Walking on Broken Glass (30 page)

Finally school ended, and I could go home. I waited hours for my mother. I didn’t call her at work; I thought I might scare her if she knew I was bleeding. I stayed in my room. Closed the door. Finished my homework. I told Peter he could play next door.

She was finally home. I heard her car in the driveway. A battleship grey Rambler with no air conditioning. She was always so tired when she got home. I waited until she changed out of her dress and went to the kitchen to pour her glass of wine. Always red. Always in a bottle with a top that just unscrewed. She sat at the table with her wine and the newspaper. I told her I needed to talk to her.

“What's wrong? Did you get in trouble at school? What did you do?”

“Nothing, I promise. Something happened this morning. You weren’t here. I’m … I’m … I’m bleeding …” I pointed between my legs. “… there.” I still wore my navy blue pleated uniform skirt. Blood had stained the insides of my thighs. Half moons of red that I scrubbed off when I got home from school.

She looked so angry. “You’re what? What did you do? You didn’t touch yourself there, did you?”

“No. I swear.” Why would she think I’d do that, touch myself there? Why would I make myself bleed? I didn’t say anything because she now seemed angrier. I’d never seen her like this before.

“Did somebody else touch you there? Some boy at school? Is that it? You let a boy touch you there, didn’t you?” Her voice was strange. It came from deep in her throat.

“NO, Mom. NO. I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t let a boy or anyone do that. I promise.” Why would my mother think these things about me?

I remember backing away from her. So she couldn’t reach me. Just in case. I searched all over her face with my eyes. I wanted to find something familiar there.

“Okay, okay. That's good.” She calmed down, like something in her unwound. She picked up the glass, bent her head to make her neck straight. She finished her wine and poured another glass. “Good girl.” She sipped again and raised her eyes to look at me over the top of the glass.

I waited. I didn’t ask her if I might die. She wouldn’t have been so mad at me if she thought I was going to die from the bleeding.

She slid her wine glass away from the edge of the table. “This usually happens when girls are older. You’re starting young. Your menstrual cycle is going to come every month now. That's what it's called. This blood means you can have babies now. You have to be careful. Don’t you let boys touch you or put things there. That's nasty and dirty. You understand me, don’t you?”

I nodded. If boys didn’t touch or put things there, I wouldn’t have babies. Every month this would happen. I was not going to die from this.

“Now, I’m going to the store to buy you a box of Kotex. You’ll need to start wearing them. Clean yourself good. And, Leah, you
don’t need to go around telling people about this. Peter doesn’t need to know about this. Not yet. And I’ll tell your father.”

She came home from the grocery, handed me the Kotex box, and said to keep it in the bathroom. “Well, Leah. You’re a woman now.”

We never talked about it again . “It” meaning what happened that day: periods, sex, pregnancy.

The night before Carl and I married, she told me, “It's going to hurt the first time. You might bleed a little. It doesn’t hurt after that. Maybe sometimes. You won’t always want to have sex, but men are different. They need sex. So you make sure he gets what he needs. That's part of being a good wife.”

I stopped. Blinked. Where had I gone? I ran my fingertips along the braided edge of the chair's arms. I didn’t know if five minutes or five hours had passed. I dropped my head forward, side, back, side. My neck muscles tightened, relaxed.

“When I was four, I had a tonsillectomy. I remember faces floating over me, somebody telling me to count, a black mask. Then I was gone. And then, I came back. Like seeing the world from a lens that opened wider and wider until the lens disappeared and only the view was left. That's how I feel now. Like I’m coming back,” I said quietly, holding on to the leathery arms of the chair as if letting go meant floating away.

“You are coming back. The world's almost all in view,” Ron said. “Only one more lens to open.”

I didn’t get it. Sex. Why it fascinated people. Why people risked their reputations, their families, their lives to have an affair. All that, for what? A few minutes?

I was a virgin when I met Carl. I think he was, too. I don’t think he wanted to admit that. When we dated, I enjoyed kissing him and being touched by him. I know in today's world it sounds dorky, but I made him promise to wait until after we married.

At first, I managed sex with Carl. It wasn’t awful. It was, I guess, like taking medicine. You know you need it. If you don’t take it, you’ll get worse. And if you hold your nose, it doesn’t taste so bad. And sometimes, you’d get surprised by medicine that actually tasted pleasant. But you couldn’t count on that every time.

