Evil Eye (18 page)

Huddled against the man's warm body, a solid sizable body, taking up more than half of her bed.

So cold! Bone-marrow cold!

As if her life, a still-young life, were veering to a premature ending like a runaway vehicle on a twisting mountain road where you can see only a few yards ahead for the way is blind and the descent from the road steep and irrevocable.

Wanting to plead with this deep-slumbering man in her bed
Love me anyway—can't you? I think—I can love you.

She'd never told anyone. Not ever.

She'd known better. Already by the age of—had it been seven? eight? ten?—that it would be a mistake to
tell.

For once you
tell,
you can't take back what you have
told.

In the household, in the family. And it was a large family.

A family so large, if you shut your eyes and tried to assemble them all in the living room, standing and seated in a half-circle around the ceiling-high Christmas tree, you could not.

For always there are shadowy figures, vague and undefined at the periphery of the scene. Always, tall male figures whose faces are just slightly blurred.

You could identify them perhaps. But you could not truly see them.

Sometimes these figures are sitting. In fact, sitting on the floor.

In some juxtaposition to the glittering Christmas tree. The astonishment of the Christmas tree, that so glittered and gleamed and the fragrance of its still-living needles so powerful, just recalling makes you want to cry.

Eyes filled with moisture. The trip of a heartbeat.

Want to cry but will not cry. Not ever
cry.

For she was a shy child. Shy, and shrewd. You might mistake shyness for slowness, reticence for stupidity, physical wariness for physical ineptitude, but you'd have been mistaken.

He had counseled her
This is our secret. These are good times but secret.

He had warned her
This is our secret. These are good times but secret.

And so she had not ever told.

(For who was there to tell? Not her nervous mother, not her irritable father. Often they smiled startled seeing her before them as if she were a surprise to them, a happy surprise, amid so many other surprises that were not happy; as if somehow they'd forgotten her, and the sight of her was a happy reminder; for she'd been led to believe from a young age that she was the one happy thing in their lives, despite being an “accident” in their lives—
I think we were burnt-out, almost—with the marriage—playing house—we'd had our kids, we thought: four of them! Jesus! And then—our darling
. . .)

(And later, in grade school, when still it was happening to her, still she was in thrall to him-whose-identity-she-could-not-reveal, she could not have told her teachers, nor could she have told another child, even her best friends—especially not her best friends. From the experiences of others who'd had far less significant secrets to reveal she'd learned how
telling
flew back in the face of the
teller
like spitting in the wind. Forever afterward you were the one who'd
told,
the
tattletale;
and what had been done to you would be irrevocably mixed up in the minds of others with
you.
)

No one knew. No one wished to know. No one asked
her.

The family was large, and well-to-do. The name
Bankcroft
was attached to a downtown street and a square and a dignified old office building.
Bankcroft
exuded an air of satisfaction, pride.

Brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles, and grandparents.

These were highly sociable people. Most evenings there were visitors in the big old Victorian house.

In such circumstances you would think that a little girl so frequently singled out for special attention by a (male, older) relative would be observed. But you would be mistaken.

Our baby. Our darling. I'm shamelessly spoiling her—she's my last baby.

Everyone adores her! They just can't help it.

Her mother certainly adored her. But mostly when others were present. At the start of dinner parties she was shown off—her curly ash-blond hair, her special party dress and fancy little shoes—then carried away upstairs by a nanny hired for such purposes.

To have
told
her mother! She could not.

For she could foresee: the look in her mother's face.

Surprise, hurt, disbelief.
No no no no no
—this could never be.

To have
told
her father! Absolutely
no.

All this she would have to explain to N. If she did not, she would lose him.

And if she did, very likely she would lose him just the same.

Yes of course, as a child she'd been taken to a doctor periodically.

A (male) family doctor, pediatrician. An acquaintance of her mother's and so, during the visits, in the examination room, her mother and Dr. T. chatted.

The examinations were routine, perfunctory, non-traumatic. The examinations did not involve an inspection of the child's body inside her clothing for why would one do such a thing? With the child's mother present, friendly and sociable?

Visits to Dr. T's office usually involved a “booster” vaccine, possibly ear-wax removal.

She who was her mother's
darling
endured these visits to the doctor stoically. Young she'd learned the strategy of being mature beyond her years.

Later, as a young adolescent, she'd had to endure the ignominy and pain of a gynecological examination.

Here, the doctor was her mother's (female) doctor: obstetrician, gynecologist.

The examination of her small hard breasts had been both painful and humiliating but she'd managed to bear it without resistance only just biting hard on her lower lip to draw a little blood.

The pelvic exam had been so brutal, such a shock to her
rigid-quivering body, in horror and disbelief she'd begun to cry, laugh, hyperventilate—this could not possibly be happening to her, that which was happening to her—
worse, far worse, more painful and more terrifying than what had been perpetrated on her as a child, which she'd begun to forget;
the examination had had to be terminated for the delicate-boned girl was squirming, thrashing, kicking in hysterics, in danger of injuring both the examining doctor and herself.

Her mother had accompanied her to the gynecologist's office but now that she was fourteen, and so seemingly self-composed, she'd asked her mother to please remain out in the waiting room. Now her poor shocked mother had to be hurriedly summoned into the examination room by one of the nurses.

It took some minutes to calm the hysterical girl. Her blood pressure had been taken at the start of the examination and had been one hundred over sixty; after the bout of hysterics her blood pressure was one hundred thirty-six over sixty.

The doctor who was her mother's friend was both concerned and annoyed.

