Tag: rape

The Woman Inside Me

Posted on by sterlingbennett

The Woman Inside Me

 

I woke up more than once last night to consider what was going on inside me. Three men are walking out along a point of land toward a drop-off. Two of them are leading a young woman between them, their hands above her elbows. She is dressed in a long white T-shirt. There are blood stains on it located just below the curve of her belly. Her hair falls about her face. She stumbles. The footing is unsure, but that’s not the reason she’s stumbling. It’s a garbage dump, and it is night. Depending on your understanding of the world, at some point you realize they are a death squad and that they are going to execute her. She is thinking about her two-year old daughter, who is probably sleeping warm with her grandmother. That woman has scooped the child up close to her. The child sleeps but the grandmother cannot. The little girl has been told it’s just for the night. Her mother feels the blood dripping down the inside of her leg. Everything hurts. She sees the child’s face, her baroque lips and curled eye lashes. The men drop back. She picks her way forward. Barefoot, stiff, unsteady, docile, not thinking clearly because of the prolonged strangulation that was part of the raping. So she would mimic sexual excitement. She reaches the edge of the garbage cliff. She catches them off guard and bolts forward, jumps over the edge, falls, pushes away with her bruised legs to maintain her descent, until at the bottom the collapsing wall of rot and refuse overtakes her and buries her underneath , saggy baby diapers and soiled toilet paper left unflushed because the plumbing in this country cannot devour used toilet paper.

 

She lies still, holding her breath. A few shots land around her but miss her. She hears the cries of rats who then also lie still. The three men with skin as brown as hers and speaking the same language, decide, “Vámanos a la chingada de aquí,” Let’s get the fuck out of here. We’re not going to ruin our shoes going down there.” They fire a few more rounds from their beat up black market M-16s at the spot they think she must be. But the ammunition is expensive, and they stop shooting. “Let the pigs eat her,” they say. They walk back to the pickup, vowing to do it differently next time.

 

“Kneel,” says one of the men. They stand in the light of the pickup’s head lights. But she turns around instead and faces him. The T-shirt is soiled but still shows the round of her breasts, a place particularly soiled where they have grabbed and pinched her. There are blood spots at the place just beneath her belly. She pushes the hair out of her swollen, bruised face and looks at them. With her tongue she wants to touch the loose tooth, but can’t. The extra two men have come to watch, drawn and attracted to this final stage of the raping ceremony, the consecration of the punishment of women by men. But she is already destroyed. The man pulls the shiny Smith & Wesson .45 out of his belt. He holds it up in both hands, brings it down leveled with her forehead, at her soiled, waiting, non-reacting face. He mumbles some words of absolution for himself. “Vaya con Díos!” The shot makes the shooter jump. It knocks the young mother and labor organizer over backward. She lies on her back. The shirt has risen enough to see the dark hair between her legs. The blood on the inside of her legs. “Whore!” one of them hisses.

 

I roll over and throw my leg over the woman I live with. My weight and closeness do not interrupt her sleep. She is warm, and smooth. It is the place I feel most at home, the most protected. I have no energy left to ponder the woman’s last thoughts, her last image. Instead, I have her again run for the edge of the dropoff and leap, crash down through the soggy cardboard and pig shit, down through the rats and Styrofoam steak package bottoms, rotten vegetables—those that have not been found and eaten by the poor and the pigs. But again, the bullet sends her reeling backward, and I turn again, rolling my shoulders under so that I don’t pull the covers away from my love and lift my leg over her again, careful not to disturb her.

 

I try to fall asleep but wake up again, urging her to leap. But she never can. When they have you, there is seldom anything like escape. Only hopelessness and the on-rushing moment of one’s extinction. That is the moment and image I flee from, but it has a life of its own and keeps returning. “Wake up, and see my face, see the moment of my nakedness, my helplessness, my abandonment, see me with my mouth open and the dark stump of my tongue they have cut from me.  See me again as he raises the gun, lowers it, and takes my life. Do not leave me and my tongue for the pigs! Swear you will visit my daughter!”

Gang Mothers Threaten Rape

Posted on by sterlingbennett

The doorbell rang around six pm. D looked through the wooden door flap. She decided it’s okay to unlock. It was, after all, only the mostly absent president of the neighborhood committee, L the mother of the most dangerous gangbanger, and E the aunt of the next most dangerous one.

I decided to step outside, too. It was one day after the bangers mentioned above ripped down two surveillance cameras that had been attached to two other houses—and I was a little angry.

