The Salt God's Daughter (12 page)

We never cut our hair. We grew it out and flung it wildly in the rain. We painted yellow streaks in our hair with Jolen
Creme Bleach, snuck out of bedroom windows, wore too much navy blue eyeliner, fought each other, made each other cry, made mistakes and fell down again, and ran, untethered to what and where we could not have known.

We had inherited our mother's impulsivity and desire for freedom. But there was something else—the gene for hyperfertility.

 

D
OLLY LIKED TO joke that she could just look at a guy and get pregnant. She said she learned more about sex from living at Bethesda than from anything else, including movies or soap operas. In our years at the Home, she made two trips over the border to “take care of things,” forbidding me to come along.

I kept mostly to myself now. Sister Zora had a crush on
General Hospital
's Luke, played by Anthony Geary, and we eagerly watched the wedding of Luke and Laura. I couldn't imagine being more excited about a wedding, unless it was my own. For days, we had talked about Laura's dress. Dolly, who now had a boyfriend with a truck, rolled her eyes at us, calling us delusional, saying no girl would ever marry her attacker, accusing us of living in a made-up soap opera world. But for me, that world had become something. My sister was gone, just as my mother had left me when I was six, and before that on a beach in Santa Monica.

 

IT HAPPENED TO me under the Cold Moon, December 3, 1981, a night when the sheet-metal moon parted the deep blue
skies, rife with chunky clouds, signaling the longest night of the year. At fifteen, I was convinced I'd never find anyone to love me. I had never kissed a boy, let alone been touched by one under my shirt. The day before, I had met someone. It was a cool beach day atop some rocks, where he found me reading
Flowers in the Attic
. I had agreed to meet him under the Bougainvillea Castle, a massive cluster of spiny vines full with succulent blossoms—purple, pinks, and reds—cascading from trees in the midst of a grassy field, five miles from the Home. This was the thing about California—gang fights amid tropical flowers, blood in a strawberry field after a rainstorm, spilled from the nose of a little boy who had thrown fists at a farmer one day and ended up locked in the back of a shed, bereft, still angry at the farmer for not saving his father. After all this time, I thought of Felix. I thought of his clear dark eyes as I rode up to the Bougainvillea Castle on my bicycle. The flowers looked toppled over in effigy, their petals torn after a storm, with the slight white cast of mourning. That is what I thought as the dry Santa Anas warmed my face, my purple feather earrings dangling against my neck. It might have been these winds that I mistook for the sound of women's voices crying out for help. I did not know they only wanted to speak for me, for my voice would soon be lost.

The boy, much older than I, had said we would be going to a big party and to wear a miniskirt. But when I arrived there was no party. He'd shown up with two withered pink roses in a plastic grocery store wrapper, and a bottle of tequila. Still, I sat with him on a white woolen blanket under the sheet-metal moon so that he could give me alcohol and kiss me.

The sky was spinning as I looked up, faint, the branches swirling against the deep blue. Within seconds, he was on top of me, groping and clawing at my clothes like a hungry dog, and he whispered into my neck, again and again, that my skin was so soft and did I like it.

I floundered, slipping away, my voice lost as he held me down. I stared at the roses on the grass. One stem had fallen onto the blanket, its thorns stuck against my bottom, tearing my skin as the boy moved up, and up.

You might think I should have cried out from the pain as he pushed my thighs apart and jabbed into me, again and again. But I didn't. I had already learned how to be quiet, to count back from one hundred. I shut my eyes and gritted my teeth and my hands grasped the edges of the blanket. I pulled myself along by counting my own heartbeats. I had learned long ago how to bear things by squeezing my eyes shut and counting. Ninety-nine. Eight. Seven. Faster. Six. There. I left my body. I was watching myself from up in the tree. “Look at me,” he whispered, in between his moans. “Look at me!” he ordered.

A thin trickle of saliva dangled from his lips. He met my eyes, just for a moment.

“I'm looking,” I whispered.

