sips.” His hand is cool against my forehead, soothing. He takes it away after I drink and presses me back against the exam table, then tells me to scoot down a bit. My feet move into the stirrups without my help.
“This should take less than a minute,” Alex says, pushing the speculum in, opening me up artificially.
I lie still, and for the first time in my life, I allow my body to be violated. In a way, I deserve it.
SIXTY-TWO
THEN:
I started hating Mary Ripley when I was in the twelfth grade, a few months after Mary transferred into the new private high school where I now found myself running with the in crowd of lipsticked and hair-sprayed girls I’d always thought I wanted to be a part of. Every day, I had to sit behind her in Mrs. Hill’s AP English class; every day, I had to watch flakes of dandruff fall from her scalp onto the same black pullover she wore.
She was a thin, redheaded girl from the other side of town, not stupid, but not like the rest of us, just one of the half-dozen charity cases Rockville Academy took on each year. Mary brought her lunch in a crumpled paper bag, worn soft from folding and unfolding and refolding. Her shoes were scuffed and a size too small, so Mary would slip her heels out of them sometimes during class, revealing threadbare socks whose heels had been rubbed to translucency. But I didn’t hate her for being poor, or for being one of ten siblings.
I hated Mary Ripley because she was going to drag me right back to the bottom of the barrel I’d tried so hard to climb out of.
The girls I hung out with called her Scary Mary. They flinched away from her in crowded hallways, worried they might catch something; they huddled at cafeteria tables over bags of chips and hoagie sandwiches they bought with their allowances; they whispered epithets about her overbreeding Irish parents when they thought she couldn’t hear.
“She’s not that bad,” I said that early November Tuesday at lunch. Three pairs of mascaraed eyes flashed at me.
“Maybe you should take her to the homecoming dance instead of Malcolm if you like her so much, El,” Susan joked. She slid down into her chair. “Oh, God. Here she comes.”
Mary was on her way over to us.
“Hi, El,” she said, ignoring the rolling eyes of the other girls. “Maybe we could hang out on Saturday if you’re not doing anything.” Mary had a soft voice, the kind I associated with a dog that had been kicked one time too many.
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s homecoming.”
Susan tittered, elbowing first Becky to her right, then Nicole to her left. When Mary was gone, she said, “You have to get rid of her, El. I mean, people are staring at us.”
On Wednesday, Mary bumped into me after gym class.
One minute I was up, forcing a comb through a still-wet mass of hair, yelling to—I don’t know—Becky or Susan or Nicole across the room. Homecoming was this Saturday, and we were in full what are you wearing? mode, worrying over shoes (strappy or closed toe) and lipsticks (matte or gloss) and what color polish to put on our nails (French mani or classic vixen red).
“I’m going for a Midnight Mauve lipstick this time,” Susan called out from under a towel.
Nicole reached over and snapped the waistband of Susan’s panties. “Like that’s a surprise. They might as well call it Midnight Missionary Position. Or Midnight Billy Baxter’s Cock, since that’s where it’ll end up.”
Susan came back with something equally catty, Nicole howled a laugh, and I started across the locker room to show off my latest makeup acquisition. That’s when Scary Mary, head bent in avoidance or supplication or self-loathing, walked into me.
Give it up, Elena. You walked into her. You didn’t see her because she was invisible and you walked right into her.
And we both went down in a tumble of towels and gym shorts.
Nicole howled again. “Watch it, Len, or you’ll get those Catholic cooties on you.”
I could have said something.