“Do not say that, Jenny,” I said.
“Keep it, kill it, whatever.” She curled herself up into a ball even further. “It doesn’t matter to me. It’s just another thing that’s happened to me.”
I crawled over on the bed next to her and put my arms around her. “Jenny, you are just going through some hard times right now. No one has been looking out for you. I am sorry. But I have come to get you.”
“I’ve been in this room for two days,” she said. “Mom said I needed to think about what I had done. I have been thinking. And I do not care. I did not care when I was having sex with those men. I couldn’t hardly feel it even. I don’t feel anything. That’s why I do it so much. To see if I can ever feel.” She looked at me. “I can’t feel, Moonie. I’m a freak. What is wrong with me?”
I felt a horrible something inside me. It was hotter than hell. It was not just me that was this way. I wanted to run outside and throw myself into a snowbank. It would be the only way to cool down. I wanted the Nebraska winter to take me whole.
HOW DID THAT STORY GO AGAIN? The one she told me a hundred times. Leaning in so close, her whisper sounded like thunder in my ear.
In the bathroom, she took off her clothes. He looked at her and grunted. She got in the shower. He turned on the water. He took off his clothes and got in the shower. He took some soap from a dish and began to wash her.
See, it is not so bad to get clean.
She tried to let it feel good but it did not. She started to cry.
Don’t cry, he said. He was annoyed.
I want to go home, she said.
He looked at her, bored. He turned her around, then bent her over in half. Easily, like she was a rag doll. She squeezed her legs together.
Stop that, he said. He forced her legs open. He rubbed the soap all over her. He forced himself in, and she squeezed her insides tight.
That ever happens to you, you just squeeze tight, she told me. Pretend you’re frozen shut in there. Pretend it’s broken. Pretend you are somewhere else. Pretend you are anywhere else but right there. Pretend you are not you. Pretend what you need to pretend to not feel a goddamn thing.
And that was when he shoved himself in her ass. Because he wanted to make sure she felt it.
OH, JENNY, I THOUGHT. You, too.
She was ranting.
“And if I can’t feel, then I don’t care, and if I don’t care, then I’ll do whatever Mom wants with this baby.”
“I don’t think that’s right,” said Valka softly.
“This is my friend Valka,” I said to Jenny.
“You shouldn’t talk that way,” said Valka.
“I’ll talk however I want,” said Jenny. “You don’t know what I’m going through. You don’t know me. You don’t know a goddamn thing.”
“I know I don’t know you,” said Valka. “And I am not going to tell you that you are right or wrong about who you sleep with or how many people. It takes all kinds in this world, and I’m not one to talk anyway. And I don’t even care if you decide to keep that baby or have an abortion or give it up for adoption or whatever else you could choose to do. But you should have more respect for your insides. The fact that you can conceive, that your body works in that way. You should not be careless about your power. There are people who would kill to have that power. You should appreciate it. It’s your body. You do what you want with it. But you respect it.”
Jenny burst into tears. And then Valka burst into tears. And then what was I to do but cry, too? We all sat there on the bed and had ourselves a good cry. I cried for my mother more than anything, and for how my family would never be the same again. Valka cried for Peter Dingle and her insides that had betrayed her. My sister cried because life is hard and because she no longer had her beautiful hair and because she had something growing inside her that she already loved, she could just feel it. And we all cried for our insides and our outsides and the whole wide world.
When we were all cried out I took Jenny in my arms. I whispered that I understood everything she felt, or did not feel. That I was the same as her, that she was the same as me. She pulled back and looked at me. I promised to help her. But we had to get out of there.
Eventually it was night, pitch dark everywhere, and it started to snow again.
“If we are going to get anywhere tonight, we better get going soon,” I said.
Valka stayed upstairs with Jenny to help her pack and I went downstairs to talk to my mother.
“Don’t even start on me,” she said, as soon as I walked through the doorway.
I walked to the refrigerator and popped open a can of beer. I sat down across from her at the kitchen table. I took the cigarette that was burning in my mother’s trembling hand and I smoked it.
“How could you leave me?” she said.
“Oh, this is my fault?”
She looked down sullenly. She could not lie.