Her: A Memoir (6 page)

She was wearing red pants and a black shirt. She walked her dog on a red leash. Red looked good. The warm wind warned of autumn. It was warmer than it should have been. There is always a sign. She didn’t need a sweater but she had one. She wore a sweater of her sister’s that she’d borrowed. It was three o’clock. Nobody was expecting her. Her husband wouldn’t be home for another hour.

She walked in the park with her dog. She didn’t see the man on the park bench, the man who held on to a bottle of liquor he’d covered with a paper bag, the man who wore sunglasses and a hat. She chose the same path every day, one of two—the steeper choice. Her path sloped straight down toward the river and the railroad tracks. The dog moved forward eagerly, faster than the girl could hold her back; the girl wrapped the leash around her wrist, yanked back hard. “Heel,” she said, knowing the dog had no use for commands. I’ll tire her, the girl thought. She let her dog go off leash, so the dog could run.

It was fair for them both: she and her dog, to walk off the day, to walk off the face of the earth if they wanted to. They descended down into the woods, onto the path darkened by trees, branches, and orange leaves. The leaves had not yet fallen. A hard rain had not stripped them from their branches. She reached the end of the path and turned left, looking behind her at the right path. She picked up a stick and threw it. Her dog ran, caught it, and brought it back. Again she did this, for the satisfaction. She had taught her dog to fetch and return.

“We’re good girls,” she said to the dog. She threw the stick farther and her dog ran fast after it. She looked down for another stick, then she looked up and saw a man approaching. He had a bigger stick in hand, a thick branch that filled his fist. She smiled hello.

“Come with me,” he said, slurring his speech. He was tall and she couldn’t see his eyes. Her line of sight was even with his mouth; his teeth and tongue were tobacco stained.

“No, I don’t think I’ll do that, sir.” He couldn’t be serious, she thought. Her second thought: I must be polite. Girls are always polite: don’t chew with your mouth open; cross your legs; keep two feet on the floor. Don’t talk to strangers. She had broken every rule there was.

She called for her dog to come. She had what she’d adopted from the pound: a dog with some tricks and no training. The dog understood little; she was young and hadn’t learned to mind her master.

The man grabbed her arm tight and kicked her at the back of the knee, brought her to the ground and then yanked her back up. She felt her shoulder pop and give. “You’re coming with me,” he said.

One of her tennis shoes fell off as her feet hung, dragging through the brambles. He pulled her farther into the woods and she watched as her shoe was left behind. They stopped. She could see her shoe from the path as he lay her down. She tried to recall every stray shoe she’d seen strewn on a road, pointing in one direction on a sidewalk, hanging by its laces on a telephone wire, stranded in a ditch. She’d always wondered how and why those shoes had been left without mates. So this was why. She’d imagined strangers walking with one shoe on, but she was dragged, pulled, pushed. She wondered who might find her shoe.

She screamed, she kicked and bit and fought. Wet leaves soaked through her T-shirt. Her elbows were skinned and bleeding, dirty with mud. A branch overhead swayed in the autumn breeze, creaky as a door with a rusty hinge. And all the time she thought: How could this be happening, when so many people died last month in those towers? I’m only one person; if I die here it won’t mean anything.

She stopped thinking when he began to hit her.

His fists were a hammer. Her cries were lost to the trees, to the roaring traffic on a nearby street. He covered her mouth and put his hands around her neck. It was rush hour. Nobody would hear her. His blows. It became a dream: slow, terrifying, unending motion. She was the body.

“Don’t make me hit you more,” he said. She couldn’t hear him. She’d lost consciousness. He dragged her farther into the brush.

She tasted blood when she came to and felt him between her thighs, fumbling to pull down her red pants, the pants she’d felt so pretty wearing. “Please don’t,” she managed quietly.

“You never done this before?”

She reached for her left hand. “Here, take my wedding rings.” She thought of her husband, past lovers.

“You think I want to rob you?” The man pushed her rings back onto her finger with such force, her knuckles jammed.

