Page 20 of My Girl to Take

“Your mother.”

“Maggie Blake.” His voice hasn’t changed, but something under my fingers has. “I was six. I remember about four things about her, and two of them are probably his stories I’ve decided are mine.”

“That’s why you took her name.”

“That’s why I took her name.”

I put my thumb on the M and leave it there, and neither of us says anything.

Then he takes my wrist, moves my hand away, and says, “That’s enough of that.”

And I understand I’ve reached the limit of him explaining his ink.

He undresses me himself, and takes a great deal longer over it than is strictly necessary.

He does the blouse the way he did on Tuesday, a button at a time, except tonight he doesn’t stop at the blouse. He turns me around to get the zip at the back of my skirt, and I feel his mouth at the top of my spine. I lose the ability to stand up straight in any convincing way.

When I’m down to nothing at all, he turns me back to face him and steps away. And just looks.

I have never been looked at in my life. I’ve been assessed, I’ve been ignored, and once, memorably, at eleven, I was measured. I have never stood in front of a man with nothing on and had him take his time about it. I want to cover myself so badly that my arms actually move.

“No,” he says.

They stop.

“Put them down.”

I put them down, and it is the single hardest thing I’ve ever done. My face is on fire, yet he doesn’t hurry.

“Good girl,” he says.

Something goes through me from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet.

I’ve heard men say things to women. I’ve been on the edge of enough rooms. It has never once occurred to me that two words could take my legs out. But here I am, standing with everything on show, undone by a compliment for doing what I was told.

He sees it. Of course, he sees it.

“Oh,” he says softly. “There it is.”

“Don’t.”

“No, we’re keeping that.”

He puts me on the bed but doesn’t get on it.

He stands at the end of it instead and takes my ankles, pulling me down the mattress toward him until my hips are at the edge. I wonder at the ease of it—how little I weigh to him, how completely he can just move me where he wants me. It does something to my breathing I can’t control.

Then he takes my left wrist, presses it flat against the mattress beside my hip, and holds it there.

He leaves the right one loose.

I understand later that this is deliberate. That he could have pinned both and didn’t, because one held and one free means I have to keep choosing, over and over, not to cover myself. That every second my free hand stays down is a decision I’m making. One he wants me to make.

“Knees apart.”

I hesitate. It’s not even a real hesitation. It’s a half-second of my body remembering it’s supposed to be embarrassed. He sees it and waits, and doesn’t say it twice.

I open my legs.