He liked having sex. He liked telling me he liked having sex. He liked surprising me with sex. Telling me to meet him at his office because we needed to go over some paper about one thing or another. I’d meet him only to find out I was the paper he planned on going over. Or we’d be at the ski lodge with his parents. I’d be curled up reading a book, settled in with my coffee, the fireplace. His parents would be in the kitchen concocting some new drink or dinner recipe. Carl would go upstairs. Two minutes later, he’d shout he’d forgotten a towel or his cell phone or whatever. I’d trot up the stairs with whatever he said he wanted. He never wanted what he asked for. He wanted me.

He thought it was romantic. I felt ambushed. Eventually, I learned not to trust him. At first, he thought “no” was a flirtatious game, designed to make him want it more, a hard-to-get game. Eventually, he learned what it meant. He just chose not to hear it. Sometimes he did. Like when I’d have my period.

After a while, I didn’t bother refusing him.

If I did, he’d pout. If I said no for a week, he’d be terribly unhappy. And then he’d be upset about the messy office, or the dirty floors, or the boring meals, or how much money I was spending. If I said no for more than a week, he’d be angry. He’d tell me I was selfish, frigid, dysfunctional. He’d throw the phone book into the bedroom and tell me to look up phone numbers of doctors.

It was easier to just do what had to be done.

Eventually, I learned a few strategies myself. Like my periods lasted longer. Like staying up late grading papers, reading. I’d force myself some nights to stay awake. If he fell asleep first, I won. I ’d fall asleep on the sofa. I think he caught on because then he told me he didn’t like finding me on the sofa in the morning. He wanted me to come to bed. I learned how to slide into bed as if I was water poured gently down the side of a tall glass. Some nights were better than others. It took practice. The secret was not moving. If I moved, the game was over. He’d know I was awake.

I knew he was right. Something had to be wrong with me. He knew I was smart; he’d tell people. But, he’d tell me, like many “book smart” people, I didn’t have much common sense. Once, I told my parents and Carl that I considered going to law school. They didn’t think it was a good idea. Law school was difficult, they told me, even for the most intelligent of people. When people would ask about my job, he’d tell them I was “just a teacher” in a public school where the trashy kids were. He’d say “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” He needed to be honest. It was for my own good, he’d say. He wanted me to see life realistically.

He gave me almost anything I asked for. He worked hard at Morgan Management. His father wanted him to have the experience of working for someone else. He wanted his father to be proud of him. And he loved my parents and was nice to Peter. We lived in a beautiful home, drove expensive cars, and traveled to fabulous places.

I loved his generosity and kindness and protectiveness. And I loved knowing alcohol could give Carl what I couldn’t … my body. And I loved knowing I, Leah, did not have to be there.

We both had what we wanted.

I
t was the week of lasts.

Last breakfast, lunch, dinner at Brookforest.

Last painting of a ceramic thingy in outpatient therapy.

Last group therapy where I listened to Doug snore, Theresa pass gas, and the U2 boys’ goofiness
de jour
.

Last family group therapy where I hoped Carl and I would not be the sacrificial family whose secrets would be spilled for the greater good. Last time I had to call my father two days before family group to reassure him his absence didn’t impede my recovery. Last time I had to remind him he’d better send the staff the food he’d promised to cook them or they’d find a way to have him involuntarily admitted on the psych floor.

I decided to attend the Serenity group meeting before I checked out to talk to Rebecca about being my sponsor. I remembered her from the first AA meeting I’d ever attended in my little alcoholic life. She’d raised her hand to remind everyone not to be slobs. At other meetings there and as I got over myself, I made an effort to meet other women. Rebecca didn’t hold back when she thought people were full of themselves or manure, as the case might be. She’d told one man whose self-pity party seemed to expand every meeting that if he wanted to be a martyr, he was in the wrong place. I liked that honesty and assertiveness. She was just as honest about her wrecked cars, buried wine bottles, and broken marriages.

Drinking coffee before one meeting, I told her I was afraid to leave Brookforest, afraid I wouldn’t know how to function without the safety net.

“I’ve heard all the AA party lines about fear being false expectations. Let's face it, we’re human and fear can paralyze us. You can’t deny what you feel. You just don’t have to act on it.”

“So, I don’t ignore it? What do I do with it?”

“Well, you do and you don’t,” she laughed. “Don’t you love how AA brings clarity to your life! I guess what helped me figure it out was when I heard, ‘feel the fear, and do it anyway.’”

“I don’t know. Doing what terrifies me even as I know how terrified I am? That doesn’t sound much better.”

She tossed her coffee cup in the recycle container. “My father planned for almost a year to take me and the kids to Disney World. Only he died of lung cancer seven months after the diagnosis. At first, we decided to cancel the trip. But when my six-year-old asked if Granddad would be sad if he was waiting in heaven to see us on vacation, but we weren’t there—that settled it. We went.”