15
I saw a penis once before. Not in real life, ‘cause I’ve never had a Dad to accidentally see, but one of the girls at school took a picture of a boy that dacked himself at her brother’s football game and she showed it to us.
So I always wondered why people made a fuss of them. They were smaller than I thought and sorta shrivelled.
But His one makes me breath catch in my throat. It’s not shrivelly like that picture and I don’t giggle. Can’t, anyway, with my socks in my mouth, tied in place. I can’t scream and I know where he’ll put it. After seeing those actors kissing and touching, I know he wants to put it there.
Still, I scream. I scream until something breaks in my throat and no sound comes out but the fear is no less loud and overpowering, making me rattle in these tie-ups.
“Do you like this, Kallisto?”
I shake my head.
He tugs at my undies until they rip and he yanks. Oh my God, I’m naked down there! Despite my panic, I still blush and would rather die than be here right now. He rears up his hand and slaps me down there. It sounds softer than the pain, which rings like symbols clapping.
“Do you like this, Kallisto?”
I pretend I was just moving to itch, but he sees me shake my head again and this time he looks down and studies me. I begin thrashing so hard, my skin breaks, and I see blood pool. He stares and stares, then suddenly sticks his rude finger up and shoves it into me.
My eyes clench shut and I think I can’t take it anymore. Surely with enough pain, a girl can die?
I feel sick to my bones, but I’m crying too much to throw up. I literally hear a rip, clear as a piece of paper ripping in two, and that could only be me.
I let myself get ripped apart. I am letting myself take this pain and nothing could make me happier than dying to forget this.
I’ll never forget this.
He takes out his bloody finger and when he asks this third time I don’t answer, and he doesn’t ask for an answer again.
His thingy is so big. He sounds a bit like a cat purring but much louder and more desperate. He touches it and strokes it back and forward. He gives me eyes that show he’s teaching me something but I don’t get what until he wraps my hands around him and tells me to pretend I’m stroking a cucumber.
Why would I want to stroke a cucumber?
But he slaps me again down there and with the blood it’s like an ice dagger ripping my mind and eyes and voice, and just everything into nothing.
I do as he says and think that maybe it is a cucumber because he is soft. He gets mad and slaps my arm if I lose rhythm or knees me between my legs, so I focus really, really hard on making him happy.
He tells me he’s about to do it and I don’t know what that is but then he shoves himself in my mouth and I drown in some weird-tasting mayonnaise thing, but it’s much saltier.
“Good,” he praises me. “You did so good you get to go again but this time, we are going to do it like men and girls are meant to.”
It was that moment I started counting. I shoved down all my feelings and all thoughts and all that I could into a locked compartment. I counted rhythm as I pretended to play my violin and counted the seconds that the audience gave me a standing ovation.
I thought of all the ways I’d tell on him to Mum, but in the end she called me to pack away the groceries so she could have some private time with Him.
“Ooh,” she called from her bedroom. “You actually changed the sheets for once. And they’re so pretty!”
I don’t know what it was about that afternoon, but it seemed like I was lying to her by waiting to tell her the next day, and the next day, and then I never found any way to tell her what her favourite boyfriend did.
16
“Hey,” I call to Mum when she tiptoes out of the twins’ room tonight.
She looks over her shoulder as if to check they’re still asleep then turns back.
“Want to come down to the basement with me?”
She gets a wicked smile and bundles our giant Reese’s Pieces bag from our local USA candy import store.
If Melbourne ever had cyclones, we’d survive for weeks down there without a struggle. Mum grabs her cigarettes, which makes my eyes pop and I get a smiley feeling in my belly. She easily could have brought a joint with her down there.
Despite Mum’s normal mood, her body is a giveaway of what I know about her. Her drug habits keep her slimmer than most Mums—or any regular thirty-seven-year-old for that matter. But I notice that in the last couple of weeks it’s like she’s disappearing before my eyes. Times before when she tried to clean up, she put on weight.
So, what else is going on? If she keeps transforming this way, it’s possible she could waste away.