do it anymore. He was starting to look at me with a kindness in his eyes that I can’t take. I think he’s in love with me. At least, some image of me. He isn’t looking closely. He never notices any bruises. He only sees a placeholder for me. The genius, the artist. He’s proud of his conquest. I’m just territory.
Anyway, the boredom doesn’t help at all anymore. I’ve become too accustomed. That’s my problem: I build up a tolerance.
I made prints of the photos I took of him. A kind of farewell rite. Part of me hopes Jake finds them. I want it to happen, I want him to annihilate me, I want this fear to be achieved, and then be gone.
JULY 2 1993
Still impossible to work. Nothing shows up when I tap on the chamber. A snake hides in the grass and waits to strike.
Instead of working, I spent the day at the window, watching each minute leaf flutter in the wind like a tiny flag. The leaf is latched on to its twig, which is latched on to a branch, and the latches are what will break if the wind gets too strong, which it hasn’t. Yet.
JULY 7 1993
When I met Jake, we were so young. We were mostly formed, but not quite. I think if I had been stronger in some ways, if I had resisted better, or if I had resisted less, perhaps he would have become a different man. As it is, I think he sensed all my soft spots and he grew into them. He became accustomed to pushing and getting. He grew to like the feeling of struggle.
He could have been anyone, that first date, the warehouse party. He was just a kid, twenty-seven and hungry, too handsome for his own good, used to getting his way. He could have met anyone that day.
I’m thinking of that tree near the grade school, the one that got sick and had to be taken down. I saw it cut, the trunk carried off … on the outside, it looked like a whole tree, but on the inside it was a mush of rotting wood. That is what Jake sensed in me. It’s why he loved me. It’s why I loved him.
Sometimes at night I hear a noise outside, a whishing, a crackling. I think it is the woods growing around me, growing to cover me tight and keep me here.
JULY 19 1993
Jake, Theo, and I watched two movies today. A Fish Called Wanda, then Edward Scissorhands, back to back, as the afternoon waned. It was too hot but we clung to each other anyway. Limbs pressed against each other. A single heartbeat flowing elbow to knee to elbow. We laughed. I microwaved a frozen pizza for dinner. Jake told me, Good job. Theo asked me to tuck him in.
There are days like this.
AUGUST 8 1993
Last night, he pushed into me even when I said I was tired.
This morning, he was kind. He said I was beautiful, he said he didn’t deserve me.
AUGUST 16 1993
What have I accomplished in my life?
I have captured. I have produced. I have seen things no one else has seen.
I have made money. Money that poured from my eyes and knit me a reputation, a child, a house, a cocoon.
I have used. I have been used.
I have dived into the green ocean, caught seaweed around my ankle, I have flashed through the waves with seals and sharks. I have floated on salt, I have drowned in the air.
I have burst under the intensity of the sun.
AUGUST 18 1993
I got my period today. Every time it comes as a relief. The routine of tampons, the brackish blood.
I love Theo but I hate the way he looks at me. When he sees me, I see myself. If he weren’t here to witness, maybe I’d never have to admit what I am: the wan shriveled husk, hunched in the corner, holding up her hands in surrender. Or fighting back and losing. Imagine being the kind of parent whose child gazes at you in wonder. How rich you must feel, how holy.
Mostly you could blame me for what I have become.
Maybe you could blame Jake.
But it was Theo, too.
Theo was my atom bomb.
That devastation was only the immediate explosion, and all these years since, the aftermath has been multiplying inside me. A shortness of breath. A red and cancerous mass.