Belt Buckles & Pajamas Read online

  It is my tenth birthday and Daddy and Mommy let me invite my three bestest friends in the whole world over to spend the night. We are going to dress up and eat popcorn and watch scary movies and tell ghost stories and stay up all night. Whoever goes to sleep first is going to be teased so much so I hope it is Kelly or Jennifer or Liz or Andie. Andie seems different than the others, she is big, but I know she is my best friend even though I thought I just had three, so I hug her when she comes and we run upstairs to my bedroom.

  “Liz and Kelly and Jennifer aren’t here yet,” I tell her.

  “That’s okay,” Andie says. “We can play dress up without them.” She takes off her clothes but she doesn’t put any more on and then she starts taking my clothes off like Daddy did last night and I start to cry. She says, “Shhhh, don’t you want to play, it’s a grown up game for my pretty little girl,” just like Daddy said and she is putting her fingers in between my legs and I push her away.

  “Don’t you love me, Daphne?” Andie asks. She reaches for me, pulling me against her warm, full flesh. Rubbing her hands all over my chest. Putting my hands on her body. I cry and say stop and she takes my head in her hands and lifts my face to look at her and says it again. “Don’t you love me?”

  I look into her eyes and I hear Dad’s words echoing through her lips. I stare at her until her face dissolves into his and I scream “How could you do this to me!” and I curse him and beat him until I fall to the floor from exhaustion.

  I wake up stark naked. My pajamas are in a rumpled pile across the room. The sheets are soaked in perspiration. That’s when it was, I realize. That’s when he went from Daddy to Dad. I will never, ever wear pajamas again.

  Thirty-One: In A Pissy Mood

  Stuart and Pet Shop are all jumpy, eager to start the morning session, whispering about Plan A and B and C. Plan C must be for Andie. Violet is really quiet and Shy Boy keeps trying to hold my hand and I slapped him twice at breakfast, can’t they all just leave me alone.

  Andie comes in and she is just as lovely and angelic and beautiful and warm and cozy as before and I look at her and think of pajamas and never want to talk to her again. Never want to talk or touch or think about anyone especially him, and how could she ever be him, it’s not fair she was everything that was pure and now the blackness is in her too. His poison has once again seeped into my waking world.

  “We have need of you, my lady,” Stuart implores in his best Glen impersonation. “The hedgehog is held in hostile environs, and only you may set him free.”

  “Herbert, is this true?” she asks.

  “Yes, Andie, the screech owl told me,” Pet Shop answers. “Doctor Martin has him.”

  “And you want me to ask the doctor to release him?”

  “We think it best,” Stuart informs her, “that you use more surreptitious methods than direct communication. It is, after all, an involuntary situation.”

  “I see.” She sits back, tapping her pencil on her notepad. Tap, tap, tap. “Hmmmm.” Tap, tap, tap. “I suppose I could have a look around.”

  “Try M. Oh, and H. He might just be filed under H.”

  Pet Shop nods, happy Stuart remembered both letters.

  “Don’t forget to look under the couch,” Violet adds. “It’s a little squeaky, as couches go, but it might be underneath. If you need any help looking on top of it, let me know.”

  Andie smiles that gorgeous show of teeth and gloss and the red of the tip of her tongue and it looks nothing like his smile, not in the least bit. But I saw, I know what I saw.

  “I will look under M, and H and certainly under the couch. I will leave the door open and instruct the hedgehog that he may escape if he so desires. However,” she says, looking intently at Pet Shop, “if he doesn’t choose to return you must allow him that. It is, in the end, his choice to be here or not. It is always a choice.”

  As if it was my choice, as if it is ever a little girl’s choice. To trust her daddy. To listen to her daddy. To love her daddy.

  “How could you be him?” I suddenly scream and then I am both shouting and crying. She looks startled, how can she be startled when she was there? Tears stream down my face and Shy Boy cowers down in his chair and Stuart and Pet Shop and Violet just watch as I explode. “How the hell can you say I had a choice when you made me love you? It’s like saying I chose to have two feet or freckles or to feel like throwing up whenever I smell bacon burning?”

