And She Was (29 page)

At 6:05 someone said, “It ain’t coming.” A few people dropped back to the fire, passed around food. I stayed, eyes fixed on the horizon. The thing in me was too heavy to move. I wasn’t going to die. By 6:30 it was dark, and I was the only Indian left on the cliffs.

Bellie came up beside me. “The Coast Guard canceled the warning,” she said quietly. “Nothing’s going to happen.”

“Why?”

“If the wave doesn’t come straight at the opening of the bay, it passes right by. Can’t get in. Most of the warnings are like that.”

“And nobody could tell me that before?”

Bellie started back toward the fire.

When I didn’t follow, Bellie came back. She took my hand and pulled me. “Come and eat.”

I piled my plate high with macaroni salad, salmon steaks,
alodiks
bread, and roast corn like everyone else and found an unoccupied folding chair. The talk was all tsunami.

“I was in Anchorage when the ’64 earthquake hit,” a man I didn’t know was saying. “Quake didn’t get but ten of them, the other hundred-plus got taken by the wave.”

“I seen the suck before a wave once out at Cold Bay,” a woman said. “The way the water just backs out of the bay gives you the creeps.”

I’d just bitten into an ear of not-quite-done corn when he came over. His red hair was tied in a long ponytail, frayed like rope ends. He was big and young, probably midtwenties. He had on karate gi pants, stained with yellow blotches and worn thin. I didn’t like him at first. Never trust a man who wears karate pants to social events. I’m not sure what message he’s trying to send, but it isn’t good.

“Hey, babe,” he said, crouching on the ground beside my chair. His hand slid across my thigh, nearly upsetting my paper plate.

I looked at his hand. “Hey, babe?”

He smiled, eyes half closed in that oblivious, basking stage of inebriation. “You look too good to be all alone.”

I smiled. He wasn’t bad looking. With a shower and jeans, he might even reach the handsome range. And he was right—I shouldn’t be alone. It brought up too many uncertainties. I had no idea what I was going to do next, where to go, who to be. I was alone with no glimmer of companionship on the horizon. Except him. He was not a sparkling glimmer but was smack in front of me with a hand on my thigh. “Maybe you’re right,” I said.

And when he grinned and his hand traced a line along my thigh I felt the power rush. He desired me. I’d missed this—this sense of mastery and control. Now it expanded in me, squeezing out silly promises. I noticed his broad shoulders and the firm muscles squaring his jaw. He wanted me, and it made him look good.

“Sure I am.” He leaned a bit too far back on his heels and nearly toppled my chair righting himself. “So what’re you doing anyway?”

“Just hanging out with the rest of the tsunami party crowd.”

“Tsuwhat?”

“The tidal wave? The reason we’re all up here?” He was even more wasted than he appeared, which was tough.

“Don’t know about that. I was partying with them,” he said, rolling his head toward the clump of HiTide chicks across the fire. “I was just coming along, you know.”

I glanced at them, watching our interaction and giggling. Jill raised her glass in my direction with a catty smile.

Shit. I looked back at gi boy. They’d turned him on to me. Tossed him my way. Here’s one for you, Elbow Room bitch. Here’s where you’re headed. Take that. Suddenly I missed being alone. Whatever nasty familiar little trip I’d been about to take, collapsed. I was done. With him. With them. All of them.

I picked up his hand, which had crawled to my inner thigh, and replaced it on his own leg. “You know I’m not that lonely after all. Tell your friends I said ‘fuck you.’” I smiled as I said it.

“Naw,” he said in that male crooning way. “I already talked to them. They told me about you.”

That’s when I knew something more was going on here than a pickup attempt spurred by vengeful coke-whores. His approach wasn’t tinged with the possibility of failure.

This guy was sure.

I smiled at him. “I know I’ll regret it the rest of my life, but I’m gonna pass.”

By this time, he was leaning into me, hand on my thigh again. I pressed him away. He reached out to keep from falling, spilling his drink.

When he’d righted himself, he was disoriented. “Shit. What do you want? I got the blow right here.”

My eyes shot to the HiTide chicks. Sure enough Jill was whispering to Honey and giggling.

I’d crossed some line with them, and now they were paying me back. It could have been anything—bringing Les to the beach party, failing to console Jill at the HiTide when she’d broken down, or maybe they just hate me on principle like I hated them.

