Page 7 of As the Rain Falls
My voice came out as a whisper, delicate and pleading around his name. I steadied my breath by staring at a blank spot on my ceiling.
“I don’t want to do this.”
I sounded upset enough to get him to back off. It should have worked, but my brother grabbed my neck with his right hand and pinned me down against the bed. Under him, I felt so small. And he tightened his grip even further when I wiggled, as if afraid I would try to leave.
I wouldn’t.
I couldn’t.
There was no winning against him.
Not like this.
“Stay quiet.”
Oh, my words.
I swallowed down my words, swallowed them one by one. The words felt heavy on my stomach, but I kept quiet even as I got nauseous. I kept quiet for so long. Silence ate all the words I had left before I started to worry.
Could I do this?
Could I survive?
What was going to happen to me?
This was all so complicated.
I almost missed his eyelashes fluttering against my jaw. His breath hit me in the face, his teeth stinking of beer, and his pupils were dilated. Dad hated it when Nathaniel drank, and I found myself hating it too. I hated it the most.
“I’m scared,” I whined, mind going blank.
Nathaniel raised his head to look at me in the eyes, and whatever he saw there had his gaze softening. His eyes were a dark green with shadows of brown then, so much like my own. It felt like I was staring in the mirror.
“I’m sorry.”
Nathaniel apologized all the time; he said he was sorry all the way through. A whispered “I’m sorry” as he pulled my pajama shorts down, another as he pressed his palm against my mouth again when I tried to scream, and a last one as he zipped his pants down and got himself off.
His weight felt twice as important as mine. His muscles were compressing my muscles, and his bones were caging my bones, and my legs were being spread apart by his legs, and my—
Close your eyes.
What I’ve learned is, you can always close your eyes when something bad is about to happen. Tell yourself little white lies that make the pain go away. It’s just a bad scene, the kind no one wants to watch at the movie theater, but if you just wait long enough this shot ends and another begins.
Everybody moves on, and you will too.
The pain in your thighs is nothing like the pain in your stomach, and the pain in your stomach is nothing like the pain around your wrists or under your arms, because nothing hurts at all. He is not shaking with pleasure, and you are not bending with fear, at least not when you keep your eyes closed.
I opened my eyes again.He was dragging himself back and forth on top of me. My older brother was inside of me now. His fingers were pressing over places I couldn’t see, places I didn’t know could be touched, or held, or squeezed.
The pain was excruciating, like my body was being split in two, ripped apart. My mind raced to find a way out, but I could feel the walls closing in on me.
Suffocated, dragged, silenced.
Tight.
I was so tight.
“You are so tight,” he said, like it was something good enough to be appreciated.
