When she flicked on the light, she couldn’t stop herself from flicking it on and off—one, two, three, four, five times, her lucky number—and he was steps away by the fifth flick, hunched panther-like as he moved through the strobing light. The switch landed on off.
He yelled. She caught a phrase here and there. That black boy. If her nonna knew. Fa schifo. Disgusting. Porca Madonna again and again. Like she was the gentle Virgin, she thought. He hit her back, her thighs, her ribs, her ass. She was there and not there. On the kitchen floor smelling the garlic he’d stuffed into last night’s roast chicken. Watching from far away, where scent was merely an idea. A chair toppled back with a clatter and she heard her mother’s voice. She called to her—Mom!—then laughed aloud, knowing how useless that was. Her mother had never helped before. But she could. She could. Maddie repeated she could, she could and a spark flared inside her so she was back in her body feeling every slap and punch and shove. He kicked between her legs and the flame blew out. It must’ve been an accident, she thought, ready to look up and forgive him for hurting her there. He’d never hurt her there before.
Mercifully, she felt nothing. Something popped in her side but it was more her knowing than feeling it. She was wrapped in that gauzy place that was not anywhere.
His fingers tangled in her hair. She slid across the cold tile. He means to hang me by my hair. He’s finally going to do it. Maddalena! You watch yourself or I’ll put a nail in that wall and hang you by your hair. She had wanted to cut her hair, but her mother said no. Her father wouldn’t like it. Was that so he’d have something to hang her by? She watched these thoughts pass in that distant soundless, smell-less, tasteless, touchless place as he dragged her toward her mother’s room. The triangle of light meant the door was open. Where was her mom? She wanted her mommy. Her mommy could stop him. She could. She could sit on him. She could. Roll her fat body on top of him. Pin him to the floor like one of Dom’s wrestlers. She could. She could. The spark flared again. It was an ember now. Her chest burned. So hot it pulled her back to that other place, the real living breathing place, and oh my fucking God she was going to puke because he smelled like a dead person, a corpse, like shit and piss and sweat and stale wine and period blood and the greasy smoke that pours out of the factory stacks and Penny’s sweat after a chemo treatment and Maddie is on her feet swinging at him again and again until she feels her nails catch and now she is the panther, claws bared slashing and tearing and she won’t stop, she promises, not until she’s flayed his skin and he’s nothing but marbled muscle and bone. She’ll eat him if she has to. To make him stop.
When the light came on, she was sitting on the kitchen floor. The package of condoms she’d bought at Genovese Drugs and hid in her underwear drawer, not wanting it to be all on Brooks, lay by her feet where her father had tossed them. She should’ve known, she thought, he’d go through her things. Stupid girl.
Her arm was wet. She wiped at it and her fingers came away bloody. The skin loosed in a flap and she did her best to move it back into place. Like a torn pocket, she thought, in need of a few stitches.
Her father stood over her, his chest heaving, his nostrils flared so she saw the black nose hairs curled inside. He held the kitchen broom. Like a trident. Like he’s Poseidon, king of the seas, and they are playing one of Dom’s Gods versus Mortals games. And so who did that make her, she wondered. Which maiden at the peak of her youthful beauty about to be raped, beaten, killed? Who will save her? Which goddess up above will take pity on the mortal Maddalena and change her? Into a dove so she can fly far away. A dolphin leaping through the sea. Or something fierce, fanged and taloned, a half lion/half eagle griffin tearing her father’s throat. Drinking his blood. Devouring him until he is a pile of greasy, tooth-scarred bones.
Her father’s hand lifted to his face. He stared at his fingertips dark with blood.
“I hit you back,” she said quietly.
The broom fell to the floor with a clang. The metal wrapped around the bristles was twisted and torn.
“I hit you back.” Louder.
She locked the bathroom door and set to taking care of the jagged cut that ran from the crook of her thumb down her wrist. She found a roll of gauze yellowed with age. She wrapped the wound again and again but the blood seeped through. Her arm looked like one of the cocoons that turned caterpillar into moth. What if she wrapped her whole body? A cocoon like a magician’s box. Step in a girl, walk out a … what?
She changed her pee-soaked underwear. She brushed her hair one hundred times just like her mom had taught her when she was a little girl wearing plastic heart hairclips. She dabbed a spot of Covergirl concealer over the burst blood vessel under her eye that reminded her of the pink chrysanthemum bursts she and Brooks had watched explode over the golf course that night.
Her father sat at the kitchen table. A shudder of déjà vu washed over her, but she already knew she’d been here before. As Dom liked to say, No shit, Sherlock.
He’d be crying. He was.
He’d ask for forgiveness. He did.
He’d tell her she was his life, his angel, his love, his baby. He did, he did, he did, he did.
She knew he wanted her to say It’s okay, Daddy. I forgive you. Don’t go beating yourself up, Daddy. You did it because you love me. Because you are a good daddy. I love you, Daddy.
Instead, she leaned in, close enough to see the flesh-colored mole sitting snug between his nostril and cheek, and she screamed so loud she tasted blood. She was sure her vocal cords snapped, sure she’d never speak or sing or hum her pleasure into Brooks’s ear again, and that was okay because I HIT YOU BACK.
36.
Veronica
She watched the moths circle the blazing lampposts lining the path from yard to house. Swarms upon swarms. Darting around the glowing glass globes so they dampened the light and threw frenzied shadows across the lawn. It felt like a miracle made just for her. Halos of wings.
Maddie came running across the lawn, through the quivering moth wings that parted for the girl like a foaming sea.
Oprah must be her fairy godmother, Veronica thought. Oprah had heard her wish to have Maddie at her side.
“My girl!” Veronica opened her arms, and when Maddie fell into her, her sharp young bones jabbing Veronica’s scarred chest, she swallowed the pain. She almost called her Ginny as their bodies pressed close so she felt the thwump of their breastbones meet and she didn’t care if the girl felt the absence of her breasts. It was time to confess. Oprah would say—share. Heal.