Story Time!

As can be evidenced from the reviews down below, X3 made quite the impression on my sweetheart, so much so that she broke through the block and wrote what I perceive to be an excellently haunting story. Disclaimers by Sequoia first, then read onwards...

* * * * *

Marvel characters belong to Marvel and no money is being made. X3 continuity. While watching the film, I realized there were two ways to view Jean Grey given her behavior as a child and the emergence of an alter - either the child was always a bitchy little psycho and the Jean persona was nothing more than a neutered Phoenix; or some traumatic event had occured during the manifesting of her powers, giving rise to the attitude and laying groundwork for a split. I prefer the latter because I like my Jean and Phoenix well shaken, not limply stirred and then whined about when they can’t think of anything to do with Jean besides "Phoenix" stories. The Phoenix is an integral part of her personality, even before it was given a name, and to strip it away is as as damaging to the character as stripping away the The Jean.

I drew on personal life experiences while writing this, downplaying some events and exaggerating others. It was quite cathartic and I’m glad I wrote it. I would give it an adult theme warning, but, well, that seems wrong, since the character involved is not yet an adult but must deal with those "themes", like so many of us, and there is never a warning.

* * * * *

AND SHE WAS

Tim Harper, with his blond curls and easy smile, his Track medals and his Scouting badges, lives three streets over and one down. The Harper’s pristine white house has blue shutters and a sanguine cataract of roses that spill upward onto the porch roof and lay like a cat in the sun.

Tim is popular and funny and smells of sweet mint tea. He has been going with Sara since homecoming and tells all his friends he loves her. Sara wears his ring around her neck and tapes photographs of them at the lake on her mirror and in her locker, next to Jackson Browne. She tells her friends that at NYU next year, she’ll date other boys.

Tim invites Jean along when he and Sara watch videos on his family’s 20-inch television, and Mrs. Harper feeds them warm, crusty bread slathered with butter and honey that melts in little rivers on their hands. Jean tells her own mother, who is a nurse and too tired to bake except on birthdays, about the bread; and Elaine stops folding towels and says the next time the hospital gives her a day off they’ll bake, just the two of them. Jean takes Mastering The Art of French Cooking Volume 2 out of the library until they’ll no longer let her; but that’s all right because the hospital won’t let Elaine have a day either.

Tim stays for dinner once a week and talks to their father about politics and the Challenger. He mows their lawn, cuts pictures of horses from magazines for her wall and comes to her dance recitals. So when he says, ‘Jeanie, come on, I want to show you something,’ she goes.

It’s the last day of summer vacation and she intends to spend it outside, even with the sun this hot and high, and Annie visiting her grandparents in Poughkeepsie. Hours on the swings, striving for height, for the buckling of the chains and the dizzying rush of freefall, have made her legs sore and wobbly, her hair a tangled mess at the nape of her neck. She leaves her sandals by the swings and holds her sundress above her knees, wading into the stream that cuts through the park, picking her way over the rocks and chasing crayfish with her toes.

The field the neighborhood kids use for soccer and softball is littered with buttercups and dandelions and crumpled brown lunch bags. Tim waits on the other side, where the stream curves into the wood that stands between the park and the Davidson’s house, and leads her into the trees where the filtered sunlight dapples shadows on their skin and twigs snap beneath their feet.

What Tim wants her to see is a fat tree with plum colored leaves, a hundred yards from the field. He picks up a stick and pokes something amid the exposed roots. ‘It must have fallen out of the nest,’ he says, and Jean kneels beside him. It is a sparrow, one wing twisted at an unnatural angle.

Jean strokes the trembling body with one finger, says, ‘I’ll bring it home.’ Tim is smiling when she looks up, a peculiar, detached smile that makes her cross when she feels the thrumming of the tiny heart against her thumb. She’ll run home for a shoebox. A jar lid filled with water and a bed of grass. ‘My mom will know what to do.’

He blocks her way when she stands. She’s very cross now, tension coiling in her stomach. ‘Stop it, Tim.’

