Prelude to kisses

Chapter 42

She was back on the couch after putting Chloe to bed, she was a lot better and was recovering immaculately. She was such a happy child, always learning, with her big eyes she asked as many questions as she could about this and that. Some questions made Jackie stutter, making Mahita laugh before answering, getting her out of her misery.

They had been watching cartoons but now she put on a movie a guy at the video store had recommended for her. Very insightful, he'd described it to be. Halfway through the movie, she could agree with him.

A scene of the main actress on her wedding night came on. It was an arranged marriage which they were both unexcited about, but to make both their parents happy, they had gone on with the marriage. They did what was expected of them on their marriage night, he kissed her, and she kissed him back, soft music playing in the background. He'd even picked her up bridal style, said she was beautiful in her wedding dress, but it was painful to clearly see that neither wanted to be there in that moment.

He unzipped her wedding dress, let the white garment fall to her feet and she stepped out of it. She reached to his jacket and took it off of him before taking him in a kiss. A lone tear fell as she let him guide her to the bed, more tears fell from her eyes as he entered her and started to move. Somewhere along the scene Jackie had an out of body experience. A moment when she and her body had separated. The actress turned her head and looked into Jackie's eyes. So many emotions lay there and before she could pick at each one something happened.

Jackie was eight or so, back at home, living with her grandmother. She was sitting together with her grandmother, "I don't want you playing around the help. You must stay away from him because he is a man and I don't want him to do anything to you", she heard her grandmother say referring to the guy that took care of the cows.

She was only eight, and she thought the guy was really nice. She'd never felt scared of him. Months later, her grandmother hired a new guy to watch the cows. The last one quit, but she's too young to understand. In another memory, she's around the same age, folding cloths so they made a ball, and she places them inside her shirt on her chest, so it looks like she has breasts. So ready and eager to grow up she was. So eager to be like all the other older girls growing breasts.

Another memory plunges itself again. Her grandmother is away, she goes away for days sometimes when her mom sends her money for groceries or when she's visiting her sons. The memory is blurred, like an old video footage, she can barely make out the memory. But she knows it as she feels it when he touches her, as he undresses and undresses himself before plunging into her. She remembers feeling the pain, she remembers how it fades sometime after, and she remembers how she likes it after. How pain fades into pleasure. When he's done, she hears the door open and close behind him as he makes his exist.

The next morning her body is not her own, and she never looks at him the same gain. He doesn't say anything to her, neither does she. It never happens again but her mind only ponders on whether it was true or not. Whether he'd really touched her or if she had made it all up. In another memory, she's twelve or thirteen, she's moved to South Africa. She's sitting in English class. her teacher is talking about rape. She doesn't hear much, but the words her teacher says stay engraved in her mind forever. They connect the dots. They make her feel less guilty and she blames herself less whenever she repeats them to herself.

Even if you like it, it's still rape.

Two years later, she's fifteen. Her friend's brother likes her. They shared her first kiss on New Year's Eve. Her legs had turned to jelly when their lips met in a feather soft kiss, just like the movies describe it. A few months later he takes her to his friend's house. She trusts him. She knows him. She knows his family. She trusts herself and she knows she doesn't want to have sex right now. He'd understand, and he wouldn't force her, she thinks to herself.

Thirty minutes later, she's struggling to get away from him. She's given him excuses enough to build a bridge on why she wasn't ready to have sex.

I have to go home.

My mom will be back anytime soon.

My mom wouldn't like it.

I don't want to right now.

I'm not ready for this.

And yet, even with all these and so much more, he doesn't budge. Sometime after, she ends up on top of him, still struggling to move from his grip because he had her leg between his legs holding her in place. She has nowhere to go, and they are all alone in a house only he is familiar with. She's alone with someone she'd believed liked her and was her boyfriend, now he was proving to be anything but. She takes a breath for a moment and the fight leaves her for a second. Only a second that she took a breath to gain some of her strength back and try to get out of his grip that he flips them over and he's hovering over her.

His movements are quick and, in a moment, he's inside her and he's moving, and she doesn't know what to think when she turns her head to the side like the woman in the movie. She doesn't cry, she just lets him. She lets him move in and out of her. She allows herself to think of walking home alone, she thinks about how tired her mom would be after a long day of work. She thinks about her sister, that she was probably at home doing her homework or had friends with her. When he's done and they are both getting dressed he says, "You see, that wasn't so bad".

He asked if she wanted him to take her home, she refused and walked home alone. She felt dirty, and everyone she passed, she wondered if they could tell. If they could feel or smell what she'd done. She felt different, like the few minutes had turned her into a completely different person. She felt different around her friends, at schools and around her mom. She continued seeing this guy until she went home to her grandmother to finish school. She was seventeen then and her relationships only got worse.

She began to believe that it was normal, that a girl didn't have to enjoy sex, that she just had to give. Even if she didn't feel like it, even if she was in pain. In her relationship with Christian, she'd wanted to be in control. She'd wanted to offer before he asked. She wanted to take her power back and initiating it made her feel more in control over her body.

"I won't force you Jackie, you know why? Because that would be rape", Mathew had told her. They had both been lying naked, and he'd probably sensed her hesitation. He had been the first man to read her like that. The first one who waited to hear her give consent. It had made her want to do it with him so badly it hurt in that moment. And when they did it felt so good Jackie couldn't imagine that it was real. That's why she'd broken up with him, because he was different, and she wanted to play the game she knew with the devil she knew. Matt was too complicated; he was new and the feelings she had for him were scary. But even after she'd broken up with him and built walls to keep him away, when she saw him again a month later, they fell away in an instant and she was back in bed with him again.

And for a very long time, she never forgot him. Because he'd cared about her in a way no other man in her life had.