You Let Me In - Camilla Bruce Page 0,13

he did that: taste me—but he liked to show me off. It made me feel special, the way he treated me, the gifts and the kindness, the secrets we shared. The kisses and words that told me he cared. I almost forgot about the pain sometimes, floating on his words.

When he pushed those soft, sweet cakes between my lips, I almost forgot that it hurt.

VII

“Have you ever thought about the possibility that you might remember these things wrong?” Dr. Martin once asked me.

“I remember them as they were,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. I was still new then, and unused to our sessions. The chair in his office was large and soft; I often felt like I was drowning in it. My feet didn’t reach the floor. I think the chair was meant to comfort us, the strange and troubled youths who went there, but to me it only felt intimidating, as if sitting in that chair meant to lose control. I gave up all hope when that chair grabbed hold and held me captive in its soft lap.

There was an oaken desk in there, but Dr. Martin never remained behind it while we talked. He was sitting before me in a more sensible leather chair, his notebook balancing on his knee, pen bleeding blue through the neatly printed lines. His chin was covered in stubble, his hair gray and wispy. His eyes were kind enough, though, when he looked at me.

“Sometimes”—Dr. Martin was looking into my eyes—“something happens that is so horrible, so painful and confusing, our brains take charge and rewrite.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that.”

“Let’s say someone hit you, someone you trust. Maybe the memory of that incident is so hard to carry that you pretend that it was someone else who delivered the blow—or you don’t remember getting hurt at all … The mind is a funny thing, you won’t believe the things it can do if given the chance—”

“I know you don’t believe that Pepper-Man is real.” I looked down at my black shoes, the white stockings. “None of you do. My mother in particular.”

“It’s hard to believe in something you cannot see.” Dr. Martin used his patient voice.

“Doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

“Doesn’t mean it is—even if you think so.”

“Are you calling me a liar?” I shifted as well as I could on the soft seat.

“I think you are an editor. I think you have learned to rewrite certain parts of your story, and I suspect there is another truth to the tale.”

“You are wrong,” I told him. “Everything I tell you is the truth.”

* * *

I had first met Dr. Martin after a long and grueling summer where puberty had hit me, hard and cruel. Mother and I fought over the smallest things, and the china plates often went spinning through the room. She had threatened to send me to a “special doctor” for years—threatened so often that I ceased to believe it would ever happen, but I suppose the flood of hormones was the last straw. Those I take no blame for; it’s just nature, such as it is. But it made everything worse. Worse by far.

I would think back on this time of ceaseless fighting later, when I was the one who had to fight—in vain—to make a teenage girl see reason. It’s as hard as catching a slick fish, the way she skitters and twirls out of reach.

I guess it made me understand my mother a little better, how our quarrels could drive her to tears and wine. Unlike my mother, though, I didn’t have the money yet to pay for someone else to handle the problem. No, I had to deal with my daughter on my own, and not even a barrel of wine would have been enough to take the edge off my misery.

Young girls will do that to you. They will drive you mad.

* * *

You know very little about your cousin, I suppose. The subject would have made your mother uncomfortable, and Olivia never liked to discuss uncomfortable things. If she did speak of it, she would doubtlessly blame me and call me a bad mother, amongst other unpleasant things. At least I always strive to keep my girl happy and safe, which is something our family has never been any good at.

Your mother has doubtlessly told you the stories about me. How I got into fights at school and enacted strange rituals at home—how people were afraid of me. After the