Fishing in Beirut

Aria cried in the changing room. Her body did not feel like hers. Laura was at her French class, always talking of Paris now, but Aria needed her in this moment. She was overwhelmed and alone. Laura was going after the SAT’s, and had been preparing for a long time. Already they were into November.
Aria wanted to go with her. She felt like maybe she could. She could run from all of this, her feelings and her life, and be whole again. New. In the changing room the other students chatted, and she covered her face with her hands. She smelt a gym smell.
June was when Laura was leaving. June 2002. Aria whispered it softly. She could push through the pain until that time, and then freedom. Was it possible? She hated seeing her mother and sister, hated how clearly they loved her, and she raged and shook and cried in her bedroom. Her mother would cry then as well.
“We should talk about this honey,” she’d plead with her. “You can tell me whatever you feel.”
Aria would scream.
She would clench up near-frozen and death-like, powerless as her father’s hands touched her five year old body. She couldn’t banish this imagery. In her room with the door locked and her heart like a stone, she lay tense limbed. She didn’t know it was an identical position.
Anna banged on the door, but Aria physically couldn’t open it. She lay paralysed. Whenever this happened she saw many things, all flashing in her mind like a dream. Sometimes she saw a pink toy rabbit. This rabbit brought a peace when it came to her, but she mentally pushed it away. And then the hands touched her.
She was paralysed there in her bedroom, the fingertips touching her hard. Why was she seeing this now? She had been five years old, an infant, and had time not rendered it void? Was it not nothing to her now?