“Sorry,” I said, suddenly losing my nerve. “You mentioned, if I wanted, that I could stay here. But I don’t have to. I just got home, and I realized I couldn’t be there one more second.”
“The offer stands,” Tina said in this sterile way that stung. The hall in the foyer was cavernous but narrow. We were standing with our backs against opposing walls, and still there wasn’t much space between us. The blanket had slipped off one of Tina’s shoulders, and she was looking at me in this reverent, hopeful way, like I was the porcelain doll she’d wanted for her birthday, but now that she had me, she could see how easily I’d damage. I’d been looked at like that once before, by CJ, and it had terrified me then too, though not for the reason it did now.
“I don’t want to take advantage of your generosity,” I backpedaled, staking the perimeter of the conversation. This was about formalizing a living arrangement and nothing outside of that. “It would just be for a little while. Until I get a job and get back on my feet.”
Tina tightened the blanket around her shoulders. I’d said the wrong thing. The coward’s thing. “Ruth,” she said, the same way you might say the word stop. That’s enough now. “If that’s what you want, it’s completely fine.”
Her signals were all over the place, giving me whiplash. More out of frustration than boldness, I retorted, “It isn’t what I want, and I don’t think it’s what you do either.”
Tina tipped her head back against the wall and gazed at me through hooded eyes, amusedly. She was driving me nuts. “Do you know what you’re getting into here?”
The house was silent, hearing, all ours. “Unfortunately, I do.”
Tina sighed. “I really need you to, though. I can’t have you on my conscience along with everything else.”
My heart was riding my collarbone. You do it, Tina seemed to be saying, and after that, I’m not responsible for what happens, for what you feel. Tina was taller than I was and, with her head tipped back, even more difficult to reach without her explicit cooperation. I took a step forward, balancing on my tippy-toes. Tina let me kiss her for a few moments, let me absolve her of any responsibility, and then, as though I had recited the password to the fortress correctly, she opened each end of the blanket and closed it around us, fastening us safely inside.
PAMELA
Tallahassee, 1978
Day 15
I knocked on the door of Brian’s house, neighborly at first, then made a fist and banged until the bone of my wrist turned red and one of the Freddy Fraternity Boys roused himself from sleep.
“Pamela?” Brian’s brother was standing at the door in his underwear and half-tied robe, digging a crusty out of a corner of one eye. “You girls okay?”
I averted my eyes from his small, pale potbelly. “Everything’s fine. I need to speak to Brian.”
“You want me to wake him?” he asked through a horrid-smelling yawn.
“Please.”
He stepped back from the door, inviting me in. It was just after seven in the morning, and I’d been showered and dressed for hours. I’d drastically overestimated my ability to sleep on the floor with thirty-four other women, under the same roof where, a little over two weeks ago, we’d been a house of thirty-nine. Even with all of us heaped together in a protective pack, I’d been hyperaware of every bump in the night, hyperaware of acting like I wasn’t hyperaware, putting on a brave face for the girls.
It’s just the wind, I’d said to the sister who stirred at one a.m. To the one who bolted upright at two, it was the old bones of The House. At three, it was the sprinklers in the neighbor’s front yard. At four, it was the paperboy, who really needed to oil the wheels on his bicycle, and by then there was no going back to sleep, not when it was an acceptable hour for people to be up and about their days. I went into the kitchen and put on the coffee and began drafting letters to our repeat donors, inviting them to a luncheon at The House. I was going to need to recoup the monies I’d borrowed from the dues account for the damages incurred at The House, assuming victims’ assistance would soon cover the deduction. Just thinking about the language of the rejection letter made the tips of my ears turn pink with shame. I had no idea what a sexual relationship exemption entailed, or how it was that we had contributed to our own injuries, but I wanted to crawl into the earth and disappear, picturing a panel of esteemed figures in the community—picturing my future father-in-law—reviewing our case and determining that there was something unsavory and inappropriate about it, about us. Sitting there at the kitchen table as the sun cracked the night sky, I was furious with myself for subjecting the girls to this kind of scrutiny. I had let them down. Worse, I’d let Denise down.