Page 41 of Jar of Hearts
They had used that photo on Angela’s missing-person flyer, the one that had been pasted on lampposts throughout Seattle, the same one that had been in all the newspapers and on TV. They’d also used it in the courtroom years later, and Geo didn’t blame them. No one had been more in love with life than Angela Wong.
She picks up the empty Mason jar, the one Calvin filled with cinnamon hearts to give to her. It had been a present, his way of apologizing after the first time he hit her. Geo never particularly liked the candy, which was the kind that was sweet on your tongue at first, only to turn hot the longer you kept it there. Cinnamon hearts were his favorite candy, not hers. But she’d accepted the gift anyway, because she thought the bright red hearts inside the glass looked pretty. Calvin ended up eating them all, the candy disappearing slowly, until only the empty jar was left.
Geo takes the jar into her hands. She should have done this years ago, right when Calvin gave it to her. She hurls it at her bedroom wall as hard as she can, anticipating the satisfying sound of shattering glass. It smacks the wall, hard, indenting the Sheetrock and scraping the paint.
But it doesn’t break.
16
In the beginning, he was all Geo could see.
It was magical, at first. It was heady, trippy, whatever word best describes being young and intoxicatingly in love for the very first time. She loved the way he smelled and how his cologne stayed on her clothes long after he’d left. She knew the shape of his hand, and how it felt when hers was in it, the exact places his fingers squeezed. And it stayed magical even when it turned violent. That’s the part nobody explains to you.
The first time Calvin hit her, it was after the Soundgarden concert. She wore, at his request, “something sexy”—in this case a low-cut black top and short skirt she borrowed from Angela. Some guy stared at her all night, and because she’d eventually smiled back at him, Calvin had been forced to punch the guy in the face. When they got back to his place later that night, they argued. Calvin yelled and accused and smashed things. She yelled back, defensive at first, certain she’d done nothing wrong, which only enraged him more.
It was confusing; he seemed to want other guys to notice her, but god forbid they looked too long, or smiled, or spoke to her. He wanted her to look sexy, but god help her if she acted slutty. It was all about lines with Calvin, very fine lines, and she never knew exactly where they were until he told her. And he didn’t tell her with words.He told her with punches, slaps, and shoves, all designed to make her feel small and unimportant and humiliated.
Being in an abusive relationship was nothing like Geo expected. She knew hitting was wrong, of course. She wasn’t stupid. They had discussed the issue of domestic violence back in sixth grade health class. It was also part of the social studies curriculum in seventh grade. And then in her freshman year of high school, a police officer had come to St. Martin’s to give a talk about how to get out of an abusive relationship. On any given day, there were posters tacked up in the hallways, encouraging girls in bad relationships to seek help.Your guidance counselors are your friends. Talk to us.Everybody knew that violence in a relationship was wrong. Just like smoking, drugs, alcohol, unprotected sex, sex without consent, and so on. Nobody was clueless about this stuff. There was no lack of education; ignorance was not the problem.
The problem was that none of those public service announcements addressed any of the real issues behind abusive relationships. A relationship isn’t supposed to make you feel out of control; it’s not supposed to consume you; it’s not supposed to change you into someone you don’t want to be. But how do you teach that? How do you explain to someone who’s never been in a romantic relationship what a healthy relationship feels like?
How do you explain to a sixteen-year-old girl who’s never been in love whatloveis supposed to feel like?
And another thing these “lessons” didn’t address? Just how quickly the abuse would start to feel normal. Geo’s father had never hit her, not once, ever. This was no pattern from her past that was repeating itself. She loved Calvin so much that she began to accept that this was part of the package, part of the price she had to pay to be with him. Because the alternative—not being with him—was unfathomable. And, of course, he didn’t always hit. Ninety-nine percent of the time, he was affectionate, kind, generous. It wasn’t like Geo was covered in bruises from head to toe. And it wasn’t like he was breaking her arm. So, okay, every once in a while he got mad. Usually because of something stupid Geo did. They would argue. If she pushedhim too far—if she said something snarky or sarcastic or she hurt his feelings—he’d hit her. End of argument. No big deal. All couples fought. Most of the time, he didn’t hurt her. When things were good, they were great.
