These Gentle Wounds

by Helene Dunbar

  “Why not?” she asks. “You can’t go back there.”

  I take a deep breath and tell her the whole story—about the weekend, and going to the house, and about Jordan and how scared his eyes were. I tell her I think he’s been hurt in some really, really bad way.

  “That poor little boy,” she says, only the sad expression on her face makes me wonder if she’s talking about Jordan or about me.

  I slip my shirt back on. I don’t want her thinking that way about me.

  “What do you think he wants?” Sarah asks.

  I rifle through the possible answers in my head. What I want and what Jordan might want gets all knotted up. So I shrug. “Jordan? I think he just wants … ”

  She shakes her head. “No. I mean, your father. My parents … they want Luke. They want some golden child who is great at everything and has his whole future planned out in a way they can understand. They want someone who is going to get a scholarship to a good school and move down the block and give them lots and lots of grandchildren. They hate me because I’m not like that.”

  I can’t imagine anyone hating Sarah.

  “You’re asking what my father wants?” I know that’s what she’s asking. But I have absolutely no idea, and this sets my hand off bad. I stop myself before I sit on it. I rest it on my knee instead and Sarah reaches out and puts her own hand lightly on top of it. It feels like a butterfly or a sparrow.

  “I don’t know,” I tell her. “All he ever wanted from me was for me to be really good at hockey. I’m supposed to do all the things he wanted to do but screwed up. But it’s like nothing Kevin ever did was good enough for him because Jim’s his dad, I guess. But Jordan’s just a little kid.”

  My hand shakes under hers and I grab it away.

  I realize, as I say it, that Kevin was just a little kid too when my father was beating him up. It makes me feel really bad for my brother and washes some of my anger away.

  “Why is Kevin so upset about you seeing me?” Sarah asks suddenly.

  I picture him standing against the lockers, clutching the bottom of his shirt in his fists. “I don’t really know. I think he’s scared.” His drunken words come back to me. What if Kevin is as afraid of leaving me as I am of losing him?

  “Scared of me?” she asks.

  “No, of … of himself, I think.”

  She nods like she understands, and we just sit there lost in our own thoughts until she breaks the silence. “So what do you think we should do?”

  The way she says “we” makes it the most beautiful word I’ve ever heard.

  “I need to find Jordan, but I don’t remember where the house was.”

  “Maybe he’ll take you there again.”

  “I don’t think I should wait.”

  “Okay. Do you think you can remember how you got there?”

  I close my eyes and try to remember the path the car took. But all I remember is tree after tree after tree.

  “Maybe a little. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

  “Do you have a computer? We could look at a map.” She’s all business now. It must be wonderful to be used to finding solutions for problems.

  “Kevin took it to school, but I was thinking we could look in the library.”

  “Gordie … ” She links her arm through mine and leans her head on my shoulder.

  I lean my head back on hers. Her hair tickles my cheek and for a minute I forget that she’s asking me something. “What?”

  “What are you going to do when you find him?” Her voice is quiet, like she’s afraid to hear the answer.

  I lift my head and look at her. “I haven’t really figured that out yet.” I bite my lip, my breath coming faster as I try to gear myself up to tell her what I have figured out. “I thought … ”

  I stop myself from saying I thought she could come with me and take Jordan’s picture. Somehow I know, even though it scares me, that this is something I need to do on my own. Well, mostly anyhow.

  “I think I know someone I can tell,” I finish.

  Even though it isn’t still in my sock, I reach down to my ankle for where Ms. DeSilva’s business card was. Somehow, I hope she’ll be able to do something, and I tell Sarah about her. “She’s a lawyer, and … I’m not sure what else. But she’s kind of looked out for me. I think I need proof, though. I think I need all the proof I can get.”

  “That’s good, Gordie. That’s really good.” She stands and brushes off her jeans, and then she’s smiling at me like she did when we were under that willow tree.

  Her smile makes me shiver.

  I get up so fast my head spins a little. I know that if I think too much I’m going to scare myself into doing nothing.

  “Sarah … ” I want to tell her how I was thinking about her this weekend. How those thoughts were pretty much the only things that kept me together.

  “What?” she asks and moves closer.

  My teeth are chattering even though it isn’t cold. “I just want … ” I can’t think of any words that are right, so I just lean in to kiss her.

  It isn’t quite like it was under the tree.

  For one thing, I’m not really as scared of it this time.

  And for another, being up here and kissing her is like stepping over the edge and getting stuck on a cloud.

  She pulls back for a minute and I think she’s going to tell me to stop. That I’m doing something wrong, that she didn’t mean it. But then she leans forward again and so, so, so gently brings her hands up under my shirt. Her fingers dance across my bruises and I feel my legs start to shake.

  She turns and backs me up to the wall of the widow’s walk. We aren’t kissing, but her face is so close to mine that I can see myself reflected in her eyes.

  In some ways this is more intense, more frightening, than kissing her.

  I have to force myself not to turn away from the interrogation of her eyes. To swallow. To breathe. I’m surprised to find that my blood is still flowing through me because it feels like my brain has shut down and is just stuck in this one perfect and terrifying moment.