“Please don’t kill me,” she whispered.

“You think I want to kill you?” The man looked at her as if she were a child who didn’t understand a game. “Be good to me.” He stroked the side of her face, tender as a lover. “Don’t make me hit you again. That’s what I ask.” His breath was heavy on her neck. He found his way inside her and thrust hard. A sharp pain shot between her hips. He ground his teeth against hers, kissed her face where he’d hit her. He came fast. “I’m sorry, chica. I don’t know why I do these things.”

She wept and looked into his eyes, meeting his gaze—his eyes were almond shaped and mahogany brown. The pupils themselves were dilated, wide as dimes. Pleasure had brought him farther inside himself: he was both far away and pinning her down. His long black lashes were curly and thick.

“Don’t look at my face,” he said coldly. He took off the black sweater she wore, her sister’s sweater, and put it over her face. She hadn’t thought of Sister until just then, and then—it occurred to her: her death would be greater for her living sister than for her. She struggled beneath him. He took the sweater sleeves and tied them behind her head. She couldn’t see or breathe. “Can you see me now, bitch?” He was playing with her.

“I can’t see you.”

He pushed the soft cotton of the sweater into her mouth, gagging her. She breathed through her nose, smelled her sister’s sweet perfume. She hadn’t yet washed the sweater.

He pulled her up. “Come with me.”

And where was her biting dog but still looking for a stick?

“I can’t walk. I can’t see.” Her legs were stiff. He took pity and removed her blindfold.

“Carry me,” she said. “You’re stronger than me. You’re so big.”

He dragged her farther down the path, her feet sliding on the ground. She lost her remaining shoe and struggled to keep her pants up. She thought of her body, where he would put it. Who would find her?

He brought her off the path and propped her against a tree. He took and took her. It was late. The sun was setting. She looked up at it—pillows of clouds streaked with bright pinks and oranges.

“You think you can look at my face?” he asked, hitting her.

“I can’t see your face.”

He took his boxer shorts off and put them over her head. He pulled a length of rope from his pocket and tied it loosely around her neck. “You’ll never see me,” he said. “I’m nothing.”

“But you’re everything to me now.” She could see his outline through the thin blue-checked cotton of the shorts.

“You’re better than my wife,” he said. “You’re beautiful.” He undid the noosed shorts and she tipped her head back in release. “Let me see your body,” he said. “Take those off your face. Take off your clothes.” She undressed fully for him. The ground was cold. He bit her shoulder and grabbed a fist full of her hair at the nape of her neck, forcing her head to the ground. He had her pinned by the hair, neck arched as far as it could go, chin pointing toward the sky. “I’m sorry I hit you,” he said, “but you made me do it.”

“I won’t make you do it again.”

“Will you marry me?”

“I’ll think about it,” she told him, as if she were actually thinking it over. She’d learned how to skillfully lie over the years, a quality she wasn’t proud of. Her knees trembled and her teeth chattered.

He entered her again. “Do you love me?”

Love would make it better, easier. Love is sometimes wrong, she thought, but it is love and love does not maim or kill or hurt. “I’m so cold,” she said.

He put her sister’s sweater over her tenderly. Time stopped. She was in his hands, he was in her body. She looked up at the trees, their leaves, leaping yellows and reds dancing down to the forest floor. This, she thought, this is what I will take with me if I am taken from here.

“I’ll never tell anyone about this if you let me go,” she said. “It’s getting dark and I think it’s about time we both get home.”

“How do I know that? Why should I believe you’d keep your big mouth shut?” He took his fingers and pried her mouth open, pushing a few fingers inside. He pressed her tongue until she gagged.

The girl cried, begged. “You have to know it because I’m telling you.” She thought of all of the crime shows she’d seen, how police got confessions by playing nice. “I couldn’t send you to jail—I don’t believe in jail. It’s racist and classist.”

“Don’t let me find you if you’re lying, girl.” The man pulled up his trousers. “Close your eyes and count to ten. I’ll be gone when you’re finished.”