Telling her mother to take her home. The examination was over.

She's had a shock. She's extremely sensitive. Maybe some other time I can do a pelvic exam. But not today.

She'd had to comfort her mother on the way home. Assuring her mother that she would have no “traumatic” memories of the assault.

And afterward she'd overheard, by chance, her mother telling her father, in a rueful tone
At least we know she's a virgin!

Yet, years later, when she was living alone and went alone to a (female) gynecologist for a routine examination, virtually the same thing happened: shock, hysterics.

Except then, for God's sake, she'd been twenty-three years old.

Though technically still a virgin but no longer a skittish young teenager.

Usually, she avoided doctors. She was in “perfect health”—so she believed. But for medical insurance purposes, in connection with her new employment, she'd had to have a routine physical examination and this included a gynecological examination.

Again, she'd managed to endure the breast exam. But the pelvic exam was as brutal as she'd recalled. The gynecologist was a young Chinese-American woman, very skilled, soft-spoken; she'd explained what she was doing, as if to mollify her tense patient; she'd shown her the speculum—(was that the word? the very sound of it made her tremble)—that was an instrument of torture to her, a crude caricature of the male penis, unbearable. Involuntarily, on the examination table, feet in stirrups and knees raised and parted, she'd recoiled as she had at the age of fourteen; her lower lip would ooze blood afterward, where she'd almost bitten through it.

The young-woman gynecologist had been concerned. She couldn't complete the examination, she hadn't been able to get a Pap swab, there was no way to know if the young woman shivering and shuddering on the examination table had a vaginal infection, or—something more serious.

I'm so sorry! My God. Please forgive me. We can try again.

It was the voice of reason. Her best self. But the child-self, quivering with hurt, in dread of further hurt, was always there, waiting for the collapse of the best, adult self.

But she'd managed. She had gripped the edges of the leather examination table and held her trembling knees parted as the gynecologist re-inserted the speculum, to open her vagina, to open it terribly as a delicate flower might be opened, exposed to a harsh killing sun.

What relief then, the speculum was withdrawn!

Am I bleeding? But bleeding doesn't last.

It's normal to bleed and the blood to coagulate.

Yet, there was more to the exam. The gynecologist had not yet finished. Inserting her rubber fingers into the young woman's vagina, pressing against her lower abdomen to determine if there were tumorous growths, irregularities. And, at the end, a rectal exam—swiftly executed and less painful.

In the vagina were scars, fine as hairs, faded scars—and in the soft moist walls of the uterus. So the gynecologist said, puzzled.

Have you had an illness, an infection? This would have been some years ago, perhaps.

Shook her head
no.
Did not know.

Or some sort of—accident? Or . . .

There was a long pause. An awkward pause.

Until Dr. Chen said, It's healed now. Whatever it was, it has healed. Do you have pain with sexual intercourse?

Shook her head
no.
Frowning and vague as if to suggest
That is a private matter, doctor!

The gynecologist regarded her with an expression of—was it sympathy? Pity?

She thought
This woman knows. She is my sister.

Carefully Dr. Chen said, Do you have any questions to ask me? We will receive the results of the Pap test in a few days and we will call you.

The dreaded exam was over. In triumph the shaken young woman sat up on the leather table, tissue-paper bristling beneath her buttocks. A smear of lubricant, a barely visible smear of blood on the paper.

Thank you, doctor.

She'd gone away smiling. Whistling.

These good times no one will know. Our secret.

The Pap test came back negative. It was a confirmed fact, she was in perfect health.

No need to see any doctor for a long, long time.

N. said, We have to talk.

Gravely and profoundly N. fixed his gaze upon her. He'd urged her to sit down, to be still. For there was a need for her, in N.'s presence, to be always moving about, to a window, for instance, to glance nervously down into the street. The sound of a phone ringing, in a neighboring loft, was distracting to her.

Wanting to tell him, to amuse him, that she'd had a “stalker” once—when she'd still been a university student.

Foreign-born, dusky-skinned, lonely-looking. He'd waited for her in stairwells, on the sidewalk in front of the residence hall. (He'd been a graduate or post-doc, she thought, in something unimaginably difficult—molecular biology, computational neuroscience.) She'd smiled at him in her careless way and he'd followed her home and thereafter for much of her senior year he'd hung about with yearning doggy-eyes and her roommates had been concerned for her
Aren't you worried? Shouldn't we report him to security?
And she'd laughed saying
Don't be silly. He'll give up soon.

Through a rustling in her brain N. was saying gravely, Look, I love you. We have to talk.

Love you
had the air of a mild rebuke. He was chiding her, as you would a small stubborn self-destructive child.

Frowning, N. said, You aren't being honest with me. If you care for me, as I care for you, we have to be honest with each other.

Care for me. Care for you
. These words were giddy in her ears, she was stricken to the heart.

She'd never
told
. She could not begin now, at her ridiculous age.

He had never threatened to hurt her, exactly. The tall (male) figure of her childhood. She was sure he'd never hurt or injured her, it was bizarre to suggest that he'd inserted something into her tiny child's vagina so sharp that it had left miniature scars; her mother, or one of her older sisters, would have discovered bloodstains on her panties and all would have been exposed.

Though this individual, this tall (male) figure so predominant in the life of her family, alone of his (older) generation insisting upon sitting on the floor, Indian-style on the thick carpet in front of the Christmas tree, with the kids. An individual whom her mother greatly respected, adored, and to a degree feared; a man whom her father greatly admired, though G. had never been particularly friendly to him.