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“No.” She shook her head. “They never hurt me when you’re around.” Sniffling, she moved so close that her body was pressed tightly to mine. “They’re scared of the brave knight.”
“I’m the brave knight?”
Tearful, she nodded. “Am I still your lady?”
“You’ll always be my lady,” I promised. “Milady.”
YOU’RE A BIG GIRL NOW
Lizzie
DECEMBER 31, 1996
IKNEWIWAS DREAMING WHEN THE MONSTER CAME INTO MY ROOM TONIGHT BECAUSEthe doctors told me he wasn’t real. I’d made him all up. The scary lady, too. They were a figment of my imagination, delusions I invented inside my own head, and I think that made me feel better because it meant I wasn’t really being hurt.
The scary lady wasn’t pushing me under the water in the real world, and the monster wasn’t putting things inside of my body, either. I didn’t have to fight back and scream and warn the monster that my best friend told me about the bad touch because it wasn’t happening.
That made me feel so much better.
I didn’t have to scratch and bite and push the monster off me. I could just lay there and be quiet because he couldn’t hurt me. The doctors said so. It was all in my head.
When the monster turned me over and pushed my head into the pillow, I didn’t need to beg to die because this was a dream. When he put the bad thing inside my body, I didn’t hope he would push me into the darkness and leave me there because he lived in the dark and I lived in the light. When he put the bad thing in my mouth, called me bad names, and told me to do what he taught me, I just did it. Whatever the monster wanted, the monster took, and I didn’t flinch. I didn’t have to wish tobe a ghost without a body he could violate because in the real world, he couldn’t reach me.
In the real world, I was free.
“Come on, Liz! It’s the middle of the afternoon!”
Feeling sleepy, I blinked awake to find my sister standing over me. “What?” I groaned, snuggling deeper into my mattress. “I’m tired.”
“You’re always tired these days,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “Dad said you need to get up and help get the house ready for tonight.”
“Why?” I mumbled, eyelids drooping. “What’s tonight?”
“Uh,hello? Our annual house party.” My sister looked at me like I’d grown an extra head overnight. “It’s New Year’s Eve, Liz.”
“Oh.” Yawning sleepily, I rolled onto my back and mumbled, “Okay.”
“Come on,” she continued to say, reaching for my covers. “Dad said you have to help.” When she ripped the covers off me, her brows shot up in surprise, and she called out, “Mam! Come here, quick! Lizzie’s after getting her period!”
I was?
Confused, I pulled myself up on my elbows and glanced down at my blood-stained thighs. “I’m bleeding.” I looked back to my sister. “Am I dying?”
“No, no, you’re not dying, Liz, and I promise this is totally normal,” Caoimhe was quick to explain. “It’s called a period.”
“A period?” Numb, I continued to stare at my bloodstained sheets. “What’s that?”
“A period is when a girl bleeds from her vagina for a few days every month.” She helped me out of bed and quickly set to work on stripping the mattress. “It’s totally normal and happens to all of us.”
“Does it happen to you?”
“Yeah, Liz,” she replied. “Every month.”
I shivered in revulsion. “Oh.”
“Oh, my poor baby,” I heard my mother croon from my bedroom doorway. “It’s okay, sweetheart.” Using her cane, she limped over to us and pulled me against her chest. She was skin and bones, and when she held me to her flat chest, it caused my heart to pound and my thoughts to race. “We knew this might happen a little earlier for you.”
I didn’t know what she was talking about, and I didn’t have the energy to care. The only thing that was troubling me washer.
