by Joseph Souza
“They didn’t have a say in the matter.”
“But you and I have choices, Clay. We have free will, according to our loving and just God.”
“We don’t swing, Russell, and that’s final. That’s the choice we made.”
“It don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got that swing,” Russell replies in a singsong voice.
“I’m sorry how this turned out, Leah,” Clarissa says. Russell shoots her an angry look. “Let them be, Russell. They’re not up for it.”
“I guess we can forget about being neighborly, then,” Russell says as he opens the front door for us.
Clay stops at the threshold and glares at him.
“I was just playing with you, Clay. My ancestors were never slave owners. They were house niggas just like the rest of them poor folks.”
“I guess the apple don’t fall far from the tree then.”
“Best of luck with that white privilege thang.”
I’m sobbing as we make our way back to the house. What a disaster. My head is spinning and I feel like throwing up. What just happened? How can I ever face our neighbors again, especially Clarissa? But I’m proud of Clay for standing up to Russell and declaring his commitment to our marriage. I’ve not been the ideal wife, especially in the bedroom. But that’s more about my own issues than a blank rejection of Clay. It amazes me that he’s stayed by my side for so long, waiting patiently for me to come around.
Clay pays Molly and then we fall back drunkenly on the couch. I rest my head on his lap as Clay runs his hand through my hair and massages my tingly scalp. I feel so lucky to have such a loving and faithful husband.
Now I’m convinced that Russell is a monster. I feel terrible for Clarissa and more sympathetic to her plight than ever. She needs to leave him right away. He’s the one pushing her to do those terrible things like swapping partners. I’ll bet anything that she has no interest in swinging or serving his prurient interests. She’s with him for the children and to keep the family intact. Russell is charismatic, handsome, and highly manipulative. A man like that tends to develop an overinflated sense of his own ego. I remember running into pretentious jerks like that during my college years. Professors who invited me out for coffee or drinks, only to try to lure me back to their bed.
Clay massages circles into my warm scalp. His gentle touch puts me at ease and makes me feel safe. Even lying on his lap, drunk, I can smell his stale beer breath. I’m nearly asleep when I feel something pressing against my cheek. I keep my eyes closed and pretend not to notice. I’m much too upset now for that. I don’t have the capacity to go through with it. Clay will never come right out and ask me to have sex with him. It’s just not his style. He’ll wait for me to make the first move. Always me. And I rarely make it these days.
“I didn’t overreact, did I? Tell me I did the right thing,” he says.
I pretend to wake up. “Of course you did the right thing, dear. What kind of silly question is that?” Something that Russell said suddenly troubles me.
“I know how badly you wanted to be friends with them.”
“Not enough to do that.” I stare up at Clay in consternation. “Why? Is that something you’d like to try?”
“Of course not.”
“Do you find Clarissa attractive?”
He hesitates for a brief moment before saying, “Not really. I mean, some men might find her good looking.”
“So you do find her attractive. What is it you like about her?”
“Jesus, Leah, is this an interrogation?” He laughs. “I’m just saying that some men might find her attractive.”
“Because she’s black?” I lift my head off his crotch and turn to face him.
“Jesus, I’m not saying that she’s attractive because she’s black. Or that I’m in any way attracted to her. What difference does the color of her skin make?”
“I saw the way you and Clarissa were holding each other’s hands.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Am I?”
“Yes. We were just having a conversation.” He pushes my head aside and walks upstairs. I feel like such a jealous fool for goading him, but I can tell when he’s lying. I suddenly realize that it’s not me who caused him to become aroused. It was her. He was thinking about Clarissa the entire time I was here with him.
I lift myself off the couch and stagger upstairs. Clay is lying in bed, turned away from me. I climb in and apologize profusely to him, but it doesn’t seem to make much difference. My head is drowning in wine and I’m so tired I don’t even take off my clothes. I reach around under the blanket and grab his member, give it a gentle squeeze, but there’s no response. I feel terrible about the way I’ve treated him.
