to go.” She tried to wriggle free, but his arms felt like bars of iron. “I need to start dinner . . .”
“There’s no rush. I’ll bet you’re lonely. And, look, no one’s home yet. We have time.” He was using his knuckles to rub at the side of her breast, and he had lapsed into a horrible, lisping baby talk. “I don’t want my poor widdle Bethie to be all alone in the big dark house.”
Bethie hated that the house was empty, that Mel was right, that she would be all alone. She wished, with a panicky desperation, for her mother to come driving down the street, or for her sister to ride up on her bike. She tried to shrink, to make her body smaller. “Please, Uncle Mel, I need to go do my homework.”
“My Bethie’s a scholar!” He sounded proud of her as he rubbed his chin up and down against the part in her hair.
“Uncle Mel, I need to go now!” With a great wrench, she pulled away from him, hopped out of the car, kicked the car door shut, and raced for the front door, yanking her key out from underneath her blouse. For a minute, she imagined that she could feel his breath on the back of her neck. Her hands were shaking, and it took her three tries to fit the key into the lock, but she finally got it there, just as she heard the sound of Uncle Mel’s footsteps behind her, like a monster in a horror movie. Bethie turned, reluctantly, and saw that he was holding her books and the cardboard box of towels. “Don’t want to forget these!” His voice was cheery, and his expression was pleasant, like he hadn’t done anything wrong. And maybe he hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d hugged her, rubbed the top of her head, brushed the side of her breast, but maybe by accident? Or maybe she’d imagined it? Bethie examined her memories, hearing Uncle Mel whistling again as he strolled back to his car. As he drove past her, he tapped the horn, giving two cheery honks—beep, beep! Bethie jumped and turned, just in time to see him waving and hear him call, “See you next week!”
She walked into the empty house, setting the towels by their own, far less spacious linen closet, dumping her schoolbooks on her bed. She left Uncle Mel’s money on the kitchen table. In the bathroom, she stripped off her clothes and stood under the hot water and she scrubbed until her skin was bright red. She still felt dirty, like there was an oily residue all over her skin, sticking to her like cling wrap, like she would never be clean again.
In the kitchen, she seasoned a chicken, feeling her stomach roll as she touched its pimply skin and pulled the pinfeathers out of its wings. She and her mother and her sister would have roast chicken for dinner, chicken salad for lunch, and chopped-up cooked chicken baked under a coating of Velveeta cheese or cream of mushroom soup for dinner the following night. Bethie scrubbed two baking potatoes, pricked their skins with a fork, and put them in the oven, and she cut up the remaining quarter head of iceberg lettuce that Sarah had left in the crisper. In the very back of the refrigerator was a bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough. This was Jo’s treat. Jo loved chocolate chip cookies, and on weekends she’d make a double batch of dough at Lynnette’s house, bring it home, and bake a few cookies every night. With all the exercising she did, Jo could eat all the dessert she wanted and not see it show up on her thighs, but Bethie and Sarah both watched their weight, and the most Bethie ever ate was one.
That night, Bethie pulled the bowl out of the refrigerator and a mixing spoon out of the drawer. She scooped a walnut-sized glob of dough out of the bowl and shoved it in her mouth. Almost before she’d swallowed that bite, she’d scooped out another, working to force the spoon through stiff, cold dough. She sat at the kitchen table, with the spoon in her hand and the bowl tucked between her arm and her body, scooping and eating and scooping and eating and scooping and eating some more, the spoon moving faster as the dough warmed up, filling her mouth with the cloying sweetness of sugar and chocolate, swallowing in breathless gulps,