Cantonese, however, is not a universal language, and I found myself desperately gesturing to the woman behind the counter at the station's 7-eleven trying to get her to use whatever emergency police-summoning buzzer the place was equipped with. I, or the shouting voices and the little slapping dull thuds of hard impacts against human flesh, eventually did manage to get her to follow me over to the scene. She just stood there, wordlessly watching. A small ring formed of other people watching. It felt like ages before somebody stepped in to break it up.
***
I was at my locker taking out books. The place was swarmed with students and I had to crouch very close to my locker to avoid the tides of people running from one class to another.
"Hey Chu!" the voice called, "congrats on making the musical!" There was a pressure on the back of my head, then the front, that there was nothing.
I woke up in the dark, the room spun and I felt a pressure on the sides of my face. I tried to move my head but I found it was wedged, and moving it pressed the doorway of the half-width locker against my temples; a frightening claustrophobic kind of pain that causes you to flinch back into the locker until your forehead presses against the back wall. When I was in 1st grade at Girl Scouts we used vacuums to draw eggs into glass bottles with mouths too small for them mostly intact, and I immediately thought of that image. I breathed out, counted to three, braced my weight so when I let go with my hands I would fall backward, and pulled my head free.
The world went black again. When I came to the hallway was deserted. My own copy of Our American History lay on the floor next to me: I assume that was what had been used to beat me unconscious. I gathered it up with my other books and walked to my classroom, not 20 feet away. The teacher looked surprised to see me late, and it was obvious from his face he did not know what had happened. The other students avoided my gaze in a manner which said they did.
The teachers were mostly in disbelief that one 12 year old girl would do this to another, nobody would come forward and say it was her and I hadn't seen my attacker at the scene of the crime. Because of this, she got a talking to but nothing else really happened to her. I knew it was her though, and she made sure I knew when no teachers were around.
I packed up the books from my locker that day and began carrying them everywhere with me so I would not switch books between classes, and I utterly refused to interact with my locker during highschool. My junior and senior years I didn't even figure out where it was.
The whole mess was all handled so nonchalantly that it was not until years later when I started telling this story to friends that I realized how abnormal it was.
***
I woke up in the dark, the room spun and I felt a pressure on the sides of my face. I tried to move my head but I found it was wedged, and moving it pressed the doorway of the half-width locker against my temples; a frightening claustrophobic kind of pain that causes you to flinch back into the locker until your forehead presses against the back wall. When I was in 1st grade at Girl Scouts we used vacuums to draw eggs into glass bottles with mouths too small for them mostly intact, and I immediately thought of that image. I breathed out, counted to three, braced my weight so when I let go with my hands I would fall backward, and pulled my head free.
The world went black again. When I came to the hallway was deserted. My own copy of Our American History lay on the floor next to me: I assume that was what had been used to beat me unconscious. I gathered it up with my other books and walked to my classroom, not 20 feet away. The teacher looked surprised to see me late, and it was obvious from his face he did not know what had happened. The other students avoided my gaze in a manner which said they did.
The teachers were mostly in disbelief that one 12 year old girl would do this to another, nobody would come forward and say it was her and I hadn't seen my attacker at the scene of the crime. Because of this, she got a talking to but nothing else really happened to her. I knew it was her though, and she made sure I knew when no teachers were around.
I packed up the books from my locker that day and began carrying them everywhere with me so I would not switch books between classes, and I utterly refused to interact with my locker during highschool. My junior and senior years I didn't even figure out where it was.
The whole mess was all handled so nonchalantly that it was not until years later when I started telling this story to friends that I realized how abnormal it was.
***
There aren't words through the walls of the cheap hotel in Phoenix Arizona that US Airways put me up in when my flight was delayed, but I could hear a woman's screams, a man's shouting and crashes of things being thrown. They were big things too, like lamps and possibly bedside tables. I forced a small smile, telling myself that everybody has their own way of getting their kicks, and tried not to concentrate on it. The woman's screams sounded desperate and terrified, my mind couldn't help but focus on the next room, and slowly I began catching a few of the woman's word's.
"Leave! Stop!"
"Say what, bitch?"
I started fumbling with my cell phone and called the front lobby. "Hey," I asked, "I think there is a disturbance on the 6th floor, can you guys look into it?"
The man on the other end sounded a little distressed, "Yeah, we're having a bit of an issue down here in the lobby as well." He hung up.
"STOP IT," the voice came through the wall, "PLEASE STOP IT!"
The screams continued for what seemed like an eternity. I waited for security or the police or somebody to come, but nobody came. At one point somebody came upstairs and calmed the lady down, but her voice raised shortly after to a new level of terror and the headboard of the bed beats rhythmically against the shared wall. I would like to tell you that I sat there and called the police and the front desk over and over until somebody showed up and made it stop, but instead I curled up under the blankets in horror and told myself it wasn't happening, that none of it was real, that I couldn't possibly be in a place like this, that the woman was just into kinky sex. I might have actually fallen asleep while he was still raping her, and much to my shame I did not sleep very badly either.
I woke the next morning and laughed to myself. Surely it had all been a dream. I enjoyed a nice warm shower and was packing my bags when I found the six identical perfectly round dime-sized holes in my wall that somebody had hastily patched. That was when I realized it had all been real. How could I have convinced myself it was not real when faced with that kind of evidence?
"Leave! Stop!"
"Say what, bitch?"
I started fumbling with my cell phone and called the front lobby. "Hey," I asked, "I think there is a disturbance on the 6th floor, can you guys look into it?"
The man on the other end sounded a little distressed, "Yeah, we're having a bit of an issue down here in the lobby as well." He hung up.
"STOP IT," the voice came through the wall, "PLEASE STOP IT!"
The screams continued for what seemed like an eternity. I waited for security or the police or somebody to come, but nobody came. At one point somebody came upstairs and calmed the lady down, but her voice raised shortly after to a new level of terror and the headboard of the bed beats rhythmically against the shared wall. I would like to tell you that I sat there and called the police and the front desk over and over until somebody showed up and made it stop, but instead I curled up under the blankets in horror and told myself it wasn't happening, that none of it was real, that I couldn't possibly be in a place like this, that the woman was just into kinky sex. I might have actually fallen asleep while he was still raping her, and much to my shame I did not sleep very badly either.
I woke the next morning and laughed to myself. Surely it had all been a dream. I enjoyed a nice warm shower and was packing my bags when I found the six identical perfectly round dime-sized holes in my wall that somebody had hastily patched. That was when I realized it had all been real. How could I have convinced myself it was not real when faced with that kind of evidence?
***
I do not remember the priest's name, but I do remember he had a horrible birth mark which turned half his face a permanent sunburn color.
"Have you learned it yet?" he asked me.
"Mostly... yes..."
"What's mostly?" He smiled, "Let's hear it."
"I confess to you almighty God, and to you my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned through my own fault... and...um..."
"In my thoughts and in my actions," he prompted.
"In my thoughts and in my actions," I repeated.
"For all I have done."
"For all I have done."
"And all I have failed to do..."
"Have you learned it yet?" he asked me.
"Mostly... yes..."
"What's mostly?" He smiled, "Let's hear it."
"I confess to you almighty God, and to you my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned through my own fault... and...um..."
"In my thoughts and in my actions," he prompted.
"In my thoughts and in my actions," I repeated.
"For all I have done."
"For all I have done."
"And all I have failed to do..."
***
May God help us all, for we surely do not have it in us yet to help each other.
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