"I
got to go, Mr. Harvey. This is a cool place, but I have to go."
He
stood up and did his hunchback number by the six dug- in steps that led to the
world. "I don't know why you think you're leaving."
I
talked so that I would not have to take in this knowledge: Mr. Harvey was no
character. He made me feel skeevy and icky now that he was blocking the door.
"Mr.
Harvey, I really have to get home."
"Take
off your clothes."
"What?"
"Take
your clothes off," Mr. Harvey said. "I want to check that you're
still a virgin."
"I
am, Mr. Harvey," I said.
"I
want to make sure. Your parents will thank me."
"My
parents?"
"They
only want good girls," he said.
"Mr.
Harvey," I said, "please let me leave."
"You
aren't leaving, Susie. You're mine now."
Fitness
was not a big thing back then; aerobics was barely a word. Girls were supposed
to be soft, and only the girls we suspected were butch could climb the ropes at
school.
I
fought hard. I fought as hard as I could not to let Mr. Harvey hurt me, but my
hard-as-I-could was not hard enough, not even close, and I was soon lying down
on the ground, in the ground, with him on top of me panting and sweating,
having lost his glasses in the struggle.
I was
so alive then. I thought it was the worst thing in the world to be lying flat
on my back with a sweating man on top of me. To be trapped inside the earth and
have no one know where I was.
--
Mr.
Harvey started to press his lips against mine. They were blubbery and wet and I
wanted to scream but I was too afraid and too exhausted from the fight. I had
been kissed once by someone I liked. His name was Ray and he was Indian. He had
an accent and was dark. I wasn't supposed to like him. Clarissa called his
large eyes, with their half-closed lids, "freak-a-delic," but he was
nice and smart and helped me cheat on my algebra exam while pretending he
hadn't. He kissed me by my locker the day before we turned in our photos for
the yearbook. When the yearbook came out at the end of the summer, I saw that
under his picture he had answered the standard "My heart belongs to"
with "Susie Salmon." I guess he had had plans. I remember that his
lips were chapped.
"Don't,
Mr. Harvey," I managed, and I kept saying that one word a lot. Don't. And
I said please a lot too. Franny told me that almost everyone begged
"please" before dying.
"I
want you, Susie," he said.
"Please,"
I said. "Don't," I said. Sometimes I combined them. "Please
don't" or "Don't please." It was like insisting that a key works
when it doesn't or yelling "I've got it, I've got it, I've got it" as
a softball goes sailing over you into the stands.
"Please
don't."
But
he grew tired of hearing me plead. He reached into the pocket of my parka and
balled up the hat my mother had made me, smashing it into my mouth. The only
sound I made after that was the weak tinkling of bells.
As he
kissed his wet lips down my face and neck and then began to shove his hands up
under my shirt, I wept. I began to leave my body; I began to inhabit the air
and the silence. I wept and struggled so I would not feel. He ripped open my
pants, not having found the invisible zipper my mother had artfully sewn into
their side.
"Big
white panties," he said.
I
felt huge and bloated. I felt like a sea in which he stood and pissed and shat.
I felt the corners of my body were turning in on themselves and out, like in
cat's cradle, which I played with Lindsey just to make her happy. He started
working himself over me.
"Susie!
Susie!" I heard my mother calling. "Dinner is ready."
He
was inside me. He was grunting.
"We're
having string beans and lamb."
I was
the mortar, he was the pestle.
"Your
brother has a new finger painting, and I made apple crumb cake."
Mr.
Harvey made me lie still underneath him and listen to the beating of his heart
and the beating of mine. How mine skipped like a rabbit, and how his thudded, a
hammer against cloth. We lay there with our bodies touching, and, as I shook, a
powerful knowledge took hold. He had done this thing to me and I had lived.
That was all. I was still breathing. I heard his heart. I smelled his breath.
The dark earth surrounding us smelled like what it was, moist dirt where worms
and animals lived their daily lives. I could have yelled for hours.
I
knew he was going to kill me. I did not realize then that I was an animal
already dying.
"Why don't you get up?" Mr. Harvey
said as he rolled to the side and then crouched over me.
His
voice was gentle, encouraging, a lover's voice on a late morning. A suggestion,
not a command.
I couldn't move. I couldn't get up.
When
I wouldn't —was it only that, only that I wouldn't follow his suggestion? —he leaned
over to the side and felt, over his head, across the ledge where his razor and
shaving cream sat. He brought back a knife. Unsheathed, it smiled at me,
curving up in a grin.
He
took the hat from my mouth. "Tell me you love me," he said.
Gently,
I did. The end came anyway.
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