We watched the fireworks late at night, when it was darkest. My uncle kept praying to the moon, in jest, to go away. Sam and Georgie carried the box to the end of the field, past the barn. Georgie did a little jump and clicked his heels in the air, gave a holler, and Sam smiled and so did I, in spite of myself, but then I went cold. The fireworks had not excited Georgie.
I
had, and what he imagined we were going to do later. I looked at my mother, who watched my brother and uncle and cousin disappear into darkness.
“I hope he’ll be careful,” my mother said, and I wasn’t sure whom she was referring to. If only she knew; then she could tell me to be careful, she could stop things before they went any further. We couldn’t see them anymore but I heard Georgie yell something to Sam, probably some instruction, and his voice ricocheting off my brain thrilled me, amplified some desire I hadn’t known I’d had.
“I haven’t seen fireworks in years,” Father said quietly. I put my hand on top of his. He turned it over and held mine. He was very easy to love.
“Did you have them when you were little?”
“I don’t remember.”
I thought that odd—whether or not you’d seen fireworks in your childhood seemed like a thing you’d remember—but I sat quietly because I sensed that Father wanted to sit quietly. I would remember this night, I thought, but perhaps one day all of this would have faded into a vague, barely recalled memory; that seemed unbearable, that all of it could simply disappear.
We heard a whoop and Mother stood, terrified, and then we heard the bang of a firework, and the rays of color spread across the sky.
“It’s fine, Elizabeth,” my father said, and my mother sat back down.
“Do you like them, Thea?” my mother asked.
I looked at the sky. “Yes.”
Aunt Carrie was quiet. I looked at her and wanted to scream. You should know, you should have stopped your son from falling into all of this.
I left before the men came back, went to check on Sasi, who was, as I’d anticipated, frantic. I stayed with him for a while, but he wouldn’t be soothed. I walked him around the ring, let him graze, but he wasn’t interested in grass. The air smelled scorched, and there was no way to explain to him that it had all been for fun, that there was no real threat.
Back inside, Mother told me she was putting the house to bed—a phrase I’d never heard her use before. She must have read it in a book. I found her in the living room, drawing the curtains, and told her I would be outside for a while, tending to Sasi. She told me not to stay up too late, and I promised I wouldn’t, though I planned to sleep outside if Sasi wouldn’t calm down. Perhaps Georgie was in the next room—in the kitchen or the hallway—and heard, or he went to find me in my bed and guessed, correctly, that I was in the barn. That was where we had met before. It was not inconceivable that I would wait there again.
I was dozing—not fully asleep, but nowhere near awake, either—when I heard him. I watched my cousin while he looked for me. Sasi was exhausted from working himself up, stood very still, his head in the corner over me. I loved him. The feeling rose in my throat.
Georgie walked by the stall. His face was sweaty. A moment later he walked by again and stopped at the stall, propped his elbows on the door, and smiled.
“Found you.”
Sasi started, jerked his head up and walked over to the door; Georgie backed away.
“I wasn’t hiding.” I stood by Sasi and stroked his neck, ran my fingers through his knotted mane. I hadn’t been taking good care of him lately.
“Thea?”
I turned my head and looked at my cousin, and he was so eager. He motioned for me to come, and I went, it was what was expected of me, after all we had done together. I followed willingly, and as soon as I was outside the stall he pushed me against the cold brick wall, which felt good through my dress. He smelled of sweat, and he bit my lip. I turned my face and he began to gather my dress around my hips. He pressed his erection against my bare leg, and I turned back and saw that he was watching himself, that he was aroused by the sight of his erection pressing into my leg.
“Georgie,” I said, “wait.”
“Why?” He took my hand and led me into our empty stall. His voice sounded deeper than it had a moment before. I smoothed the hair away from his forehead and smiled at him.
“All right.”
“You,” he said, “you are so good.”
I would have done anything, then. I turned away from him and unbuttoned the front of my dress, and he was behind me, sliding the dress from my shoulders. He kissed my neck, and felt my breasts, and then he turned me around.
He put his finger beneath my chin and lifted it. “Are you all right?”
“No.”
