Mountains of gratitude to honeywldcat for her editing of this entire series.
*
I sat on the edge of the bed, my head in my hands. I really didn't know what to do. Danielle had sunk into a deep depression for the past week, and there seemed to be nothing I could do to pull her out of it.
Several times over the past week, she had woken from nightmares and fled from my arms only to return to them seconds later. She was listless and refused to leave bed, save for going to the bathroom. I brought her all meals, what little of them she ate, and generally kept her company surfing the net while she just kind of watched.
I was beginning to worry. She had said that they hadn't gotten to her, but I was beginning to think that something had happened in that basement that she hadn't told me about. I didn't want to press her, knowing that if she wasn't telling me of her own volition, it wasn't something she wanted me to know.
"Have you eaten today?" I turned and asked her.
"No. I'm not hungry."
"Honey, you need to eat something." I said, tucking a few stray hairs behind her ear.
"I don't want anything." I could be talking to a goddamned bedpost for the amount of emotion she was expressing.
"What do you want to eat." It wasn't a question. I was going to force feed her if I needed to. I didn't rescue her to wither away to nothing while she wallowed in ...whatever it was she was wallowing in.
"I said I don't want anything."
"I'll go make you a quesadilla, and then we can talk." She looked away from me when I said "talk."
I rose, not wanting to leave, but somehow not wanting to stay either. I made my way to the empty kitchen and cooked her up a quick quesadilla. Danielle always liked those, or at least seemed to like them when I made them.
"Here you go." I set the plate down on the bed nest to her.
"I said I didn't want anything."
"Please eat?" I let the full brunt of my concern show for the first time. I'd been trying to put up a brave front, hoping she'd allow herself to lean on me for support. I was wrong. I was tired of trying in vain to offer my support, so instead, I showed her my vulnerability.
"Ok." She said, showing some semblance of concern. At least it was an emotion.
She sat up and ate mechanically. She began to eat faster as her body seemed to realize that she hadn't eaten all day. Soon, she leaned back onto the pile of pillows at the head of the bed and sighed heavily.
"We need to talk." I said, a little too bluntly.
"Do we? About what?"
"You."
"Me? What about me?" She looked at me with hardening eyes, clearly ready for a fight. It was almost as if I could see her soul retreat into the fortress of her body. I took a deep breath, doing my best to come across as concerned and not accusing.
"I think there's something you're not telling me."
"Oh yeah? Like what?" She asked. Her indifference was more threatening than any hostility she could have displayed.
"I think something happened while you were...away from me." It had become harder and harder to talk frankly about the incident as more and more time was put between us and it.
"I told you they didn't touch me."
"And I believe you, but that's not what I'm talking about."
"What are you talking about?"
"Something happened, something you aren't telling me about." I had no idea where I was going with this.
"Well, there wasn't."
"Then why are you like this?"
"Gee, I don't know, could it be that I was kidnapped by my rapists and strapped to a table for twelve hours while they debated the first way to defile me?"
Several things registered on me as she said that. She called them her rapists and not her family. This was a very large change, or at least I felt it was. Had whatever happened hurt her more psychologically than I was putting stock in? I became very aware that I needed to tread carefully.
"You seemed to get over that quickly enough. You were fine for the first two days back, and then you just seemed to sink down to where you are now."
"You wouldn't understand." She looked away from me.
"I'm sure I wouldn't." This is the turning point. Something is going to happen with my next sentence. I can feel it in my bones, in my very blood. That something terrifies me. "But please explain it to me and let me try?"
She looked at me, clearly judging me. Her turquoise eyes had never looked so piercing. I could feel her taking stock of my soul, weighing each of my merits and faults against the rubric of her uncertainty.
"All the time they abused me, I somehow believed that they 'loved' me, by having sex with me. After all, my parents loved each other, and they had sex, so if they loved me, then they should have sex with me. It was part of what made us family, or so I thought.
When they strapped me to that table, I asked them how they could do that to their daughter. My dad just threw his head back and laughed. 'You think I'd fuck my own daughter? What kind of pervert do you think I am? You were adopted, you dumb slut.'"
She sat expressionless, a hollow husk of my lover.
"My whole life has been a sham. I really have been raped my whole life."
"Had."
"What?"
"Had been raped your whole life."
"Now isn't the time to be a grammar Nazi."
"'Have' implies that it is a continuing thing. Last time I checked, I promised to never let that happen."
She just kind of stared at me, almost waiting for me to say something. It was fucking unnerving.
"How can I make this better?"
"You can't." Those are some of the most painful words she has ever said to me, especially because at the moment, not only did she mean them, they were true.
"What can I do to help?"
"Nothing."
