Aria retreated to her room, holding a bowl of vanilla ice cream. The house was quietening for the night. Clifford, who was smoothing the white patch of fur on his chest with his tongue, looked up at her when she entered the room. She sat down by him, stroked his head and began to eat her ice cream. Vanilla tasted stable and cozy to Aria. It was like the parts of childhood that one might actually miss, like warm towels fresh out of the dryer. She spent nearly an hour staring out the little window in her room at the rows of identical houses on the block. She watched cars come and go. She watched people take out the trash. She watched dogs zigzag in disorganized patterns on the end of their leashes until twilight turned into night.
She was lying awake with her covers pulled over her head when she heard a soft rapping on the door of her bedroom. The familiar sound of Mr Johnson’s gait became louder as he approached the bed. She stayed frozen, pretending to be asleep. The covers were pulled up on one side, letting a rush of cold air flood her spine. His weight as he crawled into bed jostled her and tilted the mattress.
Suppressed urges are exercised in secret. It had been like this for two years now. On some nights, when Mr Johnson could find an excuse to be absent from his wife, he would slip into bed with Aria. This time, her school absence was the perfect excuse. Mrs Johnson trusted that he was going to set her straight, but setting her straight was not what her husband had in mind at all.
She could feel his hands against her back. Her tear-blinded eyes turned up toward heaven. She was no longer a child. He was no longer a man. This was their little secret, the secret that devoured Aria’s life with confusion. She did not know if it felt wrong or right. He was the only father she had known and she was terrified of him, but she wanted his affection so much that she would lie silent to let his hands slide across her naked body.
The warm desperation of his breath gripped at the skin on her neck when he spoke. “You’re such a bad girl,” he said as he rolled her toward him. Aria’s arms fiercely folded over the top of her breasts in self-preservation, her closed hands pressed together, covering her lips. It only encouraged him further.
“Why do you want to seduce me?” he asked. “Are you lookin’ for a spanking?”
He lifted his body on top of hers, unaware of the crushing strain of his weight. She squirmed and fought to breathe. She struggled out from underneath him, which made him laugh. “Don’t you tease me now,” he said. He caught her hair and smelled it. His hand traced the length of the inside of her thigh. He began to jerk off with his other hand, his breath sucking in and out in sporadic spurts of exertion.
Aria was incapacitated by the bankruptcy of his heart. She surrendered to the simultaneous feeling of pain and pleasure as his fingers crept between her legs. She was only half there. Drowning in his perverted domination, she took the only exit that was available to her.
She looked over at the snow globe that was sitting on the desk adjacent to the bed. She was inside it, the silence and refuge of the secluded world it contained, the fake snow and sparkles falling on her face all she could feel, all she could let herself feel. Aria might be unable to escape the moment with her body, but she could leave her body behind and escape with her mind. It took her a moment after he had cum before she could let herself drift back, waiting for him to leave before grabbing tissues to clean herself with and drifting into a haunted sleep.
The next day, Aria rifled around in the various toolboxes of the garage, leaving lids open and tools scattered until she found the blade of an X-Acto knife, a deranged craving pulsing in the marrow of her bones. Like poison, despair trickled through her veins. She needed to be relieved of it. In a focused frenzy, she found a roll of duct tape and paper towels and carried them to the upstairs bathroom, and closed the door. Stripping down to her jeans and bra, she climbed into the bathtub, where she crouched and proceeded to let the blade speak against her skin. She shook as she drew the blade across both forearms, repetitively making diagonal cuts in both directions. Her skin yielded to the blade. Blood welled up out of the cuts and dripped over the side of her arms to splatter against the floor of the bathtub.
This wasn’t the first time Aria had intentionally cut herself. It was a habit that she had successfully concealed for months before her younger brother caught her doing it. When Mrs Johnson first became aware that she was cutting herself, she removed all the locks from the internal doors of the house and proceeded to shame Aria for it. She sat across from Aria at the kitchen table and read her a collection of Bible verses that pertained to the way God expected the human body to be treated. It was the way she dealt with anything. Any and all of Aria’s emotions were invalidated. Mrs Johnson had a habit of turning Aria’s feelings back on her by telling her that the way she felt meant that there must be something wrong with her, because in Mrs Johnson’s mind, there was no other valid reason for her to feel the way she felt. Of course this only served to exacerbate the problem. Aria hated Mrs Johnson. But Aria’s feelings were internalized. She became hypercritical of herself and that hatred, now internalized, was focused on herself.
Aria turned on the water faucet to a trickle. She felt the soothing relief eat away at the static of her anxiety. Her breathing slowed. She felt alive in this moment, mesmerized by the blood making its way, in streams that looked like watercolour, down the drain. Relief was all she wanted.
But the relief was short-lived. Having heard Aria hurry from the garage to the bathroom, Mrs Johnson gave in to her curiosity. She opened the door slowly. Aria was startled by the noise and tried to hide her arms. But it was too late. “Aria!” she gasped, rushing over to the bathtub.
She pulled at Aria’s arms so she could see them clearly. Once she was confident that none of the cuts were deep enough to need stitches, her panic turned to exasperation. She stood with her hands on her hips, shaking her head back and forth, and paced the length of the bathroom, muttering to herself. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked in an angry tone, looking at Aria out of the corner of her eye. “What have I done? What have I done to deserve this?”
Aria flushed with shame as she went on. “I’m taking you to see someone, this has got to stop!” she barked. She turned her back to Aria for a minute and then turned back to face her. “Do you think this is the right place for you? ’Cause I just don’t know anymore.”
“Yes,” piped Aria, suddenly overtaken by the very real threat of being abandoned again. She began to sob.
At the sight of her tears, Mrs Johnson began to cry too. She shook her head, trying to conceal the contortion of her face. She turned to leave the room and through the sounds of her cries she called behind her, “You clean it all up and for God’s sake don’t show anyone.” Her footsteps and sobs sounded down the hallway to her room.
Aria’s world was spinning. As if a perfect mirrored reflection of Mrs Johnson’s sobbing, she cried into the container of the lonely bathroom. She knew she was on thin ice and had been for quite some time.
The Johnsons had been planning to adopt her shortly after fostering her, just as they had done with her younger sister. But Aria’s frequent behavior problems had caused them to delay, and now, Aria was facing the possibility of being given up entirely. Her deep fear of being forsaken bubbled up with each sob.
She sat in the bathtub, crying, until she was shivering and the blood had stopped running from her forearms. She turned on the warm water. It stung as she cupped it over her arms, washing them clean of congealed blood. She dried them off and wrapped them sloppily in paper towel, anchoring it to her arms with uneven strips of duct tape. When she was done, aside from the warmth of it having been used, the bathroom looked as if nothing had taken place. She dumped the bloodstained towel down the laundry chute and walked to her room to find a long-sleeved hoodie to wear.