For A Good Time, Call... (11 page)

And
I was six years old again. Our house was a shack in the woods behind
my grandmother's house. Estate. My grandmother's house really could
be called an estate. But my father had slipped in between the pages
of his Bible sometime in his late teens and shunned the idea of
material wealth. He slept in the backyard for months as he cut down
trees and nailed together the house I would eventually grow up in.

There
was a small living/ dining area right inside the front door with a
fireplace. Which was the only place I had ever seen my mother cook
food. We didn't have a stove. Or microwave. No luxuries.

The
bathroom was an outhouse twenty yards from our front door. My brother
and I had a small eight by eight room, split down the middle with a
curtain. Because we weren't supposed to see each other dress or
change. Not even as small children. Sins of the flesh or something
like that. My parents had a similar sized room, their bed pushed up
against my wall.

I
used to hear them at night, my father reciting scripture to my
mother. “The husband should give to his wife her conjugal
rights, and likewise the wife her husband. For the wife does not have
authority over her own body, but the husband does.”

And
then there would be the sound of the bed slamming up against my wall,
my father panting then grunting. He would fall asleep shortly after
and I would hear my mother crying through the wall.

I
cant remember her as anything but cowering. Her shoulders seemed
permanently pulled upward by her ears, her face always trained on the
floor. When I was little I remember saying how I thought she was
pretty with her long blonde hair. My father had stormed across the
floor, grabbing my chubby little six year old face and yelling about
my sins.

The
next day I came out for prayer to see my mother's hair sheared off,
her scalp underneath ripped up and bloody.

I
never spoke of my mother in front of my father again. And my mother
tensed anytime I opened my mouth when she was in the room.

My
brother and I didn't go to school. There was too much sin and not
enough God. Not even in the Catholic schools. My father took my
brother out with him, hunting and fishing and doing things I didn't
want to know about. My mother would wait for them to leave and rush
over to me, grabbing me and pulling me down on the dirt floor and
drawing letters with a stick. She taught me to read against my
father's wishes. After every session, she would grab my hands and
tell me to look at her and in a shaking voice remind me how important
it was that my father never find out about our lessons.

He
never did.

The
early years weren't that bad. Overall. I was fed. I had enough
blankets to ward off the winter chill. I had it better than other
kids in the world. The beatings always came out of the blue after
offending some ideal of my father. He would pull me outside and break
a switch off of a tree, pull up my dress and hit me with the switch
until I cried hard enough to wet myself. Then I would be left there,
out in the heat or the freezing cold to think about my sins. To
repent to God. Overnight.

My
mother would come to me in the morning, pressing compresses to my
cuts and murmuring about the tempers of men. Telling me to hold onto
the anger, wrap it up like a baby to my chest and never let it go.
Because if I let it go, he won. He owned me.

What
she didn't tell me was that he had owned me from the day I was born.
Just like he had owned her from the day they had married. And as a
little girl, I couldn't understand. I didn't grasp the point she was
trying to make. If I didn't hold onto the anger, I would accept my
beatings. I wouldn't stop to think about how unjust the punishments
were for the crimes. I wouldn't wonder why my brother wasn't bloodied
and left outside overnight. I wouldn't see my father for the monster
he was.

I
remembered my tenth year well. The sharing of household
responsibilities with my mother. The constant, unrelenting scripture
quotes about the sins of the flesh. The weakness of women. I didn't
understand at the time that my father was hinting at something I
didn't yet know about. My upcoming blossoming. My womanhood.

Isaiah
was twelve, all arms and legs and eyes that spent too much time on me
and my mother. At the time I didn't understand. That look. That look
that, as an adult woman, you know is only one thing. You know that
look. And you know when that look is more than a look.

Isaiah
pulled the curtain between our room open when he heard me come in for
bed, standing there and staring at me while I changed. I wasn't much
then. A sapling still. My breasts were just tiny buds that would
still be mistaken for a boy's. But I wasn't a boy. And he stared. I
would crawl into bed and pull the covers up over my head. I would
hear him pull the curtain, his mattress give way under his weight.

Then
he would be panting and grunting. Panting and grunting on one side of
the room. From my brother. Panting and grunting on the other side of
the wall. From my father. And a part of me was starting to understand
that it wasn't right. That whatever was causing those noises... was
not something I should be allowed to be near. It wasn't something I
should know bout.

It
was something that made my mother cry.

My
father came in one night while I was changing, my back turned to
Isaiah as his eyes raked over me. Then he was screaming. Not at
Isaiah, but at me. Screaming words that were so angry and jumbled I
didn't even understand them. He grabbed my wrist, pulling me out of
the room in all of my nakedness, through the house, outside.

He
threw me down on the ground, six inches deep in new snow. I
remembered that feeling like it was yesterday. The stinging, burning,
stabbing sensation raking over every nerve ending where the cold
touched my skin. I remembered crying out, trying to stand. But he
pushed me down, grabbing a branch from a tree and pummeling my back
to raw strips of flesh. Then he dropped down on the ground next to
me, reaching into his back pocket. He threw me over onto my back,
letting the snow seep into the open wounds. Then I saw what he was
holding, the moon flashing off of the blade in the dark. His hunting
knife.

The
screams were like that of a dying animal. Because that was what I
felt like. Like I was being skinned. Like I was being sliced for
Sunday dinner.

Then,
like a madwoman my mother was running out of the house in her bare
feet screaming “Fire!”

“Fee,
wake up,” I heard through the screaming. The screaming I could
never forget. The choking on your own spit screaming. The praying for
blissful end to it all kind of screaming. “Fee... fuck... wake
up!”

