At first she'd kept track of each day by assigning it to an object, the three brown boxes in the corner of the room, the chair, the light fixture, the mattress itself. After each object was invested with a day, she'd look to the ceiling and count off one swirl of textured paint after another. It worked for a while, but a string of dark rainy days confused her and she had to give it up; all she knew now was feeding time, feeling it in the hollow of her bones as she listened for his footsteps on the carpeted stairs.
The TV talked in hushed tones of love and betrayal, of suspicion and remorse. Heat pushed up from a vent in the corner, made her sleepy, and she thought, as she often did in an effort to figure out how she got here, of all the things she'd ever done wrong. Her mother was upstairs making the beds and her little brother sat on the couch in the living room looking at his picture books. She felt reckless, threw herself against the cushions, and began to brood. She'd overheard her parents arguing and this gave her an uneasy and forbidding feeling; everything seemed impermanent and annoying. Clear snot ran under her brother's nose and drool stuck to his chin. He read his book in baby talk, his voice rising and falling, and when he turned the pages to a picture of a silly-looking rabbit with long ears, he looked at her and said, “Cat.”
“It's a rabbit, stupid,” she'd said, pushing him off the couch so he banged against the sharp edge of the coffee table and then fell onto the floor. As he got up she'd noticed how his arm hung funny, how he pressed it to his side. And while that was probably the worst, it wasn't the only mean thing she'd ever done to him. He was so gullible. She'd give him an olive and say it was a sweet grape or tell him about the Christmas before he was born, when she'd gotten a unicorn and a baby bear.
He was older now and she couldn't fool him, so she'd get the upper hand by making fun of his friends, saying they were stupid, that a girl would be crazy to go out with them, that they were ugly, greasy-haired nerds who picked boogers from their noses and ate them. Once she'd gone on for so long his face got red, his eyes teared, and he ran from the room, though he usually just tried to joke it off. He was nice to look at, with his pink skin and somber black eyes, his hair always cut a little too short. He had a smell too, tennis shoe rubber and grass.
Her eyes got warm, then wet, and she felt tears dribble out the sides, down into her hair. If she could see him now, she'd put one hand on each of his shoulders, look directly into his eyes, and confess all of her sins, say she loved him too, though it was risky; she'd never said it before and he might get embarrassed and run out of the house, jump on his bike. Come lie on my bed, she'd say to him. He liked science fiction books and she'd read out loud, like she used to when they were little and it was raining or snowing and she had nothing else to do.
Her father played his bluegrass records two states over, but she could hear the melody if the wind was right. Her brother talked nonsense on the cordless phone and Mrs. Bailey, the English teacher, told her no one would ever take her seriously if she didn't learn to spell. A burglar came up through the toilet and she heard the Gestapo banging on the door. Her flesh covered his ottoman, so his feet could be cozy by the fire. He untied her, wrapped her in the afghan, and carried her down the hall, through one dark room after another. The furniture stood around like bad ideas. The metal mesh of a screen door pressed against her thigh, then flapped behind her. She saw her pale hand dangling down against the blue and sparkly asphalt; it seemed so far away how would she ever get it back. The cool night air brushed against the bottom of her feet and she realized with a shock that she was outside.
The cat was not with her, probably prowling for deaf birds and blind mice out in the world. Many times she'd tried to push her own soul into the cat, so that when the man came in, she could run past him and squeeze out the kitchen window. The TV was on downstairs and hot air blew up through the floor vent. But then the mattress tipped and the floor pitched sideways, and she recognized the hum of an engine and the sound of wheels bumping up out of a pothole. She tipped her head back, saw stars beyond the front seat glimmering through the windshield, the Big Dipper to be exact, huge and glamorous like the movie version of a geometry problem. She looked at his neck, found the red birthmark at the base of his skull, and knew he was driving her somewhere else in the van again. The radio played a song so soft and incomprehensible it seemed like a ballad sung from the bottom of the sea.
Heat flowed over her, strong as smoke. Rolling up on her side, she wiggled her shoulder so the ratty afghan fell away, and she saw that her chest was bare and that she had on a diaper, the disposable kind, and that the odd sensation of wadded paper and moisture meant that the crotch was already wet. She looked down at her bare chest; except for the slightest swelling around her nipples she was, as the boys said, flat.
He glanced at her in the rearview mirror, in a perfunctory sort of way that made Sandy think she'd been sleeping for a long time, that he thought of her as any other cargo, boxed televisions, or field-grown potatoes. The sky outside the windshield was turning from black to electric blue. Dawn was her favorite time. Even at home after a long night of hearing strange sounds and linking each to an intruder, it was only with the first hint of light that she could go down deeply into the smoky kingdom of sleep.
Inside the sleeping bag, she pulled her knees into her chest and listened for what Robin would say next. It was around 8:30, almost dark; through the flannel weave she could see the girls had their flashlights on, were using them to look at magazines or paint their toenails. Sweat rose on her face and behind her knees, and she was grateful for the cool air tinged with pine and the smell of river water that came through the big screen windows as it started to rain. Drops slapped the late summer leaves and bounced across the canvas roof. The cabin was clean like a cave, well swept, but with moss growing on the window ledge and all sorts of tiny bugs crawling up and down the walls.
“Have you gotten the curse?” Robin asked. She was the meanest girl at camp, wore her hair long with little wings flaring out like steak knives. She had breasts and fresh hickeys on her neck and a story about how she and some high-school boy got drunk on rum and Cokes.
Sandy's only answer was a little moan to prove she was unconscious.
“She thinks tampons are to put up your butt,” Robin pointed. All the girls laughed and Sandy felt her mind dissolve into the rapids near the little waterfall where the girls weren't supposed to go. Ghost snakes of white water slithered into one another, then vanished. Her father pounded on the bathroom door and begged her mother to come out; her brother came into her bed and at first they just looked at each other, rolled their eyes, and tried not to laugh, but then her brother put his hands over his face and started to cry. She knew there was something wrong, that she sometimes smelled like pee and couldn't seem to pick out clothes that looked right together. Robin put her foot on Sandy's head, jiggled it so she bit her tongue.
“Leave me alone,” she said, straightening her back and shooting out of the sleeping bag.
Robin stood above her with one hand on her hip. “All right,” she said, “you big fucking baby.”
* * *
Sandy stood at the edge of the clearing, under the branches of scrub pine and red maple, away from the other campers, watching the first of the floating candles round the bend in the river. She moved up the path; the girls were still singing the camp song, about sisterhood and the splendors of nature.