Sol Stein - Other people

All those wasted hours Koch the Coward sat behind my head listening, when he has to do something to help, he waddles out of it like a fat chicken, refusing me!

Oh I know what mother would have said, you need a best girl friend to turn to, as if I were a ten-year-old.

My best girl friend was a boy, the one sweet man who, even if he couldn't possibly understand what rape was like, would be a presence, a friend. I dialed Bill's number, still seeing Koch's fat face in my mind, wanting to pummel it with my fists. When Bill answered, my voice was quivering.

"What's the matter?" Bill said.

I told Bill what had happened. No details, just a man forced me.

"Oh nooo," he said. He sounded as if I had just told him his mother and father had died in a car crash.

"Are you all right?"

What does that mean?

"Are you hurt?"

How can I answer that?

"Please, Francine, say something!"

I became aware of my silence. I couldn't connect my rage and my voice.

"Are you there?!"

"I'm here," I managed to say, my voice a dry rasp defying me to control it.

"I'll be right over," he said.

I gentled the receiver back onto the cradle, not letting it go, then felt it shivering, ringing in my hand, and I picked it up again to hear Bill saying, "It'll take me nearly an hour driving fast."

"Don't drive fast. You'll get a ticket." There's no point getting killed coming to me.

When Bill walked in, he looked at me as if to see how I was different.

Don't look at me, I am a violated person.

"Are you hurt?"

He's not looking at me.

"Your cheek is very red."

I put my hand up to where Koslak's hand had slapped me hard. It hurt to the touch.

I turned my wrists up so Bill could see where the rope had burned in.

He was wondering about the rest of me. "I hurt inside," I said.

He was looking at me as if to define "inside."

"In my head," I said, "and everywhere else. Please drive me to the hospital."

When we arrived there. Bill double-parked — I was sure he'd get a ticket, I said — and accompanied me inside the double doors marked "Emergency." We went up to the nurse's desk.

Before I could speak, the nurse said, "Which one of you is the patient?"

My mouth felt too dry to talk. I pointed to myself. I wondered if my breath was bad.

"Are you her husband?" the nurse asked Bill.

He shook his head.

"Then step back behind the white line."

Bill blushed, moved back fifteen feet to the white line he had not noticed. I could feel him watching me.

"Name?"

"Francine Widmer."

"Spell it. Do you feel faint?"

"No." I spelled my name, gave my address, said I had Blue Cross coverage, signed the form the nurse pushed at me.

"What's the complaint?"

"I have an internal problem."

Bill, watching my lips, heard.

"What kind of internal problem?"

There were now two people in line behind Bill, impatient to get to the nurse.

"I don't know," I said.

"We can't admit you without a doctor's authorization and without a specific complaint."

"You mean I have to go away."

"Unless there's something specifically wrong."

"I'll go," I said, but in a second. Bill had crossed the line and was saying to the nurse, "She's not telling the truth. She was raped."

The nurse looked at Bill and then at me.

Into the silence Bill said inanely, "It wasn't me."

"Step back behind the white line," said the nurse.

"Why didn't you say so?" asked the nurse.

"I don't know," I said.

"Alleged rape," the nurse said slowly, out loud, as she wrote the words on the form.

"Go to the second floor east waiting room. Give this to the nurse. Next."

I took Bill's arm. "Thank you," I said.

"He has to wait down here," the nurse yelled at us.

Upstairs, the nurse on duty had a blank expression when she took the slip.

"When did this happen?"

"This evening."

"Have a seat over there. I'm going off duty in a minute. Another nurse will come out for you."

The wait seemed endless. Then I was ushered into a cubicle, told to remove my clothes from the waist down, to get on the examination table, put my feet in the stirrups. I did as I was instructed.

The doctor was a resident. My age. I felt hideous in that awkward position. He glanced at my cunt without a flicker. Then at my face. Then at the paper on his clipboard.

"What happened?" he said. He sounded as if he was in a hurry.

I showed him my wrists. The pink striations were less now than when I had shown them to Bill.

"Your hands were tied?"

"Behind my back."

I showed my left cheek. "From a slap," I said. "A hard slap."

The doctor handed his clipboard to the nurse.

"We'll do an internal," he said.

"I took a bath," I said.

"You what?"

"I felt awful. I had to take a bath. I douched several times."

"Jesus!" the doctor said. "We couldn't get a specimen that'll do the police any good."

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Combing your pubic hairs to see if we find any of his."

He came away with three or four.

"These look like yours."

"If you pulled them out, they're mine."

"I didn't mean to pull any. The loose ones are probably yours, too." He put them on a piece of waxy-looking paper, folded the paper over, and gave it to the nurse. "I'm sorry," he said, "but I'm going to pull one on purpose now, for comparison."

When he had plucked the hair and put it into a second piece of waxy paper, he said, "What about inside? Are you hurt?"

"It aches a bit, too."

"I'll take a look."

It was embarrassing.

"No evidence of trauma," he told the nurse, who wrote it down. To me he said, "Did you resist?"

"I didn't want him to do it."

"Did you resist, though?"

"I tried to get away but he grabbed me at the door. I tried to talk him out of it. And other things."

"What other things?"

I looked at the nurse, ready to write.

"Nothing," I said, pulling my feet from the stirrups and getting off the table.

"What are you doing?" asked the doctor.

"Dressing."

"Here," he said, giving me a card on which he penned something. "This is your case number. The pohce will need it."

In the car with Bill I said, "The doctor was just about your age. He was awful."

"I'm sorry," said Bill, putting his arm around me.

His arm felt mechanical, as if it didn't belong to him, just an arm he put there because he was supposed to.

"I don't think he found what he was looking for."

"What was he looking for?"

"Semen and pubic hair," I said. "Doesn't it disgust you?"

"What do you mean?" said Bill, taking his arm away.

"Doesn't it change your attitude?"

"About what?"

"About me?"

Bill was shrugging his shoulders, groping for words.

"It does, doesn't it?"

"It's like anything. You have to kind of absorb it, right?"

" I didn't do anything. It was done to me."

"I know."

"It wasn't as if I went to bed with someone else, don't you understand?"

Bill, his hands folded helplessly in his lap, seemed to find conversation impossible. He looked like I feel when stomach acids back up into my throat. Finally, he said, "Where do you want to go?"

"The police station on Wicker Avenue."

When we arrived. Bill accompanied me inside. I told the desk sergeant I wanted to see a police matron.

"What for?"

"I want to report a crime."

"What kind of crime?" asked the desk sergeant.

"Rape." Does one ever get used to the word when it's about yourself?

"One flight up, turn left at the head of the stairs, door marked 'Detectives.' " A ticket taker saying "next."