There
was a sharp pain across my face and my eyes shot open, but
uncomprehending. I was still ten. In the snow. Being mutilated by my
father. I felt a hand on my knee and I shot out, fists colliding with
flesh. “Fee, snap out of it,” the voice said, grabbing
the sides of my face and shaking my head once.

Then
just like that, my dream faded, pulling backward like a fog. And
there was Hunter, kneeling next to me, his light eyes looking
downright frantic.

“Jesus,
Fee,” he said, letting my face go and sitting back on his
ankles

“How
are you here?” I asked, feeling a little more lightheaded than
I should.

“How?”
he asked, his brows drawing together. “I broke your door down.”

“What?”
I asked, confused. “Why?”

He
looked at my face. “You were screaming. I mean...
blood-curdling screaming. I thought someone was in here trying to
kill you. I kicked your door in.” I nodded, feeling more than a
little embarrassed and, what's worse, like I owed him an explanation.
I pushed up on my elbows and his hand shot to my shoulder. “Slow.
You've lost a lot of blood, baby.”

My
eyes widened, going to my thigh, feeling like I was choking on my
self-consciousness. My thigh looked worse than I remembered through
the haze that allowed me to do the damage in the first place. The
cuts were deeper and he was right. There was drying blood on my leg,
all the way down to my knee and a frighteningly large puddle on the
tile floor next to me.

I
reached out for the clean gauze, but his hands stopped me. “Fee,”
he said, my name like a question. “Talk to me.”

“I
had a bad dream,” I said dumbly and he shook his head.

“How
about this then?” he asked, gesturing toward my leg.

“It
doesn't matter.”

“To
me it does,” he countered.

“Why?
Because I woke you up?”

“Because
you scared the piss out of me tonight,” he admitted. “I
heard the screaming then I came in here and saw all the blood...”

“Don't
worry,” I said, sitting up. “no murderers here. You can
go.”

“I'm
not going anywhere,” he said, snatching the bottle of witch
hazel out of my hand. “I'll do it,” he said, squirting it
over my skin then blotting at the blood until my skin was clean. “Do
you want me to glue these?”

“No,”
I said, watching him minister to me, carefully. Like he was afraid to
hurt me. Which was something completely new for me coming from a man.
I watched as he rose and dug around for triple antibiotic, coming
back and smoothing it over the cuts. “I'm not a slut,” I
heard myself saying, quietly.

But
he heard me and his head shot up to my face. “I never said you
were,” he said, his
brows
drawing together.

“It's
just... last week...”

“Fee
forget about that.”

Was
he just trying to placate me? Poor little screwed up Fiona who needed
coddling so she didn't hurt herself. I couldn't let that be his
opinion of me.

“I'm
not a slut,” I said again, my voice a little stronger. “I'm
a phone sex operator.”

His
mouth had been open as if he was going to cut me off, then his eyes
went wide for a second before a smile started tugging at his lips.
“Wait. What?”

“I'm
a phone sex operator.” At his blank look, I shrugged. “You
know... guys call me and I dirty talk them and...”

“I
know what a phone sex operator is,” he said, rolling his eyes.
He sat there for a minute, lost in his own thoughts, looking entirely
too amused. “That explains a lot actually,” he said
finally. “So the, ah, horse noises...”

I
laughed, bringing a hand up to my face. “Oh my god... that
guy.”

He
smiled with me for a moment before his face went serious. “So
that other morning,” he started, his eyes bearing into mine.
“with the spanking...”

“A
dom,” I supplied.

“After,”
he said and I felt my face heat with the memory. “After you
hung up with him.” There was a long silence as if he expected
me to say something. But I couldn't. “You were thinking about
me. About me doing those things the guy had talked about.”

“Maybe,”
I said, not able to look up at him any longer.

“When
you were touching yourself,” he said, reaching out and tilting
my chin up so I faced him again.

“Yeah,”
I admitted.

“I
heard you,” he said. “Through the wall. I heard you
moaning. I stopped working to listen.” Which should have been
creepy, but it wasn't. “I was stroking my cock listening to
you.” Jesus Christ that was hot. The image flew into my head
and I pushed my thighs together to try to ease the chaos there. “Then
when I heard you call out my name when you came...” he trailed
off, shaking his head like he couldn't find the right words.

There
was a pregnant silence between us then, both of us lost in thought.
Him probably about my work, about me masturbating to the idea of him
while he listened. I kept thinking about our failed attempts to get
closer. To be intimate. I wondered if I should tell him. Just bite
the bullet and get it over with.

“Hey,”
he said, breaking through my swirling thoughts. “whatever put
that look on your face... stop thinking about it.”

“Hunter...”

“No,”
he said, shaking his head and getting to his feet. He reached a hand
down toward me and I took it. “You don't owe me an explanation.
I'm assuming there is some issue with actual, real life sex for you,
right?”

“Yeah.”
You have no idea. You wouldn't want me if you knew.

“Okay,”
he said, still holding my hand though I was on my feet. It felt good.
I don't ever remember having someone hold my hand. It was no wonder
new couples always did it. It felt like comfort. Like stability. “So
now I know,” he said. “It's not a big deal,” he
said, leaning forward and planting a kiss on my forehead.

He
was lying. I knew that. I knew it was a big deal. Sex was always a
big deal. When
you were
having it, it was a big deal. And when you weren't having it, it was
a big deal. “Okay,” I said. Not believing him, but
without the energy for a fight either.

“Why
don't we get you to the kitchen and get some food in you to
counteract that blood loss? And I'll go try to fix your door.”