She counted until she couldn’t hear his feet and dressed quickly. She sprinted up the hill, grabbing on to branches to make it to the top. The park was at the top of the hill where hours before she and her dog had played. She called for the dog. This time, she came, dragging her leash. She’d been afraid for the dog the whole time—the dog was confused and could have darted out into traffic. She began to run toward her apartment and crossed the street. A man campaigning for reelection for the Holyoke town board saw her and moved away in horror.

“I’m afraid of dogs,” he yelled. “Get that thing away from me.” He saw a girl with torn red pants and no shoes, her hair wild and wet with blood, her eyes blackened, but the aspiring politician was a coward before all else: he saw her pit bull before he noticed her need.

“She’s friendly, please.” She told him how to reach her husband. For the first time of many she said the words: “I was raped.” The girl fell at his feet. Her dog licked the blood from her face in long slow strokes. The politician called the police and then he called her husband.

The last thing she remembers is her husband running toward her, leaning forward to hold her. “Get the fuck off,” she yelled, and then more softly, “I’m evidence.” Nothing was ever the same again; she was someone else entirely.

“I was raped,” she repeated to her husband, in the same tone someone might say they had pasta for dinner the night before. It was like that, matter of fact, half-faced. She spoke the truth as though it was someone else’s.

*   *   *

This is what she learned: There is one road of control, and two choices: take control and kill the body, or live and struggle; ramble in conversations, stop mid-sentence, hide in bathroom stalls and cry. Fear to leave your living room; watch
The Accused
, watch
Sybil
and pick a personality. Cut your hair and dye it; waste yourself. Look at the floor, cross your legs, learn to carry flashlights and Mace. Read about yourself in the newspaper. Watch yourself disappear.

Asked what life was like after her attack, she told everyone she remembered two things. The first was something she said in a phone call she made to an older friend.

“Now,” she told her friend, “I know what it feels like to be a woman.”

The second thing she remembers occurred the day after. It was five in the morning and the sun was coming up. She sat smoking a cigarette on her rear porch, watching a dump truck empty the receptacles in the back of the building through her one good eye. The other was swollen shut, bruised, bloodshot. She’d been chewing on the good side of her lip, the side not punched into submission, thinking, I’ve never been so old. She was twenty-four.

She put out her cigarette and called school. She told the receptionist she wouldn’t be coming in because she’d been raped. She asked the receptionist if she’d need a doctor’s note to confirm. She didn’t wait for an answer; she hung up.

Before the rape everything was the same. It was autumn and some of the leaves were still green. She had just started graduate school. She had a sister and a mother. She weighed 125 pounds. Her hair was longish and dark. She walked her dog alone every day after class. She loved the woods and climbed its trees. She sang too loudly to the car radio. She liked to eat strawberry squares and she wanted to be a writer.

Chapter 5

We played airplane with
Mike. He was strong enough that when he swung us around he could hold one of us in each of his hands; our four arms and legs glided through the air. Our two screams of glee shot out down the hallway.

Mom started dating Mike soon after we moved from Dad’s house. She fell in love with him quickly and fully. Mike was a marine; he’d just finished boot camp. He was a bodybuilder in his spare time and liked to make health shakes in our kitchen: wheat germ, peanut butter, and vitamin powder. He stood over six feet tall and muscles bulged in his arms. His hair was shaved into a Mohawk; he flexed his arms in our hallway mirror, then pulled the hawk into tufts that stood straight up.

Mike let us wrestle in the house and gave us candy. Dad didn’t come to bother Mom when Mike was over, so Mike stayed often. But he played less with us the longer their courtship continued, and he grew stern.

At a dinner of cube steak and shelled peas, I flung a spoon of food at Mike. I watched the peas roll down his face and smiled in pride of my aim. “Gotcha!” I said.

“Children should be seen and not heard,” Mike said and picked up my plate. He placed the remainder of my dinner in the living room. “You’ll eat here until you learn to eat like an adult.”