“I’ll make you better.” But I wanted him to ask
why
I wasn’t all right; I wanted him to feel this risk half as much as I seemed to. He appeared so careless, Georgie, so careless about all of this. He didn’t take his eyes away. Ask, I screamed, inside my head; ask, ask, ask. Instead he put his hand between my legs while he watched me, and he was gentle. He stopped, a little half smile on his face, and I knew he was goading me. It worked.
“Don’t stop,” I said, and he unbuckled his belt, and it all felt so good, and then I wanted him, I
needed
him, because what I felt in this instant was not pleasure, exactly: it was the promise of pleasure, an itch that needed fingernails raked across it. And maybe, I thought, as I felt him next to me, as he guided my thighs apart while he traced my nipples with his fingertip. Maybe, I thought, as he pushed himself into me, it was enough, that Georgie would try to understand me later, that right now there was a need and when we were done the need would not exist anymore.
“Loosen,” he said, and I tried. It hurt, now, but the pain, I saw, was a part of the pleasure. I should not have done this, I had been very bad, and now I was being punished. It was all so clear, now. I looked out of the stall window into a black, black night. I felt the cloth of Georgie’s shirt, I put my hands on his shoulders and brought him closer to me. If a door had slammed, if Mother had stepped onto the back porch and called my name.
Sam’s face flashed in my head, not as he was now—angry, hurt—but as he used to be, a little boy who felt the world too deeply. “We should switch you!” Mother used to say, as if little girls were better suited to feel the weight of things than little boys. Georgie bent down and licked my breast like an eager dog and I shuddered, pulled him up—I felt excluded from what he was doing right now, he was inside me but he was enacting a private fantasy, one that required my presence but not my love.
Mother had been right. I was too much like a boy, too dumb to the consequences. I remembered the tent Mother let us make between our beds when we were little. Sam clasped my face between his fat hands: “Thea,” he said, “Thea!”
Georgie heaved against me, once, twice, and he seemed so large inside me, impossibly large. Then he put his head on my chest and breathed deeply. It was over very quickly.
What had Sam wanted? I couldn’t for the life of me remember.
I slid down the cold wall until I was sitting. Georgie stood over me, tucked his shirt into his pants, fastened his belt. It was something about seeing him do all those things, those normal, everyday gestures, that made me feel very alone. I put my head in my hands.
“Thea?”
“What have we done?”
“Don’t you know?” There was, outrageously, impossibly, laughter in his voice.
“I don’t mean that.”
He sat down next to me. “It’s all very natural,” he said.
“It doesn’t feel like it.” I shook my head.
“Doesn’t it?”
“We should have waited.” I looked away.
He laughed. “Why?” he asked. “There was no reason to wait, for us.”
I was naked and my cousin was completely clothed. He traced a pattern in the sawdust and seemed to consider what to say next, which was unlike my cousin, to think before he spoke.
“We were wrong,” I said.
“I didn’t make you do anything.”
I shook my head. He understood nothing.
“I want my dress,” I said, and pointed to it.
He retrieved my dress from the middle of the stall, and it seemed to me that he moved like a stranger. Then he stood over me, watched me.
“Didn’t you think that would happen?” He sounded genuinely curious. I wanted very badly to be alone.
I felt very keenly that I had given up too much for ninety, one hundred seconds. And that minute, those two minutes, had been painful for me, it had all been for Georgie’s pleasure. I saw very clearly our future: we would do this a dozen more times, two dozen more times, and then Georgie would be finished with me, with our arrangement. Boys could do this, I understood now, watching my cousin, how he stood over me, so carelessly, so confidently. Boys were meant for this world. “We’re not the marrying kind,” he said. “Thea? Did you think we were the marrying kind?”
“I don’t know what I thought,” I said. “Not this.” I gestured at the stall, the walls brown with mildew; they needed to be scrubbed, one of my summer chores. Georgie followed my hand, followed it to where it stopped: him, in clothes my parents had bought him, the only nice things he had. My cheeks burned. “It’s dirty.”
He knelt next to me and touched my cheek. “It’s not like that.”
“It is,” I said, and removed his hand. “It’s exactly like that. It’s what you do, in your family.”