I’d never know for sure, and right now I had a large, drunk fisherman draped over me, certain I was a coke-whore in need.

“Listen, I don’t know what they told you, but I don’t put out for coke. I’ve got a boyfriend.”

I ached when I said it. Because I missed him. Thad had been too good for me, and staring at this asshole reminded me how undeserving I’d been. And how lucky. I realized that I detested the HiTide whores because they had something I didn’t—clarity. Sure, they were sluts, but honest sluts. I wasn’t trading sex for blow; I traded sex for a direction. A man with a plan. And I never let them know it was only temporary and only based on need.

I hate using the boyfriend line, but it often works, and I felt cornered. Of course, he didn’t hear a word.

He leaned on me, wrapping his arm across my hips. A hand slid under my ass.

He half-fell, half-collapsed on the chair when I wiggled out from under him and stood up. “You just sit here and relax,” I said. “I’ve got to use the bathroom.” Usually I would have handled this a little better. But my reserves had run out. I’d half believed I was going to die, and half feared I was going to continue living broken promise to broken promise. I stepped over him and went straight toward the house, thinking if he couldn’t see me, he’d forget me.

Inside, the lights were on but nobody was there. The place felt odd
after all the bustle before. So quiet without people, without the muted rush of wind at the roof and windows. I sat down on the recliner Liz had occupied and lit a cigarette. I was thinking about Thad and realizing what it would really mean to be alone, not just temporarily but for a good long time, when I heard the door bang open.

“There you are,” he said, all friendly and seductive. He came clomping toward me, the door banging shut behind him. He leaned over the recliner, a hand on each armrest, and started bragging about how good he was at giving head as he eyed my crotch.

I was just too tired to talk my way out of this. Besides he was drunk, and all I needed was to get to the door. I ducked under his arm and took two steps before I felt him wrap me from behind.

“Hey, hey, not so fast,” he said, chuckling. He held me in a grotesque slow dance step for a couple beats, then turned me around.

His body draped me, no eye contact, just grabby, heaviness. I could feel it through my clothes, through my skin. Fear banged down my back and legs. By the time it rebounded to my brain it was something else entirely. It was anger. I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to have to ease out of it. I was quite simply and purely pissed.

I tried to knee him in the groin but missed and got his thigh. We swayed briefly then crashed back against a wall. His lips and tongue were slathering my neck while one hand groped my nether regions.

I backed my fist up the few inches I could and hit him in the trachea with a jab.

It wasn’t hard enough.

He stepped back. His brow crunched. “You don’t gotta to be like that. What’re you doing that for?”

He grabbed a fistful of my hair and banged me back against the wall. It didn’t hurt really, but it jarred me.

I breathed deep, gathered concentration while he fumbled his hand up my T-shirt. I could feel the ridged cracks on his fingers from the cold water and rough work. He was drunk, and a break was all I needed. I shuffled through my options—something that would back him off.

I nailed him in the jaw with an elbow uppercut at the same time my boot dug into his shin.

He bent to grab hold of his leg and I tried to step by. Too slow. He caught my leg and I went down on my ass.

I had escalated. This should have been an easy one. Talk. Talk. Nice. Nice. Kiss. Kiss. Just a minute. Wait for me. And I’m gone. But, no. I’d had to go and prove something. Make it a battle I could well lose. It wasn’t just him. It was all the guys who’d groped. It was all the men I’d fucked, willingly enough, but only because I had nothing better in mind. I was sick of taking it, sick of needing it. I wanted to scream. I wanted to hurt someone. I wanted to be free of the consequence of being rational.

“Fuckin’ bitch.” He landed on me, a knee on each side of my hips as his fist drove toward my face.

I twisted my neck to take it on the side of my head. His fist hit just above my left cheek, and I felt the thud of it in my brain. The edges of my vision went brown, but I saw the door open and Carl step in.

Carl and I looked at each other—me on the dirty carpet, Carl by the open door.

He didn’t say anything. No warning. He was just on the guy. Carl pulled him up, then sank a fist into his stomach. I scrambled up, slightly unsteady.

“Get out,” Carl said.

