I was coming down off a serious high, and the police brought me into the drunk tank.\u00a0 It was a busy night and my howling while being raped by a female gorilla (yes, women rape other women) didn\u2019t bring anyone to my rescue.\u00a0 Bruised and bloody in the morning and feeling sick the authorities discovered I was underage and with an abject apology tucked me into an upper scale dry-out clinic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I met her, Julia at the clinic, she was a volunteer mentor to disadvantaged girls like me.\u00a0 She was an old widowed Jew who, I felt, was there just to see how the outer echelon lived outside her pampered world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat was your mother\u2019s name?\u201d Julia asked trying to draw me into conversation during our first meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why \u2018was\u2019 I wondered.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cMy Mom\u2019s name is Kathy.\u00a0 Some call her Kate, which she prefers.\u00a0 It never stuck.\u00a0 Out of respect I call her Kate.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhy isn\u2019t Kate here?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhy should she be?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBecause she is your mother.\u201c\u00a0 She said \u2018mother,\u2019 in a\u00a0firm verbal underlined tone of voice. Obviously to her since Kate is my mother that obligated her to come and see about me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cKate never cared about me, she never will and that is final.\u00a0 Where\u2019s your mother?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Julia was old as dirt and I knew her mother was dead. The crackle and a sear of cruelty prevailed over our first meeting. I felt the disfigurement of disdain and anger pull my skin taunt.\u00a0 The emotion was common to me and when not incarcerated often I scoured my horizon for lonely old men to fuck; they were\u00a0good at it, lonely old men.\u00a0 Afterward they gave me money and use of their shower and I\u2019d stay high for a week.\u00a0 Here I was wasting my time with Julia discussing our mothers.\u00a0 She was silent, looking at me, watching me fidgeting; \u201cso where is she?\u201d I asked again, \u2018your mother?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWith God,\u201d she replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDoes she like it better there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI would think so,\u201d she said evenly and looking me directly in the eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cRight, like she has a choice.\u00a0 God said that\u2019s it and she had to go.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo you believe in God?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSure.\u00a0 God is a male, so He created women making it easy for him and all\u00a0his males to define hysteria as female.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She laughed out loud.\u00a0 She laughed with real mirth and her eyes went from a slate gray to a brilliant blue and all the wrinkles in her face softened and crinkled causing a sparkling aura around her face.\u00a0 Her laughter acted as a puncture to my gut.\u00a0 I deflated too quickly and my muscles began to tighten to keep my bones from falling into a heap; pain exhausts the mind.\u00a0 The room darkened and the rank breath of an acidic stomach pushed out of my slack mouth and flattened nostrils.\u00a0 For a moment I wondered if the odor seeped out of my ears and anus.\u00a0 No doubt it did.\u00a0 There she was laughing; a thing that made her ancientness look beautiful while my young taunt body being what all men desired crumbled into a smelly smoldering mop head of humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They incarcerated me for three years in the posh juvenile detention center and for three years I had no choice but to dry out.\u00a0 She came every Sunday afternoon and Wednesday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s it like being a Jew?\u00a0 Did you go through the Holocaust?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s it like being a Christian?\u00a0 Did you go through the Roman persecution?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She was good with things like that.\u00a0 She taught me\u00a0I couldn\u2019t have the same feelings as her and she couldn\u2019t have the same feelings as me. We could compare notes and meet on mutual ground, sometimes. When we couldn\u2019t do that, miles apart in conclusions didn\u2019t stop us from words spoken, lofted, shot like a bullet and even poisoned tipped.\u00a0 Conversation became a complicated game-board.\u00a0 My head often hurt after speaking with Julia. I blamed the burned out synapses in my brain longing to fire but still too frigid to ignite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDo you think I\u2019d make a good Jew?\u201d I asked her one day. I felt edgy and thought about the scent of old men and wondered what I would do when I got out of my prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I sat a moment and stared at her all prim and proper like any well to-do old woman should.\u00a0 I laughed out loud at her and she smiled then almost cried.\u00a0 The brief exchange lifted us from a plateau of several weeks.