shirt, I wept. I began to leave
my body; I began to inhabit the air and the silence. I wept and struggled so I would not feel. He ripped open my pants, not
having found the invisible zipper my mother had artfully sewn into their side.
“Big white panties,” he said.
I felt huge and bloated. I felt like a sea in which he stood and pissed and shat. I felt the corners of my body were turning
in on themselves and out, like in cat’s cradle, which I played with Lindsey just to make her happy. He started working himself
over me.
“Susie! Susie!” I heard my mother calling. “Dinner is ready.”
He was inside me. He was grunting.
“We’re having string beans and lamb.”
I was the mortar, he was the pestle.
“Your brother has a new finger painting, and I made apple crumb cake.”
Mr. Harvey made me lie still underneath him and listen to the beating of his heart and the beating of mine. How mine skipped
like a rabbit, and how his thudded, a hammer against cloth. We lay there with our bodies touching, and, as I shook, a powerful
knowledge took hold. He had done this thing to me and I had lived. That was all. I was still breathing. I heard his heart.
I smelled his breath. The dark earth surrounding us smelled like what it was, moist dirt where worms and animals lived their
daily lives. I could have yelled for hours.
I knew he was going to kill me. I did not realize then that I was an animal already dying.
“Why don’t you get up?” Mr. Harvey said as he rolled to the side and then crouched over me.
His voice was gentle, encouraging, a lover’s voice on a late morning. A suggestion, not a command.
I could not move. I could not get up.
When I would not—was it only that, only that I would not follow his suggestion?—he leaned to the side and felt, over his head,
across the ledge where his razor and shaving cream sat. He brought back a knife. Unsheathed, it smiled at me, curving up in
a grin.
He took the hat from my mouth.
“Tell me you love me,” he said.
Gently, I did.
The end came anyway.
TWO
W hen I first entered heaven I thought everyone saw what I saw. That in everyone’s heaven there were soccer goalposts in the
distance and lumbering women throwing shot put and javelin. That all the buildings were like suburban northeast high schools
built in the 1960s. Large, squat buildings spread out on dismally landscaped sandy lots, with overhangs and open spaces to
make them feel modern. My favorite part was how the colored blocks were turquoise and orange, just like the blocks in Fairfax
High. Sometimes, on Earth, I had made my father drive me by Fairfax High so I could imagine myself there.
Following the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades of middle school, high school would have been a fresh start. When I got to
Fairfax High I would insist on being called Suzanne. I would wear my hair feathered or up in a bun. I would have a body that
the boys wanted and the girls envied, but I’d be so nice on top of it all that they would feel too guilty to do anything but
worship me. I liked to think of myself—having reached a sort of queenly status—as protecting misfit kids in the cafeteria.
When someone taunted Clive Saunders for walking like a girl, I would deliver swift vengeance with my foot to the taunter’s
less-protected parts. When the boys teased Phoebe Hart for her sizable breasts, I would give a speech on why boob jokes weren’t
funny. I had to forget that I too had made lists in the margins of my notebook when Phoebe walked by: Winnebagos, Hoo-has,
Johnny Yellows. At the end of my reveries, I sat in the back of the car as my father drove. I was beyond reproach. I would
overtake high school in a matter of days, not years, or, inexplicably, earn an Oscar for Best Actress during my junior year.
These were my dreams on Earth.
After a few days in heaven, I realized that the javelin-throwers and the shot-putters and the boys who played basketball on
the
my body; I began to inhabit the air and the silence. I wept and struggled so I would not feel. He ripped open my pants, not
having found the invisible zipper my mother had artfully sewn into their side.
“Big white panties,” he said.
I felt huge and bloated. I felt like a sea in which he stood and pissed and shat. I felt the corners of my body were turning
in on themselves and out, like in cat’s cradle, which I played with Lindsey just to make her happy. He started working himself
over me.
“Susie! Susie!” I heard my mother calling. “Dinner is ready.”
He was inside me. He was grunting.
“We’re having string beans and lamb.”
I was the mortar, he was the pestle.
“Your brother has a new finger painting, and I made apple crumb cake.”
Mr. Harvey made me lie still underneath him and listen to the beating of his heart and the beating of mine. How mine skipped
like a rabbit, and how his thudded, a hammer against cloth. We lay there with our bodies touching, and, as I shook, a powerful
knowledge took hold. He had done this thing to me and I had lived. That was all. I was still breathing. I heard his heart.
I smelled his breath. The dark earth surrounding us smelled like what it was, moist dirt where worms and animals lived their
daily lives. I could have yelled for hours.
I knew he was going to kill me. I did not realize then that I was an animal already dying.
“Why don’t you get up?” Mr. Harvey said as he rolled to the side and then crouched over me.
His voice was gentle, encouraging, a lover’s voice on a late morning. A suggestion, not a command.
I could not move. I could not get up.
When I would not—was it only that, only that I would not follow his suggestion?—he leaned to the side and felt, over his head,
across the ledge where his razor and shaving cream sat. He brought back a knife. Unsheathed, it smiled at me, curving up in
a grin.
He took the hat from my mouth.
“Tell me you love me,” he said.
Gently, I did.
The end came anyway.
TWO
W hen I first entered heaven I thought everyone saw what I saw. That in everyone’s heaven there were soccer goalposts in the
distance and lumbering women throwing shot put and javelin. That all the buildings were like suburban northeast high schools
built in the 1960s. Large, squat buildings spread out on dismally landscaped sandy lots, with overhangs and open spaces to
make them feel modern. My favorite part was how the colored blocks were turquoise and orange, just like the blocks in Fairfax
High. Sometimes, on Earth, I had made my father drive me by Fairfax High so I could imagine myself there.
Following the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades of middle school, high school would have been a fresh start. When I got to
Fairfax High I would insist on being called Suzanne. I would wear my hair feathered or up in a bun. I would have a body that
the boys wanted and the girls envied, but I’d be so nice on top of it all that they would feel too guilty to do anything but
worship me. I liked to think of myself—having reached a sort of queenly status—as protecting misfit kids in the cafeteria.
When someone taunted Clive Saunders for walking like a girl, I would deliver swift vengeance with my foot to the taunter’s
less-protected parts. When the boys teased Phoebe Hart for her sizable breasts, I would give a speech on why boob jokes weren’t
funny. I had to forget that I too had made lists in the margins of my notebook when Phoebe walked by: Winnebagos, Hoo-has,
Johnny Yellows. At the end of my reveries, I sat in the back of the car as my father drove. I was beyond reproach. I would
overtake high school in a matter of days, not years, or, inexplicably, earn an Oscar for Best Actress during my junior year.
These were my dreams on Earth.
After a few days in heaven, I realized that the javelin-throwers and the shot-putters and the boys who played basketball on
the
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