‘I want to show you something,’ he says again, and unzips his pants. Still smiling. She tries to run past him and he catches her around the waist. Slams her into the ground so hard she couldn’t draw air enough to scream even if his hand weren’t tight against her mouth.

‘Shhh...shhh,’ he whispers, against her ear, making it wet with his breath, and she retches, her body vibrating like the sparrow. His other hand is toying with the strap on her sundress. He lets it drift on top of the cloth, touching her small, budding breast. She remembers the newspaper headlines her father doesn’t want her to see: Local Man Charged With Indecent Act.

‘Don’t be scared,’ Tim says, his voice quiet and gentle, and she stares at him, stiffening. ‘I like you, Jean. I don’t want you to be scared.’

Jean nods and he takes his hand from her mouth. She can breathe now, shallow and ragged, her whole face tingling. The trees are rocking from side to side, rustling purple leaves shot through with gold, and none of this seems real. None of this makes sense. Tim wouldn’t do this to her or to Sara. She thinks of Sara, beautiful, self-assured Sara, and Tim looks startled. ‘Sara doesn’t have to know,’ he says. He rubs his penis against her leg and she jerks away. ‘She wouldn’t understand.’

He is still holding her down, his hand heavy on her breast, and when she meets his eyes she knows he is a liar, that her fear is what he wants most. She tries to sit up and something inside her shifts instead, pulling softly at the base of her skull, fiery tendrils of electricity that flicker and weave through her head to pool in her temples. Tim presses one finger to her lips. His own lips make the shape ‘no one will understand’ but what she hears is ‘no one will believe you’.

Jean bites down on the finger and kicks between his legs, her toes smashing into the alien heat of his penis; and he howls and rocks back, radiating waves of black she sees behind her eyes. She half-runs, half-falls towards the water and Tim is right behind her, his hand crushing her wrist, pain pulsing up her arm, across her chest, as he pushes her down.

She pushes back against him, tearing at his teeshirt and neck with her nails. His fingers are under her dress, yanking her underwear aside, shoving into her body.

It is so bewildering that for a moment Jean cannot think or breathe or be. He drives his fingers deeper, deeper, twisting inside; she digs her heels into the dirt and sobs, trying to dislodge his weight and escape his hand and the tearing pain. Hot urine soaks her underwear and his fingers, the dirt beneath them.

And then he stops, shuddering, and Jean realizes he has been touching himself. He wipes his hands on his teeshirt, smearing her blood and his semen on the cotton. She feels empty, ransacked. Humiliated.

‘I’m sorry,’ Tim says as he zips up his pants and kneels beside her, ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you.’ His voice is gentle, like before, but she can almost smell the lies now, blistering the air.

Jean’s heart is beating too fast, everything is shimmering, slipping. She pulls her sundress down over her knees, the pretty yellow fabric torn and dirtied, blood sticky on her thighs. ‘I want to go home,’ she says, and he shushes her, tries to smooth her hair, says they need to clean her up. ‘I want to go home,’ she insists, and stumbles to her feet.

‘Not yet,’ he says calmly. ‘You can’t tell anyone about this, Jeanie. They wouldn’t understand. Your sister - ’

‘I want to go home!’ Jean shrieks, desperate for her mother. Tim is telling her to shut up bitchshutupbitch without moving his mouth. ‘I want to go -’

He grabs her throat, cutting off her voice. She gags, gasping noiselessly for air, not strong enough to pry his hateful fingers from her neck. She cannot keep her eyes open. Cannot move her body. Cannot think of anything but the immense darkness that has seeped into every piece of her. And yet -

There is a roaring inside, a mad burning that fills her lungs, her heart, her head, as Tim lays her down beside the stream. He folds her hands across her unmoving chest, and now it is the sour taste of his fear, and not her own, that washes through her. Pinwheels of light spiral wildly and burst like firecrackers, illuminating the dark, her whole being churning, restless, seeking.

Her eyes are open, staring at the sun. Oxygen fills her lungs. She stretches out her arms by her sides, palms flat against the shaking earth, the trees groaning as they bend towards her. Water and stones, leaves and branches, swirl around them. Tim opens his mouth to say something, but no sound comes out. And then he’s swirling too, faster and faster, until there is nothing left.

