The birthday party has reached its frenzied apex and hurtles towards the cake cutting finale, but Sarah wishes that she could rewind time—before she set the party budget, before she reserved the bounce house, before she bought all the goody bags, back to that moment when her index finger hovered over the “Send” button, so that she can uninvite her rapist from her daughter’s fifth birthday party. 

But no, time is impossible to retrieve. Her rapist is wearing a black tracksuit. He is a small man but still larger than her. His tan face looks much older now, papery and parched. She’s spent too many nights trying to forget that face, though, in her shock, she’s managed to forget his name—

“Dave,” he repeats, holding out one hand. “I’m Damien’s dad. I’m sorry I’m late. Thanks for inviting us.”

She recoils from Dave’s proffered handshake. Her hands are occupied: butter knife in her left, Lily’s stray sandal in her right. He doesn’t appear to recognize her. She is an entirely different person now. 

“Have we met before?” he asks. His Texan accent has dulled in the intervening years, but it’s still there.

“I don’t think so,” she says quickly.

An infinite number of Sarahs couldn’t do all the things that this Sarah wants to do right now: dropkick his body off a deep canyon, set fire to his car, erect a giant billboard outside of her house so that every person who leaves the party will be forced to gaze upon a picture of Dave’s face and the single damning sentence printed upon it: DAVE IS A RAPIST. 

Instead, eighteen years of compressed rage freezes Sarah in her tracks. She’s imagined hiring a private investigator to track down his whereabouts; she’s imagined confronting him a million times over. She’s rewritten and rehearsed what she would say to him, but never like this. She can’t recall a single sentence. He asks her a question that doesn’t register. She can only wave the butter knife in his general direction and mumble an excuse that neither of them can hear. She retreats before she can do something that she will regret. 

*

The inside of the bounce house smells like feet. Sarah finds herself jumping aggressively alongside fifteen shrieking, shoeless kindergarteners. From the mesh window of the bounce house, she monitors the view into the bay window. Dave introduces himself to her husband, Henry. Their mouths move in conversation. Her calves are on fire. She pushes through the pain. She’s lost Lily’s sandal somewhere along the way. The butter knife in her pocket threatens to fall out or stab her in the thigh but somehow never does. She imagines all of the children fleeing in a panic from the collapsing bounce house while she remains inside, ripping the synthetic walls apart with her bare hands. 

Birthday girl Lily is dressed in her favorite outfit: the top half of her Hulk Halloween costume, a polyester green t-shirt shaded with fake abs paired with a frilly tutu. Her Hulk princess plays with a wild energy that scares off the more passive classmates. Sarah encourages this. She’s not raising a wallflower. True to form, Lily sends her small body careening off another little girl. There’s a stomach-churning moment as Sarah tenses and waits for the wails and accusations to fly, but both of them fall onto the floor and laugh hysterically. Somebody is bound to get concussed today. She should have made everyone sign waivers at the door. 

As Sarah surveys the moshpit, she ticks off the names of her daughter’s classmates in her head: Brittany, the nose picker; Tommy, the jokester; Damien, the crybaby-cum-papereater. Damien, her rapist’s son. She feels a sudden hot prickling on her scalp. Maybe she can pull Lily out of her school and place her elsewhere, though she and Henry bought their house only a few months ago with this school district in mind. 

Someone in the middle of the kindergarten moshpit is howling. Something about the high pitch arrests Sarah’s attention. She hurries over, still gasping for breath. It sounds like it’s too late to prevent whatever is happening from happening. 

The howling kid is Damien. 

“Are you hurt?” Sarah asks, lowering herself down on burning quads. 

He’s too upset to speak. Fat tears water Damien’s neck. The tips of his ears are pink. His anger is bigger than he is. She examines him for injury, but the source of his pain is invisible. The other kindergarteners gather around helpfully to explain the situation to Sarah: 

“He’s always crying.” 

“Don’t give him attention.” 

“He likes to eat paper.”

The children, immune to Damien’s crying at this late point in the school year, begin their vigorous jumping again. 