  “There is no choice, it’s not my fault it’s yours, it’s your fault, how can you be him?” I sob as she tries to hold me but I push her and start scratching and kicking and biting I don’t know who it is I am attacking but it hurts and I hate him, I hate him, I hate him and Sam is pulling me off of her and I feel the needle plunge into my arm and it goes dark.

  Thirty-Two: Journey Through Darkness, Part One

  I open my eyes and the world is as dark as it was when they were shut. I see nothing, I hear nothing – I feel nothing. I have no connection with my extremities. Where there should be a brush of air against my skin as I wave my hand before my face there is only tactile emptiness.

  I wait in the dark for eternity. It passes. It passes again. Still I wait, alone, beyond sensation, beyond humanity. I wait.

  Approximately thirty-seven eons from the end of the universe, I see the dot. A small, insignificant speck of pale light against the backdrop of an infinite blackness. As dim, as weak, as tiny a bit of brightness it is, it still shines like a super nova in contrast to the dark void that I have been in. I rush to it, I cling to it, I call to it, I hunger for it. For anything beyond the depths of despair that entraps me.

  I run a thousand marathons and it is an inch closer. I scream oaths into the night and hear nothing as the ebony surrounding me absorbs the sound instantly. I run a thousand more, then another, and after there is nothing left but to run to the speck I find I have approached it. It is within reach. I stretch my hand out to it, grasping it, and I hold it, and it is as if the sun has risen, as if there is life in the universe once again, and the colors rush in and flood my senses and I wake up and she is there. Melissa is there.

  Thirty-Three: Journey Through Darkness, Part Two

  Melissa. Everything that should have been. Everything that never was. I fall at her feet and she puts her arms around me and strokes my hair and whispers sweet nothings in my ear, breathing soft, warm breath on my face and my neck and giving me tiny kisses on the top of my head.

  Melissa. She was strong and she was beautiful and she was little girl and she was grown-up woman. She was the center of the universe and a cascading meteor with shocking hair and blazing eyes and a sultry dance that no male or female could resist, with pulsating hips and throbbing thighs and curvaceous torso that gyrated around and around and drew one as a moth to a flame.

  Melissa who loved Daddy in the way that he wanted. The way that he needed. The way that made him so happy, made him feel so good, made him love her. Melissa who came to me one night and promised that she would be my bestest friend ever.

  Melissa who lied. Melissa who never told Mommy, who never stopped Daddy, who only came after, when it was over. Melissa who left when the buckle hit the floor.

  I run back, away from the speck that is Melissa, preferring the emptiness, the void, the dark, to the presence of the one who betrayed me when she was all I had left in the world.

  Thirty-Four: Journey Through Darkness, Part Three

  I waited in the darkness, facing away from the speck that I knew led only to her. I waited for any other chance, any other path to redemption, than the one that had been offered. I waited in vain.

  I turned around. She was closer than I remembered, as if she had approached me, as if she had run for eternity after eternity to find me in this void. I stared at the speck as it grew larger, as the halo of light grew bigger and brighter and once more consumed me.

  I was spent, no longer able to resist her pull. No longer able to deny the memories. No longer wanting to avoid the truth.

  �
��Melissa,” I hear, and it is not my voice calling the name. “Melissa,” he says, “be a good girl for Daddy.”

  And I want to tell her she doesn’t have to do this. That he is wrong. That she is a little girl and pure and wonderful and should be playing with dolls and hopscotch and learning how to match her socks with her belt and not how to cry into her pillow and hide the bruises and pretend it doesn’t hurt when you walk.

  “Don’t you love me?” he asks her and she cries and says “yes, Daddy, I love you,” and he doesn’t listen to me or to her, he just does it and I want to kill him, I want to kill Daddy and I want her to die so this memory never returns to me again. But he is not kind enough to kill her, no he loves her and cleans her up and tells her he loves her and that this is their little secret. Mommy might not understand how they love each other and I want to scream that it doesn’t matter because the bitch will ignore it, she is going to see us and she will pretend it never happened.

