In Short – Volume 1, Issue 1 (Spring 2024)
May 31, 2024
Escape Route
By Deb Fenwick
Content warning: This piece contains references to sexual abuse of a child.
He stands, saying, “Wait here. I have a surprise for you.” It’s Saturday night, his mother’s working second shift at the motor factory, and we have her leaky roof house all to our teenage, beer-buzzed selves. Aerosmith’s on the boombox. Dream On. Even in our 1980s neighborhood, where gearheads and girlfriends rock hard, the song’s tired. Yet, when he goes upstairs, I begin dreaming about that surprise. Right on cue.
I sit on a couch that’s been gutted by house cats, sipping Miller Lite, imagining a box he wrapped in pink paper. A heart-shaped locket on a silver chain, I think. Maybe a mix-tape. At 17, I like song lyric poetry and strawberry lip gloss. I love him. I dream about our future. We’ll get married and take our three children to Six Flags every summer.
My boyfriend loves his boombox. He carries it everywhere. And when he can’t find an outlet, he’s got eight Duracells. Usually, it sits on the floor in his bedroom while he and his friends use Sharpies to cover every inch of wall with rock band names, dirty jokes, and a long list of assholes. But tonight, it sits atop a console TV that hasn’t worked in the two years I’ve been his girlfriend.
We patched this boyfriend-girlfriend lifeboat together in our mid-teens. Right after he realized his dad wasn’t coming back. When his mom was too broken to mother. Years after a man siphoned every bit of eight-year-old girl out of me in a basement.
When I’m with my boyfriend, I forget the sound of my mother’s sobs. I almost forget that my father’s rage makes fist-sized holes in drywall. My boyfriend says I make him happy. He picks me up for dates in his dented muscle car, and we roar away from my sad house. He’s the only person I trust.
He returns, one hand behind his back, and I’m sure it’s a dozen roses.
“Put your hands out and close your eyes,” he says.
With an eye-roll and grin, I comply.
“I won this for you,” he says.
I open my eyes, and there’s red lingerie in my hands. He tells me he won it at the neighborhood bar’s weekly fashion show when he stopped in after his shift at the auto parts store.
I stifle my flinch. I don’t want to wear it. But I don’t want to hurt his feelings either. Sometimes when he’s angry, he shouts and swears. Sometimes I cry.
It’s cheap, brittle lace. I smell cigarette smoke and the sweat of the woman who modeled it while selling one-dollar raffle tickets to underage, over-served boys. I see the old men at the end of the bar. Men who forfeited their dreams—their family’s dreams, for big-screen ball games and neon beer lights. The music pounds, and my throat is dry. So dry. I stare at the fabric to make the room stop spinning.
He goes to the boombox, turns the volume down, and sits next to me. Our stonewashed thighs touch.
“Try it on,” he tells me. “You’ll look great.”
I pause, then lie: “I love this song. Dream until your dreams come true, right?”
He kisses my cheek and says, “You’re a dream come true. Just try it on.”
Then he adds, “For me.”
The crotchless lingerie isn’t a locket. It’s not like the opal ring he gave me on my birthday. The thought of wearing it uncoils a taut ache, and I’m dragged to the place I keep dark and dormant. I give him a lip gloss, beer-breath kiss to stop him from talking. Asking. Telling. Save him from disappointment. Save myself.
We make out until he pulls away, looking at the lingerie on the coffee table, then back at me, then back at the lingerie. I’m silent—until I think up an escape route:
“I can’t wear it,” I say. “It looks way too small.”
He puts his beer down and says, “You really should have more confidence in yourself. Go ahead; you’ll look hot.”
Because of fist-sized holes and men who take girls into basements and muscle cars that roar into the night, I carry the bodysuit to the bathroom, rinse it under cold water, crush it, twist it dry. When I loosen my grip, it springs to life.
Stepping in, inching it up, I’m flesh against seams. Straining against mesh. I’m untamed body hair exposed by uneven hems in the full-length mirror. I’m an eight-year-old girl being led downstairs—a scared girl who likes being told she’s pretty. On the other side of the door, my boyfriend turns up the music. I practice my smile and walk out to model lingerie.
Right on cue.
After a long career in public education and youth advocacy, Deb Fenwick (she/her) lives and writes just outside Chicago, in Oak Park, Illinois. Her work has appeared in Hippocampus, Pithead Chapel, Cleaver, and elsewhere.