Sarah is eye to eye with her rapist’s son. Up close, she sees that he has his father’s olive complexion, his father’s eyes. An eye for an eye. What else has he inherited? Damien remains stock-still, still howling, just asking for a real concussion. She can palm his small skull with one hand. She’s suddenly afraid that her hand will move of its own accord and do something despicable. Instead, Sarah plays good hostess and plucks him out of the moshpit. Even though he has too many elbows, she is able to drag him outside of the bounce house to safety. 

Once his peers are no longer an audience to his pain, his howling fades to nothing. He’s still sniffling, though. She does not know how to talk to small children except for Lily.  Motherhood is still an awkward fit sometimes. She came into her current suburban life later than most, after a series of meandering twists and turns and low points and resets that stretched into almost twenty years. She might have been a journalist, or congresswoman, or a diplomat; instead, she supports the pharmacists at CVS by managing inventory, labeling and preparing prescriptions, and interacting with customers at the walk-up pharmacy counter. Still, it is not a bad job.

“Do you want an ice pack?” She considers what will placate him. “How about some paper?” 

He shakes his head. One glistening line of snot wends down the side of his mouth.

“Should we do some rainbow breathing together?” In Lily’s school, the children are taught coping skills to deal with their big emotions. Rainbow breathing involves inhaling and exhaling while moving through the color spectrum. Sarah borrows this coping skill whenever she encounters rude or creepy customers who harass her at the walk-up counter. The transgressions range from talking her ear off to stalking her to her car. At this point, she’s already received two warnings for arguing with verbally abusive octogenarians; she hopes that rainbow breathing will prevent a third strike or at least delay what feels almost inevitable. 

Damien turns away from Sarah and kicks the side of the bounce house. His small foot fails to make a dent. “I hate rainbow breathing.” 

She raises her eyebrows. According to Lily, the word “hate” is off-limits, the kindergartener equivalent of a swear word. They’re not allowed to use it in school. Privately, though, Sarah couldn’t give a rat’s ass. Let her daughter hate whomever or whatever she wants. “Why don’t we go find your mother?” 

“My mama is too busy taking care of my little brother.”

Sarah recalls a harried-looking woman, the only other Asian person at this party other than herself, Southeast Asian, maybe Vietnamese, who arrived with a sleeping toddler in her arms. Damien was tailing her, carrying Lily’s present in both arms and already weeping over an unknown slight. Damien’s mother is probably in the dining room right now, partaking in a few well-earned adult beverages. 

It dawns on Sarah that an opportunity has presented itself: she can tell Dave’s wife what kind of person he is, Asian woman-to-Asian woman. She can tell his wife what he did. 

“I need to do something important right now,” Sarah says. “You can go play with the others.”

Damien reaches up and grabs her by the sleeve. “Don’t leave me!” 

She tries to remove his paw from her clothing, but he just holds on tighter. “Why don’t you go play with the other kids?” She adjusts her tone into something that mimics bright and cheery. 

“Where are you going?”

“I need to take care of some adult stuff.”

“What kind of adult stuff?”

“You’d probably find it pretty boring, but that bounce house looks really fun.”

“I hate fun.” 

She glances towards the bay window. “I also hate fun.”

“Hey, you’re not supposed to use the h-word.”

“Fine. I dislike fun.”

“Can I come with you?”

Damien, son of a rapist, the pariah of his classroom. He looks so pitiful.

*

As soon as Sarah and Damien step inside the house, her father-in-law forces a drink into her hands. He’s been lubricating all of the guests with tequila sunrises; he wants everyone to have a good time. He knows that Sarah doesn’t mind being around alcohol, not anymore. She has twelve years of sobriety under her belt. He doesn’t want her to feel left out, so he’s been cranking out mocktails for her, too, one after another. Of course, he means well.

“Special drink for a special lady,” he says. “Drink up.” His eyes are glassy and his face is flushed. He gives her a double thumbs up. His drink of choice is actually iced tea, sipped in front of the television, but he’s on a mission to win over their new neighbors. They all agreed that tequila sunrises would be fun for the guests, a Mexican spirit but American to the core, which is actually the inverse of Henry’s family. After some practice, her father-in-law can make a mean mocktail, but Sarah simply can’t ingest anymore vitamin C. When his back is turned, she hands the mocktail to Damien, who accepts it gravely in both hands. He takes a sip, then makes a face. 

