THE HOUSE INSIDE ME

by Camelia Wheatley

  I stand up and lift my shirt over my head. Mark whistles. “Stop it,” I say, feeling my face flush. I quickly strip to my bra and panties. That’s as far as I will take it. I walk shyly over to the edge of the water. Mark playfully grabs my leg and swiftly pulls me in. I go under the water but come up laughing in his arms. I can hear my own heart beating relentlessly out of control. He is only a shadow silhouetted against the firelight glow, and I melt into the darkness of his ink eyes, under his spell and drowning in a deep well of danger. His embrace is passionate but changes almost instantly, growing intense, almost smothering.

  “Owww…Mark. That hurts,” I say, trying to make him stop. I don’t like the way his eyes glaze over as if he doesn’t hear me. His lips lock forcefully around mine until I feel swallowed. I have no air. His hips grind into mine without gentleness. The playfulness turns to heavy hands, pressing, groping and grabbing. My mind spins with thoughts. He doesn’t want me. Not Cass Collard. Not the girl. He wants the object. He wants what the men in the magazines wanted. He saw the bad girl. It’s who I am—always have been—always will be. Momentarily, his eyes lock onto mine. In the reflection, I see what he sees. Tacked around my eyes are the black bars, the dark mask of who I am. The real me. The monster. The sin.

  I try to get away, to settle things down a bit. “No,” I say, pushing his hands.

  “Aww, come on, baby. You know you like it.” His tone is playful, slightly different. “You’ve been wanting me since you met me, admit it. I see how you look at me.” It makes me second guess myself, my actions, his intentions. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it’s just me. I’m overthinking things. Lighten up, Cass, I say to myself. Mark lets go of me and falls back into the water, submerging under the surface. I watch the bubbles pop up one after another and then my feet go out from under me. I slip into the dark of the underworld where I feel his arms wrap around me and take me up out of the water into a breath of air. My back plunges against the embankment of clay. He presses his body into me, his face dripping water drops one after another. I see the dark of his eyes. The way he looks at me, like I’m not a person.

  “No, Mark. You’ve got the wrong idea. I’m not doing this, I’m not. I can’t.”

  His eyes spill over into nothingness. He doesn’t hear me. Blocking my pleas. He kisses me softly at first, then bites my lip hard, sadistic. Then it’s forceful again, heavy-handed, pushing, groping and grabbing. I’m confused, scared. I don’t know what to do.

  “No, Mark. I mean it,” I say firmly. I push against his shoulders, but he doesn’t budge. I squirm but his weight pins me to the clay dirt. I feel his penis hard and slippery against my hips.

  My mind is screaming inside with words I can’t speak. Not like this. This is not what I wanted. This isn’t the way it works. Not like this. No. Stop. No. Finally the words find their way to my lips.

  “NO,” I say loudly and with force. “NO!” I scream. “I mean it, Mark. NO!”

  The echoes of my voice in the wild are like demons taunting me and turning into laughs.

  He doesn’t hear me. No one hears me. My voice is a night scream of an animal being wounded, killed, unable to escape, until the screams turn to whimpers and wet tears. Exhausted from fighting, I can only cry in silence at the brutality that invades me. In that moment, a kingdom desecrated, a queen dethroned, a crown destroyed.

  An hour or so passes, and I gain some form of clarity, some realization that Mark is gone. What he left behind is ruin. It is then that I, the grown-up Cass watching this play out, beside the little girl, hand-in-hand, can no longer stand. Crushed by emotion and repressed memories of this moment coming back in time, now, making me collapse to the ground. In duplicity with my younger version of self, I wail with her. I scream with her. I cry with her. Together, adult, teen and child weep so hard the loblolly pines start to leak thick sap, their limbs scratching and swaying, crackling and crumbling, breaking, breaking, breaking for their weeping queen.