  Her fingers are still moving so softly against my skin. I wonder if I might be imagining it. I know I’m not. Nothing my brain has ever come up with has ever felt this good.

  I can tell she’s worried about hurting me, and I want to say that nothing she could do would ever hurt, but I can’t find my voice.

  My heart is pounding. Everything in me wants to be touching and kissing her until I can’t feel where I stop and she starts.

  Somehow my hands are steady. But it’s like they move all on their own as they crawl under the edge of her shirt and my fingertips skate across her soft skin. For a few amazing minutes I don’t care about anything other than the feel of her tongue on my lips and her body pressed against me.

  She pulls back, her breath coming in fast gasps too. I knot my hands behind my back to keep from drawing her back toward me. Just the few inches of wasted space between us are making me feel empty and alone.

  She reaches up a hand and rests it on my cheek. “Will you hate me if I say that we need to get back to school?”

  I’m glad to hear that her voice sounds as raw and odd as I’m feeling. I have to search my head for words that sound like English. And even once I find them, I have problems getting them out of my grateful, bruised mouth.

  “I could never hate you.”

  She smiles and takes my hand to lead me back toward the window, but I stumble, dizzy and shaking, feeling like I’ve been turned inside out.

  I’ve only barely recovered when, as I lock the front door of Jim’s house, I realize that I never once seriously thought about flying over the edge of the walk.

  When I see her in the library at lunch, she blushes.

  I wonder if she’s thinking about us kissing on the walk like I am. Probably not, since it
’s all I’ve been able to think about. It’s almost like a spin, but not. It’s just something I want to do again really, really badly.

  I stand there like an idiot, staring at her.

  “Sit down,” she says, grabbing my sleeve and pulling me out of it. “I have a map.”

  I’m grateful to have a task to focus on. We pore over streets. I try to remember everything I can, but my mind is a frustrating blank.

  My hand starts to cramp so I massage it. It doesn’t help. I let it sit in my lap and do its thing.

  Sarah ignores it.

  “Maybe we can find Jordan on the Internet,” she suggests.

  “He’s only seven.” I’m surprised to hear the anger in my voice.

  “You’ll find him, Gordie. We’ll find him.” I’m glad she knows I’m not angry with her.

  She chews on the end of her pen and I watch her teeth make tiny indentations in the plastic. Her mouth forms words and I have to struggle to listen to what she’s saying because watching her mouth only makes me want to kiss her again. “Maybe if you talk to that lawyer now, she can help too.”

  She’s probably right, but talking to Ms. DeSilva seems like something I need to do after I have something to show her. Maybe Jordan isn’t there and someone will think I’m making it up, or Kevin will pipe up and say that it’s all in my head because he doesn’t want me to get involved.

  “I have to wait until I see him again first,” I say.

  “Maybe there’s something in your dad’s house that has the other address on it?”

  That stops me. Of course.

  I can’t take waiting anymore, so I lean over and kiss her. Once. Quickly. With my lips closed because I know that if I feel her tongue inside my mouth like before, I won’t be able to stop.

  “You’re a genius,” I say, gasping for air.

  Sarah laughs and starts refolding the map. “You would have thought of it eventually.”

  I pause and swallow hard when I think of the other favor I need from her. I regret not asking her when we were at Jim’s.

  “There’s something else I need you to do,” I say before I lose my nerve.

  “Sure. What?” She’s distracted by the paper she’s shoving into her bag when I grab onto her hand.

  “I need you to take pictures of me. Of the bruises.”

  Her eyes open wide and she goes pale like a ghost.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She shakes her head and her voice is small and squeezed. “Maybe I could loan you my camera and Kevin could … ”

  “Please,” I beg. There’s no way in hell I’m letting Kevin see my back. I’m pretty sure he hasn’t been joking about killing my father, and that would send him over the edge. “We have to do it now. Before they fade.” I don’t say I’m pretty sure that if we wait long enough, my father will do it again.

  She chews on her pen again as she considers the idea. “Now … like, this minute now?”

  “Yeah.”

  We walk in silence to her locker so that she can get her camera, and then I lead her to the closet outside the entrance to the gym. It’s never locked. It just has brooms and stuff in it.

  We sneak in one at a time, but no one is paying any attention to us anyhow.

  After we close the door, I tug on the string to turn the light on and start to pull my shirt over my head.

  She turns away from me and looks at the wall, which is silly because she’s seen me without a shirt before.

  “Are you sure about this?”

  I hang my shirt on a broom handle and think about turning around, locking the door, and kissing her until my lips are sore again. “Yeah.”

  She turns toward me and flinches. Then she bends down and pulls her camera out and attaches a lens and flash.

  When I twist around, leaning against a stack of boxes so that the worst of the bruises face her, she sighs. “Oh Gordie … ”

  My fingers curl into the cardboard and I force myself not to move.

  I hear the click, click, click of the shutter and she directs me how to turn, and stand, and after a few minutes that feel like hours, we’re done.

  After I put my shirt back on, she puts her arms around me.

  “Gordie?”

  “Yeah?”

  There’s silence and all I can feel is her hair against my chest.

