Lust

by Leddy Harper

Could I really tell her? Could I really tell her what I had seen and why I left without an explanation? That was my out… right there as she asked me. That was my chance to come clean and tell her everything, finally tell someone everything. But I couldn’t. A burning need flickered inside of me, setting everything aflame. “Why would you think it was because of you?” I needed to know her answer more than I needed air to breathe.

  “Because of what I look like…”

  We were talking in circles and I couldn’t take it anymore. I needed a real answer from her. My feet moved forward until I was toe-to-toe with her and tenderly grabbed a hold of her shoulders. I walked, making her walk backward, until we were at the couch and she was sitting down. Every signal she was emitting told me she didn’t want to be there, she didn’t want to be sitting next to me, but she didn’t move as I sat next to her. With her hand in mine, I pressed for more. “I need you to explain this to me. What do you mean the way you look? With words, please… real words. I need a real answer, and don’t assume I know what you’re talking about because I don’t.”

  “The scars,” she whispered between silent sobs.

  Scars?

  “What do you mean by scars?”

  I was hearing things… that’s the only thing that would make sense. She swore to me she hadn’t been abused, and I had believed her. There had to be another explanation, I told myself. Scars… what the hell was she talking about?

  “I don’t want to tell you,” she started to cry, hiding her face in her hands.

  “Well, you have to give me something because I don’t like what’s going through my head right now. You say I looked at your vagina and saw scars… I need to know what you meant by that. What kind of scars? And how did you get them?” My brain immediately went into work-mode and I leaned into her more, desperately hoping she would take her hands away from her face. I needed to see her eyes, hoping they would comfort me some.

  All she did was shake her head and attempt to push away from me.

  “Ivy, please,” I begged. “Tell me.” I grabbed her wrists and pulled them away roughly. It was probably too forceful, but I didn’t care. She couldn’t just tell me she had genital scarring and then stay silent. I had a feeling we were on the edge of a breakthrough and I wasn’t about to let her hide from that.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” she wailed, keeping her eyes tightly shut.

  “It doesn’t matter if I understand or not. This entire time, you’ve told me you weren’t abused, and now you’re telling me you have scars. Something doesn’t make sense here; what you’re saying isn’t adding up. I need you to explain it to me. Make me understand.”

  She took a deep breath and then looked to the ceiling, avoiding all eye contact with me. It wasn’t what I wanted, but at least it was something, so I couldn’t argue. I could only wait for Ivy to open up to me. “I wasn’t abused the way you think,” she started.

  I interrupted, keeping her from giving me more garbage than she already had. “The way I think? From the moment I met you, I had you pegged as a sexual abuse victim, and you’ve gone out of your way to tell me I’m wrong. You’ve admitted to me things your mother had done to you, which no matter what you say, is considered abuse. I no longer think anything when it comes to you, Ivy. I can’t allow myself to think anything because you have a way of proving that it’s worse.” My words were harsh, but I couldn’t soften them no matter how hard I tried. She had me feeling as if my nerves were bare and raw, feeling everything she had been feeling.

  “It was something she did to keep me from having sex,” she admitted in a mouse-like voice, her eyes moving to her twisted hands in her lap.

  “She? Your mom?” I knew the answer, but I had to ask for clarification anyway.

  Ivy nodded. “I don’t really remember when it happened. I guess I was too young.”

  “When what happened?”

  She cleared her throat and looked away. I took her chin in my fingers and turned her head, making her look at me. There was such turmoil swirling in the depths of grey, mixing with the rare red specks. Just the look in her eyes alone made my stomach sink and a fear unlike any other take hold and leave me powerless to stop it. I needed to know the truth, no matter how much it scared me. No matter how much I knew I would never be able to look at her the same again, there was a dying need within me to know the truth, Ivy’s truth.

  “She had a procedure done to keep me from having sex,” she whispered into the air between us. Her words silenced mine and all I could do was sit and wait for more, holding my breath the entire time. “I was told it probably happened when I was around four, but they didn’t know for sure.”

  “Who are they?”

  “The doctors I saw after social services came in. I was examined and some female doctor tried to explain everything to me. But I was only eleven years old and nothing made sense. I always thought it was normal; I had no idea what was done was something bad. That was the first time I realized I was different and no one would ever see me as normal. Even the doctors looked at me that way, as if there was something terribly wrong with me. That’s when I realized that no matter what I did, I’d never be normal. I’ll never forget it.”

  I took her hand in mine and held it tightly. My throat was tight and my eyes burned but there were no tears, not even the slight blurriness that comes with the onset of them. I was stunned at what I was hearing. Part of me wanted to make her stop… I didn’t want to hear any more, but a greater part of me needed to let her finish. I knew better than most the toll secrets take on one’s mind. I knew that if she opened up to me about this, there was a great chance I would feel comfortable enough to bear my own demons to her. I just had to hold on and let her finish getting it out before I could make that call.

  “What happened, Ivy? Start from the beginning.”

