Where she had begun as their keeper, she was now down to being their equal-less than equal
for being the it of the game. Where this morning they had barely dared strip her na ked, she
had become by afternoon the object of rape. Tomorrow she would be little better than the
Barbie Doll that Terry had foreseen her becoming.
Tomorrow, Barbara said. I've got to think. Oh, why am I always saying that, when I can't?
One thing she had learned. If her body was a prisoner of Freedom Five, her mind was a
prisoner of her body. The steady complaint of nerve ends to the brain-stop everything until you
take care of this, and this and this and this--created an interrupting static that made her jump
from subject to subject. However she tried to imagine tomorrow, the most that she could come
up with was that it would be worse than today.
Tomorrow Paul would invent new ways to tease and hurt her (and here, she felt true fear). This
afternoon, when he had begun to drag his knife over her just short of breaking the skin, he had
just been Paul. As time passed, however, his face had assumed a smooth cast of pleasure,
even righteousness, as if what he was doing was for him the most correct thing-for him-in the
world. Here was the revengeful soldier putting the torch to Joan of Arc's pyre; here was the
good gray friar listening to confessions of heresy from the rack. Barbara had thought, this little
boy is very nearly insane. The string that held him together-fear of parental punishment-might
have snapped this afternoon, might well snap tomorrow when he no longer felt novelty in the
situation. If it did, he would really stab her or worse, and if he did it
135
once, he would do it again and again in a frenzy. Barbara could see it; she could see that
tomorrow 's he might die sitting up, bound to a chair in the guest room at the Adams'.
Whatever other thoughts came across her mind, that picture remained-the little boy stab-
bing her again and again-and she was afraid.
Tomorrow-again her mind took a sideways jump-John would probably attempt to rape her
again, and he would probably succeed. Here her thoughts shattered and ran off in several
directions at once (again). There was fear of pregnancy ... sorrow ..• John ... Midge ....
In college, during Barbara's first year, there had been a girl called Midge, who, as the
nickname implied, was short, petite, brunette, vivacious, and pretty much everyone's
choice as the Most Fun To Be With. The night after the Indiana game, she and a boy were
goofing off, horsing around the freeways in their car when they hit an overpass bridge
abutment and were killed.
Such things, of course, produce shock on campus, even on so large a one as that. For
several days following, the conversation rather typically ran to "I knew
her ... ,"or "A friend of mine knew her ," or "She
was in my American Lit class last year ," etc. The
main point of it all was that one of us is dead, already dead, actually dead. There was awe.
Afterward there were sophomoric, if better considered, discussions of life, love, God,
philosophy, and so forth.
In the dorm where Barbara was living, the second clear point to be derived was, If you
knew you were going to die tomorrow, wouldn't you be sorry you hadn't jumped in bed with
every boy who ever asked you? It was hardly an original question, and it elicited what was
hardly an original answer. Yes, I would, I most certainly would. The girls had shaken their
heads. Since they were not going to die, of course (it was true: that was the only student
death incident that year), they had not altered their various standards. They had simply
thought about it.
136
Midge's death had had no further meaning for Barbara until tonight when it was reflected as
this: if you had known you were going to be taken prisoner by a bunch of kids and raped by a
sixteen-year-old, wouldn't you have given in to Ted when he wanted you to? Yes, I certainly
would have, Barbara said. Absolutely. It would have had something nice about it then.
Ted swam, too.
He wasn't Olympic caliber-on the team there was a standing joke that when you were twenty
you were over the hill in swimming-but he was good as most young men went. They had met
at the pool and gone stroking off like a pair of sleek young otters, and afterward, Barbara was
considered to have a boyfriend.
Ted had a number of other qualities, too. He could be serious; he hit the books with fair results
and even thought about them afterward; he was kind and considerate for a young man; he
smelled good, and though he was strong as a bull, he was remarkably gentle and restrained
with Barbara. One night after a different game (it was the next year-last year) they, too, had
been goofing off and coasting around in his car when he turned into a vast, empty parking lot,
parked and put the moves on her. He was the first one whose attack did not cause revulsion.
She was surprised.
His hand circled under her arm and covered her breast, his other hand moved under her skirt
and stroked her thigh (well, I guess there just isn't all that much different you can do, she had
thought), and she had consented. She had liked it. There wasn't that wild, randy look that
some of them had. If she had had to put it into words, she might have said that she was being
worshipped-it had seemed so, anyhow-and that was certainly permissible. I just might, Barbara
had thought, I just might, and if I do it and like it, I just might keep on doing it. But she hadn't.
There was her innate "niceness."
Barbara's mother and father hadn't reared her to do it in a parking lot. Or in a rented motel
room (at least, she didn't think so). Or in the woods (not most
137
woods, anyhow). Just exactly where she would consent to Ted's loving, Barbara hadn't
decided (at that time). She supposed she would know it when it happened. Anyway cars
kept coming and going with their headlights; it was cold and cramped and just out of the
question. At best, she wordlessly promised to go to bed with Ted at some unspecified time
and place and to submit-she used it in the grand sense of girlish surrender-to his whims
(which appeared .. safe and pleasant). Yet even that hadn't happened.
Mostly because of money, because of time, because of the lack of a place to be safely
alone, because of her own aversions, they simply hadn't connected. Instead summer had
come, and they had split until this coming fall. Therefore young John Randall, many and
many a mile away and unknown then, had ultimately taken for his own what was honestly
promised to Ted.
Again, it wasn't fatal, she supposed.
I'll live, Barbara said. After all, I'll live. Some girls lose it to a bicycle seat.
Nonetheless she felt sorrowful, deprived unfairly, and changed against her will for the rest
of life. John had altered her. He might also have made her pregnant. She thought about it-it
was too late to do anything else now.
On the one hand, marriage and children were what Barbara considered herself best suited
for. She just. wasn't an activist; she had no desire to compete; politics were like real-life