I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl by Kelle Groom Read Free Book Online

1983, my drinking is so out of control, Sophie refuses to go out with me. At the bar, I’d tried to trick her. Downing shots while she went to bathroom, drinking vodka disguised in juice. But I always got too drunk, and she had to take care of me. She’s had it now. Tired of my blackouts, sweeping up, my sleeping hidden under tables, on the floor, in the parking lot, yard. Drinking, I was safe with Sophie. Without her, anything could happen. No one else knew to protect me. I’m going to meetings off and on. It’s the Fourth of July, and I have six days without a drink. It’s a good stretch for me. Usually I drink every other day. Sometimes I can go as long as four days. But holidays are trouble—I’m off work, free. And now I’m down to acquaintances who don’t know I can’t be left on my own, that I’ll disappear.
    I’m home alone, in the apartment my parents have found for me. Six days of cashiering, of laundry and television, humidity, homework, dirty dishes, dust. I look at the phone on the wall. Run my fingers down the names in my address book. Stop at the names of two sisters who always want to go out. One works ina hair salon and always wears a hat. They’re both sort of distant until they get drinking. I call them. We meet at ten o’clock at a new bar. “I’m just drinking beer tonight,” I said. “I can’t ever drink enough of it to get drunk. I always get too full first.” The hat girl says she wants to get drunk. Everyone is cheerful. The waitress brings me a drink that someone has sent over. It’s not beer. I drink it—tequila, rum, vodka. Someone else buys me another. When the bar closes, one sister goes home, and the hat girl rides with me to an after-hours bottle club.
    Inside the club, an older man tries to pick up the hat girl. He gives us a fifth of both Jack Daniel’s and Southern Comfort. They charge for water, so after one glass, I take the square JD bottle and fill my glass halfway, then pour Southern Comfort to the rim. It spills a little. Swallow, take a breath, swallow, breathe, pour it down, pour it down, breathe, pour. I make another drink. I’m going to throw up.
    I black out in the toilet stall. Wake up with my face on the dirty tile, other shoes visible in the empty space beneath my stall, at the sinks, the mirrors. It’s hard standing up, as if I am lifting another body, downed and waterlogged. In front of the wall mirror, I see a woman with gum, ask for some. Cinnamon, a tiny rectangle, a slight hot burn on my tongue. Her face in the mirror before I go out the door, black out again. The hat girl never sees me leave the bathroom. The doorman doesn’t see me leave the bar. Nobody else knows me. The hat girl can’t find me in the bar or the parking lot. At five in the morning, she gets a ride home from the older man. Earlier, I’d come to in a house, on the carpet, knees on fire. A blackout is ending. Three strange men stand over me—two dark men who look Middle Eastern and one blond American. I vaguely remember dancing with the blond man.
    My knees are red, rug-burned from trying to run when I can’t stand up. I’m crawling fast. Someone laughs, moves leisurely, butI can feel a nervousness in him, that I’ll get away. He lets me reach the bedroom door, touch the gold knob, and turn until it stops hard at the same spot, clicking no over and over in its shut way, until the man drags me back.
    We’re in one square room of a suburban home, neighbors asleep next door, the room nearly bare of furniture: dark brown plywood—roach camouflage, corner where the blond man stands, a bed that rattles like a metal bridge. It’s very late, near dawn.
    The abduction was easy. When I danced with the blond man, he promised a bottle if I’d go home with him to get it. I don’t know where the two dark-haired men come from, one of whom drags me back when I try to leave. They speak English, but their accents are from another country. The three men could be students, sharing the