But when they were bad, they were terrible.
Deep down, though, there was a small part of Geo that liked it. Liked how worked up he could get, enjoyed how jealous he could feel. It was so easy to mistake control for love, to believe he was upset because he cared, that he was protective because he loved her so goddamn much. Sometimes she liked pushing those boundaries, seeing how far she could go before he snapped, seeing how crazy she could make him. It was her way of controlling him, too, because yes, it went both ways.
And yes, she was fooling herself. None of it was okay. But she loved him. Every part of her loved every part of him.
Calvin waited for her most days after school in his bright red Trans Am, and Geo would feel a surge of pride every time she bounced down those school steps. He would be leaning against the car, waiting for her. It was like a scene out of a movie. It was likeSixteen Candles, and she was the regular girl, and he was the ungettable guy. The other girls gawked, and while Calvin might smile at them, it was Geo he kissed, Geo he opened the car door for, Geo who drove off with him into the metaphorical sunset.
He had a day job as a house painter, but he didn’t work all the time, and so he sold drugs—weed, speed, and painkillers, mainly—on the side to pay the bills, and to pay for the car. Geo was alarmed at first, but then she realized it wasn’t as shady as the movies made it out to be. His customers were mostly college students, suburban housewives, and overachieving high school kids. They would come to the apartment, money would change hands, everyone was polite. After a while, that began to feel normal, too.
He never pushed her into having sex. He knew she was a virgin, and that she wasn’t ready. So they did other things, things with his hands and his tongue that made her cry out his name as her eyes rolled back in her head. But full-on sex, never.
“I want your first time to be special,” he said. “I can wait.”
It only made her love him more.
Calvin took up an enormous amount of space in her life. The more time she spent with him, the less she saw Angela and Kaiser. Cheer practice, something that was scheduled three days a week after school, was becoming more and more of an annoyance for both of them.
“I can’t see you tonight,” Geo said to him one afternoon. They were sitting in his car at the far end of the parking lot behind the school, near the wooded area. Classes had let out for the day, and she had practice in fifteen minutes. “My dad’s expecting me home for dinner, and I have so much homework.”
She didn’t tell him her grades were slipping. She didn’t want him to think of her as a child. He was twenty-one, his high school days long behind him.
“So quit cheer,” Calvin said.
“I can’t quit.” She was appalled at the suggestion. “I’m a cheerleader. Nobody’s ever quit cheer before. Do you know how hard it is to make the team?”
“But it’s so stupid.” Calvin traced a finger up her bare thigh. The hem of her school kilt was short when she stood; it was practically nonexistent when she sat. Reflexively, she spread her legs a little, closing her eyes as his fingers brushed the outer edge of her panties. She wanted them inside her, but she was still shy about asking. Thankfully, she didn’t have to. He leaned over and kissed her again, his tongue intertwining with hers, tasting faintly of beer, cigarettes, and cinnamon hearts. It was a taste she would forever equate with feeling like a child and an adult at the same time, which is really what a teenager is. His fingers slipped inside her panties and stroked her, and it felt like she was melting and firming up at exactly the same time.
“Quit,” he said again. His middle finger entered her a little deeper, but not much; she was a virgin, after all. His thumb kept pressure on exactly the right spot. It felt good, so good that it couldn’t possibly be the same thing as what they’d learned about in sex ed. She spread her legs even wider, feeling an orgasm approaching as hekissed his way down her neck. “If you quit, we’ll have more time together. Then I won’t have to stop.”
Abruptly, he pulled his hand away. She gasped at the sudden absence of pleasure. It almost hurt.
“It’s time for practice,” he said. “Better get going. You don’t want to be late.”
