The Rest of the Story

The second-floor room was not only packed, it was also stuffy despite the droning efforts of a small I-think-I-can-I-think-I-can window air conditioner. Knowing anything could happen at a public open mic event—dreadful poems about cats or pizza, 5,000 words delivered in a monotone—I considered the exit.

            My friend beside me rested her hand on my thigh. “I brought something to read. Please stay.” I smiled and relaxed my grip on the soft, bright sweater in my lap.

            When the first reader centered his girth behind the podium, my mouth hitched to one side. He usually goes last, I thought. I braced myself.

            He said he’d be reading a poem. It wasn't poetry. It was porn. After the first few words, I squeezed my eyes shut, hugged my ribs. A few more syllables and I began to hum ever so softly, twined my legs and leaned forward and back in tiny increments, didn’t stop.

I opened my eyes when I sensed motion nearby. My friend stood and headed for the hall. “Take me with you,” I told her but she didn’t hear. My scream was silent.

Through narrowed eyes, I studied my right foot,  meditated on its crushed-twenty-years-ago sesamoid bone and how the pain had flared recently. I imagined myself walking without shoes, without the custom orthotic that guarantees freedom from pain. Barefoot, my arch tries to make a fist with muscles and tissue someone seems to have scraped with a vegetable peeler.  Pondering pain, I decided, is preferable to hearing hurl.

The moment my mind brought up vomit, I recalled the stench of grade-school spew, the kind that on one level smells like cheese. I pictured a teacher summoning a janitor. When he entered the room, he’d locate the splat then dip his hand inside the sack he'd brought. He'd lift out a mound  of evergreen-colored crumbles and with his fingers splayed slightly he’d shake his hand over the mess on the desktop or floor. The absorb-the-barf bits would rain onto the wet, and shortly after, the room would reek of minty cheese, like if you ate pizza then chewed spearmint gum. As much as I love peppermint, I hate spearmint. It makes me seasick. I think. I’ve never been on a cruise.

~~~~~~

I had trouble sleeping the night of the reading. The morning after, I slipped into obsession mode.

“Why did last night rattle me so? Why didn’t I just leave?” I asked myself those things over and over. “Like my friend did. I sat in the back not far from the door. It would’ve been easy.”

At the kitchen table, I stirred my cappuccino to incorporate the steamed milk into the espresso. I like all of the beverage to be foamy, not just the top layer.

“I'll tell you why I didn’t move.” My words sounded loud, sharp. “Every body part weighed two tons. No way I could move.”

I relocated to the linoleum, my back against the snack cabinet door. Both my bunnies approached. I cringed as all 32 of their one-inch nails assaulted my thighs.

“Am I talking in my I-have-a-treat-for-you voice?” I asked. “Sorry, I don’t.” Again and again I slid their silken ears through my fingers.

“I was like Bambi in the headlights, " I told Domino and Coal Pepper, "or rather his girlfriend, Faline.  Like a doe in the road when her eyes glow in the dark and she won’t, can’t, budge. Instead she’s stuck stiff-legged in the purgatory between fight and flight. Motionless. Freaked. Incapabable of doing the one thing that’d save her.” I sighed. “That was me. Me was she.”

Domino climbed my shirt front to get at my face. Licked the salt  she found there.

~~~~~~

Later that day I sat cross-legged on the sofa in the living room, journal open on my lap.

“I wish so much I’d left," I told the golden walls.  "I thought I was all better, healed. Am I not? Why didn’t I leave?”

Those words—why didn’t I—they’re not four letter words but they could be. Blame isn’t a curse word but it ought to be. When the finger that’s pointing at you is your own, it’s so much sharper than someone else's. Freddy Krueger sharp.
         In that moment I made a decision, closed my notebook with a snap. A minute later I opened it again and began to write.

“I’m done being oblique, finished alluding to the rest of the story.

I am a sexual abuse survivor. All my life I’ve felt like a freak for it,

like the child left in the center of the circle at the end of a game

of Farmer in the Dell. I’m not alone. Statistics say at least 1 in 5

women have been sexually abused. Count the women around you—

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.  Don’t think for a second the eyes of the

wounded ones will glow. They don't always. I can

sometimes spot them, but most of the time their Suzy Sunshine

Syndrome runs way too deep, be it nature or nurture. More often

than not, their competent  functioning misleads.”

