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by Terrie Relf
e've known each other for a long time, she and I. We first met when she was a small child playing alone in a tree in her backyard. She fell, twisting and catching her leg on a tree branch, perilously suspended upside-down in the air high above the earth. No one was home. She cried and called out to me. I came eagerly, and help her down. I remember her small arms around me, nuzzling close, begging me to take her. The odd thing was that I couldn't. Not yet.
That night as we lay close together, we spoke of many things. Her trust was incomparable. Never had I known any child to so readily give away her most precious secrets or confessions of love.
"I love you," she said. I uttered no sound.
"I really love you!"
"How could you," I asked. "We've only just met."
"I just know," she answered after an extended pause within which I realize that she was my betrothed.
In exchange for this confession I promised to guard her against the dark presence which she so often felt within her bedroom, and from the creatures which called out to her in waking nightmares, which caressed her with sharp fingernails, which watched her every move with eyes like venomous spiders. I knew that when I found her huddled beneath the covers, breathing frantically, that she was hiding from these dark forces and not from me. She never feared me, for I was her betrothed.
It was painful to watch as she grew from a child of eight or so to a young woman of thirteen. She no longer climbed trees or went wandering in the canyon, but spent hours walking along the beach without awareness of time or person. I say "painful" because she seemed to have forgotten me. Her mind was on other things, none of which she would disclose to me. Time was all I had, so I waited. But oh, how I wanted her! The awkwardness of puberty was slowly being replaced by a wildness and passion which awed me. Miraculously, she emerged from her stupor and sought me once again.
"I've missed you " she said.
"And I, you," I replied tentatively, so as not to appear too eager.
Her eyes misted briefly, and then she flung herself towards me, her laughter at once shy and triumphant. I could have taken her then, but I refrained. She need to prove herself to me. No, that wasn't it exactly. I think what I wanted from her was that indefinable something which once evident, one knows what has always been missing. It is not like me to be so vague. Suffice it to say that she needed to walk the edge—and walk that edge she did.
That fall in school she discovered boys. She was only thirteen, but ready. The boys knew it. They could sense her ripeness by the languid looks which she offered them during class, glances which made the boys shudder within that primal realm of their untried passions. I don't blame her for not waiting for me. In fact, I looked forward to her assignations.
One older boy was braver than the rest. He followed her home one afternoon, keeping a few paces behind her. I was close behind them, a fact to which only he was oblivious. Her beckoning gestures were intended for me rather than for him. What could that mere boy offer her that I could not? Yet I still resisted a nebulous impulse to claim her there on the path. She was irresistible and yet I still chose to wait, thus prolonging our dance.
He took her from behind without fondling. I moved closer to the window and heard her scream out in pain which he mistook for ecstasy, plunging deeper and deeper into her. I wanted to intervene, but only watched. When she tried to pull away from him in between thrusts, he grabbed her roughly, pinned her hands down under her, and continued to satisfy his need.
When he finished dressing afterwards, he blew her a kiss.
The entire school knew about it before lunch. The word was out that she was a slut who liked it rough. They laughed at her and made lewd gestures. They whispered during class. They snubbed her.
But the phone rang off the hook...So, she went out with these boys, letting them do what they wanted—even convincing them that she liked it.
"I pretend it's you," she said to me months later.
"You confuse me," I replied, wondering at why this was all so perplexing. "You say that you want to be with me and yet—"
"It never seemed to bother you before. After all, you told me it's not time yet."
"You're right, but I don't want you to forget your promise to me"
"I won't! I won't! she cried, burying her tear -drenched face against me.
"I—want—you to—tell me," between sobs.
"Tell you what?" my voice now gentle.
Then she looked up at me and said," that you still want me."
I wasn't able to convince her that there was nothing to forgive, that I still wanted her. Yet she was adamant in her belief that I had rejected her.
She began spending her afternoons after school seated on the kitchen stool with the knife drawer open, in a trance, fondling the long sharp blades, sensuously running them along your yielding flesh. I watched as thin tendrils of blood moistened the hard blade's edges, yet its furthermost point never quite pierced the skin. It was exquisite torture, watching her thus. She knew I liked how she toyed seductively first with one blade, then another.