“Gross,” he says, but takes another long gulp.

The mothers in the dining room wave at Sarah; Sarah waves back. Their circle feels impenetrable. Sarah is the odd woman out. The mothers already know each other from last year, before Sarah and Henry moved into this prized school district. Sarah had looked forward to the fresh start and being closer to her in-laws; in practice, she finds the prospect of making new friends daunting. The other mothers make a little room for them and resume their conversation. Sarah chooses the seat next to Damien’s mother. Just two Asian women, hanging out. She wonders if Dave has a type. 

Damien inserts himself between Sarah and his mother. He makes a motion to crawl onto his mother’s lap, but she blocks him. 

“No climbing on me,” she tells him. “You’re a big boy now.”

Damien pouts next to her, then begins chugging his drink. 

His mother has a merry face. When she laughs, it’s with her whole body. There’s a small brown sunspot on her left temple and crow’s feet around her eyes. She wonders if Dave mistreats his wife. She wonders if Dave also spiked his wife’s drink on their first date. The words hover on the tip of Sarah’s tongue: your husband is a rapist. She’s afraid that she will blurt them aloud to this circle of potential mom friends. Five words to ruin a marriage. Does she dare?  

Sarah can’t follow the quick flow of conversation. Her head pinballs from speaker to speaker. At times, she’s not sure where to look. Her nerves are shot. She has too much on her mind. She wants a drink, a real one. Twice, she tries to interject, but the mothers keep talking excitedly over her. It’s going to be hard to separate Damien’s mother from the rest of the women. She can tell that Damien’s mother is the type of Asian who doesn’t want to be seen with other Asians. Damien’s mother laughs so hard at another mother’s joke that she’s practically crying. Sarah tries laughing along, too. Ha ha. 

Statistically speaking, how many of these women happen to be married to rapists? How many of these neighborhood women would choose to stick by their shitty men? Maybe she will write an anonymous letter to Dave’s wife instead of trying to talk to her. After all, how will it look if the only two Asian women at this party end up in a knock down drag out cat fight? She thinks about drowning herself in tequila, even though she hates tequila. She thinks about giving up and just lying on the kitchen floor, sinking deep into the ground until she’s six feet under and lilies grow over her face. Someday, Dave and his wife and their children will also become plant fertilizer and none of this will matter. 

Damien wears an orange juice mustache. He wipes it off with his arm. He pokes his mother repeatedly on her arm. His mother ignores him. 

“Mama, I need to pee real bad,” he says. 

His mother barely reacts. “You’re a big boy. You can go by yourself.”

“The bathroom is just down the hall, to your left,” Sarah says, standing up. There’s no point in staying in this circle, waiting for the right opening that will never come. “I’ll show him where it is.” 

The mothers don’t seem to notice Sarah and Damien leave, so engrossed are they in their talk. Damien follows her down the hall. They walk by the television room, where Elmo sings the alphabet on a large screen and babysits the smallest, unblinking children. Past the living room, where Henry–bright-faced, gesturing animatedly–is holding court with the circle of men. He’s flanked on one side by his brother, a cop, and Dave on the other. Her brother-in-law is here to support them, even though he’d rather shoot himself in the foot with his own gun than be forced to socialize during off-duty hours. He’s the opposite of Henry in that way. Henry, with his golden retriever energy, is finally making new friends with these other dads, starved as he has been for male friendship ever since they moved to this city. Henry’s world currently revolves around taking care of Lily, helping out at his mother’s bakery, and putting in fifty hours a week at the bank. She wonders where Dave works. With a little effort, she could track down Dave’s employer and rat Dave out. She could publicly name him online. She could demand reimbursement for liquor purchases, DUI classes, sleep medications, anger management courses, therapy sessions. 

