Even in the absence of students, the school still smelled the same as it always did: like chemicals from the dry erase markers mixed with stale air and a faint smell of body odor wafting from the gym. It would be another couple of months before the students returned to school. I felt as if I’d hear the bell ring at any moment, the sounds of the students’ laughter echoing through the halls as they spilled from their classrooms, slamming lockers and shouting over one another.
I navigated my way down one dark hall and then another. Most of my soreness was now replaced with a constant state of ‘uncomfortable’ that I felt in each and every step.
The towering locker system looked very much like rows of silent soldiers lining every open section of wall from the floor to the ceiling. When I reached the closet-turned-darkroom that Mr. Johnson had built for his photography class, I used the knife from my boot to flip the flimsy latch.
When I was sure the room was light-tight, I turned on the safe light and went to work pulling the negatives from my camera and filling the trays with processing chemicals. It took longer than I thought, but when I was done, twelve black-and-white photos hung on clothespins on the drying line across the room, each one a different angle of the same subject.
Me.
Looking at them made me feel as if not even a second had passed, let alone a few weeks. I was right there again. I closed my eyes to fight off the intruding memories, but they wouldn’t relent.
Again, I felt every blow, every bit of force he used when he pushed himself into me. I felt a sudden panic rise in my chest that radiated down my body to my toes.
I was afraid to leave the apartment in those first couple of weeks, not just because Owen was out there somewhere, but because I didn’t want anyone to see me. I’d called Reggie and told him I was violently ill and didn’t want to get the rest of the guys sick so he slipped invoices and receipts under the door of the apartment for me to organize at home until the bruising on my face faded.
When I did make it back to work, I’d heard that all the Fletchers were spending the rest of the summer at their cabin up in Jackson Hole.
Owen would be gone until Jake came back.
I could breathe for the first time in weeks.
The smell of the chemicals in the small space, mixed with the heat of the non air-conditioned room, must have been too much for my fragile state of being. I grabbed an empty mop bucket from the corner and threw up the contents of my stomach until nothing was left, and I was just dry heaving.
I’d come to develop the pictures knowing in advance how I would feel. I knew what my reaction would be. I didn’t want to remember what happened. I didn’t want to acknowledge it at all. But, this wasn’t for me. This was for him. I would be strong for him. I had to show him everything. He needed to know.
I barely had the strength to hold my camera when I took them. My wrists had shaken under its seemingly enormous weight. That shake could almost be seen within the photos themselves, causing fuzz around the edges instead of solid lines.
I saw so much more in them than I’d expected to.
In the first, I was staring straight ahead, as if I was looking at someone else’s reflection. I held the camera down by my side so I could capture all of my naked body. Every bruise, every bit of dried blood, every swell and scratch was picked up by the camera’s lens and magnified in the truthful light and shadow of the black and white image. The next was similar. In that one, my body was turned as if I looked over my own shoulder at the spreading bloodstains under the skin that covered my ribs. The next was similar, just slightly different.
And the next one.
And the next one.
And the next one.
Each was a haunted, battered version of me, taken from a different angle.
In the very last one, I was on the floor with my legs spread out in front of me. My knees were pushed open as wide I could make them go. I was wincing from the pain of the position, but the camera I’d raised above my head in both hands had captured my determination to take the photo.
This photo wasn’t taken to document what Owen had done. This one I had taken for me. Fresh wounds mixed with old scars. A portrait of my life in pain. Proof that I had been beaten, but I wasn’t broken.
They couldn’t fucking break me.
My photos reminded me of my favorite painting by an unknown artist. It depicted a woman lying naked with a huge red scar running down the length of her body. Her mouth was open, like she was screaming. Just like her, my photos represented my abusers ill-fated attempt to cut me open and gut out my secrets. She’d been cut but not opened.
Just like me.
I looked at the line hung with square images of my battered body, my blackened eyes and my swollen mouth spread in a wince, and realized: all of this was a consequence.