Hardly Knew Her

He tried, she had to give him that. He slowed down, kissed her a lot, and she could see how it might be better. She still didn’t feel moved, but she took his advice, shuddering and moaning like the women in the movies, the R-rated ones she and Joe had been sneaking into this spring. At any rate, whatever she did wore him out, and he fell asleep.

She didn’t bother to put on her clothes, although she did carry her purse with her as she moved from room to room. When she didn’t find the velvet box right away, she found herself taking other things in her panic and anger-a Baltimore Orioles ashtray, a pair of purple candles, a set of coasters, a Bachman-Turner Overdrive eight-track, an unused bar of Ivory soap in the bathroom. Her clunky sandals off, she was quiet and light on her feet, and he didn’t stir at all until she tried a small drawer in his dresser. The drawer stuck a little and Sofia gave it a wrenching pull to force it open. He whimpered in his sleep and she froze, certain she was about to be caught, but he didn’t do anything but roll over. It was the velvet box that had made the drawer stick, wedged against the top like peanut butter on the roof of someone’s mouth. But when snapped it open, the box was empty. In her grief and frustration, she gave a little cry.

“What the-”

He was out of bed in an instant, grabbing her wrist and pushing her face into the pea-green carpet, crunchy with dirt and food and other things.

“Put it back, you thievin’ whore, or I’ll-”

She grabbed one of her shoes and hit him with it, landing a solid blow on his ear. He roared and fell back, but only for a minute, grabbing her ankle as she tried to crawl away and gather her clothes.

“Look,” she said, “I’m thirteen.”

He didn’t let go of her ankle, but his grip loosened. “Bullshit. You told me you were in high school.”

“I’m thirteen,” she repeated. “Call the police. They’ll believe me, I’m pretty sure. I’m thirteen and you just raped me. I never had sex before tonight.”

“No way I’m your first. You didn’t bleed, not even a little.”

“Not everybody does. I play a lot of football. And maybe you’re not big enough to make a girl bleed.”

He slapped her for that and she returned his open-hand smack with her shoe, hitting him across the head so hard that he fell back and didn’t get back up. Still, she kept hitting him, her frustration over the long-gone necklace driving her. She struck him for everything that had been lost, for every gift that had come and gone and couldn’t be retrieved. For Brad’s bicycle, for her mother’s candlesticks, for Shemp. She pounded the shoe against his head again and again, as if she were a child throwing a tantrum, and in a way she was. Eventually, she fell back, her breath ragged in her chest. It was only then that she realized how still Brian was.

She put her ear to his chest. She was pretty sure his heart was still beating, that he was still breathing. Pretty sure. She put on her clothes and grabbed her macramé purse, still full of the trophies she had taken. She checked her watch, a confirmation gift. There was no way she could get home in time without a ride. She helped herself to money from Brian’s wallet, and it turned out he had quite a bit. “I’ll meet you outside,” she told the taxi dispatcher in a whisper, although Brian didn’t appear to be conscious.

It was almost midnight when she came up the walk and both parents were waiting for her.

“Where were you?”

“At the dance.”

“Don’t lie to us.”

“I was at the dance,” she repeated.

“Where’s Joe? Why did you come home alone, in a cab?”

“He came with another girl, a real date. Another boy, someone I didn’t know, offered to walk me home. He got…fresh.” She pointed to the red mark on her face.

“Who was he?” her father demanded, grabbing her by the arm. “Where does he live?”

“All I know is that he was called Steve and when I wouldn’t…” She shrugged, declining to put a name to the thing she wouldn’t do. “At any rate, he put me out of the car on Holabird Avenue and I had to hail a cab. I’m sorry. I know it was wrong of me. I won’t ever take a ride with a stranger again.”

“You could have been killed,” her mother said, clutching her to her chest. Sofia ’s father simply stared at her. When she went up to her room, he followed her.

“You telling the truth?” he asked.

“Yes.” It seemed to Sofia that her father’s eyes were boring into her macramé bag, as if he could see the stolen treasures inside, including Brian’s cash. Even after the cab ride all the way from Essex, there was quite a bit left over. But maybe all he was seeing was another object that he would raid, the next time he was caught short.

“Daddy?”

“What?”

“Don’t take any more of my stuff, okay?”

“You don’t have any stuff, missy. Everything in this house belongs to me.”

“You take any more of my stuff, I’ll run away. I’ll go to California and do drugs and be a hippie.” This was about the worst fate that any parent could imagine for a child, back in Dundalk in 1975. True, the Summer of Love was long past, but time moved slowly in Dundalk, and they were still worried about hippies and LSD.

“You wouldn’t.”

“I would.”

“I’ll drag you home and make you sorry.”

“I’ll make you sorrier.”

“The hell you say.”

“I’ll go to the police and tell them about the game at Gordon’s, in the back room.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I would. I’ll do it this very Friday night. But if you promise to leave me and my stuff alone, I’ll leave you alone. Deal?”

He didn’t shake on it, or even nod his head. But when her father left her room that night, Sofia knew he would never enter it again.

That was the spring that Sofia learned to bluff, and once she started, she found it hard to stop. She would never have called the cops on her father because it would have killed her mother. She was sixteen, not thirteen, but she knew that she could pass for thirteen. All of a sudden, Sofia could bluff, pretend, plan, plot, trick, cheat, cajole, threaten, blackmail. Even steal if she chose, for while the necklace belonged to her and she would have been within her rights to take it back if she had found it, she had no claim on the other things she had grabbed. Brian hadn’t stolen from her, after all. He knew nothing about the necklace or who owned it or what it was worth, except in the most literal terms. He had probably pawned it soon after accepting it for payment, or given it to another girl who went for rides in that red Corvette. For several days, Sofia checked the paper worriedly, reading deep into the local section to see if a man had been found dead from a beating in an Essex apartment. She even considered getting rid of her shoes but decided that was a greater sacrifice than she needed to make. Whatever happened to Brian, his red Corvette was no longer seen up and down Brighton Avenue.

She used part of his money to buy a padlock for her bedroom door, a fancy one with a key. She used the balance to buy a lava lamp from Spencer’s at East Point Mall. At night, her homework done, she watched the reddish-orange blobs break apart and rearrange themselves. Even within that narrow glass, there seemed to be no limit to the forms they could take. Her father stewed and steamed about the lock, saying she had no right to lock a room in his house. He also criticized the lava lamp, saying it proved she was on drugs because what sober, right-minded person could be entertained by such a thing.

But for all he complained, he never tried to breach the lock, although it would have been a simple thing to pry it off with a hammer, not much harder than slicing through a set of guitar strings. He was scared of her now, just a little, and incapable of concealing that fear no matter how he might try.

It was a new sensation, having someone scared of her. Sofia liked it.