We stood outside in the callejón, just outside our front door. We had never met L before. D had tried to talk to her many times before but always got the brushoff. I introduced myself. She took my hand—almost no grip—but would not look at me. We got down to business quickly. The president, who had given up trying to get D and C to stop being co-leaders and strong women, had also, it appeared, given up being the local cacique, boss, only interested in his own power. He was now a conflict resolution expert.

“I have a proposal that might calm the situation,” he said.

“You want us to take down the cameras,” I suggested, probably with sarcasm.

D probably interrupted him at that point and continued to address L and E. No, sure, she said, she would be glad to take down the (remaining) cameras when there was no trash in the alleys, when the thick, ugly graffiti all around us was painted over, when everyone could pass through the allies without being threatened, menaced or intimidated, when illegal drinking and drug taking no longer dominated the callejón, when that activity no longer drew in all kinds of people from other barrios (attracted to the same behavior), when the revelers no longer pissed in the alley, kept the neighbors awake and fearful, when their sons and nephews behaved with respect for the Commons, the public space, when they behaved with courtesy and respect for the all the rest of us, when they no longer threatened her personally with kidnapping and rape, and, finally, when their mothers and aunts took responsibility for teaching the boys the above-mentioned civic values.

The president tried to continue with me. I cut him off.

“I’m listening to them,” I said, too forcefully. He, after all, was supposed to have been in charge of security, a role which failed to perform in any fashion. And now he was essentially representing the gang and their mothers.

L had a position. “Me ofende que las cameras están espiando a mis hijos….” Her meaning: It’s offensive that you have these cameras aimed at my innocent sons.

D lets her have it again. I let her have it. I am pissed. What in god’s name are you talking about. There would be no cameras if you had control over your sons, your nephew. E glares at me. I glare back her, too long, too pissed. D does it much better. She is clear and respectful. Still you can hear the trace of scorn in her voice.

This is a tricky situation. We are two Ph.D.’s; E and L have very little education. L lives with her husband and three sons in little more than a shack, probably with no more than two rooms, at the most. There is a class difference. They—including the president—invoke the foreigner rule: You are not from here and do not understand our ways. We are permanent residents, in fact. That doesn’t matter. There is a web of confusion, assumption, non-understanding. There is also a generational factor. Gang culture and activity is often handed down through generations, and carries with it its own assumed ethic. Such as: the public space is not public—not when we claim it. L’s husband was in prison for murder; it is said he lived with a woman who was selling herself. That may or may not have been L. He came home day and found her with another man, whom he killed. It is very possible he learned such solutions from his father, and his father before him. It is possible that L’s husband is involved in things, like our Nemesis in the privada. One could say they belong to what you could call a bandit class. Let me explain.

There is a long history of banditry (el bandido) in Mexico. It is an activity you could characterize as social/political (take from the poor, give to the rich) or professional (straight out bank robber), or shades of both.

The concept overlaps with caciquismo (el cacique), the activity of a local political boss). This type of bandit operates inside or outside of the local governmental structure. But there’s nothing like getting your hands on the people’s money, the public coffers.

Then there is caudillismo (el caudillo), the activity of a political-military leader in an authoritarian context. He (or she: Eva Perón in Argentina) is supposed to control banditry’s impact on society, but he will enlist bandits of all types to further his own political power. Mexican governors and presidents, for example, reach accommodations with the leaders of cartels.

There is a fourth category that has no word for it that I know of, and that fact says something about the challenges for women who are the mothers, aunts, wives and girlfriends of the various kinds of bandits. They are not soldaderas like the women that fought in the Mexican Revolution). It is about the women who navigate to survive in circles of banditry, caciquismo and caudillismo. They do this by being the spies, propagandists, lawyers and lobbyists for their bandit males. There used to be a word for her in the U.S. during the Twenties: the moll. Hollywood depicts her more as the plaything of the gangster, but I suspect she was, at times, also his advisor and partner in crime.

The complement to banditry is the feeling of helplessness in the face of arbitrary (usually) male claims of power and violence. Which is to say, the citizenry, even the molls, find themselves trapped in social dilemma—how to find accommodation with the local cacique and his strongmen, even the latter may be living in one’s own family.

L and E and C, I have decided, are molls. They are part of the bandit group. They had come to our front door to 1) find out what we knew about the attack on the police and the destruction of the two cameras, 2) to argue our otherness and lack of understanding in things Mexican, 3) to deny the facts (everything is fine), 4) to plead the innocence of their sons and nephews, and 5) to point out the dangerous provocations coming from us.

