2004
Elise’s walk home is quiet. It’s still too early for the swarm of rush hour traffic on Sheridan Road, still too early for almost anyone to be out, except people like her, who come alive at night. She passes a Loyola coed, stumbling back to the dorm after a night where she probably did something she will regret, at least until the next time. She doesn’t look up at Elise as she passes, keeping her eyes downcast, a curtain of blonde hiding her face. There is a homeless man asleep in the doorway of a bank, still clutching a bottle sheathed in a brown paper sack, the front of his grimy pants stained dark. A young man hurries down a cross street, intent on getting somewhere. He is wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket and tight Levis, his hair close cropped. Elise wonders if his energy and hurry is chemically induced and what awaits him at the end of his journey.
At Morse, she turns off Sheridan, and walks to Greenview, where she will continue north to her apartment. Something has changed. Her breathing and pace seem easier, her step lighter. She has passed a test, one whose true nature will only be revealed after reflection. But she feels relieved that a chapter has come to a close. She is sad for Edward, trapped in a kind of hell, one in which he will never do what made him Edward ever again. But she is also glad he shared his story with her, making her final decision that much easier. She can now go on.
She can begin turning her life around. It may take a while to find a job that doesn’t require keeping late night hours and spreading her legs for men who have enough money to employ her for a half hour, five minutes. But she’s young and, unlike her sisters of the night, has not been plying her trade that long. They are trapped. Elise knows what it means to be trapped, because she has just avoided being ensnared—close call. Avoiding one trap has allowed her to recognize another: the kind of life she has chosen for herself was never one she planned on making permanent. But she supposes every woman who got into the rent game had the same thought, at first. And many of them never found their way back.
She will find her way back. She had allowed despair to make a home in her psyche; had allowed bad experiences in relationships to sour her outlook on love. She had let these things take away her hope.
No more.
She has only a few more blocks to go (three, maybe four) when she hears the footsteps behind. She grins and shakes her head. “Not again,” she whispers to herself, glancing up at the milky white sky, its illumination full on for this day. She knows Edward is sleeping somewhere dark and wonders if he dreams anymore, or if even that bit of inspiration has deserted him.
She doesn’t want to appear nervous or paranoid, so she doesn’t glance over her shoulder. She tells herself that someone else is just following the same path as she, someone who is headed to Jarvis Avenue, or Fargo, or Howard Street, to start their day in some dead-end job.
Yet she wishes the quickening pace behind her would turn off the avenue, duck into an apartment building or a house, head for the el. She swallows hard, mouth dry, as the footsteps speed up and get closer.
You’re being silly
, she thinks,
lightning won’t strike twice
.
No one is following you
again.
Besides, it’s daylight now, things are picking up. Who would be stupid enough to try anything with her now?
The steps have almost reached her and Elise feels a prickling sensation run up her back, like cold fingers.
“Can I ask you a question?” A gruff voice comes from behind.
Elise keeps walking, putting a little more speed in her step, already casting her gaze about for somewhere safe to run, for a stranger or a group of strangers coming her way.
“I said, can I ask you a question. Come on!”
Elise freezes and breathes in deep. She turns.
A young black man wearing a hooded sweatshirt and baggy jeans is standing in the middle of the sidewalk. He’s smoking a little plastic-filtered cigar and appears nervous, shifting his weight rapidly from one foot to the other. His hood is pulled up, hiding his face in fleece and shadow.
Elise closes her eyes and thinks she’d be better off just to answer him; he is probably only going to hit her up for money for the train. Once they conclude their business, she can be on her way. And she will sleep for hours and hours. “What is it?”
“I don’t got any money. I just need $1.75 for the train, or even a transfer, if you got one.”
Just get rid of him
, Elise thinks, digging in her pockets for change, for an errant dollar bill. She is both glad and sorry she didn’t bring her bag with her.
All she comes up with is a quarter, a nickel, and three pennies. She holds it out to him. “Sorry, this is all I’ve got.”
He slaps her hand and the change goes clattering to the ground.
“Bitch,” he whispers. “Fuckin’ white bitch.”
