Rosethorn (26 page)

I get up and go towards the hallway, not even waiting for him to say anything or to see if he would follow me. But he does, as I knew he would, locking the door, grinding against me on the wall, his hands underneath my skirt where I am bare-nothing for him to tear, quicker to rise and more explosive than my fury. I moan out loud and he covers my mouth with his hand, which I bite—I don’t care who hears me and I don’t care if I leave my mark on him.

And when we're done, I just smooth my skirt and walk out before he’s finished zipping up. I say nothing to him and don’t look back. The waiters are outside in the hallway and have probably heard everything, judging by their averted eyes and knowing smiles, but I have no shame.

I stride away in my red boots, even as my thighs run wet underneath my skirt. I peel out of the parking lot and drive all the way to China Camp, running out of the car almost into the sea, weeping.

We can’t
be over. Even now, I can still feel him inside me.

Chapter 18

December 1, 1986

All of a sudden, it’s winter today. It’s cold, quiet, and gray. I hold my breath indefinitely, waiting.

December 16, 1986

I sang a solo in the choral concert tonight and as I sang, my voice ringing out, I saw my parents in the audience looking so proud. Mama’s eyes were shining with unshed tears. I know how selfish I am. And that I've hidden much from them. But this is what they want to see, their little girl singing like an angel, pure and untouched. So that is what I give them.

December 18, 1986

He’s home. I drove by their house and saw his car. But he hasn't called. It’s been 21 days.

I won't break.

December 22, 1986

I borrowed ma’s car and waited at the corner around his house this morning for Alex to drive by and he did. There was someone in the car with him, a girl with blonde hair. I followed them to the store and watched as he opened the door for her and helped her out. The sun shone on them both--it was a beautiful California winter’s day and Alex had brought home a girl for Christmas. A pretty white girl in a navy peacoat and cream gloves. She looked clean and sweet and smiled blissfully as they walked hand in hand down the street.

I stared at them both from my car, stared at them so hard, I felt sure he must have felt my rage, my pain, it was so great. But he didn’t even look around, didn’t feel a shadow on his perfect day.

He had driven thousands of miles in the past four months just to make love to me, told me over and over again he would die if he couldn’t have me, yet he lives, with some other girl he’s brought to his parents’ house, where they’ll sip eggnog by the fire and kiss under the mistletoe, wholesome and clean.

If I could have snapped out of my shock, I would have run over Alex and his vanilla girl with my
mother’s car again and again until I felt sure they were both dead. Yet here I am, forming words onto a page, letter by letter of how my lover has so quickly and neatly cast me aside for another. He can’t think that it will all be this easy.

December 25, 1986

Strange how I don’t feel evil, even though what I’ve done today is the cruelest thing I’ve ever done. Yet I feel no shame. It was the only thing I could do. Alex has humiliated me and made a mockery of my love. He thinks he has conquered me at long last, used me to his satisfaction, then when he is done, all he has to do is walk away?

I'm out of my mind with pain, you see, so whatever I’ve done today, it is because of you, Alex. I summoned Daniel to me today of all days, taking him away from his family, telling him urgently that I must see him, that it couldn’t wait. And he came, without hesitation, for after all this time, he still held hope. It could have been true, I wanted it to be true, when I told him I loved him. How his face broke open then, how deliriously happy I made him.

I let him have what he thought he would never have, given to him as easily as Alex fought so hard to get. Over and over he told me he loved me, that he's never been so happy.

For a moment I was touched, for a moment, looking into his sweet eyes, I felt myself to be the angel he called me. But then I saw Alex looking out of his face, I remembered the white girl who’s taken my place and misery choked the tears out of me.

Sweet, sweet Daniel blamed himself, believing that he had overpowered me with lust, made me do what virtuous, churchgoing girls wouldn’t do in the backseats of parked cars. Trying to comfort me, saying how it was his first time too and that he wanted to marry me.

Please help me, Daniel, I asked him. I’m lost.

December 26, 1986

Daniel’s happiness, it seems, can't be hidden. I wasn't surprised that Alex followed me today.

I dressed in red again, not Christmas red, but bloody red, the red of desire. I am intoxicated with it, full with it and it radiates from every inch of my skin for when I walk down the street, every man turns to look at me as if invisible ropes are tethered to their necks.

I felt Alex follow me, watch me from afar, his desire only equal to mine. And just when I thought I couldn’t bear it any longer, he was there before me, his face twisted in red hot anger, calling me crazy and fucked up. Why Daniel, Stella? Why?

I reminded him of his wish that I date boys my age, but it only made him angrier. Please don’t use my brother to get back at me.

Not everything is about you, Alex, I said as I twisted out of his hands. I started walking off. Believe me, neither one of us was thinking about you yesterday.

He grabbed me again and just as quickly I threw him off. Get your hands off me, I said, with all the fury and contempt I could spit out, You’re never touching me again.

I’m shaking uncontrollably just as I did that first summer night. Have I gambled recklessly?

January 2, 1987

He’s returned finally, defeated by his love for me. Not knowing where I found the strength, I kept him away, trying to be impervious to the intense craving in his eyes and his plea that I was the only one that ever mattered to him that he would die if he couldn’t have me. Careful, I said, savoring each word, each moment I withheld myself from him, even as I suffered, I m
ight just take you up on that.

You enjoy this, don’t you, Stella? Having me grovel and beg for weeks without throwing me a bone. Then you just give it up to my brother, just like that. You don’t know what you’ve done. He stood and looked at me then with equal parts anger and desire. Or maybe you do. I know I’m not a saint, Stella, but at least I don’t play with people.