  My mind, my body, my spirit crack into a million broken pieces, clusters, fragments, particles of light and dark. Somehow, I leave my body and spill into the twilight of stars and moon until I am one with the universe, drifting and floating till I reach the dark, tangled place of the void. The gap, the place of wholeness Maw Sue loved so much, but could never touch, not until she passed over. I stay in the void trying to find a place of sanity until the river laps at my neck and the clay dirt is caking my face. The water pulls me out of my trance. I am leaning against the clay banks, my body imprint of where it happened outlined in the indentions of the soil. It is marked with him, as I am marked with him. For some reason, my mind drifts to me at school in the Chicken Little play. I hear my words. The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

  Indeed. The sky has fallen. I slide down into the water slowly. It would be easy to drown myself; rid my body and soul of its aches and pains. Take my life like Maw Sue tried to take hers. I understand her desperation now, her pain. More than ever before. I feel sick to my stomach because I can still feel him. I start to cry again. Frantically, I try to wash his handprints off my skin, his taste, his smell, his imprint, his mark, but deep inside I know the truth. His seed is inside me. There is no removing that. What do I do? I want to die but instead float face up on top of the water like a dropped flower with some of its petals ripped away, and my eyes take in the blackened sky. Underneath the moonbeams and the blinking stars I feel my lifeblood slipping away, draining me of everything. In the waist-deep soggy river bottom deep in the pine woods, I cry, pray, beg to be washed of the blood, a saintly baptismal with river angels. I pray the terrible awful will vanish and the great sadness will wash downstream, my sins eaten like fish pellets. I sink underneath the water and when I come up, I will be untouched, untainted, and cleansed. But I am not. I feel dead. Deader than before. Blacker than black. Tears well in my eyes, but not for me, only for the little girl I used to be. Deeper inside she hides. Beneath. Below. Behind the Pine Curtain.

  In a slow, begotten hypnotic trance, I walk out of the river. I get dressed and stare into the campfire. I am transfixed on the flames and try to think of rituals, stories, or what Maw Sue might do. But it is useless. I’m trying to erase it all—make my mind forget, but denial removes its mask. I get up and walk around only to collapse near a brush of trees and roll onto my back and scream into the sky, hoping it will swallow me. When I am finished and nothing I do is working, I catch it out of the corner of my eye. My watery eyes see it hanging there. My eyes squint to take in the vision of filtered light blinding me. It doesn’t look real and I wonder if I’m hallucinating. I never noticed it before. It’s a large wild bush of white roses. I take in its beauty just as within each bloom a face emerges upon the lush petals. A wild bush of Petal People come to life with energy and illuminating light. Faces I recognize, along with faces I’ve seen only in pictures. It is magnificent and frightening, splendid and sorrowful. They are here to take my grief. The terrible, awful sadness I cannot bear. The Immortelles, the everlastings, the Petal People do what Maw Sue said they would. They absorb my pain. They take my grief.

  Time passes, the fire is flickering and the woods are growing darker and more wicked by the minute. I hear coyotes howling and a nearby owl. I know I need to get home. Before I leave, I break a wild rose off and press it against my nose and all I smell is the nectar of shame, my scent of suffering. My vision goes black. I spin off into the depths of the deep, dark sky and feel as if I will never come back.

  But that was then, and this is now. I do come back, but it’s years later sitting in Doc’s office. I jerk upright, breathless and terrified by what I’ve just remembered. I can barely talk but I manage to get a few words out in stutters.

  “Did, did, I just…tell you what happened? Did, did …oh my god…. did you see what I saw, what happened?” I notice someone beside me that wasn’t there before. I turn my head slightly and she takes my hand. Warmth surges within me as the inner child Doc is always referring to is there beside me, just like she was moments ag
o, in memory, remembering the terrible awful sadness.

  “Cass,” Doc says. “This repressed memory is horrible, but it is necessary for you to confront it in order to move forward and understand where you are now. You’ve done all this work so far—to get you here. Most of all, you need to know it wasn’t your fault. You did nothing wrong. What he did was awful, and he is a terrible, evil person. He is the badness, not you. He took advantage of you. Now that I know this story, I truly believe that this is when a most significant trauma occurred and the great sadness took you away—for good. You never told anyone, so no one knew. Because it was so traumatic, you tried to will it away—even the rosebush was part of it, wanting the flowers to bear your grief when you could not. Pretend it didn’t happen—but it did happen, Cass. It did. You must understand that regardless, it doesn’t define you. It doesn’t make you less of a woman.”