She turns to run, but before she takes even a step, he is upon her, one arm pulling tightly around her waist and cutting off her air, the other arm up by her face, a hand clasped over her mouth. “We just gonna see if this is how much you got,” he whispers. The low, soft voice is more terrifying than if he were shouting.
Elise struggles, pushes against him as he drags her toward an apartment building parking garage. Her screams are muffled under his hand, but this doesn’t stop her from trying, searing her throat with her terror and her desire for help. She kicks at him, but this only makes him laugh.
He has her in the garage in a matter of seconds. They both pause, panting. Once safe in the shadows, he flings her hard to the ground, her head slamming down on the concrete. She sees stars. She bites down on her tongue as she makes impact with the concrete and tastes her own blood.
“No,” she whimpers, hands fluttering up like birds to slap, to stop him.
He pulls out a gun, a little snub-nosed revolver.
“You just keep still if you know what’s good for you. I ain’t afraid to use this thing.”
Elise knows from her time on the street that it’s futile to fight back against a firearm; you always lose. Even though she knows he might kill her no matter what she does, her only hope for escape lies in cooperation.
“Okay, okay,” she whimpers. Her tongue is already thickening. “Just don’t hurt me. Please.”
With one hand, he rummages through her clothes. She’s sorry, terribly sorry, she hasn’t worn underwear. His hands linger over her nipples, pinching. He slips a finger inside her, dry, and she winces and yelps with the sudden, sharp pain.
“Nice.”
“Please, please don’t.” She pauses for a moment. “I…I have HIV.”
“Yeah? Well so do I. Bitch.”
“Come on. I’m for real. You can get AIDS. Just let me go and we can both forget this ever happened.”
Elise knows no amount of pleading is going to change anything. She tries to go somewhere else in her mind as he rips the clothes from her, tearing them and flinging them off into a dirty corner. She looks desperately for a place that will take her in, that will at least allow a psychic escape. She shuts her eyes tightly as she feels him on top of her, struggling with the zipper of his jeans. Her thoughts race, going anywhere but here. Thinking of her girlhood home in Cleveland; thinking of a beach in Cozumel where she once walked with a college boyfriend; thinking of the house on Sheridan Road where Maria lives, and the art there. Each place slams the door in her face. In the end, there’s only the throbbing pain in the back of her head; the cold concrete against her skin; and the taste of blood in her mouth. She is beyond tears. She goes limp.
And then he’s ramming himself inside her and Elise shrieks. His hand quickly covers her mouth as he continues to thrust, each movement sending white-hot jolts of pain through her. She whimpers beneath his sour-smelling palm, afraid she will vomit into his flesh, that he will not remove his hand and she will drown.
Mercifully, it’s all over in a few seconds. He pulls out of her and she looks down to see his cock covered in blood. “Shit,” he whispers, reaching for her shirt to wipe himself off on. He flings the shirt over her face. “Thanks, bitch. Have a nice day.”
And then he is gone. And then she really is sick, turning her head to go on and on, into the dry heaves. But no amount of vomiting can ever rid his memory from her.
Weakly, she gets to her knees. The pain throbs within her. She wonders if she has been ripped, if she needs a hospital. Of course, she does. But she knows she won’t go. Sobbing, she struggles into her torn and bloody clothing and manages to stand, to hobble home, hoping no one will see her.
2004
She wonders when these hot jets of water will turn cold. Elise has been standing under the showerhead now for what seems like hours, unable to ever get clean again. Rubbing her body nearly raw, first using soap, then shampoo, then defoliating scrub, she’s made her skin tingle and discovers abraded places, small patches of blood and torn skin exposed. And yet she continues to scrub, almost oblivious to the pain and damage she is causing, whimpering as the water sluices over her, slightly pink from her torn and bleeding skin.
She turns her face up to the spray, opening her mouth and gulping the almost scalding flow down her throat.
Finally she turns the water off and sits on the porcelain bottom of the tub, near the drain, shivering. A trickle of blood seeps from between her legs.
Mercifully, she has no memory of what happened to her, but it must have been something horrible—she’d never been one to shrink away from trauma. Hell, she'd seen her lover—or whatever Maria was to her—with blood on her face…
Blood.