        I shut my journal and leaned forward to collect my phone off the cocktail table. Tapped a message to my writer gal pal: If that ever happens again, take me with you when  you leave. I poke the SEND key with a metallic fingernail.

“She’ll know what I’m talking about,” I said, “’cause she’s a Suzy Sunshine too. "

Afraid of the Dark

I'm so glad it's sunny today.  I like light.  I mean, I really like light.  Sometimes I go through the house and flip every switch and turn on every lamp. Then I run around and light bunches of candles.  Little campfires to ward off the absence of illumination.

See, I'm afraid of the dark.  Have been as long as I can remember.  I'm scared because--  Well, God, you of all people know why, right?  That omniscient property you have?  Oh, and eternality, that too, you know what they mean, don't you?  You were there.

That fact used to burn me up.  If you were there, in my baby's breath pink room, with lime green shag carpet, and French provincial furniture, why the heck didn't you show up?  Be big.  Call down fire or locusts.  Do some signs, miracles, or wonders.  On my behalf.

As I got to know you though, I backed off the shoulda, coulda, wouldas.  It is what it is.  No amount of tears, wailing, or teeth gnashin' is gonna change the past.  And besides, you had your own bullies--tons.  I only had one. 


In therapy, I tried so hard  not to compare my pain, my experience, with other folks.'  Trust me.  That's a bad place to go.  "What happened to you?"  Counseling clients shouldn't be able to ask that.  It's like houses, cars, wedding rings.  You know how big yours is, what it's worth.  So then you try to figure out if theirs is larger, worse, sicker than yours.

I remember this one time.  I was in a group with a whole bunch of other damaged people.  I didn't say anything, but man, they did.  Jacked their jaws 'til I wanted to smack the big, long conference table and scream--SHUT UP!!

This one lady, she saw a car wreck.  Ooooh!  Scary!!!  She wasn't in the totalled car or anything.  Just watched the accident from the berm.  Said she had PTSD as a result.  Liar.  She just wanted attention.  Was willing to pay $95.00 an hour to get it.  She shoulda taken her money up to WalMart and bought herself a life.

This one gal sat across from me.  Probably 20, maybe 22.  For the longest time she didn't say anything.  Not a peep.  Boy howdy, she was  big.  I saw her lips move.  I cocked my head.

"Excuse me?"

Her voice was wee.  "If I get huge, maybe they won't want me no more."

I leaned toward her.  "Who, sweetie?"

Her gnawed nails traced the woodgrain of the table.

"The bad men.  They tie me up.  Stuff a rag in my mouth.  Drive me to that cabin way out in the woods.  Ever since I was four."

I'm glad she didn't look me in the eye.  No one wants to see pity and horror in someone else's gaze.  My fingers clawed into fists. 

"Who are they?  Where are they?  I'll kill 'em for you. Cut off their--"

Her eyes weren't pretty.  Not even when they got big and shiny with tears.  That just made 'em look muddy.  She folded her head, like she wanted to bury it between her prodigious breasts.  She leaned forward, then back again.  Did that.  Over and over.  Hummed something.  I think it was Ring Around the Rosy.  Wasn't that song about the Black Death?


Jesus, I'm sure glad you're light.  You know how the preacher man always says, "Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life?"  I always thought he said, "The way, the truth, and the light."  I wanted you to be light.  Needed you to be.  And now you are.  To  me.

One time I was at a ladies' luncheon, and a speaker gal told her story.  Dang!  She had a tough rough to hoe.  At the end of her talk though, she said,  in her sweet, quiet, tiny like a wren voice, "As I look back over my life, bad as it was, I wouldn't change a thing."  I almost stood up and said, "Lady, someone needs to knock you up side the head.  You are a fool."

But now? I think I kinda get what she was saying.  It's like the end of the Joseph and the Rainbow Coat story in the Bible.  Joseph told his brothers, the ones who sold him into slavery 'cause he was a goody-two-shoes, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good, to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives."

I hope I can do that someday.  Save many lives.  From gloom, despair, and agony on them.  I just have to find the afraid-of-the-dark people.  Hand 'em a candle and say, "Guess what, friend?  Jesus is the way, the truth, and the light."