Really? I asked, outraged. You never played with me this whole time, never lied, never told me you loved me and fucked me in secret, then dumped me for some white girl you parade in front of your parents, in front of the world?

He kissed me then roughly, so roughly that my lips are still bruised and will be for days.

Did my brother ever touch you like this, he asked, did he make you feel the way I do.

No, I moaned over and over again. No one has ever given me this searing pain, this closeness, this almost unbearable pleasure.

Don’t ever leave me again, Alex.

January 8, 1987

I drift in a cloud all my own, high above everybody else, set apart. I caught Kay staring at me today and when I asked her what was up, she told me I looked different. I only smiled. I know I'm radiant with love for Alex. I even feel different. We're two stars in the vast sky burning brightly and the rest of the universe merely revolves around our fire.

If there's one shadow, it would be Daniel. I was crazy for a moment, I wasn’t myself. I didn’t mean to
lead him on. I didn’t mean to lie.

I put all of my skills to use and said my parents didn't want me to be with anyone, that I’m too young to be serious and that I need to concentrate on school. He begged me to see him in secret, then when I told him I couldn't go against my parent’s wishes, he tried to get me to run away with him. He thinks he’s Romeo to my Juliet, but it's all an intricate web of lies I’ve woven. I don’t know how to undo it. I just want him to go away.

February 5, 1987

I've been ill with a flu that won’t go away. If only Alex would come home to see me, but he can’t get away. He told me that he almost failed two of his classes last year. Hinting that it was because of me. This winter is so unbearably cold and dreary. It has been raining for weeks now. If only it were summer and Alex and I were together again.

Daniel haunts me. I avoid him as much as I can in school, but his tortured face repeatedly appears in my dreams. Perhaps that is why I feel sick all the time and can’t keep food down. I'm Lady Macbeth who can’t ever cleanse the blood from her hands.

February 19, 1987

I just called Alex’s house in LA. One of his roommates answered and told me he wasn’t home. He didn’t even ask who I was, as if it was normal for girls to call for Alex on Saturday nights. He wasn’t home last night either or Valentine’s Day. I don’t want to believe what my head is telling me, that he doesn’t drive up because he doesn’t want to, he isn’t home because he’s with someone else, that I have once again been made a fool.

February 24, 1987

Mama was helping me with one of the costumes I’m making for West Side Story, a simple frock for Maria, a virginal white for the first time that Tony sees her. She couldn’t zip it up, telling me that we need to let it out some more, that I had measured wrong. I was about to tell her that it fit a week ago, when it had the temporary seams, but a cold, sick feeling silenced me.

Don’t worry,
anak
, she said, as she caught my worried look in the mirror, just stop eating all those green mangoes.

It all came to me, suddenly and clearly, the nausea, the vomiting, and when I didn’t feel ill, craving
green mangoes with salt, sometimes eating a whole bag in an afternoon, all my clothes becoming too tight around the waist, my breasts tender. When I was alone, I looked at the calendar, trying to remember when was the last time I had my period. Not since November.

Perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps I’m just irregular. I’ve skipped months before. And I have been eating too much, maybe I just need to go on a diet. I’m scared, more scared than I’ve ever been. I need Alex to tell me it’ll be okay.

February 26, 1987

I cut 4th to 6th period today and drove to the city, to one of those free clinics in the Mission. The nurse had her back to me when she said, “Congratulations, you’re pregnant,” in a flat voice, and didn’t turn around to see me cry, saying that the doctor will be in to talk to me. The doctor estimated me to be 12 weeks along, told me that I am due in September, turning some sort of paper wheel in front of me with his matter-of-fact voice and pushing a free bottle of pills in my hand to take. Prenatal vitamins, he said. I couldn’t speak except to mutter thank you.

I don’t know how I walked out of there, how I got into my car and got home. Everything's a sickening blur. Tell me what I’m supposed to do, I wanted to scream at the doctor. Pee samples and charts and pills. Is there anything I can consult, a pill I can take that will make all of this go away, like a nightmare? I want to wake up. Please, someone wake me up.

March 27, 1987

I’m so very tired these days and sleep for 12 hours at a time. Sleep is the only thing that I crave now, more inviting than stuffing my face full of green mangoes or wallowing in endless tears. I write because I am for once fully awake and lucid, rare these days.

We'll be moving soon to a tiny townhouse in Venetia once this house is sold. There's a room for Papa on the first floor so that he doesn’t have to go up and down the stairs. The doctor encourages him to take walks and be active now that he's stronger, but Mama doesn’t want him on the stairs.

I think, too, that she wants to keep us apart. Since I sleep all the time anyway, I'll be upstairs, out of the way, hidden. Papa doesn’t have to look at me and neither does Mama to remind them of the ruin I've caused them. Ever since the heart attack, Papa has barely said a word to me.

Mama doesn’t have to tell me to stay away, to keep to myself. I don’t want to look at him either. I love him, I want him to get better, but every time I see him, see how slowly he moves, like an old man, the fragility of his health only brings to mind that horrible night when I came home from LA after telling
Alex.

Where have you been, you awful child, Papa had yelled. Do you know how your mother has worried over you, how we’ve looked everywhere for you? And Mama trying in vain to calm him down, her face sick with dread.

I told them and Papa was suddenly silent, Mama started crying, both of them aghast. Then more yelling—how could I let this happen to me, who had done this, was it Daniel. No, no, no I cried. Not Daniel.