  “I’ve already told you that my mom never wanted me to touch myself; she never wanted anyone, including me, to look there. I never understood why until I was taken away from her. And I’ve already told you that she was crazy. There was something wrong with her, but I never realized how bad it was until I was at the hospital, getting evaluated after social services showed up.

  “I remember screaming when they took me back to a room and asked me to take my clothes off. I cried and told them that it was wrong, that no one was supposed to see me. They tried talking to me, tried making it easier, but nothing worked. They eventually had to give me a slight sedative that calmed me down, but it didn’t make me stop crying the entire time. I couldn’t look at them while they examined me, and their words only made me cry and shake harder. Nothing made that fear go away. I can still feel it now when I know someone will see what she did to me. That’s why I have never been able to have sex without freaking out—until you. But then, you looked at me and you freaked out.”

  “I’ve already told you, Ivy; it had nothing to do with you.” I wanted to calm her nerves and tell her the real reason why I ran. If she knew that it was because of me and not her, I could make her feel better about what we did, but I couldn’t do that until I knew everything I needed to know about her.

  “How could it not?” She started crying again and crumpled into herself. “What else am I supposed to think when all I can see and hear are the doctors from when I was eleven? I heard what they said. I heard their gasps as they looked at me. I hear it all the time—it never goes away,” she cried hysterically.

  I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her to my chest, trying to calm her the best I could. Whatever she had been holding onto for nineteen years had to have been so bad she would never feel whole again; I knew that feeling all too well. I, too, could still hear the voices of the hospital staff from the night I was saved. I held her close and gave soft shushes in her ear, hoping she could find comfort in my arms.

  “I’m not going anywhere, Ivy. Just tell me.”

  She sniffled into my shirt and then took a deep breath. Something in her rigid posture told me that whatever she was about to say would t
urn my world inside out—more so than it already was. “My mom had me stitched closed, and the doctors had to cut them apart. They told me some had been ripped out over time. I knew that already; I felt it each time one ripped through the skin,” she managed to say through the sobs that tore through her body.

  I thought I was about to vomit. I could feel the bile rise up in my throat and sit at the base of my esophagus, burning like acid. Stitches. Scars. Closed up. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what she was trying to tell me, but even without her admission, I knew what she was saying. I didn’t want to believe it.

  “What are you saying, Ivy? Are you telling me that your mother stitched… that she used a needle and thread…” God, I couldn’t even finish my questions. I couldn’t say the words out loud. “I don’t want to assume anything here. If that’s not what you’re telling me, I need you to say it.”

  “Yes, Cade. My mother had some sick fuck sew my vagina closed when I was very young in the hopes it would deter me from having sex, touch myself, and keep anyone from looking at me. I have no idea who she had do it; I have no idea how old I was. I don’t remember any of it. It was already done by my earliest memory and I thought it was normal. I thought every girl had that done.” She stopped talking and continued to cry against my chest, her fists balling up in my tee shirt.

  “What did social services do once they found out?”

  She shrugged, wiped her eyes, and then spoke again. “I’m not sure, but my mom committed suicide shortly after that.” Ivy sniffled and cleared her face, but she never once looked me in the eye. “I haven’t told anyone that in a very long time.”

  I pressed my lips to her forehead and pulled her against me, wrapping my arms around her tightly. “Well, I’m glad you told me,” was all I could say as I continued to kiss the top of her head. Words weren’t coming to me as images of the torture she had to endure ran through my mind, causing my stomach to turn inside out.

  Who would do that to someone? And how could someone actually think it was okay? The fear Ivy must have lived with her whole life since then was something I couldn’t wrap my head around. No wonder she never wanted anyone to see her. But now that I’ve had a taste of being with her, I couldn’t imagine never doing it again. I wanted to heal her and I thought I was doing that. She opened herself up to me in ways she had never opened to anyone else, and that gave me a sense of pride unlike anything else. I could do this. I could make her whole again, and maybe, just maybe, she could make me whole again, too. If she was able to be honest with me and show me the darkest parts of her, I could do the same.

  “Ivy,” I whispered into her hair, finding the courage to confide in her for the first time.

  She didn’t respond or move, and I looked down at her to find her sleeping against me. Soft breaths escaped her slightly parted lips. For the first time since I met her, she actually looked peaceful. She looked as if the darkness that had been surrounding her for most of her life had started to lighten and a calmness began to settle within her.

  I leaned her back against the armrest of the couch and pulled a blanket around her. I watched her sleep for a few minutes, taking in her natural beauty that had always been just beneath the surface of her pain. I had been so wrapped up in watching her, looking at her with what felt like new eyes, I nearly forgot about what that darkness actually was. That’s when I decided to grab my laptop so I could find out more about what she had endured. The last thing I wanted to do was question her endlessly once she awoke, and I knew that meant I needed to find the answers myself.

  I set up my laptop on the ottoman in front of the couch and sat next to Ivy as I began to search the Internet. The first thing I looked up was “sewing vagina closed,” but all that came up were ridiculous threads from young girls asking if they should do that to keep themselves from having premarital sex. I couldn’t believe the stupidity of some people. Then, after searching through a few more threads, I found the term “female genital mutilation.” I typed that in the search box and the moment it loaded, I thought I might throw up.