  “I meant what I said to Kevin. I really like you a lot. I just want you to know.”

  Suddenly the room is hot and my shirt feels sticky against my skin. I don’t want her to like me just because of what my father’s done, and I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to say back.

  “I like you a lot too,” I say, but I can’t meet her eyes even though it’s the most honest thing in the world.

  “Promise me you’ll try not to let him do that to you again.”

  I’d promise her anything, but it would be a lie to say I have any control over my father.

  “I’ll try,” I say. But I know I’ll fail. If I can do what I’m trying to do, he’s going to want to kill me.

  Twenty-Five

  After school, I walk back to the old house. Maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I should just run away, but I have nowhere to go and the thought of leaving Sarah now makes me almost as scared as thinking of Kevin leaving.

  My father’s car is in the driveway, black, shiny, and long, like a hearse.

  It’s kind of weird that he’s not picking me up from school. I guess he knows I have nowhere else to go without getting someone I care about in trouble.

  The garbage is out near the side porch, which strikes me as funny because I don’t think it’s garbage day. It isn’t even bagged up right. I walk over and reach down to pick up some bit of red fabric, to stuff back in, but the minute my hand hits it I fall to my knees. I remember this dress. Mom’s dress.

  I can’t breathe and the fabric is just running through my hands like water, like blood, like … no … I’m surrounded by a hundred million memories. I swat at them ineffectively as they swarm around me.

  I’m shaking. My stomach heaves as my head fills with picture after picture after picture after …

  “Mommy.”

  No, I don’t call her that anymore. I’m ten. I’m big now. I don’t want to sound like a baby. Even Kevin is going to make fun of me if I do that.

  I bury my face in the red. It smells like the perfume she wears when she goes out to do something special. But I don’t want her to go. I don’t want her to leave me here all alone again.

  “Stay. Stay. Stay. Stay. Stay.” I hear myself say, over and over and over, and …

  “Sweetie, what are you doing out here?”

  I curl myself into a ball, pull my arms over my head, and try to block out the voice. The movement makes my muscles ache in the spots where my father slammed me into the boards.

  I know the voice is coming from inside my head. I know it is. However much I want her to be here, she isn’t.

  “My sweet boy … ”

  I should open my eyes to prove to myself that I’m alone, but they’re glued shut.

  There’s a soft breeze against my face as I rock my head back and forth into the side of the concrete step. I’m pretty sure it should hurt, but I don’t feel anything no matter how hard I push.

  “Z. Y. X. W. V.” I recite the alphabet backward, hoping that will push the voice out of my brain.

  “Gordie.”

  My name is like a whisper on the wind. Like the wings of a bird beating against my ears.

  I try to pick up where I left off with the alphabet, but the wings have blown all of the letters away.

  The very worst thing is that I’m not really stupid enough to think my mom is here. I just wish she was. I want her to be. A part of me thinks it might even be worth it to be crazy if it means I can see her again.

  “Mom.” The word escapes my lips even
though I don’t want it to. I bite my cheek until I taste blood. But now that I’ve let a sound out, I can’t stop another from following. “Why?”

  “Because I love you,” says the voice, only I don’t understand. How could she do what she did if she loved me?

  “But … ” I start to ask the question, then force the back of my hand to my lips to stop myself. I bite down on the skin, the fabric in my hand grazing my cheek like a caress, and try to make myself stop rocking. I can’t do this. Kevin says that if anyone finds out how much I’m spinning, they’re going to force me to go back to the counselors or even worse. And lately it’s been so, so bad.

  What if I’m like Mom?

  I know that talking to people who aren’t there is a whole other kind of crazy from spinning. I’ve read about those hospitals. If I end up in one, I’ll never get out again.

  I struggle to pull myself up against the wall of the house. My head is heavy and falls backward against the cool brick. I can hear my breath coming in little gasps.

  I focus on that. On my breath. On trying to take long pulls of air, trying to get my heart to stop beating a million times a minute.

  I slam my hand onto the concrete of the porch. I’m so tired of being a freak.

  At least I can feel the pain this time.

  When I’m able to pry my eyes open, I look around and make sure I’m alone. I knew I would be, but there’s a small little sparrow of a thing inside me, crashing against my heart because my mom isn’t here.

  I pry the fabric out of my hand and shove it deep into the bag, trying not to touch anything, terrified of what else I might find.

  I’m just tired. I know that’s it. Tired and stressed. Tired and stressed. Tired and stressed. That’s all this is. I’m not expecting dragons to come save me, like Jordan is. I’m okay. I’m fine.

  I’m not ten, I’m fifteen. That means I can take care of myself. I can make this better for me, and for Kevin, and for Jordan.

  I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay.

  My legs are shaking, but I pull myself up on the side of the wall and dust off my jeans.

  A car speeds down the street. I want to flag it down and beg whoever’s driving to take me far, far away from here, but Ms. DeSilva says I have no choice. I have to spend the week here, which means that even if I tell someone, all they’re going to do is ship me back. Or to a hospital. I can’t imagine Sarah would ever want to kiss someone who’s locked up in a loony bin.