would take a drunk girl’s word. The Keaton victim’s mother saying, It’ll be okay, and calling the police for her daughter. I could only tell people on the periphery of my life: the restaurant manager. My new roommate, whom my parents had found in the newspaper. They’d moved my things into her apartment, given me the key. My new roommate who works at night shipping packages, backed away from me, my news. The nurses, doctor.
A couple of days after I see my doctor, a religious counselor calls, asks me to come see her. She’s in a room of the hospital, in one chair within a big, empty circle of chairs. I sit next to her. It’s as if we’re surrounded by invisible, quiet people. There are dark, heavy curtains behind us, floor to ceiling, like a stage. Her face is not something I can remember, but she’s a nun. In regular clothes. And because she’s a nun, I feel I shouldn’t talk about the body, use sexual words. My words feel blurry. But I hear her say, “It’s notyour fault. No matter what you did. It’s not your fault.” There is a mark across the sky, I want to say. Look up.
I’m supposed to go back, see the nun again. I don’t. But when I can’t remember what I used to be like, I sit in a car stuck in highway traffic, car lighter on the soft inside of my arm, searing circles that scar white and cratery, perfect little moons, or break a juice glass in the sink, rocks glass on the toilet tank in the stall of a bar’s restroom, cutting shallow lines of blood around the moons—and once, forgetting to unroll my long sleeves, set a drink down in front of a customer who pushes herself back, asks, “What happened to you?” and when I say, “ Accident,” she squints at me, says, “It looks like you’ve been in a concentration camp.” The customer watching me carefully, angry I don’t break down, confess, her cramped lips letting me know she doesn’t like liars—or, when I find myself in the mirror by surprise, and I don’t know this nice girl, her pretty smile; then, I try to play the nun’s voice in my head, a song. Her words soothe me even if I can’t believe them. It helps to know that someone believes it wasn’t my fault.
After the rape, I want our red rocking chair, the scratchy fabric. When I was a child, my mother, who touched me rarely, would take me in her arms after I’d been punished. Though this didn’t happen often or seem unusual—we still had corporal punishment in school—it was always humiliating and often my mother’s doing, complaining to my father about something I’d done. Afterward, she’d hold me in the red rocking chair, and my body didn’t seem distasteful to her then. As if I had to be broken down, almost hopeless, for her to touch me. Or maybe it was that I was so vulnerable then, like a baby. It seemed more like the beginning, when we were one. The chair’s been reupholstered, a different color, but she’s held me inside. I’d like to show her the lines in my hands, ask if she recognizes me.
I need to be touched in a nonviolent way. As soon as possible.I’d read in Time magazine that it takes a woman seven years to heal from a rape. I’m not letting that be taken away too. The pleasure of being touched. I make my own prescription, a plan to counteract the rape.
I have to find someone to have sex with. But first, I have to get drunk. I’m only three days off Antabuse. I’d started the drug to show I was sorry for drinking, that I’d learned my lesson. Here, I’ll swallow this pill, and then I can’t drink. The thing is, Antabuse doesn’t prevent you from drinking. It just makes you sick. And while it’s “nontoxic,” it can also supposedly kill you. If you drink on Antabuse, your body makes more of an acid, a colorless, flammable liquid. A concentration. It was discovered in the 1930s by rubber workers who worked with the substance, and became ill when they went out drinking.
I go off the Antabuse and three nights later, choose Steve, the
A couple of days after I see my doctor, a religious counselor calls, asks me to come see her. She’s in a room of the hospital, in one chair within a big, empty circle of chairs. I sit next to her. It’s as if we’re surrounded by invisible, quiet people. There are dark, heavy curtains behind us, floor to ceiling, like a stage. Her face is not something I can remember, but she’s a nun. In regular clothes. And because she’s a nun, I feel I shouldn’t talk about the body, use sexual words. My words feel blurry. But I hear her say, “It’s notyour fault. No matter what you did. It’s not your fault.” There is a mark across the sky, I want to say. Look up.
I’m supposed to go back, see the nun again. I don’t. But when I can’t remember what I used to be like, I sit in a car stuck in highway traffic, car lighter on the soft inside of my arm, searing circles that scar white and cratery, perfect little moons, or break a juice glass in the sink, rocks glass on the toilet tank in the stall of a bar’s restroom, cutting shallow lines of blood around the moons—and once, forgetting to unroll my long sleeves, set a drink down in front of a customer who pushes herself back, asks, “What happened to you?” and when I say, “ Accident,” she squints at me, says, “It looks like you’ve been in a concentration camp.” The customer watching me carefully, angry I don’t break down, confess, her cramped lips letting me know she doesn’t like liars—or, when I find myself in the mirror by surprise, and I don’t know this nice girl, her pretty smile; then, I try to play the nun’s voice in my head, a song. Her words soothe me even if I can’t believe them. It helps to know that someone believes it wasn’t my fault.
After the rape, I want our red rocking chair, the scratchy fabric. When I was a child, my mother, who touched me rarely, would take me in her arms after I’d been punished. Though this didn’t happen often or seem unusual—we still had corporal punishment in school—it was always humiliating and often my mother’s doing, complaining to my father about something I’d done. Afterward, she’d hold me in the red rocking chair, and my body didn’t seem distasteful to her then. As if I had to be broken down, almost hopeless, for her to touch me. Or maybe it was that I was so vulnerable then, like a baby. It seemed more like the beginning, when we were one. The chair’s been reupholstered, a different color, but she’s held me inside. I’d like to show her the lines in my hands, ask if she recognizes me.
I need to be touched in a nonviolent way. As soon as possible.I’d read in Time magazine that it takes a woman seven years to heal from a rape. I’m not letting that be taken away too. The pleasure of being touched. I make my own prescription, a plan to counteract the rape.
I have to find someone to have sex with. But first, I have to get drunk. I’m only three days off Antabuse. I’d started the drug to show I was sorry for drinking, that I’d learned my lesson. Here, I’ll swallow this pill, and then I can’t drink. The thing is, Antabuse doesn’t prevent you from drinking. It just makes you sick. And while it’s “nontoxic,” it can also supposedly kill you. If you drink on Antabuse, your body makes more of an acid, a colorless, flammable liquid. A concentration. It was discovered in the 1930s by rubber workers who worked with the substance, and became ill when they went out drinking.
I go off the Antabuse and three nights later, choose Steve, the
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