She dives in and tickles my neck, and I let out a little laugh before turning my head and pushing her hand away.
“He came to see my ballet troupe perform,” she goes on. “He came a lot, and I would see him watching me from the audience. All the other girls were so jealous, because I got flowers and presents, and I never did before. He called me his little princess, and I would dream he was going to take me home and make me his little girl and take care of me, so I didn’t have to live in that cold theater anymore with so little to eat.”
She looks off for a moment, her smile falling. I know my mother was young when she married my father. I hear people whisper when they find out she has an eleven-year-old son.
“And then one night,” she continues, “a big, black car came to get me. I was told to dress in my prettiest costume, they did my hair and makeup, and I left the theater. I was taken to his house, outside of Moscow, and he asked me to dance for him.” Her face lights up again, and she dives in, whispering as if it’s some secret. “And I did. I twirled and leaped and danced under the chandeliers on the marble floors of the hall, feeling like I was in a dream. He let me eat cake and drink champagne.”
One finger of her hand trails down the center of my torso, and then all of her fingers fan out across my stomach, making the little hairs on my body stand up. That feels good.
“And when I fell asleep,” she says, watching her hand caress me, “I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten to the bed. To his bed.” She stares off, lost in the memory. “I’m not sure when I woke up. Maybe I’d only been asleep for a moment, but when I opened my eyes, he was pulling my costume down… baring my little body…and ripping off my tights and slippers.”
I freeze, listening to her and surprised but not surprised, either. I haven’t heard this before.
But my father does awful things.
“I started to cry,” she tells me, “scared and screaming when he kissed me all over and bit my body so hard, and when he pulled down my panties and shoved himself inside me, I…” She breathes hard, still locked on the images in her head. “I liked it, Damon. I liked it.”
I know what she’s talking about. What he was doing to her. I’ve seen it before.
But she was thirteen. Her ballet studio in town had girls who were thirteen. I can’t imagine any of them…
“I liked being ravaged by him,” she continues. “I was a big girl now and he was so much rougher than the men I’d seen taking some of the other dancers when I would peek in the rooms of the theater. This is what men do. They ravage. They’re strong and they ravage, Damon.
She looks down at me, and that’s when I snap out of it and realize her fingertips are trailing down the front of my sleep pants.
“And it’s time you start practicing,” she says.
She reaches inside my pants and takes me in her hand, rubbing it.
I shake my head, squirming as I try to inch away from her.
“Shhh, it’s okay,” she croons, kissing the corner of my mouth and moving her hand faster on me. “Do you feel that, baby? It’s getting hard. That means you like it. You like what Mommy’s doing.”
No, I don’t. She’s not supposed to do that. She’s not…
I still, closing my eyes as it pumps with blood and sticks up straight.
No, no, no, no…. I don’t want this. I want to leave. I want to leave.
“Enjoy it, baby. Just enjoy it.” She leaves little kisses all over my mouth and face as she strokes. “You’re a strong man and strong men get as many women as they want to make them feel good.”
I don’t want…. I don’t want…
I squeeze my eyes shut and let out a groan. No, no, no…
I grabbed the soap from the dish and lathered it up, washing my chest and stomach again before soaping up my cock and getting it clean. Cleaner.
That was the first fucking time my mother ever touched me like that. The first episode of what turned into years of her on me.
My throat swelled with the vomit rising, and my shoulders slumped as I tried to turn inward, making myself as small as possible. It was an old feeling, but one I knew well. It made me hide in the fountain. In the maze. In showers and in closets, because if no one saw me, they wouldn’t see the shame.
She’s gone, I told myself. She’ll never take from me again. No one does.
But looking back over the years, I realized now it started long before that night. She took me into the shower with her long after I was able to take them on my own. She washed me and dried me and stayed in the room when I dressed and undressed.
And after months of doing everything she could with her hands and mouth, she finally came to my room one night and…
I used to brag I had my first woman at twelve, reveling in how other guys either thought I was lying or I was so lucky, because of all the whores my father kept around the house. But I always told the truth.
My father had to know what was going on. In his head, though, it made me a man.
And it wasn’t like he was against raping children, either. Considering how young my mother had been when they met.
I rinsed and shut off the water, grabbing a towel and drying off. I wrapped it around my waist and stepped out of the shower, walking to the mirror and wiping the condensation off.
I stared at my dark eyes, a little darker than hers, and the same black hair. A shadow lay on my jaw, and I picked up my straight razor, running it under the faucet to make sure it was clean.
What did Winter feel when she thought about me? Was the anger so thick that was all there was?
He asked her to dance for him.
He asked her to dance like I’d asked Winter to dance for me.
He watched my mother as I watched Winter.
Was that it then? Did I do to Winter in high school what my father did to my mother? Did I groom her?
I looked up, meeting my own black eyes in the mirror.
The secret of life that everyone knew and everyone forgot was that we weren’t alone. We thought we were unique. We thought we were the first.
No one has been through what I’ve been through.
No one else is feeling this.
No one knows what it’s like to be me.
This is the first time anyone has endured what I’ve endured, right?
They’re lies we tell ourselves, because we think we’re special. Because it would lessen the entitlement to suffer to know what we’re going through is not uncommon. It was a secret I never forgot and was able to use to keep things in perspective, so I could get through the shit in my head, but now...
Now I wished I could forget it. I wanted to be alone.
I didn’t want to know that I was like him or he was like me or that life followed patterns and history repeated itself. I wasn’t him, and Winter wasn’t my mother, and no one has been where we were.
This is special.
It’s different.
It’s unique and all mine.
She and I…we’re alone in the universe. No one was us.
And unlike my mother at thirteen, Winter fucking deserved everything that would happen to her.
I shaved and finished in front of the sink, knowing any doubts I had wouldn’t make me feel any better than being right where I was.
So I would stay the course. My mother was right about one thing. I liked everything when it was hard.
Walking into the bedroom, I spotted Arion right away, sitting on the bed with another girl, but I didn’t slow as I walked to the table with the bowl and dug out my watch.
“Did you bring me something, Arion?” I fastened the watch to my wrist, not looking at either one of them.
She wasn’t supposed to be in here, and she fucking knew it. The master bedroom was split into two rooms, conjoined by a walk-in closet in the middle. She had her space, I had mine. Maybe I’d invite her in one of these nights, but that was my call.
“A present,” she answered. “Just a little one.”