“But he violated me in other ways,” she says. “It doesn’t have to be physical to be abuse.”
“What about the other girls?” I ask.
“He groped them, too.”
“That’s all he did?”
She scoffs, “Yeah, I guess that’s all.”
So he touched them. It was what he’d confessed to me all along, starting that night at his house, when he held my face in his hands and said, I touched her. That’s all. I was relieved then. I wait now for the relief to find me again but there’s nothing, not even outrage or shock. Because by hearing her say it, nothing is changed. I already knew.
“I know how different it was with you,” she says. “But it started the same way, right? Calling you up to his desk. You wrote about it on your blog. I remember when I first found it. Reading it was like reading myself.”
“You read it back then?”
She nods. “I found it bookmarked on his computer. I used to leave you anonymous comments sometimes. I was too scared to use my name.”
I say I had no idea—about the comments, her reading.
“Well, what did you know?” she asks. “Did you really not know about me?” She’s already asked the question and I’ve already answered, but it means something different now. She’s asking if I knew what he did to her.
I tell the truth. “I knew,” I say. “I knew about you.” He told me but called her nothing and I didn’t argue. I forgave him, and I offered forgiveness for something so much worse, something he hadn’t even done. What was a hand on the leg compared to what he’d done to me? I didn’t think it mattered, and even now, with her standing before me, it’s hard to understand the damage it could have caused. Was it really that bad, what he did to you? Was it worth all this?
“It might seem small to you,” she says. “But it was enough to wreck me.”
She leaves me standing in the middle of the sidewalk, her braid bouncing against her back as she strides away. I walk home through the square, the giant Christmas tree being strung with lights, the high school kids on their lunch period loitering around, boys with their hoods up and groups of teenage girls in jean jackets and scuffed sneakers. Their chipped nail polish and ponytails and laughter and—I squeeze my eyes shut so tightly I see sparks and stars. He’s still inside me, trying to keep me seeing them the same way he did, a series of nameless girls sitting at a seminar table. He needs me to remember they were nothing. He could barely differentiate between them. They never mattered to him. They were nothing compared to me.
I loved you, he says. My dark Vanessa.
In Ruby’s office, I ask, “Do you think I’m selfish?”
It’s late, not our normal day or session time. I’d texted her, I’m having an emergency, something she has always told me I could do but I never imagined I’d need it.
“I think there are ways forward that don’t require stripping yourself bare,” Ruby says. “Better ways.”
From her armchair, she watches me and waits, her endless patience. Out the window, the sky is a range of blue, azure to cobalt to midnight. I tip my head back so my hair falls away from my face, and to the ceiling I say, “You didn’t answer the question.”
“No, I don’t think you’re selfish.”
I straighten my head. “You should. I’ve known this whole time what he did to that girl. Eleven years ago, he told me he touched her. He didn’t lie. He didn’t hide it from me. I just didn’t care.”
Her expression doesn’t change; only her fluttering lashes show I’ve affected her.
“I knew about the other girls, too,” I say. “I knew he was touching them. For years he would call me late at night and we’d—we’d talk about the things we did when I was younger. Sex stuff. But he’d talk about other girls, too, ones in his classes. He’d describe calling them up to his desk. He was telling me what he was doing. And I didn’t care.”
Ruby’s face is still unflinching.
“I could have made him stop,” I say. “I knew he couldn’t control himself. If I’d left him alone, he probably would have been able to stop. I forced him to relive it when he didn’t want to.”
“What he did to you or to anyone else wasn’t your fault.”
“But I knew he was weak. Remember? You said that yourself. And you’re right, I did know. He told me he couldn’t be around me because I brought out darkness in him, but I wouldn’t leave him alone.”
“Vanessa, listen to yourself.”
“I could have stopped him.”
“Ok,” she says, “even if you could have stopped him, it wasn’t your responsibility and it wouldn’t have changed anything for you. Because stopping him wouldn’t have changed the fact that you were abused.”
“I wasn’t abused.”
“Vanessa—”
“No, listen to me. Don’t act like I don’t know what I’m saying. He never forced me, ok? He made sure I said yes to everything, especially when I was younger. He was careful. He was good. He loved me.” I say that over and over, a refrain that turns meaningless so quickly. He loved me, he loved me.
I hold my head in my hands and Ruby tells me to breathe. I hear Strane’s voice instead of hers, telling me to take deep breaths so he can get farther inside. That’s nice, he said. That’s so nice.
“I’m so fucking tired of this,” I whisper.
Ruby’s crouching on the floor in front of me, her hands on my shoulders, the first time she’s ever touched me. “What are you tired of?” she asks.
“Hearing him, seeing him, everything I do being laced with him.”
We’re quiet. My breathing steadies and she stands, her hands dropping away from me.
Gently, she says, “If you think back to the first incident—”
“No, I can’t.” I throw my head against the back of the chair, press myself into the cushion. “I can’t go back there.”
“You don’t have to go back,” she says. “You can stay in the room. Just think of one moment, the first one between the two of you that could be considered intimate. When you look back on that first memory, who was the initiator, you or him?”
She waits, but I can’t say it. Him. He called me up to his desk and touched me while the rest of the class did their homework. I sat beside him, stared out the window, and let him do what he wanted. And I didn’t understand it, didn’t ask for it.
I exhale, hang my head. “I can’t.”
“That’s fine,” she says. “Take it slow.”
“I just feel . . .” I press the heels of my hands into my thighs. “I can’t lose the thing I’ve held on to for so long. You know?” My face twists up from the pain of pushing it out. “I just really need it to be a love story. You know? I really, really need it to be that.”
“I know,” she says.
“Because if it isn’t a love story, then what is it?”
I look to her glassy eyes, her face of wide-open empathy.
“It’s my life,” I say. “This has been my whole life.”