“Don’t you have any other friends, someone you told about us?”
“Naw. Everyone I’ve worked with is a creep, an irresponsible bastard. I know guys who leave their wives and kids fending for themselves. Selfish bastards. Besides, most wouldn’t appreciate what we have
and what a girl like you means. They’d ask only about the sex. C’mon, sit and eat,” he said. “Stop worrying about me. Worry about yourself. You’re days away from being better and strong enough to get pregnant. That’s what we want, right?”
“Yes,” I said quickly.
He smiled, and I sat at the table. How ironic it was now for me to be hungry, to eat well, and really try to get healthy again. I had no idea when he would decide that I was ready to make his baby, but the healthier I became, the closer I came to the day he would rape me. What was my choice? Stay sickly? Maybe it wouldn’t matter. Tomorrow, in fact, he might look at me and say it was time, and I would never have the strength to fight him off. If I tried to do that, there was no question in my mind that he would become very violent.
I recalled the conversation Haylee and I had had about rape, and now that I had tried to escape and failed, now that I was physically weak and feeling defeated, I realized I would probably do what she’d said she could do: accept it by trying to imagine I was with someone I liked. Ironically, Haylee had put me in a place where I could survive only if I was more like her after all.
When we were little, we used to play the switch game. We’d take each other’s name and pretend we were each other. Mother had even caught us doing it but thought it was a sweet and loving thing for us to do. It had seemed to confirm her belief in what we were.
“You could easily be each other,” she’d told us once after seeing us do this. “You are the same person. You like and dislike the same things. No sisters will ever love each other as much as you two love each other, because it’s like loving yourself. That’s why you must try never to fight or argue with each other. You never have to be jealous of each other, and you must always want the best for each other because it’s the best for yourself.
“People will see this about you, and they will be amazed. They will understand why I think you’re so special. My girls,” she had said, hugging us to her. “My wonderful, unselfish girls.”
I remembered looking at Haylee and seeing the unhappiness in her face. It was one thing to pretend and play a game, but the game always ended. She didn’t really want to be me. I never said it then. I even tried not to look it, but I felt the same way. I certainly felt it stronger and stronger as we grew older. I didn’t really want to be her.
Nevertheless, I supposed we had spent most of our youth trying to get us to be more like each other, me like her, her like me. It had been a struggle we knew enough not to let Mother see, but it was always there. Haylee loved to say, “You’ll realize I’m right.” She was so confident that I would become more like her, whereas I was never confident that she would be more like me. The older we became, the more I was convinced that we were very different people, despite the things Mother had said or had pointed out to us and everyone. Half of the things we did that made us seem so perfectly identical were things we did just to please her anyway.
Whenever Haylee did get me to do something I didn’t want to do, she’d looked so pleased. She wanted to be more in charge, more powerful, more everything, but she was smart enough not to try to compete with me in some things, like schoolwork, especially math and science. She was content using me to keep her grades high enough to satisfy Mother. If she couldn’t compete in something, she would dismiss it as not very important.
There was never a question about which one of us was tougher, shrewder, and more conniving. Haylee always had been, and the truth was, I had depended on her strength often. She would defend me as hard as she could defend herself. Sometimes I didn’t like the way she went about it, distorting the truth and lying about any girl who tried to hurt me or was jealous and cruel toward me. If that didn’t work, she would get in her face in the locker room or the girls’ bathroom and threaten her so crudely and firmly, the girl couldn’t apologize and stay out of my way fast enough.
In some ways, then, I supposed Mother was right. We were two halves of one perfect girl. I provided what she needed, and she did the same for me. But, like her, I wanted to be completely myself. Right now, I had no choice. If I didn’t become Haylee when I needed to, then yes, I would suffer more. She was winning in so many ways after all.
In the days that passed, I ate well, nibbled on the weight-gain bars, and felt myself getting stronger and stronger. Without the chain anchored to my ankle, I moved about more, exercised, kept myself clean, tried to occupy myself with my diary, and tried to come up with a new plan of escape. Anthony brought down the crib and put it together. He wanted me to admire how well it had been kept for so many years, something for which he praised his mother. He was talking about her now more than ever. Sometimes he would spend hours describing how she had brought him up in a house with so much conflict, all created by his father. He wanted me to understand how much she had protected him. He vowed to be as protective of our child as she had been of him. He was determined to be the opposite of his father in every way.
