James Hall - Body Language

As he wedged himself inside her, Alexandra opened her mouth against Darnel’s hand and bit deep into one of his fingers, wrenching her head to the side, trying to strip flesh from the bone. She tasted the tang of his blood, and Darnel cried out, but he did not stop.

The rest of it was fast and clumsy and it hurt at first; then she was numb. The ice cream dish was broken on the plywood floor and a puddle of ice cream melted next to her head the whole time. As Darnel rose up on straightened arms and began to groan, she turned her head to the side and her gaze fell on the playhouse mirror, where she and the Flint sisters had made their first experiments with makeup. Mr Flint had inscribed a passage from the Twenty-third Psalm across the top of the mirror. With her eyes blurred. Alexandra stared at the mirror, and for a second she thought she saw the outline of someone’s face. But when she blinked her eyes, the apparition had vanished.

As Darnel worked to his climax, she turned her head away and let the Scripture run through her mind, a quieting refrain. ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.’

Finally, Darnel rolled away and lay panting for several moments. Then he told her that from this moment onward he and Alexandra were engaged, which meant he had the right to kill her if she violated their sacred oath of silence.

She said nothing to her parents. Her father was a police officer and she was afraid he would explode and kill someone. Her mother taught high school and had a very stern manner. Several times, she had told Alexandra that girls who misbehaved with boys had only themselves to blame. Girls were in charge. They simply had to be strong and prudent and exercise good judgment about what gestures of affection they gave to their male friends. Flirting could lead to trouble, she said. Be vigilant.

For the next few nights after the rape, Darnel tapped on her bedroom window and stood with a bowl of ice cream in his hand. Ashamed she’d provoked him to such an emotional pitch, Alexandra trembled and fought back tears. She peeked around the edge of the curtains but wouldn’t show herself.

Even after he gave up and stalked away, she couldn’t sleep. Each time her eyes began to drift closed, she felt again Darnel Flint’s suffocating weight against her chest, and she jerked awake.

Then last night, Darnel Flint had been at the window again and his hair was slicked back and he wore a new shirt and was holding a rose. Through the glass she told him to leave her alone. She never wanted to see him again. He was disgusting and mean and he had hurt her.

‘I love you and you love me. This is the way love works.’

‘I don’t love you. I hate you.’

‘Be careful what you say,’ he hissed at her. ‘If you reject me, I might go crazy and kill your entire family.’

She shut her curtains against him.

The next morning when her father went out for the paper, he found Pugsy lying on the sidewalk. His neck was broken and his hips were crushed as if he’d been run over by a car and had dragged himself into their yard to die. Alexandra sobbed but was too frightened to tell her parents what she suspected.

After they buried the dog down by the canal, Alexandra lay all morning in her room and thought of the summer on the beach, trying to revive the feelings she’d had just a few weeks earlier. How every morning she woke to the pleasant mumble of the surf, then right after breakfast ran across the empty roadway to check her sand castle. Dolphins rolled past in groups of three and four; the Gulf changed colors all day, from blue to emerald green, and then to silvery red. Each night, the sunsets turned the sky into immense paintings that the three of them would try to interpret. At lunch, they had lemonade and sandwiches on the screened porch with the radio playing country music, the paddle fans circling. Lazy lizards climbed the screens, puffing out the orange disks at their throats. The air was rich with honeysuckle and coconut suntan oil. Her mother and father were quietly in love. Alexandra was tanned and healthy, Princess of the Sugary Sands.

But recalling it didn’t help. She was no longer that girl. Last week, after Darnel raped her, Alexandra had risen out of her body, and now she hovered above herself like a shadowy haze. She looked down at the little girl with the pistol that was too heavy. Floating near the ceiling, she watched the girl open the cylinder of the .38 and look at the bullets, spin the cylinder as she’d seen her father do, then click it closed.

Alexandra wasn’t afraid of guns. She’d been around them since she was little. Her father had shown her how to clean them, how to put the safety on and take it off. He had pistols and rifles and shotguns around the house and he said it was important that she knew how to handle them responsibly.

Alexandra listened to her father pushing the lawn mower through the brittle September weeds. She felt dizzy and far away. She had been forced out of her body by Darnel Flint and she doubted she would ever be able to return. She would have to live in exile for the rest of her days, forever homesick, forever banished from her own flesh.

The Flints’ front door was unlocked, as it always was. When Alexandra pushed it open and stepped into the house, she heard one of Darnel’s heavy-metal albums playing from his bedroom stereo.

She shut the front door and stepped into the Flints’ living room. Mr Flint’s Old Testament verses crowded the walls and shelves and mantel. Women’s magazines littered the floor; ashtrays overflowed. There was the smell of stale cigarettes tinged with Mr Flint’s English Leather cologne.

She walked down the hallway to Darnel’s room and pushed open the door.

He was propped against his pillows, still in his pajamas. J.D.’s twin bed was neatly made beside his. It took Darnel a few seconds to look up from his Penthouse magazine. When he saw her, he grinned. His cheeks were puffy and white, and as always they seemed to be printed with circles of rouge.

‘Well, well, well, look who came for a visit. My little fiancée. Couldn’t stay away, could you?’

He set the magazine aside and started to get up. Then he saw the pistol and his grin crumpled.

‘You killed Pugsy,’ she said.

She watched herself from above, a girl in pink shorts and a yellow top, white Keds, holding a .38 Smith & Wesson down by her side. She felt giddy and breathless from being so far outside her body.

‘Jesus Christ! What do you think you’re doing with that gun?’

He was kneeling in the center of the unmade bed.

‘You killed my dog, Darnel. Admit what you did.’ She lifted the gun a few inches but didn’t point it at him.

‘Okay, okay, I killed the damn dog. He was getting old anyway. He was a pest.’

She took a deep breath and blew it out.

‘You shoot me, they’ll send you to the electric chair. You’ll get fried.’

‘You’re going to stop bothering me, Darnel.’

‘Yeah, yeah. Sure. Whatever you say.’

‘You’re going to stop coming to my window and you aren’t ever going to touch me again, either.’

‘All right, all right,’ he said, staring at the gun. ‘I won’t ever bother you again. Okay? Now get out of here.’

‘You’ve got to swear on a Bible.’

She kept the pistol at her side.

He looked wildly around the room.

‘This will do.’ He leaned over to his bedside table and picked up one of his schoolbooks – twelfth-grade civics.

‘And swear you’ll never tell anyone what you did to me, either.’

‘Okay, yeah. I swear. I swear. All of it. Every single word you just said.’ He pressed the civics text against his heart.

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Goddamn it, I swore, didn’t I? You and me, it’s finished. I got another girlfriend anyway. I’m not interested in you anymore, you little shrimp.’