  But she nods her head and thinks Daddy must really love her if he trusts her with a secret he won’t even tell Mommy and maybe Daddy will marry her when she grows up. Because he loves her, he tells her every night. Every night.

  He leaves and I go to Melissa and I hold her and tell her it will be okay, that one day Daddy will get really drunk in a bar and hit a telephone pole at sixty miles an hour and Mommy will run off and we will have people who really love us take care of us and help us. People like Glen and Theodore and Stuart and Violet and Pet Shop and Shy Boy and Andie. And I tell her it wasn’t real, Andie was never Daddy, she would never ever be Daddy and I hug her and I think maybe it will be all right.

  Thirty-Five: Morning After

  I wake up and I am in pajamas. I strip them off, throwing them in the wastebasket. I pull on sweat pants and a t-shirt and crawl back into bed.

  I stare at the ceiling and it doesn’t fall down on me and it doesn’t turn into an enormous black hole sucking all the light and life out of the room, it just stays up there all whitewashed and uncracked, and I try to imagine what it would be like to get up and go to breakfast and I throw up all over the bed sheets when I think of the smell of bacon cooking and eggs frying in the kitchen.

  Stuart finds me, head against a pillow damp with puke, and says it is okay, no one is watching, no one saw, THEY aren’t here. I tell him I don’t care, it doesn’t matter, nothing matters. Violet joins us and looks at me and starts laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” I ask, upset that she doesn’t see how messed up I am. How can she not see that?

  “You, silly girl. Here you are lying in your own puke, feeling sorry for yourself. Let’s get you showered off.”

  So I let her lead me to the showers and she scrubs me over and doesn’t even try anything, even when I am all wet and soapy and push against her hand as she rubs the bar over my body. I guess maybe she did see it. She dries me off with a towel that isn’t fresh from the dryer but because I know she cares and she understands it feels exactly the same.

  We missed breakfast, no big loss when the thought of it makes me want to heave again, but we make it to morning session. I am scared and want to hide under the sheets in my sweats and t-shirt and never come out but Violet makes me go. I don’t feel like I have been dried off with a fresh from the dryer towel anymore, I feel like I still have vomit in my hair. I sit down, shaking, not wanting to meet anyone’s gaze, not wanting to see what she thinks of me now. Scared she is gone like Melissa.

  “Good morning, Daphne,” Doctor Martin says. “I hear you had a little excitement yesterday, I would like to talk to you about it.”

  I lift my head and look around, and Andie isn’t there, she has left me to face the evil emperor on my own and I can’t blame her, I deserve it.

  “Where’s Andie?” Stuart asks, “What have you done with her? We are fully capable of rescue missions, it will do no good to lock her away.”

  Doctor Martin appears more amused than threatened by Stuart’s declaration. “I told Doctor MacPherson to take a day off to recover. I wanted to talk to Daphne about it. I felt it might be easier without Doctor MacPherson in the room.” He turned to me. “Don’t you agree, Daphne, wouldn’t it be easier to talk about Doctor – about Andie – without her in the room?”

  I don’t want to give in to him. I don’t want him to see any part of me. I don’t want to remember Daddy’s face turning into hers.

  “Leave her alone,” Violet says. “She had a rough night.”

  “No rougher than Doctor MacPherson’s, I’m sure.”

  “Come on, Doc, lay off. If you want to get into anything how about you and me go make that couch of yours squeak.”

  Sam edges nearer. I think he got yelled at last time when he let Violet get close enough to latch on to Doctor Martin. Violet sees him. “Relax, Sam, it was a friendly invitation. If Doc here isn’t interested, maybe you would like to take his place?” She runs her hand down his chest. He grabs her by the wrists before she can do anything more enticing.

  “Sorry, honey, why don’t you take a seat and talk to the doctor?” He pushes her back down onto the chair before releasing her arms.

  She crosses her arms. “What’s a girl got to do to get laid around here anyway?”

  Sam laughs but Doctor Martin’s face remains stoic. “Daphne, do you remember what you did yesterday? When you were talking to Andie? Can you tell me what happened?”