“Outsides can come in here, you know, and some of them are men who rape,” said L to D.

“All the more reason for cameras,” said D, without missing a beat. She had been walking past L’s house one day recently, and Y, L’s youngest son, seven or eight years old (who used to borrow children’s books from D and who D found out could not read) had said, “You know, the cameras really aren’t such a good idea. They’re thinking of kidnapping you.”

L and E and C are women who have to go along with the bandit culture and worldview. They are part of it. Thinking any differently from their men could turn out to be very dangerous for them. We do not know to what extent they have already been abused and brutalized. They are the molls of the neighborhood, and their lives cannot be easy.

The Woman inside Me

Posted on by sterlingbennett

I woke up more than once last night to consider who was speaking inside me. Three men had been walking out along a point of land, toward a drop-off. It is rainy and cold. The men wear jackets. Two of them hold a woman between them. She is dressed in a long T-shirt—nothing more. Her hair falls across her face. She stumbles, barefoot, over things that hurt.

It is a garbage dump, at night, perhaps an hour before dawn . Depending on your understanding of the world, at some point you realize they are going to execute her. She is slender and young and at a time in her life when she could, if she wanted to, start a family. She has already suffered. I am wondering how long it will be before a she realizes what they are going to do. Her two escorts release her arms and drop back away from her. She picks her way forward, unsteady, docile. She reaches the edge of the place where trucks, by daylight, puffing diesel, stop backing up and dump the city’s waste.

I want her to jump, dive over the edge, take her chances, roll, fall, plunge this way and that, down, down, head over heels, too far down, behind too much debris, maybe buried by a wall of rot, old beer and diaper shit, and out of sight.

And she lies still, and the three men—with skin brown like hers and speaking the same language—decide, “Fuck it, we’re not going to ruin our clothes going down there.” And so they fire a few bursts with their AK 47s at the spot they figure she is, then walk back to their pickup, vowing to do it differently next time.

“Arrodíllate,” says the one man coming along behind her—almost gently. Kneel. But she turns around instead and faces him. The T-shirt clings to her body, to her private breasts and a her private belly. She pushes the hair out of her face. She is already half destroyed. “Okay,” says the man, “it’s alright”—and stands sideways, as if it’s Saturday morning and he’s at the shooting range. Except that he’s standing six feet away from her and lifts a .45, .38, .32, .22 or 9mm, pointing over her head, then brings it down, starting to pull the trigger just as the Sig Sauer, Smith & Wesson, Beretta, Colt, Glock, Springfield, Remington, Mauser, Browning, Walter, Ruger, or Luger is almost level with the top of her head.

Nothing happens. Perhaps he is reconsidering, reading her blood- and snot-smeared, non-reacting face. She reaches up to wipe her mouth. Her hand trembles too much. She brings it down. Maybe he tells her to jump backward over the edge of the garbage drop-off. Save yourself, girl.

The gun jumps instead, there is a black hole in her forehead like blackberry crushed flat, without juice. She leans backward, a gymnast starting a backward flip. The man lowers the .45, .38, .32, .22, or 9mm. She arches—a summer girl letting herself fall backward off a warm rock into a clear river pool.

She lies on her back, floating on garbage. The shirt no longer covers the dark hair where her legs meet. I know if I walk closer, after the men leave, I will see they have destroyed her twice-over.

I roll over and rest my leg on the woman I live with and love. She sleeps deeply, floating on her back. The weight of my leg does not interrupt her sleep. She is warm, and smooth, and as troubled as the rest of us. If I try to switch positions and move my leg away, she reaches up out of her sleep and holds my knee where it is—above the dark hair where her legs meet.

I try again—having the young woman awaken from her stupor and leap over the edge. She tumbles down through the shredded plastic and soggy cardboard and pig shit, down through the fleeing rats and styrofoam and rotten vegetables, that have not yet been found and eaten. The bullet sends her reeling backward, and I turn, carefully, so that I don’t pull the covers, and lay my leg over my love. The pigs listen. There may be more to eat.

The horror is deep, my love is warm. I almost fall asleep. He still hasn’t reached her. I urge her to save herself, but when they have you, there is seldom any escape. “Wake up,” she mumbles, as if she has rocks in her mouth, weeping. “See the moment of my extinction, see the dark stump of the tongue they have cut from me…and the mouth below—made for love of my choosing—ripped by their anger and triumph. Watch how they raise the gun, bring it down, and take my summers away from me forever.”