Dave expresses agreement with something that Henry was just saying. Again, the faint hint of Texas in Dave’s voice. She met Dave through an online dating app, and they had gone on one date. She’s never told Henry about the rape, but he’s guessed. Once, Henry asked if she wanted to report it to the police. She said no, too much time had passed. She can’t ever imagine telling her brother-in-law about it, even if he is a cop. She’s afraid that her brother-in-law might treat her differently if he ever found out. She doesn’t want him to start tiptoeing around her and treating her like another victim. She’s relieved that Henry has never treated her with kid gloves, not even when her heart lagged behind his own, though it eventually caught up. She appreciates Henry’s patience, his cool head to her hot one. He’s the type of person to take his time and consider all options before making any major decision. Sometimes, though, his glacial rate of decision-making drives her crazy. When this happens, it sends her blood roiling. She’s someone who tends to make snap decisions, even as she knows she’ll regret them later. She’s been working on this.

The hallway walls are lined with framed photos of her precious Lily. The butter knife, still in her pocket, shifts with every step. She thinks about stabbing out Dave’s eyes and ripping out Dave’s organs; she thinks about leaving his empty body to dry out in the nearby desert until his skin becomes a desiccated shadow. They turn left. She remembers Henry’s unloaded handgun, hidden on the top shelf of their walk-in closet, inside a safe. They keep the ammunition in the deep recesses of the linen closet, hidden inside a sealed container. 

“Here we are,” she says, gesturing to the bathroom.

“Can you wait outside the door?”

“Damien, I have something very important to do.”

“Please? I’m afraid of the toilet monster.”

“Toilet monster?”

“It comes out and munches on your butt while you’re pooping.”

“Toilet monsters are not real.” She wants to shake him and tell him that he should be more concerned about other kinds of monsters in this world.

“Toilet monsters are real, I swear. I’ve seen them!”

“Fine.” She waits until the bathroom door closes, then tiptoes away. She walks quickly upstairs and into the master bedroom and straight into her walk-in closet. She halts in front of the safe. 

She and Henry rarely argue, but last month, they had their biggest fight to date. She had stormed out of the house, then given him the silent treatment for two long weeks, during which time Henry had moved into the spare bedroom. She didn’t want any firearms in the house; Henry insisted that they buy a gun to protect the family. Once Henry reaches a decision, any decision, he can’t be swayed from it. He’s stubborn in that way. In the end, for the sake of peace, she had very reluctantly agreed to the purchase, but only if they were both properly trained in how to use it and only if the most stringent storage practices were in place. Now she pictures loading the gun, striding into the living room where all the fathers are standing, and shooting Dave point-blank in the head. 

She steps back, shaken. Ruining her daughter’s birthday would be the least of her worries. She has too much to live for. She has Henry and Lily, her little family. She imagines Lily growing up motherless. She imagines Henry putting their forever home back on the market and moving far away to distance himself from the memory of murder. She imagines Damien crying nonstop for the rest of his life. She imagines Damien’s mother never laughing again, the little brown sunspot on her temple spreading into the rest of her face like a bloodstain. Sarah backs away from the safe, runs down the stairs before she can change her mind, and almost trips over Damien.

“You were supposed to be waiting by the door! The toilet monster almost got me!” He’s crying again. He has truly earned his nickname.

“I’m sorry, Damien.”

“Sorry’s not enough,” he pouts. “Adults are always saying sorry but not really meaning it.”

She’s still trying to catch her breath. 

He stares at her. “Why are you crying?” he asks.

If she is, she hasn’t realized it until now. She wipes her face and schools her features. Damien looks worried. She envisions a rainbow above Damien’s head, begins a round of rainbow breathing. She does not feel better. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t. What is rainbow breathing but a dressed-up version of plain old breathing, an action necessary for life, something that she would continue to do, anyway? The first time she tried rainbow breathing was a few months ago, right after her shift, when she was ambushed at her car by one of the pharmacy’s former regulars. Bill was an old man who used to linger at the pharmacy window to purchase gum, ask increasingly intrusive questions, and disclose uncomfortable details about his ailing wife; a persona non grata whose final visit to the pharmacy had ended with security hauling him away, shouting about how no one cared about him and that he would come back and set the store on fire. The parking lot was empty. She jumped out of her skin, screaming, “Get away from me!” 

He had lost weight and the rest of his hair. His legs were matchsticks in his shorts. He looked surprised and a little hurt. “I just wanted to tell you—”

The old disgust and fear rose up in Sarah. Here was another man who had infringed on her, time and time again. The old Sarah would have run away, but this Sarah would never play victim again. Inside her purse, she unzipped the concealed pocket that contained her taser. She had never used it on anyone before.

