Gabriel Tallent - My Absolute Darling

“You are mine ,” he says, and swings the fire poker around and strikes her on the arm and she pitches onto her stomach in the mud, her left arm numb, her shoulder broken-feeling, and she tries to rise, gets one hand under herself and heaves up and he plants his boot on the small of her back and drives her to the ground. He raises the poker into the air, and she thinks, get away, get away, Turtle, for your life get away , but she is pinned in place by his boot and she thinks, you have to—you have to, but she cannot move, and he brings the fire poker down onto the back of her thighs, and she bucks, spasms.

“ Mine ,” he says, his voice breaking. She rakes up handfuls of mud, tries to haul herself out from beneath his boot and cannot. She cannot let him bring the poker down on her again, she cannot. Her body is filled with pain. It is the only thing she can think of, and in her mind, she repeats it over and over—no, no, no, no—and her helplessness is the only thing, locking up her entire brain with mindless panic, and he does not even seem to care, leaning over her, bearing down with his heel. “You are mine,” he says, “you little bitch, you are mine .”

“Please, Daddy,” she says, wrapping her hands together as if in prayer, laying her face into the mud, “don’t, please don’t, please, Daddy, don’t .” She cannot get a good look at him out of the corner of her eye, his figure stooped, hesitating, and she waits and thinks that he is done, and then she sees him raise his arm and the terror is like biting into a live wire, unendurable, and he brings the poker down hard onto her thighs and her body locks and bucks.

“Please,” she says.

“Listen, Julia Alveston. Listen,” he says, and he thrusts the poker forward so that the spur catches below her jawline, and he uses the hook to lift her face from the mud. “If you think I have not seen how you are different . If you think I have not seen you pulling away. If you think I have not had my suspicions.”

“No,” she says.

“You are mine,” he says, and tosses the poker into the ashen water and steps away from her. “Get up,” he says. Turtle struggles. She gets a hand under herself, goes onto a knee. “Get the fuck up,” he says very quietly. She does not think she is going to be able to stand, and then she thinks, get your feet under you, Turtle. Get them under you. She rises, gripping the side of the trash barrel, white-knuckled.

“That’s right, you fucking stand ,” he says to her. She straightens. “Go back to your room,” he says, “and if we ever have this conversation again, if I ever see so much as an ounce of hesitation in you, of doubt, believe you me, I will fuck you with that poker.” She starts limping away. With difficulty, she makes it up the porch steps. Martin says, “And, kibble?”

She stops. She isn’t able to turn. It is all she can do to stay standing. He says, “Don’t ever let yourself go down like that again. You understand? I don’t care if you get hit by a fucking truck . You land on your feet. You hear me, kibble?”

She nods tiredly. She walks back in through the open sliding glass door, and she starts up the stairs, leaning against the wall with her good shoulder, making soft noises of pain. She limps to her room, shuts the door, and very slowly lowers herself onto her bed. She closes her eyes, and the dark blooms red and golden behind her eyelids. She thinks, this is me. This is me. This is who I am, and this is where I live. She thinks, my daddy hates me. Then she thinks, no, that’s not fair. She goes to sleep thinking of it.

When dawn touches her window with gray light, Turtle struggles off the bed. She braces against the steamer trunk, bent over, breathing painfully through clenched teeth, but she stays on her feet. She thinks, I will not fall down. She takes measured and difficult steps to the doorway. She makes it down the stairs only with great difficulty, one step at a time, grimacing. Martin is standing in the open kitchen door, looking out on the back deck, as she comes into the kitchen. She opens the fridge and takes out her carton of eggs and a beer. She turns and pitches him the beer underhand. He catches it and opens it on his teeth, grimacing as he bites down on the cap. He stands drinking and holds it against his chest. Turtle lifts an egg, cracks it into her mouth, discards the shell into the compost. Martin comes over and proffers her the beer. She drinks and cuffs at her mouth. He accepts it back and drinks and exhales with the pleasure of it. She crosses painfully to her backpack, kneels down, and with great difficulty pulls on her old combat boots. She struggles with the sliding glass door, using only her right hand, and walks down the driveway to the bus. He follows her out and down onto the bottom of the drive. They stand by the road together.

“You don’t have to come,” she says.

“Yeah,” he says.

In the near-silence of the morning, she leans against the mailbox, snuffling and grimacing. When the bus does arrive, her limping gait draws looks from both sides of the aisle. She moves carefully, putting her hands on the backs of the seats. She passes Rilke, and Rilke turns around and looks and says, “Julie? Are you all right?”

Turtle stops, hate climbing up through her, hate that Rilke—who is beautiful, who has lovely straight hair softened and glossy with honey and jojoba oil, whose parents love her and who has all the bobby pins and lip gloss and things she could ever need, Rilke for whom everything comes so easily, Rilke who is going to go on to high school, no question, and who will intrigue Jacob and Brett and everyone else with her shining little intellect and her bright little pens and her careful, studious way of doing things, this Rilke, whose life is enchanted , who is blessed above Turtle by the inscrutable order of things, Turtle hates that this Rilke should see her weak and tired, should see that her daddy hates her, should see that Turtle will never have a boyfriend, will never have anything, and so Turtle turns slowly and looks at Rilke, her face a rictus of disgust and scorn, and she says, “What do you know about it, sugar tits?”

A ripple of laughter runs down the bus, among people who were listening, and Turtle sees the succession of confusion to anger and then to hurt, and Rilke wraps her hands around herself, pulling her red coat up onto her shoulders, and she bends over her book, opening her mouth as if to say something, and not coming up with anything to say.

Turtle turns and walks away, and she thinks, that’s not me, that’s not who I am, that is Martin, that is something Martin does—his knack for finding the thing you hate about yourself and giving it a name. She thinks, Christ, that was so much more like Martin, derisive, condescending, than it was like me. She limps down the aisle, sits, and crushes her face into the vinyl seat ahead of her. She thinks, this is the part of him I hate most, the part that I revile, and I reached for it and it came easy. Christ, she thinks, Christ. Then she thinks, so what, so what if I am a misogynist. I never liked women anyway.

Anna stands at the front of the class and says, “Number one. ‘Exacerbate.’ Spell, define, and use in a sentence, please.” Turtle puts pen to paper. She thinks, you are no good at this, and then she thinks, what if you never got knocked down and you always did your best to stand up and instead of being a little bitch you fought for it, and she thinks, you have Grandpa’s knife and he never would’ve given it to you if he didn’t think you were a fighter and not a coward, even if you have been a coward and will be again, maybe that is not all you will ever be, and what if you never let anyone knock you down, and she thinks, it would take a great deal of courage to be more than Martin believes I can be. Maybe I don’t have to be what he thinks I am and maybe he would hate me anyway. Maybe he will hate me and love me whatever I do and it doesn’t much matter. What are you thinking for, the difference is that today you have studied and you are ready for it and you never studied before, and heroism never got anyone anywhere unless they’d already done the work. She thinks, poor Turtle, your life is so hard. Why don’t you cry about it? She thinks, why don’t you go away and cry and never do anything to make it better and never see Jacob again and then you can just cry and cry like the little bitch you are. She puts her pen to paper and writes: