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Sexual Violence
Protection
It took a long time, but, by the following summer, I could get in and out of my car without hyperventilating. I could walk calmly down main streets in the daytime, although I still avoided parking lots and alleys, and rarely went out alone at night.
April 1998The Blue Devils Of Blue River Avenue
Whether I was at the Sambeauxs’ or the Millers’ or the Carrs’, or just out in the street with my little buddies, it was always the same. They were like hothouse tomatoes pushing hard for what they thought was the light. We would hide in a bush, or cluster in the treehouse, or lean back among the interstices of the towering, ragged, catwalk hedge, and the topic would invariably arise, spelled out in red letters above our heads: S-E-X.
August 1997Poof
Jayne, my hairdresser, has just had her eyebrows tattooed. Two black scabs arch across her forehead. “I don’t dare frown,” she says, “or they might bleed. But, oh, when the scabs fall off, my eyebrows will be deep gold, to match my new hair. And even when I go swimming, I won’t lose my face.”
March 1997Three Spheres
I have not healed so much as learned to sit still and wait while pain does its dancing work, trying not to panic or twist in ways that make the blades tear deeper and finally infect the wounds.
November 1996Tree-Jumper
He told me about his own first “transgression”: fondling a seven-year-old girl; how one thing led to another (he was mostly vague about his crimes) until he finally got caught. How his greatest fear was that he would someday molest his own children, though he didn’t have any yet. The other inmates at Coxsackie had pinned a label on him: “tree-jumper,” a guy who stalks children and hides in bushes or behind trees.
September 1996Annie’s Hair
As she sat up, Annie kicked at a pile of hair near her feet. The hair screamed and begged for mercy. She told it to shut up or the broom was going to get it. After that the hair was quiet.
June 1995Daughters Lost
It is difficult to convey the horror of losing your children like this. I found it hard to sleep, to concentrate. Every night I had beautiful dreams in which my children were young and loving, and every morning I woke up to a reality more like a nightmare.
June 1995Six Days
The investigator from the department of mental health, Mr. D., called yesterday to tell me that the woman who seduced me after my stay on the K-4 unit a dozen years ago has been suspended from work for six days.
September 1994