She's bleeding! She looks down at herself, at her torn and battered body, and the sight nearly makes her faint. She knows only that what happened to her was something horrible, painful, and damaging, but when she tries to grasp the particulars, they scatter away like dream images.
“Maybe that’s for the best,” she whimpers, sliding forward until her face rests against the rapidly cooling tub bottom.
She lies in the tub for more than an hour. She gets up only when the chill and the shock cause her to shake so badly she isn’t sure she can get herself to stop. Staggering to her bed with just enough strength to crawl in under the covers, she pulls them over her head.
Every light in her apartment is on, even though the sun has risen.
Her tongue is thick. It feels like she is under a blanket of needles; even the soft, brushed fleece of her blanket feels rough and chafing.
She closes her eyes and in seconds, slides into a deep, dreamless sleep, almost a coma.
When she awakens, sunlight floods the apartment, usurping the power of the electric bulbs, which are almost humming. She pokes her head out from under the blankets, breathing easier, the air cooling her sweat-slicked skin.
With re-awakening, Elise remembers the rape and the horror and pain of it. She realizes that shock had granted her a few hours of oblivion, but that has worn off. Now, reality sits squarely in front of her, and its knowing grin is hideous. She wishes she could turn back and continue to live in the kind of numbed ignorance she experienced before she fell asleep. By degrees, she manages to get up on her elbows, and eventually to a sitting position. Her breath is ragged and she hurts all over, especially her cunt, which is throbbing and cramping; the flow of blood has slowed to a trickle, but still not stopped. She wonders if she will ever heal.
In spite of the pain causing her to her wince and cry out, Elise stands and moves like an old woman across the expanse of her studio apartment to the kitchen sink, where she turns the tap on (cold this time), splashing the water over her face and gulping it down, letting it run until it gets colder, colder. She holds her head under the stream until the cold causes her head to hurt, until the water sluices down her front and starts the shivering all over again. She pulls away, dons a T-shirt and shorts that were on a chair. She sits down near the window, hands in her damp hair.
“Why did this happen to me?” she wonders aloud to the empty apartment. But she’s already learned this lesson: that there is little reason to the world, a place where the evil are victorious and the good cast aside, where the evil are squelched and the good were rewarded. It is all a random pattern and trying to figure it out is useless.
Outside, children’s voices. School must have let out; she always notices how the noise levels rise in her neighborhood around three in the afternoon. They shout to one another. There’s lots of laughter. How can they laugh? Elise wonders. How can anyone ever laugh again?
The flow of traffic outside her window grows louder as the late afternoon traffic increases. Cars pull up, double-park, honk their horns, engines idling just below Elise’s window.
How does the world go on? It seems surreal.
She moves to the edge of her bed, icy water dripping from her forehead down her face, and has one thought:
Surreal or real, this is a world I want no part of.
She looks to her drawings and paintings, lined up along the floor, leaning against the walls.
If that’s the price I have to pay…
She sits, quiet and as composed as she can be in her discomfort, hands folded in her lap and waits for the voices outside to lessen. She sits and waits for the darkness to fall. When twilight erases the bright yellow sun, she will call Maria. She will not use the telephone (which was shut off for non-payment two weeks ago anyway). She will use only her mind, only her heart. How could she have doubted being with someone where communication between minds is so certain, so secure? The fact they can sync this way foretells a relationship of honesty and togetherness. She thinks of a man, his voice scarred. “Can I ask you a question?” Her stomach turns and she gets half up off the bed, afraid she will be sick, but the moment passes.
Take me. Take me away and love me.
She can’t help sending the message out to Maria, even though the sun is bright. Who knows what messages penetrate her sleep?
She stands, makes a short circuit of her drab room, and shuts off all the lights. What will she really be losing anyway? She understands the love of darkness and feels like its shadow has been in the wings all along, even before she met Maria, waiting to claim her.
I’m ready now. Ready to come to you.
Elise feels like she’s walked down a road that ends in blackness. Not in shadow or darkness, but simply ends, as if nothing more exists at its edge. The thought is like what people believed before they accepted the reality the earth was round; that it was possible to fall off its edge and be consumed by monsters.
Take all of me. Consume me.
She returns to her bed and lies on her back, eyes focused on the ceiling, patient for it to get lost in shadows. Like her. Soon.