+ + +

When Jean opens her eyes again, the sky is marbled pink and orange and red. She lies perfectly still and listens to her heartbeat. Except for the pain in her throat, her wrist, between her legs, she is numb. All blunt edges.

The sparrow with the broken wing is dead, its tiny skull caved in. She buries it in the plummy leaves and sits by the makeshift grave until the sun has set. She walks back through the field, into the park, and realizes she is moving above the grass, the tip of each blade brushing against the soles of her feet. Streetlamps and porch lights pulse and go out as she passes.

Inside her own house there is a ten dollar bill and instructions to order pizza taped to the refrigerator. John has a lecture; Elaine is working a double shift so she can see her girls off in the morning. The 6th and the 12th grades are important, she says. You’re nearly finished.

Upstairs she can hear the stereo hitching, Don McLean grieving for Van Gogh in fragmented bursts. Jean knocks on the bedroom door and rests her forehead on the wood, pitching into Sara when it opens, her sister’s surprise becoming a strange wail when she sees the bruises on Jean’s neck and wrist, the stains on her dress.

‘Who did this?’ Sara keeps saying. ‘Who did this?’ Her thoughts are splashing against Jean’s own, a sick panic edged with violence; and Jean doesn’t know how to say it, where the words are, so she splashes back, filling Sara with a kaleidoscope of Tim and his fingers, dead birds and the delirium in her head.

Sara throws up all over the floor.

+ + +

They stand together, fingers entwined, papers and books tumbling against the ceiling. Sara decides that no one can know about Tim. This sudden, eerie ability cannot be hidden. If the police, the hospital, see what Jean can do, if they know about the assault, they will assume the rest when Tim does not come home. Mutants are a rare and dangerous anomoly, discussed in apprehensive tones even when they simply run faster or learn languages more quickly than they should. Their parents will feel enough devastation without knowing this, too.

Sara draws a bath, the water bubbling up and over the side; but Jean herself is pliable and worn, allowing Sara to help her wash until she can no longer smell him on her skin. Sara combs her wet hair and wraps her in one of their mother’s nightshirts, curling around her on the bed until Jean’s breathing steadies, papers gliding feather-like to the floor.

Sara makes sure the bathroom and bedroom are clean and straightened. Takes her sister’s ruined clothes and pushes them to the bottom of Mr. Cole’s garbage can next door. And sits quietly, brittle with guilt, at the kitchen table, waiting for her parents and the Harpers’ inevitable calls.

+ + +

In the days that follow, Sara discovers she is an excellent liar.

I am so sorry, Mrs. Harper, Mr. Harper. I didn’t see Tim yesterday. There was a party in the city but -

Yes, Officer, in Central Park. He must have changed his mind and left the flyer -

No, Officer, I didn’t want to go. He said he found a ride but it’s such a long way -

No, Mrs. Harper, I don’t know who with.

The community is sympathetic to her situation. She is a volunteer at the church and the soup kitchen, a good student. Her distress is palpable. Her teachers send her schoolwork home to her and she is interviewed by the local news. And yet, when the police announce they have all they need and the Harpers go with them, Sara’s relief is haunted by the certainty that it is due more to Jean’s will than her own deception.

Jean herself has become both fragile and imperious, burning with a slow, cold anger. When their parents mourn for the sudden loss of their loquacious, vibrant daughter, for her warmth and compassion, Jean explains in terse, measured tones that there is too much, she must hold herself close. She needs to be still inside or she will unravel.

Sara watches their parents move in a disconcerting fugue, intellectual and concerned, but unable to see.

+ + +

Jean sits three feet above the bed, her hair curling down in copper waves. She folds her hands across her chest and listens to her heart. Fireflies flicker behind her eyes. ‘They have a school,’ she says. She knew they were coming an hour before the doorbell, knew they were different. One hums bright inside her head, the other lays placid and dark.

Sara says, ‘Will you go?’

Jean gives her sister a half-smile, quick and curious, but does not answer.

She is listening.