad times to ride out.
    By the time I was twelve, I was on the road a lot with the Center on Deafness’s Traveling Hands troupe. We signed and danced to music and performed all over. There were trips to Texas, Nebraska, and throughout Illinois. So much fun!
    In each city we’d stay with host families, many of them with Deaf children of their own. It was carefree and fun, and Liz and I loved it—the bus rides as a troupe to the cities, on our own, where we could talk for hours and no one cared.
    That year I also began working with the rabbi on my bat mitzvah. As with everything else, my parents were determined that I would have this experience just like any other Jewish girl.
    I had fuzzy memories of Marc’s bar mitzvah when I was four. I do remember that I got a beautiful blue-and-red dress and white stockings, and my hair was pulled up into a ponytail. After the service there was food and dancing, and I got to dance with Marc, then my dad, then the three of us together. It was such a happy time. Way past my bedtime, someone took me home for the night. I couldn’t wait to have my own ceremony and party when I could stay until the very end.
    For two or three years, I worked with Rabbi Douglas Gold-hammer, studying the Torah and working on my speech. I’ll never forget learning about my religious history, but more than that, really connecting to my faith. Understanding that it was a very real part of who I am, beyond the Friday-night Shabbat dinners and Hanukkah candles and presents.

    My bat mitzvah day

    On the day of my bat mitzvah I looked out and felt surrounded by love. My brothers, parents, sister-in-law Gloria, my uncle and aunt from California, it made my heart feel full. Here’s a piece of the speech I wrote for that day:
    I am deeply proud that I am a