pride in his voice, as he climbs on top of me again.
How long has it been? I have no idea. The theater feels like a sealed tomb, something out of an Edgar Allan Poe story, soundproof and windowless, with a trapped heart beating inside. I am alone. Utterly alone.
I watch from above. How will it end?
I try something: “I think the people I was supposed to meet will come back,” I say. “They might catch us. We should get out of here.”
He looks at me, thinking about it. Then he nods and reaches for his pants. I crawl across the dirty carpet for my skirt. We dress in a hurry.
“Get your purse,” he says.
I give him all my money: a couple of twenties and some singles. He grabs the wallet from my hands and shakes the coins out, pocketing the quarters and dimes and pennies.
When he has everything, he puts the dagger-scissors up to my back and pushes the point in just enough so I can feel it.
“OK,” he says. “We’re going to go outside now. I told you I wouldn’t kill you, but if you do anything stupid when we get out, I will kill you.”
He leads me out a backstage door and down a staircase, holding my arm, the point of the scissors pressing into my back.
Then he opens a door and we are outside. My brain registers the change in one-word thoughts: Bright. Sun. Air.
Then: DAVE.
In the sun, I see a tattoo on his right arm: “DAVE,” carved into his dark skin in crude capital letters. It looks like someone etched it with a sharpened ballpoint pen. Or scissors, I think, feeling the point in my back.
I glance at him and look away. Now I know his face and his name, or maybe his prison boyfriend’s name. Did he notice that I saw it?
“Where’s your car?” he asks.
My tiny flame of hope sputters and dies. I’m outside, but I’m not free. And now I know too much for him to let me go. Now he’ll take me somewhere in my car and kill me. I hesitate.
“It’s in the lot over there,” I say. Then I add: “Right next to the attendant’s booth.”
This is not true, but I continue the lie. “We can’t go there. We don’t want to get caught.”
He thinks for a second, then turns me so I’m facing him. He licks his finger and rubs at the blood on my neck. He smooths my hair.
“Now, don’t you go to the cops,” he says. “If you go to the cops, I’ll have to go to prison.”
“I won’t go to the cops. I promise.”
“If I have to go to prison, I’ll miss you,” he says, almost cooing. “And when I get out, I will find you.”
He kisses me on the lips and walks away.
I want this written on my body
I wobble toward my car, holding my torn blouse closed with one hand, the straps on my shoes flapping with each step.
The midsummer evening feels like afternoon, bright and hot, the burned smell of asphalt rising in the still air. The paths through the campus are empty. Everyone has gone home, which is where I’m supposed to be by now. I hear traffic a block away, the hum of the last gasp of rush hour, people thinking about dinner and wondering what’s on TV tonight.
When I get to the parking lot, I see someone in the booth. A man in a uniform. I stumble across the tarmac toward him. He will make me safe.
When he slides the window open, I stand there, mute. My throat clamps shut again. He notices my ripped blouse.
I blurt out, “I was just raped.”
It’s the first time I say the words, and it sounds wrong. Too flat. Too direct. I feel like a fake, a feeling that will return again and again in the days and weeks to come. Why am I not crying or wailing like a real victim? Why do I sound so emotionless? After stating just the fact, I am unable to say anything else.
The man in the booth doesn’t know what to say, either. He falters for a few seconds, staring at me, and then opens the door and points to his stool. “Sit here.” He looks like someone’s grandfather. I feel bad for him, having to deal with this. I sit on his stool, shaking, while he talks into a walkie-talkie. “I have a rape victim here,” he says, and then he steps outside of the booth to wait, leaving me alone for the first time that night.
Seconds later, a guy in a red pickup pulls up and shouts into the window, “Which way did he go?” I point toward Euclid Avenue and the guy speeds off, and before I can figure out how he knew about the rape, a cop car pulls up, and I’m out of the booth and in the front seat.
The cop does not want the story. He wants a description: What was his race? What did he look like? How tall was he? What was his weight?
“Black,” I say. “But I’m not sure how tall he was. I’m not sure about his weight, either. It’s hard to estimate.”
The cop tries to help: “Was he taller than you, or shorter? Heavier?”
“A little taller than me. He was pretty thin, so I’m not sure if he was heavier.”
“How much do you weigh?”
I pause. “About one thirty,” I say, automatically shaving off the traditional five pounds. This will worry me quite a bit later on. Will someone discover I lied about my weight, and so must be lying about everything else, too?
After more back-and-forth, we arrive at a description: Wiry build, maybe a hundred forty pounds. Slightly taller than me. I’m five-six, so maybe five-seven or five-eight.
“What about his color,” the cop says. “Was he dark or light-skinned?” Again I hesitate. I’ve never described the gradations of African-American skin color; I don’t know the benchmarks.
“I guess he was light,” I say. “Maybe he was medium. I don’t know.”
I try to make up for my indecisiveness by offering something better: “He had a tattoo. A name tattooed on his right bicep. ‘DAVE.’ It was all in capital letters, and messy, like it was made with a pen or a knife.” The cop nods with approval. I have a moment where I feel like what I always tried to be as a child: I’m a good girl.
Then we are at the emergency room, where a dozen people slump in rows of plastic chairs, waiting for someone to see them. The room is dim. A TV hung on the wall plays without sound.
The cop rushes me through the waiting room like a celebrity he has to protect from overzealous fans. If I had a coat, he probably would drape it over my head. He tells me the Cleveland police will come to talk to me. He tells me I did a good job with the description. Then he leaves.
Inside the ER, the intake nurse puts me in a private room, one with a door instead of curtains. With brisk efficiency, she hands me a paper gown and asks for my clothes, then stuffs them into a bag to give to the police. Evidence, she tells me. She brings me a cup of water. She takes down all my information, my history. She asks me who she should call to come to the hospital for me. Am I married? I give her my husband’s phone number at work. She tells me the doctor will be there soon, but first the police need to talk to me. A hospital social worker will come by, too. Do I want someone from the Rape Crisis Center to come? Yes. Please. Then she leaves.
I am alone.
A clock on the wall ticks the seconds. It’s past 6:30. I thought it would be later. Time, after disappearing in that theater, returns to me. It lasted an hour. DAVE trapped me and raped me for an hour.
Outside the room, a gurney rolls past, clacking. Someone moans, then moans louder. Two