“In my family?” I felt all the words forming in my heart, ready to tumble out; I clutched my dress to my chest and saw how I would end this. I pitied him, now. He stood so dumbly; he was so confused. I didn’t want to pity him. I didn’t want any part of him. I wanted to wash my hands of him, and in this moment that felt possible: I could be done with him forever.
“You’re like your father.” I was speaking quickly; I pictured my kind, mild uncle and felt like a nasty, nasty girl but I had no choice. “Your father came to my father like you came to me, begging. You’re just like him, shameful.”
I held my dress to my chest and wished for nothing more in the world than to be clothed. My cousin looked out the stall window, into the night, black as pitch, here where the lights of town did not reach. I felt sick. I wanted this to be over. But I watched my cousin’s profile and knew it would never be over; we were family, we could not be rid of each other.
I looked down. When I looked up again, Georgie’s face was mean. And what choice did he have? I ask that question now, years later, too late, everything a ruin. “Look at yourself,” he said, and his eyes roamed over my body, the dress that covered me so inadequately.
“If you don’t leave,” I said, “I’ll scream.”
“You’ll scream?” What if I had waited a beat before I’d threatened to scream? Or, better, if I had stepped back in time and said nothing at all and kissed him good night and acted as if everything was the same, and let our arrangement end slowly, as Georgie said, naturally. He could be thick and clumsy and cruel; he was also kind and funny and sincere. And anyway, none of that mattered. He was mine. He was my cousin. I wanted to take everything back. I wanted
him
to take everything back. For the first time in my life, I understood that certain words were brands, etched onto the brain. “Who will hear you?”
“Everyone.”
“I don’t think you want everyone to hear you.”
We watched each other. God knows what you were thinking, Thea. Only God knows. I could hear Mother’s voice. Georgie watched me, but I wouldn’t meet his eye. Finally, he left.
I slept in the barn. I felt unclean, but not unclean enough to wash. It seemed natural to fall asleep in this empty stall, to stay in the barn until it was light.
I slipped upstairs at dawn and bathed, thought of Georgie, who slept in the next room. I might as well not have bothered with closing the door. He had seen me naked. But there was Sam, who hadn’t. I pressed my fingernails into my forearm. I had been used by my own cousin. I was a young woman when young women were powerless. You would think I could have predicted what would happen. But I never felt powerless in my home. I hadn’t known to be careful in that regard.
When I went downstairs to breakfast, Georgie wasn’t at the table, and neither was Sam. I assumed they were still sleeping—it was early, not yet seven.
“Has your pony calmed down?” Mother asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you all right, Thea?”
I wanted so badly to tell her. I wanted so badly to be comforted. I’m so ashamed, Mother, I’ve done something so awful you won’t believe me.
She tapped my wrist. “Thea?”
Her voice was so soft, so lovely.
“Yes,” I said. “Only tired.” She looked at me, her head tilted, and I knew I could never tell, not in this life.
After breakfast I saddled Sasi, headed out into the orange groves. I rode all morning, turned around and let Sasi canter back in the direction of the barn. I felt careless today. There would be consequences—Sasi would fight for his head the next time we went toward the barn—but they felt small, and I felt large and bad. And I felt scared, though I tried to ignore the feeling of fear as it rose, tried to dampen it, send it back; I had always been so good at being fearless. I’d felt near tears all morning; now the cantering lulled me into some sort of trance and I flopped around in the saddle like a rag doll. I began to cry, like a girl, like a child.
Then Sasi swerved to avoid something—I couldn’t see what—and I gasped and grabbed Sasi’s short mane and righted myself in the saddle, just barely, while I tried to murmur soothingly, while I tried to pick up the slack in my reins. It was always like this when you rode, doing a million things at once, all by instinct.
“Sorry,” Sam called behind me, and I wished I had fallen, so that I would have an excuse for my tears.
“Thea?” Sam asked. “Are you all right?”
No, I wanted to say, no, I am not, and then I started to sob. I had let Georgie do things to me that had turned unimaginable in my mind; I had done things to him that I could never speak of, not to anyone. Not to Mother, not to Father, not to Sam, not to—and this occurred to me only now, on the back of the pony I loved, in the middle of an orange grove I had ridden through thousands of times, no, millions—my husband. I felt sick and dizzy.