But all that had changed. I knew now.
I knew also that I ought to get up to do the jobs my mother expected me to do on Saturday mornings: vacuuming, laundry. Slowly, I unfolded myself from the bed and went to stand in front of the window, which looked out onto the side yard. The sun had passed the point where it shone in the window, and the banana palm just outside now cast a green shadow.
Beyond, however, the sun dazzled. I heard the sound of water running, splashing on concrete. Someone was washing a car on this fine morning, someone was cleaning things up.
I turned, pulling off my nightgown as I did, reaching to open my drawer. I was putting on my underpants when I heard somebody bang open the front door.
One of my brothers? My mother home early?
Heavy footsteps crossed the living room and started down the hall. Not one of my brothers, because they would have taken off their shoes before stepping on the wall-to-wall carpet in the living room, and my dad avoided the room period, coming in the back and through the other hallway whenever he could. Strange.
It wasn’t until the footsteps turned at the end of the hall and then started toward my room that I even wondered if it might be Danny.
In my bare feet I padded silently over to the door and listened. There was someone outside. Definitely not one of my brothers.
Every one of them would have rattled my doorknob and then barged in. I hated that, I’d been complaining about it since I was nine or so and became aware of the idea that boys shouldn’t see girls in their various stages of undress. But my mother had said to keep my door shut, and that was that. Expecting anything more from men and boys was completely beyond hope.
So, the breathing I heard on the other side of the door, and the heat that seemed to come through it, were not coming from someone in the family. Not from someone who might think he had a right to be disagreeable, to bother me, to invade my territory.
And nobody else but Danny knew which room was mine. I finished pulling on my T-shirt and shorts, and then opened the door a crack.
“Hello,” I said.
His hair was standing on end, and he hadn’t shaved. His eyes were bloodshot. The smell of something sour—sweat, stale beer, confined spaces—blew toward me. His shirt was rumpled, a long drip of motor oil ran down the right leg of his pants, grease covered his hands.
Grease didn’t bother me, grease was something that my father was never able to get out from around his fingernails, something that went with security and a male world that was safe, not threatening. But Danny’s smell, his disarray, his urgency disgusted me.
“You ran out on me,” he said. His voice was hoarse, and when he opened his mouth his breath stank.
I didn’t reply right away. I could feel his edginess just as strongly as I could smell his breath.
“You took off with somebody.”
“I called a cab,” I said. “I was tired of waiting.”
“No, you ran out on me, you went to meet somebody else,” he said, pushing the door open and coming into my room. He looked around quickly, and I imagined what he took in: the windows open and the curtains blowing in the light breeze. My single bed still unmade with the pillow punched into the shape I liked, my nightgown sliding off toward the floor. My desk with my school books, my stack of stuffed animals, the dirty clothes overflowing the closet, waiting for me to do the laundry.
“Why did you leave me?” he asked. He reached for my arm with his right hand and for a second I thought he was going to be rough with me. “Why did you do that?”
“Because I got tired of waiting,” I repeated, trying to be matter-of-fact. “Simple as that. I’d been sitting in the car for more than an hour and you just kept on doing whatever it was you were doing ...”
“But you knew I’d be out in a few minutes,” he said. “You knew that the guy was my boss, you can’t just get up and leave when he’s asking you to help ...”
“You didn’t have to go by,” I said. “You dragged me there, and you said you’d be only a minute, and ...”
He was reaching for my other arm now, standing close to me, raising his voice. I turned, trying to twist out of his grasp. At least one of my brothers was probably there, if I called out he would hear. Or the person washing a car nearby would. There was really nothing to be alarmed about, there was someone nearby.
He seemed to realize that his grip might be frightening. “Look,” he said, “let’s sit down and talk this over. You ran out on me and you went to some surfer party.” He pushed me gently toward my bed. For a second we stood next to it. I could feel him trying to decide if he should push me down.
“If you aren’t interested in me, I don’t see why I shouldn’t go where people are,” I said. I twisted my shoulders again, making my arms move under his grip. He wasn’t being rough with me, he wasn’t even holding me very tight, but I didn’t like it.
His eyes bored into me. “But I am interested in you,” he said. “I love you, for Christ’s sake.” Then he dropped his hands from my arms and sat down heavily on the bed. He put his elbows on his knees so he could cradle his head in his hands, covering his face. “Oh, Annie,” he said, his voice cracking into sobs.
That would have been the time to go to the door and call for my brother, I knew later. No, I knew even then, as I stood listening to him blubber. But I didn’t do anything. I merely waited and listened, and then, as his sobs began to splutter to a stop, I sat down next to him even though he still smelled, even though his dirty clothes were disgusting, even though I wanted to have nothing more to do with him.
“Are you going to be all right?” I asked.I wasn’t touching him. I knew it would be a mistake to even put out my hand to give him Kleenex from the box I kept by the head of my bed. So I sat.
“Yeah,” he said, after a minute. He pulled out a dirty handkerchief, covered with grease too. He blew his nose and then stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket. He turned toward me and reached up with both his hands to cup my face between them. “I love you,” he said again. “I really do.” Then he leaned forward and kissed me on the lips.
It was a kiss that started out to be just as innocent as the one that R.J. might have given me the night before: dry, lip to lip, nothing enticing. His breath was awful, and I found myself holding my own breath to keep from smelling his. But it was a long kiss, which took me by surprise with only half a lungful of air. After a few seconds I found myself running out of breath, pulling back, opening my mouth to say, “Whoa, let me breathe.”
But his hands held my face next to his, and he slipped his tongue in as soon as my lips parted. I tried to pull air in through my nose, I twisted my head, I brought my hands up to push him away, but he moved closer, tipping me back on the bed so that he was covering me.
What followed was inevitable, I decided afterwards. He was stronger than I was, he was still more than a little drunk, his pride had been hurt. And he loved me after his fashion.
I saw that then, as I saw it later.
Afterwards he was embarrassed and ashamed and afraid I’d tell my brothers. But I had no intention of doing that, because to do so would be to acknowledge that he had a claim on me. As I lay under him, listening to him ask my pardon, waiting for him to let me up, I felt my heart harden. No, I told myself, this is not happening. This does not count. I cannot bear to have it count.
“Get out of here,” I said, when he had finished apologizing. “I don’t want to see you ever again,” I added, sitting up now that he was off me.“I am going to go down the hall to the bathroom, and I am going to take a shower, and when I come back I want you out of here. Otherwise ...”
I left the threat floating in the air. Then I stood up and walked, my legs shaking, to the bathroom. I shut the door