“I love you, Clay.”
“Love you too.”
“I’m very lucky to have you.”
“Thanks.”
“I know you’d never cheat on me.”
He grumbles something under his breath.
“What do you think Russell meant when he said, ‘That’s not what I heard’?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“He said it as if we were cheating on each other.”
“Forget Russell. He was just talking smack.”
“I wonder what he could have meant by that.”
“Who the hell knows with that guy? He’s obviously a loose cannon.”
I laugh, the wine making me bold and adventurous. I suddenly want to fulfill my marital duties to this wonderful man. “Would you like to make love to me, Clay? Would you like me to pretend I’m your slave? A young girl that you trapped behind the barn one night and had your way with?” I giggle girlishly.
He spins around and glares at me. “What did you just say?”
The look on his face scares me, but I don’t want to back down now. “I thought you might like that. Something different.”
“Are you messing with me, Leah?”
“No. I just thought I’d step out of my comfort zone for once and change it up for you. Do something ‘edgy.’” I make quotation marks with my fingers.
He seems to think it over, and as he does, I suddenly realize that I don’t want to assume this role anymore. Why did I even offer myself up in such humiliating fashion?
“You’d do that for me?”
“If that’s what you really want.”
“If it’s what you want.”
I gulp nervously. “Okay then.”
Clay begins to rip off my shirt and panties, a bit rougher than I would have liked. This isn’t how I thought it would proceed. I can’t even begin to imagine how a poor slave girl must have felt back then.
“Clay?”
“Hold still.”
“Please,” I mumble, but he thinks I’m assuming the role.
He pins my wrists down on the pillow and begins to push into me, with each successive thrust calling me names I’ve never been called before. It hurts, bad, but I close my eyes and keep my mouth pressed tight. Hopefully, it will be over soon. I shouldn’t complain. I’m the one who offered myself up. I’m the one who volunteered to be his sex slave for a night.
His beery breath blows on me and makes me sick. I turn my head into the pillow and bite my lower lip until the skin breaks. A trickle of salty blood makes its way into my mouth. Although I don’t resist his entreaties, I feel dirty and violated. He flips me over roughly and takes me from behind. This is something we’ve never done. I bite down on the pillowcase, fighting back the tears. This act is entirely new and most assuredly not welcome. Finally, he groans and climbs off me, falling back onto the mattress. I begin to sob quietly as he huffs and puffs, trying to catch his breath.
I don’t want him to see me crying, and so I turn away from him until our backs are touching. I’m sore all over. There’ll be no cuddling or affection tonight. He took advantage of my good nature to punish me, and there is no way I can protest. He treated me like the lowest piece of dirt on the planet. A nonentity.
Like a l
owly slave.
And I’m the one to blame....
CLAY
Wednesday, October 21, 11:30 p.m.
I TURN OVER IN BED, WIPING THE TEARS FROM MY EYES. I’M PISSED AT myself for doing that to Leah, and I’m pissed at her for suggesting it. What was she thinking? Our backs press up against each other in stubborn defiance. Although I know I should turn over and embrace her, tell her how sorry I am for what I’ve done, I don’t. I can’t apologize. It would be an admission of guilt. Of not understanding her mixed message. And I have to stay strong, deny any plausibility that she wasn’t role-playing. She was the one who suggested it. What the hell did she expect? Of course, I’m lying to myself if I think that what I did was right. I took liberties. My behavior was the action of an angry, vindictive husband who feels guilty for having cheated on his wife with a girl almost half his age. A husband fed up with his wife’s passive-aggressive bullshit, and because of that turned elsewhere for intimacy.
So why did she want me to treat her like a slave? Does she know something about my relationship with Mycah? It’s almost as if Mycah’s ghost returned and whispered something nasty in her ear.
