I stood in the row with my knees apart and my mother’s hand sweating in mine.
The church was white and too bright. She had put me in a pale dress with a slit she called elegant and I called a problem. No cotton thick enough. I had not crossed my legs in the car. I had not crossed them on the bench. The A was a rule now, and my cunt had spent the night remembering his fingers in a coat hall and the c**k he had refused me. By the time the doors opened I was slick for a man walking toward my mother in a suit.
Edward Hale did not look at me during the vows.
That was worse. He looked at her. He said the words in the same voice he used to read a grade. I heard none of them cleanly. I watched his hands. The same hands that had bent me over a desk and pushed his c*m back into me. The same thumb