  Images filled the page—images I could have gone my entire life without seeing. They were gory and gruesome, showing bleeding and mutilated vaginas from females of all ages. My insides cringed and hardened, and I had to summon all of my courage just to keep searching. I bypassed the images, never needing to see those again.

  Informative websites popped up, explaining the act and why it is preformed. It’s cultural based, and believed to keep the purity of women in tact. Usually preformed at a young age, they are cut with unsanitary items including razor blades and broken glass. Anesthesia isn’t used and more than half the time, the girls die due to the pain, the bleeding, or an infection caused by the unsterile situations. I couldn’t believe what I was reading, never realizing how much goes on in other countries that I wasn’t aware of.

  Sites explained that there are typically three different forms of genital mutilation: the removal of the clitoris, the removal of the clitoris and the inner lips, and then there was the closure of the vagina, which also included the removal of the clitoris and inner lips with a small opening left for urination. The female remains sewn closed until marriage, in which the husband breaks the sutures by penetration for the purposes of procreating. Once the child is born, the female is sewn back up.

  It made me think of Ivy and what she had gone through. I wondered what would cause her mother to do that to her child, and where she would have taken her to have it done, or if she had done it herself. And that’s when I discovered that the act was once upon a time preformed in the United States, and it wasn’t officially banned until 1996. I was utterly sick at the discovery, finding out that American doctors did such vile things to children, and in some situations, it was still being preformed to keep families from taking their children overseas to have it done. What they do to appease the parents aren’t to the extremes that I read about taking place over in Africa, but it was still happening nonetheless.

  But I had been with Ivy; I had gotten her off in my office. I touched her. I think I would have noticed if anything was missing, which only caused me to have even more questions. Why hadn’t I noticed something was different? She was so adamant and fearful of people seeing her and noticing the scars, but yet I hadn’t discerned anything different with her.

  I glanced over at her and noticed she was staring back at me with wide eyes. The grey looked almost silver as she stared unblinkingly at me. I wanted to ask her things, but I couldn’t find the words. The fear in her features stole any words that I would have said and erased them.

  “Just ask me,” she said, her timid voice breaking. “I know you want to ask.”

  I started to shake my head, but she was right. “Why did she do it?”

  “I don’t know. I never had the chance to ask.”

  “But I read that it is a cultural thing. Did she believe in that kind of thing?”

  Her shoulders rose to her chin. “I have no idea. I don’t think so since I was never raised that way. My mother wasn’t a religious person as far as I knew. I think she was just crazy. There was something seriously wrong with her, but I’ll never know what it was. There are a lot of things I will never know because she’s not here anymore to ask. I did talk to her boyfriend once, the one that called social services and had me taken away from my mom. I never told him what happened to me, but I did ask if he knew what was wrong with her. He told me that he never realized there was anything wrong until close to the end of their relationship. They had a fight when he told her I should be allowed to be around other kids. She argued with him that I wasn’t allowed to be seen by anyone. He said that’s when he realized something wasn’t right. It wasn’t long after that when he made the call, and he said he was scared the entire time, worrying what would happen to me if they didn’t take me away. He told me that if they let her keep me, he would have come back for me. But I never saw or spoke to him again after that. I have no idea what ever happened to him, but I believe he saved my life. I don’
t even want to think about what would have happened to me had he never called anyone. Then again, I look at myself and wonder what kind of life I have now because of it. Maybe I would have been better off where I was, safe in my own little bubble.”

  “You can’t possibly believe that to be true.”

  She shrugged again and looked at the computer screen. “That’s not what happened to me,” she said as she read the screen. “There was a doctor at the hospital that explained it all to me. I had no idea what had happened or why, and she explained it the best way she could to an eleven-year-old. As I got older, I became curious about it, but I never looked into it. I didn’t want to read about it or know any more than what I already did. But I do know that nothing was ever cut off. I was only sewn closed.”

  Relief flooded my veins at her admission. “So, these scars…” I let my sentence drift off, allowing her to finish it herself. I was used to asking tough questions in my profession but, for some reason, I couldn’t find the strength to finish any real question I had wanted to ask Ivy.

  “They are from the sutures. There were some that ripped out when I was younger and now I have scars. I remember finding a mirror at my aunt’s house and looking at myself after everything happened. I had never seen myself before, and only on occasion had felt it, and I was curious as to what I looked like without them. I was disgusted and never looked again.”

  “When you first told me that you didn’t like to be touched or seen and after what you told me about your mom, I just thought it made you feel dirty. I had no idea it was this bad. Why didn’t you tell me before? You could have told me, Ivy.” I had a desperate need for her to understand that I was there for her, that I would always be there for her. I didn’t understand it because I never felt the need to always be there for someone before.

  Her eyes met mine again and they looked glassy, like she was about to cry again. I moved closer to her and leaned over her body, getting my face as close to hers while still being able to see her clearly. Her breathing hitched and once she let it out, I felt a slow wave of warm air brush against my skin.