Squeezed

by Tong Ge

Saturday, following a movie and some wine, my new boyfriend and I retired to bed.  We have been dating for six months and have never argued. Then he leans over and squeezes my breasts playfully.

“Stop it!” I shove him away roughly.

“What’s wrong?”

“Never do that, okay?”

 “I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”

I turn away. “Look, I’m fine. You didn’t hurt me, not physically. I just…”

“I’m listening.” He spoons me and presses a light kiss on my shoulder.

I turn around. It’s time. I have never told anyone this story, not even my mother.

 

As a sophomore living in China, I fell in love for the first time. Love poems poured from me like a water-spring gushing out of a fountainhead. 

My boyfriend, an art student, was the older brother of my girlfriend in high school. When we first met three years earlier, I never dreamt that we would date one day. You see, he was just too handsome for an average-looking girl like me. Now, with a movie star face and an artist’s hands, he becomes an ideal husband.

I didn’t tell my practical, stable, unromantic parents about him. Dating would take time and focus away from my academic studies, my mother claimed. But I was not going to give up my Movie Star—not for my studies, not for anything.

 

Life was perfect except for one thing. I had developed some small, painful lumps in my breasts and armpits. I put up with the problem until I couldn’t anymore. I had to seek medical attention. Movie Star dutifully accompanied me.

When we entered the hospital, a tall, slim woman with wavy hair walked elegantly toward us. Movie Star and she exchanged a brief greeting. I was not introduced.

“Who is she?” I asked after she walked away.

“A model in our school,” Movie Star said dismissively.

I knew what he meant. Not just a model, but a nude model. He’d seen her naked and sketched her long legs. Nude models were a new and stigmatized occupation at the time. Old-fashioned Chinese called them whores and most of them had to keep their occupation a secret. Those who were found out often were disowned by their families.

“Does she have a boyfriend?” I asked.

“Not among the students.”

“Because of what she does for a living?”

“Perhaps.”

So, even art students were not immune from deep-rooted traditions and public opinion.

 

When it was my turn to go into the doctor’s office, Movie Star waited outside.

After learning about my problem, the doctor told me to unbutton my shirt. A pair of claws gripped my beasts and squeezed. I knew right away it was not the right way for a doctor to examine a patient, but if I screamed or said anything, Movie Star could hear, and he might dump me.

I should have screamed and slapped the doctor’s face anyway. I should have jumped up and ran out of the room. But I couldn’t risk losing Movie Star.

I tried to see the water-color sunset that Movie Star had painted earlier. The lights and shadows danced in brilliant colors in the river, in the reflection of the sky. My future could be as beautiful as the painting. I would not allow anybody to take it away.

So, in dead silence, I allowed this doctor his actions. I allowed those dirty hands to squeeze and fondle my breasts—the breasts only my boyfriend had ever touched. I clenched my teeth, enduring the pain and the shame.

After he was done with me, the doctor told me the lumps were harmless. I buttoned up my shirt without making eye contact with him.

The beautiful painting was gone. All I could see now was a dirty spot on the canvas.

Why had I come to the hospital in the first place? I had done it to myself when I insisted on an examination, hadn’t I? Maybe God intended to punish me for not only dating a boy but allowing him to touch my breasts.

As long as I had Movie Star in my life, I told myself, I could endure anything.

 

A year went by. One weekend, Movie Star left his book-bag in my dorm while he went out on an errand. I knew he kept a journal. I soon found it in the bag. I only wanted to know how deeply he still loved me. To my surprise, I found an entry about him stealing an item from a local air force base. He didn’t say what the item was, but it must have been very valuable or very useful for him to risk jail time. Then, a line about me made my heart almost jump out of my throat:

“Qian would have never guessed if she were to come between me and what I want, I would not hesitate to point a dagger at her heart.”

 

The day I broke up with Movie Star, I cried hard for my soap-bubble future—beautiful but fragile; destined to burst. I cried for the compromise I had made for a man I hardly knew. My imagined future was not the beautiful colors in the sky but only a reflection of it—a delusion.

            Over the years, I have managed to paint something on that soiled canvas, to cover the spot, to pretend it is not there. But I know it will never go away. Thank God I was not raped. If I were, I would have had to burn the entire canvas.

 

When I finish my story, my boyfriend gently brushes my tears away. “I’m so sorry.”

“It was a long time ago,” I say.

I don’t tell him that sometimes the memory of that day comes back like a wave of nausea and the suicidal thoughts have never left me, not even after I had immigrated to Canada. But I couldn’t kill myself. My mother would never survive my death. She would never know how her beloved daughter was once squeezed between silence and a scream, between shame and dignity, between the ugly present and a beautiful future. She would never know how she had saved my life, and I, hers.

* * * * *

Born and raised in China, Sherry Wong moved to Canada in 1988 to pursue her master’s degree. Since 2012, she writes both under her real name and her pen name, Tong Ge, and her works may be found in publications including PRISM International, Canadian Stories, Ricepaper, Academy of the Heart and Mind, FLOW magazine, Vineyard Poetry Quarterly, 渥水, 远方的诗, Polyglot Magazine. She has also received three literary awards and is among the finalists for another five. Her debut novel The House Filler will be published in Canada in October of 2023.