There are things a girl never forgets when her virginity is stolen. To an outsider it's really nothing more than an old tree—a mess of branches hung with stories, with images from soap operas and movies, about a love she might find and a life she might live. But it is a tree wholly hers and hung with her most secret wishes, the ones she let herself imagine on long summer days, when the sand stretched on for miles of possibility. It is a tree with dreams patterned in its bark. It is a tree that, in a moment, can become ash.

It can engulf a person in flames, if she is standing too close.

These were the things I would remember: the whisper of branches scratching at the sky; the fluttering petals of bougainvillea caught in the wind, streaking hues of scarlet; my mouth open without sound, despite the pain as he pushed into me and asked if I liked it; the feeling of being conquered, branded, of being won; the coarse fibers of the wool blanket where a thorny rose stem tore across my bum; the burning pain in my
vagina; the trickle of blood that would run down my thigh and into my high-top sneaker; the sight of smashed roses in the grass after he rolled off of me. And when he was done, the sight of him pulling up his pants, and the rose petals beneath his sneakers drying like blood.

But it was the shame and the humiliation that lingered most of all as I watched him speed away on his bicycle, knowing I'd never see him again. And the self-loathing that followed, the slow and painful slogging through grief as I knelt on his white blanket, stained with my blood, hands covering my face. I would begin walking the never-ending path to forgiveness, trying like hell to figure out how I could have let this happen.

Maybe I had caused it. Maybe I had wanted to be changed. I would struggle with self-blame. Because from the age of thirteen, when I'd first arrived at the Home after my mother's death, I had envied the sensuous blossoms of the bougainvillea, furious at my body for not developing, convinced my breasts were locked up inside me, unlike all the other girls around me, who had already become women.

Now, I had given myself up to a stranger. Had I done it? I had trouble fathoming that it had happened at all, and yet I knew I would always have to live with it. I crawled into the grass. I looked down at the thorns of that single rose stem. I picked up the stained blanket and threw it into the bushes. Most of all, I remembered not being able to say the word “stop.”

 

THE MOON FOLLOWED me as I walked my bicycle back to the Home that night, aching, my clothes stained with grass and grief. I imagined all the girls who lived at the Home were crying as well, tossed in and out of their sleep, taken over with the despair of smoke, as Sister Zora huddled on the fire escape like a gnome, puffing on a cigarette. I imagined the girls waking up suddenly with the dim memory of what they had done and what they would do.

A violation. That's what the nuns called the loss of virginity. This is what Sister Mary said when she washed away the blood between my legs and then handed me a tube of antibiotic ointment. Dolly, weak after a fight with her boyfriend, asked Sister Mary to leave us alone in the bathroom. How carefully my sister washed me in the bathtub, letting me cry. Her normally indelicate hands floated over my body. She did not once tell me to stop, but rubbed my back in hypnotic circles with a wet washcloth. After, she helped me into a clean white nightgown. We lay on my bed and I refused to look at her. She kissed my head and stroked my hair as I wept. She rested her cheek on my shoulder as I stared at the wall.

“Moose, I'm so sorry I let you go by yourself,” she whispered.

“Don't take the blame. Don't you dare,” I said evenly.

The next day, Sister Mary drove me 140 miles across California to the high Mojave Desert of Joshua Tree National Park so that I could empty myself of my grief, so that my tears would dry up in the sand. I remembered the Joshua trees, with their spindly outstretched limbs that Mormon pioneers once believed pointed to the Promised Land. Some people never returned from this desert.

I'd heard stories of hikers lost in canyons, their footprints disappearing in the dust. Was Sister Mary going to leave me here? I thought about my mother again. I could see myself standing in a puddle on the side of the road and defying the darkness, holding my breath, waiting for the glow of car lights. Now, my eyes followed the abandoned things strewn across the sand, the dented silver fenders and the chalky strings of animal bones. I stared at the rock formations until my eyes found animals in their shapes.

It didn't matter. I could not have cared less about being left.

It took me forty-five minutes to empty myself of words, of tears, with Sister Mary sitting in her gold Chevy with the statue of Jesus on the dashboard, waiting for me as I knelt on the desert floor repenting, spilling out all my sins until I had nothing left.

