Miranda began to cry. She didn’t remember losing her virginity. She recalled the pool, the trout catching edges of light. The dam. She remembered the dam. She wept blood. She recalled the tower and it falling, being under it falling. But she didn’t remember losing her virginity.
She saw herself walking up over the hill. She saw the feed mill. It was midsummer, her last in Waldron. The heat rose in waves from the steel roof. There was no one around. Close by the mill, she heard cool water running underneath. She reached out and touched the side of a sports car parked by the loading dock with its top down, ran her fingers along the edge of the cockpit, read the insignia, XK 150, Jaguar. It was British racing green. She touched the back of the worn leather seats. She heard a door slam on its spring, heard voices. She moved on past the mill and up the incline where she disappeared into the dark tunnel of cedars that had been planted a hundred and fifty years before to shore up the mounded banks of the race. She saw herself walking, saw through her own eyes as she walked step by step under the canopy of trees, the depths of shadow opening in front of her, myriad bits of light falling through the foliage to illuminate the path in the still, hot air. She heard twigs snap under her feet and heard the dry grasses brush against her legs. She heard the sound of her blouse rushing against her skin as she walked, and she heard the hush of her own breath through her nostrils. She felt sweat slide down her legs and the inside of her arms. She inhaled the deep metal smell of water slipping along the race to the mill, and the lovely dry sweet smell of the withering cedar. Then she caught the scent of the shallows at the edge of the pond and the resinous odour of pines by the dam, and the dark tunnel opened into the glittering meadow.
Miranda watched herself carefully spread a towel on the grass beside the dam. Then, without looking at the ruined mill, consciously ignoring the tower, she slipped off her blouse and shorts and spread lotion on her arms and legs. Standing, she unhooked her bra and stepped out of her panties, dropped them into the small pile of her clothes, bent to pick up the lotion again, began to sit down, changed her mind, straightened and walked over to the shallows, moved along to the dam where it was deeper, stood tall, addressing the sun, dived into the pond, swam to the shallows, and waded to the shore where she walked back to her towel, sat down, picked up the lotion, tossed
it aside, and without drying herself, lay back with her eyes closed in the beating sunlight.
Back in her bedroom, Miranda felt the rising light of day against her skin and twisted in bed to shield her eyes. She wasn’t awake and she wasn’t asleep. She didn’t want to leave the pond. She knew she had to stay, and some mechanism inside her, the impulse for survival that had expunged this episode from her memory, now insisted she see it through. She waited, the city stayed distant in her mind, the sun beat down on her, and perhaps she slept in its heat. When the sun suddenly disappeared, she opened her eyes and a dark figure loomed over her, outlined in fire. At first she thought it was Celia; they often scared each other or shook water across each other. She didn’t move; it wasn’t Celia. It was a male, his outline, a man, not a boy. He was naked, but she couldn’t see his penis, not with the blinding sun behind him. She tried to see it — that seemed to be the centre of the unfolding drama. He was moving slowly, his face in shadow. He leaned down. His hands grasped hers and held her against the ground. She didn’t struggle. He seemed to be manoeuvring between her legs.
“Don’t,” she said. “Please don’t hurt me.”
He settled back on his knees between her legs, watching her carefully, releasing her arms which lay dead at her sides. He reached out and touched her breasts, first with his fingertips, and when she lay perfectly still, he cupped them against his palms.
“Please,” she said again, “don’t hurt me.”
He responded to her voice, kneading her breasts as if he expected her to respond, but he wasn’t passionate. He was methodical. He ran his hands down the sides of her body and drew one hand across her pubic hair, letting his fingers play in the curls at the top. She shuddered, for the first time beginning to shake, and whimpered. She lay as rigidly as she could. His fingers feigned innocence and toyed with the soft curly hairs, fluffing them out in the sunlight, gradually dropping down into the cleft of her vagina. She froze, but he seemed not to notice.
He reached under her hips and lifted her pelvis toward his own kneeling body. She felt the earth press through the towel against her back, her arms at her sides, powerless through fear and wonder. He dropped her bottom against the towel and leaned forward. With one hand he guided himself and spread the lips of her vagina with his other hand. Then, after a brief pause, he thrust deep inside her. She howled — one low deep-throated bewildered utterance that trailed off into a sob and finally silence.
The pain was intensely focused for a moment, then spread in waves through her entire body. He kept thrusting and thrusting, driving her against the ground. She felt the towel abrading her skin, the pebbles in the grass. She felt him large inside her, and it was strangely familiar, like the feeling after orgasms with her mother’s massager, though she had never put anything inside herself. Suddenly, a tremendous shuddering of the man’s weight ran panic into her like a weapon, and for the first time she pushed up against him, trying to throw him off, to escape.
He raised himself on his arms, crushing against her pelvis. He seemed to be smiling, but she couldn’t make out his features. Then he began again, grinding into her, and she couldn’t move, couldn’t shrink away. Pressed from underneath by the solid earth, she could only adjust her body to his so that his pelvic bones didn’t grind against hers, his rib cage didn’t crush her chest. Several times he stopped, slid down so that he could mouth her breasts without his penis slipping out, sucked at her, nibbled, trying to give her pleasure, she thought, and felt no pleasure but didn’t feel disgust, only fear. When he came this time, he lifted her as if he were trying to bring her along with him, and when he was spent, he lowered himself gently against her.
Time passed, and he leaned back on his knees. “Turn over,” he said, lifting one of her legs awkwardly in front of him, across his body, pivoting her around.
She felt horribly exposed. “Don’t hurt me,” she said. On her stomach she clenched her buttocks and whispered hoarsely into the earth. “Don’t. Please don’t.”
“Stay just like that.” His voice was dispassionate. “Look at the ground.” With a curiously gentle caress, he drew his hands slowly across her thighs and cupped her buttocks, awkwardly giving them a lingering massage, perhaps imitating affection. “Just stay like that until I’m gone. Give me lots of time.”
He stood and walked a short distance to the edge of the shadowy cedars. From the sounds she heard, she figured he was dressing. Then she heard nothing. He must have approached her naked, she thought. He must have felt ridiculously vulnerable. What if she had laughed? Would he have run off, would he have hurt her?
Slowly, Miranda rolled over. She didn’t know whether to cry. Her whole frame shivered violently and then became very still. She was confused by the strange diffusion of pain that spread from a sharp centre between her legs through her entire body. She wasn’t revolted, and if she was stunned, she conveyed this by acting with deliberation, as if everything were the same. She got up and walked over to the dam, dived cleanly into the dark water, swam to the shallows where she squatted and splashed waves of water against herself. Then she went back to where her clothes were still neatly piled on the grass beside the towel, got dressed, folded the towel, opened it again, shook it out, spread it in the sunlight, stained and ugly, and left it there. She walked out along the race, past the mill, where the green sports car was gone, strode up and over the hill and down into the village, into her house where her mother and sister were watching Days of Our Lives, into her room where she changed her underwear and threw her panties into the disposal bag in the bathroom reserved for used sanitary napkins. After a scalding shower, she dressed in a loose shift, went back into the living room, sat beside her sister and mother, and watched the rest of the soap opera, never admitting to her innermost self until now that the incident had happened, or that she might have known who her first sad lover had been.
8
Red Herring