Here’s the sad irony. Mycah appeared to enjoy the rough sex. She couldn’t get enough of it. Name the sexual act and we did it. She encouraged—no ordered—me to smack her around. There was no holding back. Grab her hair and pin her wrists down. Nothing I did or said seemed to upset her, no matter how demeaning. She performed the most bizarre sexual acts I’d ever seen, things I’d only seen in movies. And hell yeah, I began to enjoy it. It opened my eyes to a new avenue of pleasure. It felt liberating, exciting, and way too cool to be true. To be the sole object of a beautiful girl’s desire made me feel like a man again.
I wipe the tears from my eyes. What I’m thinking right now is shameful and wrong, and it has nothing to do with hurting my wife. A plutonium grade of sadness buries me to the core. Something inside me whispers that I’ll never experience such sexual pleasure again. I cringe at the notion that that part of my life is over. Forever. I miss the curves of her body as well as the caramel hue of her skin. I miss running my hand over her smooth, strong stomach, and fingering her symmetrical belly button and perfectly shaped ass. There were nights I made love to her for hours at a time and into the early morning. Three or four sessions a night until I was spent. Delirious with love or lust, I seriously contemplated leaving Leah and the kids to be with her.
What a damn fool I was.
Then I woke up one day and learned that Mycah had gone missing. And I can’t help but hope that she is dead and buried.
LEAH
Thursday, October 22, 7:45 a.m.
I WAKE UP AND FEEL SORE FROM LAST NIGHT. THERE ARE BRUISES ON my upper arms and thighs. Clay has already left for work. I envision him down at the brewery, holding test tubes and flasks up to the light as if he’s a Nobel Prize–winning chemist. My head hurts, although I can’t be sure if it’s from the wine or from our late night tryst. I remember my skull smacking repeatedly against the headboard. I smile cheerfully, reminding myself that what we did last night was based on love. It confounds me at times how worked up I get over absolutely nothing. Our lovemaking was consensual. I gave him permission to role-play because I’m a dutiful wife who loves her husband. This is what normal couples do to keep their marriage fresh and exciting. It says so in all the women’s magazines. Although I’d prefer not to do that sort of thing again, maybe what we did will end up strengthening our bond.
I down three Tylenol with a glass of water and then limp to the kitchen. There’s so much I need to do today, and it all involves tracking down this missing girl. I can’t wait to ship the kids off to school so I can take out my phone and read the rest of Clarissa’s diary. Maybe she’ll drop another clue as to what Russell did to her. Because if she won’t report him to the authorities, then I certainly will.
As I make the kids breakfast and bag their lunches, I try to recall the events from last night. Unfortunately, Zadie is gabbing away at the table and trying to get my attention. My mind shifts gears like a badly tuned racing car, and I feel myself jerking from one speed to the next. If only she would stop talking for a few seconds so I can hear myself think. Zack sits quietly at the table, reading a book I can only assume is one of those weird science fiction novels he’s always nose deep in. This one’s titled A Scanner Darkly.
Once the kids are out of the house and on the bus, I rush back inside and open my phone. The soreness radiating throughout my body spreads up my arms and into my shoulders. I remember how Clay pinned me down last night, an expression of mock rage over his face.
I open up the jpg file, hoping that I might learn something about that girl’s whereabouts.
October 19
Still no word about Cordell’s death. Russell seems unfazed about it, as if nothing has happened. I still find it hard to believe that he killed Cordell, but what else am I led to believe? What else can I do?
We all have secrets, every one of us has them, whether we know it or not. Maybe it’s best to bury these nuts as deep as possible and never go back. Shoot any rival squirrel that tries to dig them up. He holds it against me. My own husband.
I followed him today when he left during lunch. His department secretary tells me everything. Seems he’s been leaving every day around noon. Today I finally worked up the courage to follow him. He drove around some. Then he headed toward Carver, a few towns away. After thirty minutes of driving, he stopped in front of a house in a neglected part of town. The house was a run-down bungalow located next to the river that used to feed the nearby mill. I heard the waterfall before I saw it. He sat in his car for about ten minutes before he got out and went inside. Fifteen minutes later he emerged from the house. Then he drove back to campus for his afternoon class.