“If you left me here, I probably wouldn't come back. You'd have room for one more girl,” I said, half wishing she would tell me I was right and then at least we would know what the other wanted.

“I don't leave girls. I find them,” Sister said.

 

CHARGES WERE NOT pressed. I didn't fight him. I hadn't even screamed. In those days, in the early '80s, few girls pressed charges, especially when they had gone with the guy willingly, as though lambs to the slaughter, like I had done. People called it consensual. It was about the physical struggle, what you had done. Would it matter if you hit or punched? Would a knee to the groin make a difference? What if you spit in his face, clawed at his neck?

How long did you allow yourself to be choked? Did you choke back? What if you just lay there, doing nothing, motionless, lost from the shock or the alcohol? What if you didn't struggle enough? What if you had wished only to kiss him?

Did you want it?

Girls cried themselves to sleep for their mistakes. Hung their heads low. The older nuns kept their secrets, soaked up blood with towels, drove over the border for cheap abortions, took some girls who were further along to midwives to be checked for pregnancy, which the nuns considered a curse and a blessing. No one talked about what virginity meant, or how its loss could affect a girl. I'd never spoken to anyone about it, not even Dolly. Over and over, as the midwife examined me, poking and prodding, she asked, was this okay? Did this hurt? It reminded me of how the boy had asked if I liked it as he pushed into me. He hadn't stopped, even when he glanced down at my blood on his penis. When it was over, when he was done with me, before he took off, he picked up one of the smashed roses and thanked me.

I'll never forget it: I actually took the rose.

The next day, Dolly cut off my long red curls, almost to my ears, just as I'd asked. I looked like a boy. I had no desire to groom, primp, or adorn myself in any way. I gave back her Bakelite bracelet, the one she had let me borrow. I threw away my Love's Baby Soft lip gloss and eyeliner. I rifled through the pile of old ripped clothing in the charity bag, and I wore baggy pants made for boys to school. But Sister Mary, despite her own deprivation, was wise about the ways of lost virginity. She told me I should not hide my femininity in clothing made for men, nor should I silence my words, because it would strain my soul at its roots. She said I needed to speak. Right now. At exactly this time. I was in between the places I knew, and my voice might be lost forever.

“Speak, Ruthie. As often and as loudly as you can. Keep speaking it,” she said.

At the age of fifteen, I learned to speak. She said if I let myself disappear, I would end up like Sister Elizabeth, who had once been raped and never spoke a word again, and was now imprisoned by her own silence, not to mention her wheelchair.

 

SISTER SAID THIS happened to others. She had seen it a thousand times. Why didn't girls know that some flowers were never meant to be given?

“Slut.” Someone whispered from the hallway when I was organizing books on my shelf. Her tight black eyes met mine. I could smell cigarette smoke on her clothing as she stopped at my doorway, out of breath.

The girl startled when Dolly jumped her, slamming her face against the floor. Sister Mary said one more offense like this, and Dolly would be sent away for good.

In the days that followed, Sister Elizabeth was the only one I wanted. I didn't want people fighting for me. I just longed to disappear. With desperation, I sought her out. I needed to be near her in a way I could not explain to Dolly. She was the only one
who understood. Her bright hazel eyes flashed with secrets from behind thick glasses, her small delicate mouth hammered into silence. I volunteered to be her aide, a job no one else wanted because she smelled from lack of washing, sometimes defecating in her pants while struggling to reach the toilet. It didn't bother me. Each morning, I brushed her long gray hair and wove it in a braid. Each night, I lifted a plastic chair into the shower so I could bathe her while she sat comfortably. Taking care of her somehow brought me healing. I could not care for myself, but I could care for her. I cared for her in the way I wished my mother had cared for me.

I still cried, but my tears lessened with time, as things do.

I wasn't sure I would ever be able to stop entirely. I tried to keep my tears limited to the shower and the bedroom that I shared with Dolly. Sister Mary was growing frustrated, worried this might never stop.