“I showed up that night, and he was alone. He was… strangely quiet. He kind of just murmured a hello and then we warmed up together, but he didn’t talk much. Once we were done, he pointed to the barre and he followed behind me as I walked over. Then, I caught him in the mirror, one second too late. He ran up and grabbed me pushing me up against the barre, hard. I can still feel it digging hard against my ribs, bruising me. He pushed his mouth against mine and started kissing me really roughly. I was so surprised, I didn’t even know how to react. I tried to push him away, but I couldn’t. He was too strong. I screamed. But nobody heard me. He didn’t say anything, he just kept running his hands all over me, trying to pull down my tights. I just kept kicking my legs, and struggling, trying to break free.”
Her voice grows louder, shaking. Her hands tearing at each other, her skin rubbed raw. But I know I can’t stop her. I close my eyes and try to swallow the bile rising up my throat. I don’t want to hear this, but I know I have to. This is why. This is why our lives turned out the way it did.
“I kept trying to scream, I remember he slapped me. It was so hard. I saw stars. His mouth was all over my face, my neck, even while he tried to… tried to pull my tights down. I did everything I could to just keep moving, struggling, kicking my feet out, freeing my arms. I think I even tried to bite him. One of my kicks finally connected with his shin or something and he let go, just for a moment and I manage to break free.”
My heart leaps in my chest, as if I’m there watching it.
“I ran as fast as I could but he chased me. I didn’t think I could make it to the door before he’d reach me so I picked up one of my slippers I saw laying on the floor and flung it at him. It hit him on the side of his head but it didn’t really slow him down. He grabbed me from behind and threw me down onto the ground.”
I almost throw up in my mouth. I want her to stop. Tell me it’s all just a bad dream. This never happened. She’s making it up. The thoughts swirl in my head so fast I can barely process them. No, I can, I can see them, they’re just buried under the one clear thought that is flashing clearer than anything else; I’m going to kill him. I’m going to find him and I’m going to fucking kill him.
“He… started to kneel down, to straddle over me, I can still see his face, he was sweating, not even looking at me, like he was in some sort of haze and… I’m not sure how but I lifted up my knee and it… it hit him in the groin. He doubled over and I… got up and ran to the door. I could hear him yelling after me that he was going to kill me if I ever told anyone about what just happened. That he knew everything about me. And to never come back to his class. I… I never did.”
She stops.
But she doesn’t move.
I want to feel relief, that that’s all that happened. But I know there’s more. I know how it ended. With us apart. There had to be more.
“Malynda,” I say, after she’s quiet for almost a minute. The sound of her name triggers something, and she turns to me, shaking her head. “You can tell me. Nothing you will say will change the way I feel about you.”
She sighs, her shoulders dropping after the tension from the story.
“If only that were true, Xavier.” She says and leans over and presses a kiss against my lips. “One last kiss,” she whispers.
Then she sits up and tells me the rest of the story.
Her
“I never went back to class. I went to my dorm, packed up my things and left that night. I couldn’t tell anyone. I was so scared. I didn’t think anyone was going to believe me if I said anything, and I… I believed his threats. I believed he would hurt me. I’d seen that emptiness in his eyes that told me he would kill me if he had the chance. So I just left. I packed up everything I had into a bag and left. I didn’t have a lot of money. I couldn’t tell my parents what had happened so I couldn’t ask them for money. I stayed in a cheap motel for about a week and spent almost all my savings.”
“Why… why didn’t you tell me?” Xavier asks.
“What could you have done?” I ask him. “You were just an eighteen-year-old boy as well. What would you have done?”
He doesn’t say anything, and it hurts too much to watch how he’s going to react to this next part so I return to my stare out the window.
“One night, with only a few dollars left in my pocket and knowing I would have to leave the motel the next day, I was walking around, looking for a place I could afford with the last of my money when I saw a flyer. It was for a club downtown, looking for dancers. I thought it was the best luck, that it was fate.” I stop, laughing at my own naivete. “Yes, they wanted dancers. Not for any kind of dancing I had done before, but I didn’t know that. Not until I got there. $100 a night, the club manager promised me after she looked me up and down for a minute. It was $100 I didn’t have and desperately needed.”
He doesn’t say anything. And I can’t blame him.
“I told myself, I’d just do it for the night and if it was really too bad, I could quit and no one would ever need to know. And I’d have $100, and that could get me through another day or two.” The years fall away, and it’s like I’m right there, staring at that darkened stage for the first time. The fear. The shame. The hopelessness.