  “He took my virginity. I had never been with a guy. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.” The magnitude of my words is almost too much.

  “I know, Cass. He did. It’s all right to be angry. You should be angry. Feel it. Whatever you need to do to deal with this constructively is good, but I need you to know you can move on from this. Confront it, deal with it and get on with your life, no matter how long it takes.”

  Doc’s words rumble through me and I hear another voice. She is squeezing my hand.

  “Cass…” the little girl says, “she’s right. I’ve held this secret inside the walls of the house of seven for years because you couldn’t handle it. I had to do it for you. But I’ve been here the whole time watching you grow, seeing how you handle things differently now, and I know that it is time for you to move on. Besides, I would really like to come out. I would like to live. I’m supposed to be freely living within you, sharing your life as it should be. Please don’t shut me out. Do what you have to do to heal, but let go. Set yourself free. Set me free. It’s the only way.”

  Let go. Let go. Let go. I hear the voices of Petal People all around me.

  “Remember, Cass. You are…wait, I meant, WE are grit and courage. Blood and tears. Stars and moon dust. Faith and hope. Together we are a beautiful cluster and a constellation of hope. And remember what Maw Sue always said, make lovely your losses. I think together we can do that.”

  23

  The Terrible Awful

  Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

  ~William Shakespeare

  Remembering the terrible night at the river unleashed a plethora of skeletons rattling their memories to life with the same dreadful entrance as always. Flashes, images, sounds.

  It was the morning after the great sadness. My head was dead weight on the pillow as my eyes opened, blinked a few times to adjust my vision. My mind spun with thoughts of what I hoped was just a nightmare. But once my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw it hanging in my closet. The wild white rose might as well have been me, strung up lifeless, limp, frail, void of life and purpose. Dead. After a minute staring and remembering what I did not want to think about, I sat up but was restricted. My legs felt bound. Immediately, I panicked, adrenaline surged and I jerked upwards, throwing the covers off me. I scrambled in a fright, untangling myself only to realize it was my sister Meg.

  “Shit!” I said, terrified. She moaned and rolled over and never knew a thing.

  “Whew” I said, falling back against the headboard. What is she doing in my bed? When did she come in? It took me a few minutes to settle down, my nerves on edge and my jittery level of intensity way off the chain, so that the least little move made me jump. I had to calm myself, so I sat on the side of the bed and took deep breaths. I focused on the wild white rose until I could feel it taking my grief from me. Taking from me what I could not bear. My feelings, my weight, my tears. The next thing I remember was taking a bath and avoiding the mirror. I could not look at myself. Not now. Facing myself would mean accepting what happened. It didn’t happen, I told myself. Not to me. Not Cass. It didn’t happen.

  I wrapped myself in a towel and when I opened the door to my room, Meg was sitting upright gripping her pillow. She had a long scratch across her face. I stared for a second pondering and then turned to get dressed. I didn’t speak. Didn’t nod. Didn’t care. I was numb.

  “Hey, I wanted…”

  “Meg,” I said, cutting her off. My tone was stoic and flat. “I don’t want to talk this morning. Okay. So, whatever you have to say—just don’t. I’m in no mood for it.”

  “But Cass, I need…”

  “But nothing, MEG!” I spat violently, my body tensed, stiff and angry. “Just go away, Meg! And what are you doing in my bed anyway? Aren’t you too old to be sleeping with your sister? Go to your own room. Leave me alone. I mean it. Out.”

  She clutched her pillow, sullen and defeated. I turned to get dressed and heard the door shut behind me. For the next week or so, I fell into this dark abyss. I barely spoke. My parents were clueless. I heard them mumble something to each other about teen moods, hormones and typical growing pains. Everyone just went their own way. Snuff called four times the next day and every day after. I avoided talking but I heard Meg speaking to him like they were worried I might cliff jump. My main fear was running into him. Not Snuff, but Mark. I skipped school a few days to avoid the chance, but I knew I couldn’t run forever. Upon returning, Snuff tracked me down and cornered me at every turn.