“After today, I promise I’ll never bother you again,” Bill was saying, closing the distance between them. “I came to tell you that I’m moving away.”

She could taser him where he stood, watch his body crumple to the ground. It would be almost satisfying. She found that she wanted to maim him. 

He looked gaunt. There was a red stain on his shirt. He held out both hands, palms up. “I just wanted to thank you for showing me kindness.” 

At this, though the effort pushed her past her limits, she put away that great, pulsing desire to hurt. She zipped up the pocket that held the taser in its velvet holster. She unlocked her car, then slammed the door shut. As she sped out of the parking lot, barely avoiding the telephone pole, he waved and called after her, “I’ve enjoyed our talks!” In the safety of her car, she remembered rainbow breathing, started with red and ran through all the colors until she was no longer shaking with rage. A build-up with no release. That’s how Sarah feels right now, as her long exhale winds down. Damien watches her anxiously.

She asks, “Do you want to help me get the cake ready?”

*

In the kitchen, Sarah and Damien cut open the cake box together. Nestled within is one of her mother-in-law’s showstopping cakes: triple-tiered, luscious and pink, decorated with elaborate swirls of rainbow icing, and topped with a menacing plastic Hulk figurine, per Lily’s request. It is a work of art, a labor of love, and an advertisement for her mother-in-law’s bakery. Business can always be better.

The counter is littered with empty beer bottles and abandoned cocktails. She picks up an opened beer bottle and guesstimates that it’s almost full. How optimistic of her. She sets it back down. She is so thirsty. While Damien counts out the candles, Sarah distracts herself with the gorgeous cake. She could lace a piece of it with some odorless, flavorless household product, then present it to Dave. It would make him sick. Let him shit from both ends. 

“Can I have some cake?” Damien asks.

She cuts off a wedge of cake and dumps it on a plate. 

“Is that for me?” he asks hopefully. 

She opens the drawer under her sink to review her cleaning products. Which one is odorless and flavorless? She’s not sure. She pulls out her phone and begins to type, “which household product can make a person sick without killing him.” Damien takes a tentative nibble from one end of a candle. No, don’t do that. She shakes her head to show her disapproval and holds her hand out. He makes a face, then spits the little bits of wax into her outstretched palm. Her internet history could be subject to search in a criminal investigation. Easy evidence for a DA to present to a jury. She imagines trying to explain to twelve peers that her intention was never to kill him, that she only wanted to make him very sick on a temporary basis. She’s not a criminal. She just wants to tell him how angry she has been for the last eighteen years. She tosses the nibbled candle away. She takes the butter knife out of her pocket and dumps it into the sink. Next to the soap dispenser, there’s a cocktail glass filled with clear liquid. She begins another round of rainbow breathing. At the end of the last exhalation, she feels no relief, none at all. It seems that all the breathing in the world can’t help her right now. 

Something propels her hand forward. She raises the cocktail glass to her lips and takes a big gulp. She smells the stink of it before it goes down. Tequila. She absolutely, positively hates tequila. Twelve years of sobriety vanish in an instant. 

“What are you drinking?” Damien asks.

She sets down the drink, then shoves the plate of unpoisoned cake into Damien’s paws. She watches him insert forkfuls of pink icing into his mouth. She wonders if he will grow up to be a rapist someday, too. She needs a little more liquid courage. While she finishes the rest of someone else’s tequila, Damien sets down his fork and begins picking his nose. He unearths a fat booger. It rests on the tip of his finger. He holds it up to the light, as if to admire it, then brings it to his lips and sucks up the morsel. 

She hides the empty glass in the sink, out of sight. Tomorrow, she will start all over again. She can’t remember the bulk of her diary entries that she wrote and rewrote and shredded all those years ago. She only remembers that they all started with “You don’t know me” and built from there. A few paragraphs about how much pain he has caused her; a few paragraphs about how long it took for her to rebuild. Words to prick the conscience; words to shame him for the rest of his life. 

*

Sarah’s mother-in-law is not happy. She points to the missing wedge. “Mija,” she whispers loudly, “what happened to my cake?” 