As time passed, our conversations became increasingly directed towards her love for me.
"Why do you love me?" I demanded to know.
"I have always loved you—ever since that first day we met. Those boys mean nothing to me—nothing!"
I was silent, so she continued imploring me to believe her.
"With you I feel whole. I feel—safe, soothed. I feel—"
"Enough!" I interrupted. It still wasn't time. She just wasn't ready for me. Not yet. I never believed that it would be not ever; I knew otherwise.
She went back to the boys and the years ticked by. When she was about sixteen, a friend of hers disappeared for several weeks. When the fried returned, she was ecstatic.
"Where have you been?! I've been so worried about you."
"My parents threw me in a nut house."
"What?!"
"Yeah, I tried to kill myself—but I didn't do it right. God! I can't do anything right!"
Curiosity peaked, she asked, "Well—how'd you do it?"
The girl slid her left sleeve up to reveal a partially-healed row of scars across the wrist.
"See—I did it crosswise. A girl there told me that you're supposed to do it like this—: and she traced her finger lengthwise up her arm.
"You're supposed to open up a main artery or something."
The girl only nodded, despair clouding her eyes.
"I don't want scars or pain." she told me later that evening. I understood. It's the human condition not to want to suffer, and yet all they do is suffer due to their persistent attempts to avoid the inevitable.
"I'm depressed," she cried. I remembered her as a small child, and held her while she slept, longing to ease her suffering, to give her what she wanted. Me.
She turned to the speed demon in the car her parents bought her for her sixteenth birthday. Behind the wheel of the car, she felt free, going top speed up the winding streets which led to Mt. Soledad's Cross. She brought the boys along on joy rides. Yet they were no longer boys; she had men now.
She became particularly fond of one of these men. He shared her passions for speed and sex. I watched them closely, guarding against the possibility that he would take her from me. He whooped when she went 90mph, and was in the final throes of an orgasm at 120 mph. They were made for each other. Time was running out.
One night, they drove leisurely up the hill to The Cross. She was ministering to his needs while he drove, occasionally looking up at his face which held the pacified look which she sought. When they reached the top of the hill and parked, she took their clothes off, throwing them into the back seat of the car, mentally daring the police to patrol the area. He leaned her forwards over the hood of the car and began to lick and nip at her flesh, beginning first with her ankles, up her calves to her thighs, too many whiles massaging her buttocks expertly with both hands. She was delirious, begging him to keep going. I remember that he laughed. I had had enough!
On the way home they wrapped their car around a telephone pole. The man was D.O.A. She was in critical condition. I had wanted her to come to me willingly, without fear, without looking back. My anticipation was steadily mounting; I could feel a fullness within me which was ready to burst like a storm-ravaged cloud. I could taste her within me, so great was my hunger for my betrothed.
Her warm, shallow breaths told me that she was near. Only a thin veil separated us know. I am not all-powerful, even though some think me some. I now knew the anguish of what it must feel to be human—that hunger, that longing for bondage to what we desire, a desire so acute, that the awareness of self dissipates, and there is only the other. Yet I wanted us to be not one plus other—just one—inextricably melded without barrier. Ahh! The exquisite torture of seduction!
I hesitated while I watched her struggling to hold onto that one force which I truly abhored. What if once I had her, she lost her place within my awareness, and became just a part of me, thus her no longer. I did not want my betrothed to be so enveloped within me that my awareness of her ceased to exist.
And so I lost my love. Was it due to my fear of her loss of self within my all-consuming presence, or was it from some nobler cause to which I was only now awakening? I had had my chances to claim her, yet I always hesitated, waiting for that indefinable something which was only now present. I realized that what I was always watching for, and that for which I was waiting, was for r her to choose, for her to love Life before she came to me. Watching her struggle to hang on, to elude me, even as we came so close to finally being together, proved to me that she was worthy, and yet I released her from our promise.
I now watch her from afar. She catches occasional glimpses of me and I still see that bittersweet smile of unrequited love upon her lips.
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