What was that all about? Whom was he seeing? I wanted to stay and find out, but I had a meeting to attend that afternoon.
I need to go back at some point and find out who lives in that house. I want to know why he visited it. Is one of his mistresses hiding inside that bungalow?
Somehow I convinced Russell that I should invite our neighbors over for dinner. He wasn’t too happy about it. Not in the least. But he agreed to go along in order to appease me. The question is, will he behave or will he spoil the dinner with his usual arrogant bullshit?
Leah confounds me. I find it odd how her history abruptly stops at the age of thirteen. I’ve looked into her past and there’s no record of her attending grade school or middle school. It’s like she appeared out of nowhere. Or disappeared from someplace else. Was she adopted later in life? Did her parents die and her relatives in Seattle take her in? My friend in DC is supposed to call any day now and tell me her full story. I’m extremely curious to know who this woman really is. Or who she was as a girl. Honestly, I find it rather comforting to realize that I’m not the only one with a secret. Then again, her secret history could end up being nothing at all. Or maybe just as bad as mine.
I slam my phone down on the table and Mr. Shady scampers out of the kitchen with his tail between his legs. What is this woman doing to me? Why is she checking out my past? I pace around the room in a state of agitation, wondering what to do about it. I debate going over there and demanding that she stop this nonsense. But if I do, she’ll know that I’ve been sneaking into her house and reading her diary.
My hands are trembling so bad I can barely hold my glass of juice. I’m visibly shaken by this development. Mr. Shady runs back into the kitchen and starts barking furiously at me. There’s one more diary entry on the phone, but I’m not sure I can read it. The coffee has made me jittery. I take the phone into the living room and settle on the sofa, staring at it, working up the courage to read it.
I’ve made up my mind about all this. I’ll confess to Clarissa what I’ve been doing and beg for her forgiveness, and pray that she’ll keep this secret between us. But what if she doesn’t? What if she tells Clay? Clay cannot know that I’ve been sneaking into her house
and reading her diary or he’ll think I’m crazy. I’d be willing to do almost anything to keep him from finding out about my past.
I scroll down to the next journal entry, almost too afraid to read.
October 20
I still can’t believe it!!! WTF! When my contact informed me about Leah, I nearly spit out my wine. Who would have ever guessed? She seems so quiet and unassuming. It’s amazing she can even live with that hanging over her head. Then again, she was only a child.
The invitation will be made tomorrow. I’m going to feel weird sitting across from this woman, knowing what I know about her. So creepy. But in some ways it’s a relief to know that someone else has a past stranger than my own.
Despite my shock, I managed to sneak out of the office just before Russell’s lunch break. I drove over to that house and parked across the street and then waited patiently. I wrote down the address. 26 Peavey Terrace. Fifteen minutes passed before I saw his BMW pull up. He sat in his vehicle for a few. Then he approached the front door. He rang the bell and waited. A few minutes later the front door opened. Was that a woman I saw? I was a good distance away. Is she still alive? OMG! I can’t be sure it’s her, but it looked a little like her.
Should I call the police? Then again, if I’m wrong, I’ll look like a complete fool. It could possibly jeopardize my career and rip me away from my children. Russell will surely file for divorce, take custody of the kids, and then reveal my true identity.
But what if it’s really her? What the hell would that mean? Did these two lovebirds conspire to get rid of Cordell?
There’s only one way to find out. I’ll need to go over there at some point. If it’s her, then maybe I can get her to tell the truth about what happened that night and see if it was really a hate crime or whether Russell had anything to do with it.
Shit! Russell’s coming up the stairs. Gotta go.
I grab my coat and car keys and run out to my Prius. I Google the address and head toward Carver. It takes me twenty minutes before I pull into this broken-down mill town. The GPS leads me to Peavey Terrace and I slowly cruise down the street. I search for Russell’s car and am relieved to see that it’s nowhere in sight.