“I’m not sure,” Sarah lies, holding her face carefully away. She’s dizzy and she doesn’t want her mother-in-law to smell what’s on her breath. “Must have been one of the kids.”

Her mother-in-law glowers and grumbles, though Sarah knows it’s all for show, and heads inside the house for her backup frosting. Her mother-in-law is nothing if not prepared. By the time she returns, piping bag in hand, Lily’s classmates, including Damien, have gathered in the backyard, around the cake, and are waiting expectantly. They back away respectfully, fingers tucked into their mouths, as she doctors up her patient.

Once the open wound is covered up with rainbow icing, the mothers shower Sarah’s mother-in-law with compliments. Before the candles are lit, her mother-in-law has already passed out all of her business cards. The men are summoned, and then everyone is taking their phones out. Sarah’s mother-in-law and father-in-law hold their phones up on either side of Lily, capturing the same scene from two different angles. Lily’s little face beams as everyone serenades her. Today is Lily’s day. It’s been a long time coming. Every family member has been pulling more than their full weight to make this day a success. Sarah stands next to her mother-in-law and tries mouthing along to the words, but there is no pleasure in this song. There’s the faintest hint of rot in the air. Maybe they are standing too close to the compost pile. She tries to suppress a small, tequila-laced burp. When this song is over, she will walk up to Dave and ask, in her calmest voice, “Can I talk to you for a moment?” Once they have gone inside the house and ducked into a quiet corner, she will finally cut all her words loose.

When the birthday song is finished and the candles are plucked out, Sarah’s mother-in-law cuts the cake with methodical precision and lays thick slabs of it on paper plates. Henry and her brother-in-law pass them out. Sarah tries to compose herself. Is she drunk? An old self-test: if she has the wherewithal to ask herself this question, then she’s probably not drunk. Right? After all, she knows better than to come across as too angry, too emotional, too unhinged. Her brother-in-law offers Dave a slice. Dave declines and pats his stomach. A few mothers surround Sarah’s mother-in-law and pummel her with catering questions for their upcoming events. Sarah’s father-in-law runs around refreshing everyone’s drinks. Lily spins to her mother’s side, knocking over another child along the way like a bowling pin, and gives Sarah a big hug. Lily’s arms don’t go all the way around Sarah’s thighs. “Best birthday ever!” she says, burying her face briefly into Sarah’s crotch.

Even as Sarah makes her way towards Dave and Henry, careful not to stumble in the grass, she considers the futility of trying to confront him when there are so many distractions. Her legs have gone soft. Perhaps a confrontation doesn’t make a scrap of difference in the long run. It looks like Dave and Henry are exchanging numbers. She’d rather die a million deaths than ever see Dave again. She imagines Dave getting down on both knees and begging for forgiveness. She imagines Dave denying that anything ever happened. She imagines Dave laughing at her in mock disbelief and walking out of the party a free man. Can she live with herself if she lets today go by without a confrontation? At this point, she’ll shout everything across this yard, if only to get the words out. 

“We had a wonderful time,” Dave is saying to Henry. Dave tugs Damien forward. The rapist’s son is crying again. “Damien, can you say, ‘thank you’?” 

“Leaving so soon?” Sarah asks. She hopes that Henry can’t smell her breath. She gets down to Damien’s eye level. An eye for an eye. “Damien, do you want to stay a little longer?” Please, she prays, please stop crying. She needs to talk to Dave. She has a bellyful of words that can’t wait anymore. She is broiling on the inside. 

Damien nods but only cries harder.

Dave’s wife joins them. She’s impatient to leave. She’s carrying Damien’s younger brother in her arms. The little boy is all tuckered out. There’s a streak of pink icing in his hair. 

“Damien is overstimulated,” Dave explains. He looms over Damien and Sarah. “If we wait too long, we’ll be in full meltdown territory.” 

Everything moves in aching slow motion. A million Sarahs couldn’t do all the things that this Sarah wants to do right now. In the empty space above Damien’s head, she traces an invisible arc of red that curves from one end of her vision to the other; at the same time, she draws in a single breath, inhaling so deeply that it almost splits her in two.