  “Cass, are you okay? Why won’t you talk to me?”

  “I don’t know,” I’d say. “Just don’t feel like it.”

  “We need to talk, Cass. We’re buds. Come on, Smokes. Let me help you. We’re best friends.”

  “Help me?” I’d snap. “Why do you think I need help?”

  “Just a feeling.”

  “Well, your feeling is wrong.” Being the nice guy he was, he just lifted his hands and walked away defeated. Me…I was paranoid at every corner, afraid of running into Mark. Afraid he had told the whole school I was a slut. Was this why Snuff wanted to help me? God. What if everyone knew? But they didn’t know what really happened. Besides, no one would believe me. I’d be the talk of the school, the infamous rumor mill of gossip and grins and slut shaming. No one would know the truth. I’d almost have a panic attack in the middle of the hallways at school just thinking about it. It was all my fault anyway. I shouldn’t have agreed to meet him. Snuff warned me but I didn’t listen. It didn’t matter anyway. No one ever believed the girls. It was always because we asked for it. We flirted or led him on. We wanted it. We dressed provocatively. We consented. We drank too much.

  The overwhelming dark emotions told me I deserved what I got. I was bad and bad attracts bad. I was like the deep blue black of the ocean depths. You can’t live there without enjoying the blackness and turning black yourself.

  During fifth period I was walking down the hall to the bathroom. A classroom door opened ahead of me. A dark shadow of breath and sweat walked out. I froze. I stopped breathing. My head swayed on my neck. My feet sunk into the tile floor. Mark Addington never noticed me behind him. He walked a few steps, stopped and opened a locker. He glanced up and saw me. Our eyes met. I froze without air. He was different. His right eye was blackened with green edges and his nose was shades of purple and black. He looked like he’d been hit with a baseball bat. My skin crawled and my body shook. I turned away. He slammed his locker and walked the other direction. When he was out of sight, I ran to the toilet and hurled. I had no idea what happened to Mark’s face, but as far as I was concerned, it wasn’t nearly as painful as what he took from me.

  For the remainder of the school year, I planned my route to avoid him. Our group never gathered again even though they tried. Snuff and I drifted apart. The world was broken as I was broken. Nothing was the same. Everyone went their separate ways. One night altered our entire universe. Rerouted our fate. The night the terrible, awful sadness took me away.

  24

  Sister Codes

  Nirvana is not the blowing

  out of the candle. It is the
extinguishing

  of the flame because day is come.

  ~Rabindranath Tagore

  Papa C took his last breath—and I lost mine. I came undone. Again. It seems I’m always coming undone. He was eighty-nine, the last of the greatest generation. The last of my childhood. He was now a part of the Immortelles. The everlastings. Another Petal for the Mason jar. Another flower to take my grief. After news of his death, I unraveled like an old sweater. Meg and I sat in the living room of our parents’ house with its haunted walls of silence to contemplate our loss. I kept thinking of him still alive. Disbelief ravaged me. He’ll walk through the door any minute now and plop down in Dad’s ugly green recliner and say, “Girls, did I tell you the story about…” and then the world will return to normal, Meg’s normal. My normal. Pine curtain normal.

  Death does strange things to people. Meg and I were sitting at the kitchen table trying to get through a conversation without breaking down. Papa C’s spirit hovered over us with unbearable emptiness. Dad had his moments too. But he didn’t stick around for us to see it. He’d mow the yard, or tinker in the shop or pop the hood of his truck, cut firewood or trim the hedges. His denial was to avoid feeling by keeping busy. My mother was a whole ’nother story. She did what she always does, cook. The pear cobbler was cooling on the counter. The room simmered scents of cinnamon and sugar. Dad came barreling in the kitchen with a familiar I—need—a—beer—expression. He eyed the cobbler, plucked a corner piece of crust and was just about to eat it when Mother, having eyes in places no one else does, sprouted octopuses’ arms and backhanded him with a spatula.