\u00a0 My physical release would happen soon and the future looked dark and my body felt the old hungers for hard sex and mind numbing chemicals. Looking at her hiding her tears behind her smile I thought of our first conversation.\u00a0 Had we come full circle or as Julia liked to say spiraled up? We were miles apart culturally and never closer spiritually at that moment and I wanted to maintain the exhilaration of pain and separation which drew us together in understanding but I felt the descent of reason budging in and wanting to analyze what just happened.\u00a0 Julia sensed by despair.\u00a0 \u201cWomen need women,\u201d she said in a way of explanation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I began to talk of my rape, why I ended up in a better place than all of my other drug induced cohorts.\u00a0 She frowned slightly and leaned forward listening, intently\u2013interrupting only to bring my language up when I felt the power of hopelessness overcome me.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cGenitals,\u201d for \u201ccunt.\u201d \u201cPenetration,\u201d for \u201cfucked,\u201d and so on.\u00a0 I was sweaty and chilled when I finished telling her of my night in lockup.\u00a0 There was no reason for me to tell her of that experience and when I finished hiccuping and sputtering my way through, fighting the urge to sob out my anger and helplessness Julia was gray and thin lipped.\u00a0 I had made a mistake, she would talk of either forgiveness or injustice but she did not, she gave to me what I had just given to her; a life story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy husband came from a long line of Jews\u2013as you call me.\u00a0 Some of his family wore the traditional garb.\u00a0 He was more liberated in his thoughts that my very conservative family and I found his conversation good though some of his personal philosophy wanting.\u00a0 Though he celebrated the holidays and the Sabbath, his diet wasn\u2019t kosher, as his wife I would correct that in him I was sure. Our families arranged our marriage, you see.\u00a0 Even in the United States some practices this.\u00a0 It was many, many years ago.\u00a0 Coming from a very wealthy family my dowry was large, and I was nervous about men because of that fact.\u00a0 The arranged marriage was necessary; but I wanted to feel a part of my ancient heritage and to this day I do not find any fault in my desire.\u00a0 He was brutal.\u00a0 He could only come to a sexual climax by cruelty.\u00a0 My children, I have three who lived, were begot in horrific ways.\u00a0 It was not their fault.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She was silent for a few moments, the two of us horrified as if the earth had gone dark and the rumble of an earthquake had shaken us out of a mundane conversation.\u00a0 \u201cWhat happened?\u00a0 How did you survive?\u201d\u00a0 The burn of my life story still trembled from my fingertips and left me shivering with cold. How would I feel about my life when I was her age?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI had him murdered.\u00a0 I could not stand one more rape.\u00a0 Divorce was an option but he would then have access to my children through visitation rights, I could not risk their minds if their father\u2019s appetites should turn toward them.\u00a0 I had run away with the children but he would find me.\u201d\u00a0 She stared into the corner of the room, I could not read her expression, it seemed shadowed even though we sat in an opened sunlit place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat happened?\u00a0 How are you here?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI got away with it dear.\u00a0 I paid for his demise and no one is the wiser, except now for you.\u201d
Staring at her snow white hair, glistening and glowing within the streaming sunlight I thought\u00a0her bright blue eyes must have been the culmination of her beauty in youth for even as I gazed upon her they blazed with intelligence and something else\u2026. cunning?
\u201cDear girl, I only tell you because you must grow and take responsibility for your life.\u00a0 Let this be our gift to each other\u2013bad happens, we lose and we win but through it all God grants a chance at human connection that make the bad bearable and the good a humbling experience; not all take advantage or cherish endings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We never spoke of again of rape or murder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was coming down off a serious high, and the police brought me into the drunk tank. It was a busy night and my howling while being raped by a female gorilla (yes, women rape other women) didn\u2019t bring anyone to my rescue. Bruised and bloody in the morning and feeling sick the authorities discovered I was underage and with an abject apology tucked me into an upper scale dry-out clinic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3,19],"tags":[11,13,21],"class_list":["post-377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-short-story","category-short-fiction","category-writing","tag-amwriting","tag-flashfic","tag-shortstory"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":683,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377\/revisions\/683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}