I was tempted to tell him, to suggest that he was being more like his father by imprisoning me, but I didn’t dare. As time passed, he dwelled more and more on our having a baby, being surprisingly detailed about how we would bring up our child, what things he would teach him or her, ranging from manners to basic survival in nature. He listed what sorts of toys we would buy, always something educational, and he promised we would always eat dinner together like a family should. He promised that he would make sure to read our little boy or girl bedtime stories and showed me the books he had on the shelves, stacked in the order in which they should be read.
Almost always, he would end by telling me how important it would be for our child to have a brother or sister, which he had told me about before but was now planning to the point of how soon after the birth of the first child we should work on the second. He claimed that he had done a great deal of reading about it. Maybe it was his horrible upbringing and his loneliness that made him so determined to have a successful family. It truly amazed me how out of the mouth of a madman trickled promises that any good parent would want to see come true.
As the days went by, I struggled to think of ways I could hold him off. Although I didn’t have a mirror, I could look at my body and see that I was regaining weight quickly. When I would finish eating, he would force me to eat a little more or have another weight-gain bar before going to sleep. I was beginning to feel like a farm animal being fattened up for slaughter, only in this case my slaughter would be sexual intercourse and, as he predicted, a few times a day. He talked about that and his sexual powers as if he was a horse put out to stud.
His conversation circled back to the plan to improve the basement apartment. Once I was strong enough to get pregnant, I was obviously strong enough to help redo the walls and floors so we’d have that togetherness he thought was so important. The day he brought down materials to begin the new flooring, I knew my time was nearing. If the sex was not starting this very evening, then surely it would start the next.
To keep me happy, he did what he had promised and began bringing home more clothing, shoes, new makeup and colognes, even some costume jewelry that included matching necklaces and earrings. Every evening after the first two days of what I would call forced feeding, he would take me upstairs to have a bath. Now he would let me bathe myself. He would stand guard at the door or stand beside the bathtub and talk as I washed myself. I sensed that he was measuring my recuperation. I could see it in the way he studied my hips, ribs, arms, and legs. I was somewhere between embarrassment and self-denial.
He treated me with a strange, almost asexual respect, not mauling me or doing anything that could be considered sexual. At times, I felt as if he thought someone was watching us to make sure he behaved. I was always anticipating it, but it had yet to happen. If anything, I continued to feel like some sort of animal being prepared for slaughter. The tension and expectation were maddening at times. Whenever he did touch me, as innocent as it was, my body would get as tense and taut as a bow and arrow. I would close my eyes, hold my breath, and think, H
ere it comes. But it had yet to happen.
Nevertheless, there was no doubt that it would. To him, the event and the date were almost holy, so it couldn’t be impulsive. Finally, on the afternoon he had me assist him in laying the carpet, he declared that I needed only one more day to recuperate. I tried not to look frantic, but my heart began to pound. I gazed at the door and at him bent over, measuring something. He did concentrate when he worked, but did I dare try another run for it? Even with my strengthened legs and better shoes, I’d never make it, I thought. This time, if I tried and failed, it would surely be worse for me. Instead, I forced a smile, nodded, and continued to help him with the work.
The following morning, our lovemaking was all he talked about at breakfast.
“I’ll be hurrying home from work today,” he vowed. “We’ll have a nice dinner, with some wine and music, and make love a few times. I can be quite the stud when I have to be.”
All I could think of was to keep him talking. “Have you had many girlfriends?”
“More than my share. Of course, none of them could hold a candle to you. I don’t mind confessing that I was with some who could have used a bag over their heads. Good sex but no romance, understand? I’m a little ashamed of those times. My mother could sense when I had been out with some tramp. She’d say things like, ‘You smell like you been with trash, boy.’
“Of course, my father would laugh and say, ‘Who else would go out with him?’?”
“How horrible for you.”
“Yeah, how horrible,” he said, nodding, his face filling with rage. I said nothing, and he looked at me and quickly smiled. “No bad thoughts, hear? We have no bad thoughts today or tonight. Bad thoughts can trickle down into your deepest soul and contaminate your child.”