  He is persistent; I’ll give him that. I stare at him. He stares back. I wonder what it would be like to gouge out his eyes with my fingers, but figure that Sam would have me down on the floor with my arms pinned back and a knee in the small of my back before I could sink my thumbs into the soft squishy orbs.

  Seconds turn into minutes turn into hours. Does he sense my confidence? Does he somehow know that just last night I stared into deepest black for infinity? That seconds or minutes or hours mean nothing to one who was cast into the void for eternity? He must, for it is he who breaks first.

  He gets up; his bones crack from the long period of inactivity. He walks out of the room without a word to any of us. After the door shuts, sealing him out more than us in, Stuart giggles. Sam pulls me out of the chair. He is a little grabby, in my opinion. Violet tells him to lay off of me, if he wants a little action to see her and Sam gives her a look like she just might get what she’s asking for one of these days. Pow, to the moon, I think.

  Thirty-Six: Shy Boy Gets A Kiss

  It is a little harder to slip past Sam this time, but we eventually lose him and head out to the cemetery. The sky is full of brooding storm clouds. I expect the downpour will start about the time we get there. If it started sooner we would turn away and if it started later then it wouldn’t matter, we would already be on our way back.

  Shy Boy and Pet Shop are with us. I don’t know why they missed the morning session. I ask Pet Shop and he says he was working on Plan C and hoping that Andie comes back tomorrow so she can save the hedgehog. At the mention of Andie the conversation dies and I walk silently. Shy Boy keeps sneaking glances at me and the cow says “Somebody’s watching me” and Stuart looks around for flying saucers or spies or who knows what. I blush and keep walking.

  Violet crowds me and I bump into Shy Boy and he pretends it wasn’t on purpose. He bumps back into me a couple steps later and I give him a teeny smile and his face lights up, and I don’t even notice the spittle dripping down the side of his chin. It is so cute that a little contact can change his world like it does. I guess a little contact can change mine as easily.

  I refrain from clasping his hand although it is offered, but it does not dampen his spirits and the air is crisper and we walk more rapidly as if we know that something magical is waiting for us at the cemetery.

  The grass is still overgrown and the fence is still broken down and there are still scraps of tin foil scattered about. The tombstones still bear only numbers and single dates as indication of the dead beneath them. The thunderclouds still hang heavy in the air with their threat of watery assault. Doctor Martin
is still a bastard, and I still know that I hurt Andie. Despite all of that, maybe because of all that, I stand at the base of the big tree and take Shy Boy’s hand and I dance and I laugh and I tell them all that I love them.

  The rain comes, and though it is cold we do not leave. It pelts us and we find shelter under the tree. Our clothes are heavy and Violet says let’s take them off and we do. It is cold but we are sweating and Shy Boy reaches for me and I reach for him and we kiss. A tender, walking you home from the movies only a little bit late and Dad please don’t turn on the porch light we are just saying good night kiss. It is every kiss I never got and it makes me feel like I can still call him Daddy not Dad and I want it to last forever.

  Violet is watching us and I know she wants me to do more than kiss Shy Boy but I push her out of my thoughts and only think of innocence. As I breathe him in and he breathes me in, as we kiss naked in the rain, I tell him this is all I have, this is all I can do. Even though he is ready for more, that is obvious as I feel his hardness against my thigh. I hug him because he isn’t rocking forward, he isn’t rubbing himself on me, he isn’t forcing my legs apart and he isn’t like him at all. And I cry on his shoulder and the rain comes down and Violet watches us not make love and Pet Shop says he is cold and so we put on our clothes and go back.

  Sam yells at us when he sees the sorry state we are in and tells us all to go take showers and that he better not catch us running outside in a storm again or else. Violet says “or else what” and pats Sam on the butt and he just scowls.

  Thirty-Seven: Plan C

  It is lights out time and I get in my not-pajamas sleeping sweats and t-shirt and think about Shy Boy and Andie. I want to tell her I am sorry, that I know it wasn’t her and I hope she is back tomorrow.