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Show Moon -109 She took what felt like her last breath and then she lay stiff, unmoving and cold, her muscles as rigid as if she'd set eyes on Medusa herself and had turned into stone. She become something hard she might never unbend from. He turned her over on her back, lay on top of her, began pushing his knee into her legs. His breath pressed into her ear like steam hissing. But she kept herself inert, lifeless as the coldest slab of marble. She thought about yellow leaves and horses, lakes trembling on the edge of mountains like black pearls, the tiny woman in the daffodils. Everything good about herself, she gathered up like treasures to be hidden in a tomb of granite. She walled off the man she had called her father by the force of her living death. Finally James picked himself up with a great sigh and left her. Joy sprang up and locked her door. Soon after, she heard him turn the knob, rattle and push, then his feet padded away once again. This rattling at her door went on every night until her mother and the boys came back from Baguio. Once he called through the door, "You've deliberately seduced me. Let me in!" At last her mother and the boys returned, and Joy pulled her mother into her room so they could be alone, and cried, "Mom, I have to tell you something. Daddy tried to have sex with me. I'm so afraid!" Her voice trembled. She wanted to fall into her mother's arms and weep. Her mother frowned and drew back from her, and Joy began to doubt herself. "At least I think he did. He came into my room and starting kissing me, you know what I mean?" Her mother wove her pale fingers together, stared at her daughter as if she were a stranger, and turned toward the door. She said, "I'll talk to him." Anne started to say, "I don't think that will help," but her mother had left the room. The next night night her mother came to her and |
