The Frozen Baseline

I look around the room, which has a bed, a dresser, and a few shelves. I’m feeling disoriented. It seems my drink contained something. My expectation was a standard English lesson, since my grammar was not yet proficient. I looked at my hands, then down at my body. I was wearing my favourite green crop top that I got from my best friend on my birthday, when I turned thirteen, the shorts I got from my mama that I wore to P.E., and some cool shoes that were comfortable for riding my bike. I looked back up, and I saw him: the thirty-four-year-old man who had noticed that I was struggling with my English grammar in an English-speaking country. He spoke my mother tongue and had offered to help.

The next second, he came toward me, grabbed me by the waist, and leaned down, whispering in my ear.

“I will ensure you are no longer a virgin after tonight.”

I did not know what a virgin was, nor what he meant by tonight. My mind stopped as his hands slid under my shorts to grab my lower back. He started kissing my neck. I moved quite a lot and made my way to the door; it was closed. I looked at him with fear in my eyes as his hands roamed over my body. He picked me up and threw me on the bed I saw earlier, started undressing me, and his mouth landed over my chest. I screamed, tried to push him off, but I was too weak for that; also, the things that he had given me before also had their impact here. After some time, he started going down, taking off my shorts. I screamed even louder, hoping someone could help me, as I heard his zipper unzip. I knew I was done.

My eyes flew open in derealisation as I looked at my dark, messy bedroom, which I had to clean a week ago. I was in my bed, not his, seventeen, not thirteen. My heart was racing, my ribs ached, and my hands shook violently against the sheets as I just realized it all was just a dream, a realistic one that also had left scars and feelings; I still could feel his heavy calloused hands pressing onto my thirteen-year-old bones. The feeling, the sensation, was so loud and noticeable that I had goosebumps and chills running down my spine. I felt his presence over me even though I was alone in my room, surrounded by my plushies and thoughts. There was a need to scream, to ugly cry, but I couldn’t afford to wake anyone up and start an argument about something I told no one in my family about. I know they wouldn’t believe me; it was already four years ago.

Moving like a ghost, I slipped out of my bed so my steps wouldn’t make that much noise. I locked myself in the bathroom. Turning the tap on full blast, letting the bathtub fill with water that’s almost too hot to bear. I grabbed the peeling cream and the abrasive cloth from the upper shelf. Looking into the bathtub, seeing my reflection in the water, I felt disgusted with myself. I stepped into the tub; the heat was stinging my legs, but I barely felt it as all I could think about was the phantom weight of him.

I squeezed the cream onto the cloth and began rubbing. Hard. I scrubbed my arms, my chest, my stomach, pressing down until my skin started turning angry, bright red. I wanted to peel the top layer of my skin, the layer that he has touched, the layer that was filthy and disgusting. I wanted to scrub until there was nothing left of the girl that he had touched, leaving only something clean, innocent, something that was entirely mine. I rubbed until my muscles ached, desperately trying to wash the dirt of a four-year-old nightmare down the drain.

I finally stopped rubbing when my arms grew too heavy to lift. The abrasive cloth slipped from my fingers and floated in the water. I leaned back against the cold porcelain of the tub, staring at the cracked plaster on the bathroom ceiling. The water was losing its heat, turning lukewarm, then cold. My skin burned angry, raw red, but the weight of those dirty hands was finally gone for now. Clean. Or as close to clean as I would ever get.

Downstairs, the floorboards creaked; my mum’s boyfriend got up, moving through the house like a ghost, ignoring the others. No one knocked on the door. No one asked if I was okay. I pulled my knees to my chest, letting the cold water swallow me. I liked the quiet. I liked being alone, where no one could look at me, no one could demand anything from me, and no one could start an argument. But as I sat there in the fading warmth, watching the steam disappear into the dark room, a heavy realization settled into my chest. I was seventeen, and I was already tired. I didn’t care about tomorrow, or the day after that, or the years stretching ahead of me. There was no future to look forward to. There was only the dark, the cold water, and the quiet survival of another day.