I hesitated. Thoughts flickered quick as a strobe light. Would Carl stop if I asked? Did I want him to? All my yelling and screaming hadn’t made a difference before. I had been shaking with fear, revulsion that time. This time I was afraid too, but a sweet fear, the kind that makes your mouth water. A fear cool with intention.

Was it any different? My hands or Carl’s? Wouldn’t it feel just as good?

I turned toward the door. With each thud of Carl’s fists, my ears tightened, but I didn’t look back. I stepped onto the porch to see a group of men rush toward me. They’d heard the fight sounds, this posse coming to see blood, coming to the rescue. The enemy this time.

I felt the pinched knot of the lock between my fingers as I twisted it and the hollow weight of the door as I pulled it shut behind me and heard the lock click.

There. Take that.

They swore and pounded on the wood as I lit a cigarette and walked away from the house, back to the side of the cliff, where I’d watched for a killer wave. The still air pooled the smoke around my face, and I
exhaled the next puff out the corner of my mouth. I heard an eagle scream below me, over the water. A predator, a hunter. I smiled and hid behind closed eyes, letting the air weight my lids. My fingers close over the bead around my neck.

I felt vindicated, alive, and powerful. I touched my cheek, where I could feel the swell rising—a validation of my righteous anger, the Warrior Me. I’d finally said, no. To him yes, but more importantly, to myself. I’d said I wasn’t going to keep on following, and I’d carried through. I was alone, and other than a swollen cheek and a bump on the back of my head, I was okay. I was good. I had taken back the night.

The feeling lasted all of half a minute. That victorious, break-out-the-grog, beat-my-chest feeling coasted to a stop inside me. And before I could prepare or rationalize, it was gone.

In its place lay a field of anger and of blame. I covered my face with my hands, fingertips digging into the line where hair gives way to naked flesh. My anger was an anger infected by shame. The anger of a bully who’s just been beaten. The anger of a whore who’s just been raped. They tell us and then we tell ourselves that it’s never our fault, and we know it’s a lie as we repeat it like a mantra. The victim is never to blame. Never. It’s always his fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. You go, girl. Wear that tube top, hang with the wrong crowd. Drink ten Everclear shots at a frat party. You go, girl. Take back the night.

As I stood above that ocean on that insubstantial cliff, I stopped believing. I felt the weight of my choices, both a few moments ago and for years; I felt the wide expanse of right and wrong and the shades between. The illusion of pure and righteous victimhood slipped out of my grasp. I’d used it in all the wrong ways—my sexual power, with my tight jeans and the thrill when I knew I was wanted. But it’s an amoral power—it can go either way. It had brought me down.

I’d just set up the severe beating of a man. Sure, he was an irritating, possibly even dangerous man, but just a man, who’d been misinformed, needy, drunk. I couldn’t pretend shreds of culpability hadn’t stuck in my hair, in the treads of my shoes. When I recognized this, it felt like drowning, all reference points submerged in gray-green, all confidence gone soggy.

And then.

It felt like freedom.

In saying I did this and this and this wrong and it got bad, enough of the fault lies with me. And so does enough of the power to do it better next time. And this power isn’t shared. This one is all mine. It’s all I’ve got. It may not always be enough, but at least it’s not on loan from someone else. I felt like her in that moment, like my Aleut Mona Lisa. Like I was in charge of the future, no matter how bad the past had been and how bleak the present.

I was just feeling this possibility, this murky oozing potential that I could do everything differently, better, when I uncovered my face and opened my eyes to Liz. She stood beside me, her dark eyes turned up to mine. Beside her stood Ida and Anna.

And Bellie. Like a foretold fortune, when I saw them, I realized I had expected this. Except Bellie. I’d never expected her. All my newborn freedom turned on me, caved in to shame.

Then fear.

They were so close, too close. I could feel their breath, cutting separate paths in the stillness.

“Give me a cigarette,” Liz demanded. I could still see something in her of the woman who came to my cabana at night, something of the clear-eyed guardian, the vigilant watchwoman. I handed her a cigarette, then the lighter, feeling as if each incremental movement to accomplish the exchange had been scripted, practiced many times.

I kept my eyes on the other two, on Bellie. We were too near the edge of the cliff. This cliff, so inadequate such a short time ago, now rose under my boots.