Pack a bag, they said. We’re taking you to the emergency room.

I don’t know why we didn’t have any normal kind of bag in the house, but she brought me a clear zippered bag that a bedspread had come in. I was embarrassed that people would see my bras and underwear. I packed clothes, deodorant and a toothbrush. I didn’t bring my journal because I thought they would read it. I had already removed the critical pages and hid them inside the lamp that had fallen and split open. I put the pages inside and glued it shut. It was the ceramic lamp with handpainted flowers decorating it. It had always been mine, even in the old house in the blue room and in the pink room before that.
They took me to the doctor’s office and explained to him that I was crazy. I still felt woozy. I think I was just exhausted. I stared at a framed print that was hanging on the wall of a mother holding a child. The colors throbbed in and out of focus. I watched them throb while the doctor examined my wrists. I guess he wasn’t impressed because instead of commiting me he just sent us all home. He asked my mom to leave the room so he could talk to me alone.

What are you going to do with your life? he asked.
I dunno know. Go to college?
You’re not going to college. Look at yourself. He threw salt on my wounds.
Yes I am.
No you’re not.

I didn’t argue. There was only one person who could tell me what I would or wouldn’t or could or couldn’t do. I imagined that he was right next to me whispering in my ear, **** him. I love you, I whispered back. Only he could guilt or shame me now. We drove home and someone watched me until I fell asleep. In the morning, we would go to psychological services. At least I wouldn’t have to go to school.

I was relieved because my mother told me that at the psyche ward they would be observing me and I was horrified at the thought of being seen naked. I could change my clothes discretely so that even if they were watching, they couldn’t get a full sense of how fat I was. But being watched while I showered made me want to throw myself out of the car into oncoming traffic before I ever arrived. But then I would end up on a table in the ER having my clothes cut off me anyway. And I was wearing the pants that I had worn on the night and I didn’t want them cut up. So I was really relieved about that.

Look at what you’re doing to your mother, my father said. I couldn’t look because she had locked herself away in her bedroom. How does she get to be the victim? Wasn’t I the one who just got ****? That made me hate him even more. I hated him with vengeance.

When it comes to this I hate them still. Everyone blamed me. It was easy. I was loud.

A white room with white sheets on the bed, white sheer curtains blowing around the windows in the white light that came from everywhere. It was like the Nowhere scene from Twilight Zone, the movie, with the kid and lady-teacher. This room was Nowhere. The doorway didn’t connect to any real place. I would go in. There in the corner would be the black video camera on its black tripod rolling its black tape. Buzzing. I would be wearing white. The sacrificial virgin. He would follow me in with his black hair and black rimmed glasses with their thick lenses to accommodate his narrow vision. I had never seen a real, grown man naked before. Just in the movies. Tom Cruise in Risky Business and that was just his **** in the stairwell **** scene. I had never touched a real, grown man’s skin before. I didn’t imagine what his dick would feel like and really, I tried really hard not to. I didn’t plan on touching it. I tried not to think about it being there. I would go in and he would follow and he would slowly and gently undress me, like pulling the bandages from an open wound. He would undress himself but I wouldn’t notice. I would be laying on my back on a white bed staring at the ceiling, my bare white skin camouflaged in the white cotton sheets and I would stare straight ahead until it was over. How would I know it was over? He would tell me, Okay, I’m done.
He told me he would have to put his fingers inside me first to stretch me open. I rolled my eyes into the back of my head looking for a dark place to hide.
He said I would probably bleed. I felt preemptively embarrassed.
He said it would hurt. I hoped that it would burn. I hoped that it would make me cry. I thought about suicide after it was all done.
I said, Please bring drugs so that I won’t remember.
He said, Okay, but I doubted him.
I felt very, very cold. Like snow.

I lay in the bed in my basement bedroom staring at the half-finished drop tile ceiling and the insulation where it wasn’t covered. I could see mouse poop that had collected in the plastic sheet that was stapled over the insulation. I lay there imagining the white room. If I said No, then what? Then the tape that he’d reserved for me would be used to tape his own suicide. It was my choice, or course. And he would be willing to that for me because he loved me. But don’t forget that none of this would be necessary if I hadn’t **** up. So, it was this or that. He had to explain to me what Hari Kari was. Nevermind that none of this made any sense. There was room in the world for things that didn’t make sense. Especially when challenging things that didn’t make sense meant being left behind. What we don’t do to keep from being left behind. What would Jesus do? I asked myself. WWJD. If Jesus gave his life for the benefit of all mankind, surely my body for one man for one night was the least I could do. It was practically meaningless. But it didn’t feel meaningless. It felt painfully full with meaning like pus that I would have to drain from it. I lay in my bed staring at the whitewashed cinder block walls and ached for some way out. I begged against that cinder block wall but it just wouldn’t move. And the only way out, as far as I could tell, was to abandon myself. To lay there motionless no matter what. If the tide should pull in and cover my head I should lay there and drown. If the grave I’m lying in begins to fill, I should accept its weight as my fate. I should roll my eyes into the back of my head and let it go. It was the only way. It was all my fault. It felt like the lead blanket that they put over you at the dentist’s office before they take pictures of your inside of your head. Only it was heavier. And I was sealed inside of it.

He gave me three days to think about it and at the end the end of three days I told, Yes, of course I would do it. It wasn’t really a question. More like a reconciliation.

The real room, the one inside the real house that sat along the winding farmland road had wood paneling just like the rest of the house. I didn’t see much of the bedroom as I waited. Enough to see that it wasn’t white. I sat on the floor and drank raspberry wine coolers and watched TV while he came in and out of the room, setting up the camera, charging the battery, adjusting the tripod. He hadn’t brought any drugs. I had stolen my mother’s Xanax and that, combined with a little alcohol was my white light. On the wall above the TV was a mounted fish. It reminded me of the giant sailfish that hung in my ophthalmologist’s office when I was a kid. PM Magazine was on TV, something about animals or zoos or something. I think that was its last season. It wasn’t his house. I didn’t actually know where he lived. And I didn’t know whose house it really was. I didn’t really know where I was.

I waited, coming to terms with the brown paneled walls and the dimness of the room. I waited for thirty minutes when his friend, the driver, came in. My parents were looking for me. They were smarter than I thought. We stopped everything and got in the car.