at 13, to a traveling salesman of household
items who cruises in a big bubble-shaped Packard.
Summer 1945, Washington state: faraway war
done, fat apples thumping to the ground, happiness
in the street, cripples. Nell meets him outside
a coffee shop where she, barefoot, has no dime
for coffee. C’mon to my room, he says, and she
does, wearing her best shoes which are also
her only. The suspenders under his jacket swish
as he strips them off. He’s 28, skinny, married
with two kids in Idaho. She can’t decide whether
he’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen, or
the most horrible. But he gives her a dollar. She cries out
and bleeds when he takes root in her, and though
she doesn’t know it yet, something else, harder than stone
or cancer, plants itself in her too, at that moment,
something fierce and bitter, something permanent
that will never flush out with warm water, or Coca-Cola,
or the half-bottle of vinegar from her stepmother’s shelf. |
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