The Blue Notebook

by MD James Levine

  As he nudges my thighs apart I see the metal object he just cleaned in the bathroom reflect the sunlight. He is advancing it toward me and now pushing it between my legs into Bunny Rabbit’s mouth. It is cold and my legs shudder but his arm’s weight is behind it and it is pushed inside me. He is muttering, “Good girl, good girl.” I stare down at his hand and my natural reaction is to tighten my legs on him, but this hurts. He changes his mantra to “Relax, darling, relax, darling.” As I start to let my legs open and as they stop fighting against him, he presses the metal object deeper inside; as I feel his force pushing into me, it suddenly hurts. I contract my back sharply and let out a yelp. His muffled apology is followed by a repetition of the mantra, “Relax, darling, relax …” but then I feel a deep pain stretching across my tummy. I try to arch my back up, but with the other hand he pushes my tummy down. I wriggle, trying to somehow push it out. He stops, turns to look at me, and says, “Now you bloody stay still or this will really hurt you! You understand.” I stop moving and nod my head. One thing is for sure, I will not cry for him. He shines a torch at the metal device pinioned between my legs and enveloped by my body. He lays his head onto the bed to get a good look (I consider kicking him but this metal thing prevents me) and then in a second he pulls it out. He straightens up on the bed, and the smile returns to his face. Sweat is pouring off his forehead. “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” he says. I say, “No, Doctor.” “Good,” he says, “just one more thing to do.” Before I consider what this might be, he pushes two fingers in Rabbit’s mouth. I feel them moving around and twisting and I look up at him staring down at me. A minute later he removes his hand and holds out his wet fingers as if he is waiting for washing to be hung from them. “Done,” he says. He gets up, walks to the bathroom, washes his hands, and starts to hum again.

  I have pulled the robe around myself and cower back as he returns to sit next to me on the bed. He senses my fear of him and smiles at me. His jowls wobble. He reaches for my ankle and speaks as he strokes it, “Look here, little thing, I’m done and you’ll be pleased to hear that everything looks really very good—shipshape.” He continues, “A couple more questions and then I must write my report and leave so that you can have the loveliest holiday.” He gets out his pad and pen, looks at me, and asks, “Now, how many men are you with … say, in the last week … ten maybe?” I look at him. Ten in a week—I would be beaten through to the flesh if I only baked ten times per week. “No, Doctor.” “More?” he asks. I nod. Taken aback, he asks, “How much more?” I answer, feeling the shame I am made to feel, “Ten in one day … sometimes,” I answer. Rubbing my ankle, which at the best of times I would find highly annoying, he continues, “Little princess, you are now in this lovely hotel, with so many lovely things, a little cuddle for Dr. Prathi would not do any harm and I would give you an excellent report.” I look at him but do not speak. I am the mouse trapped in the snake’s gaze.

  I say nothing, for there is nothing to say. He grips my right calf firmly in one hand and with his other hand pushes the robe up my legs. He half falls, half climbs, and half rolls on top of me. His weight alone divides my legs under him. His eyes are yellow but he is fat and slow and by heaven he stinks. I try to slide under him toward the floor but his weight traps me. He grabs my left wrist and drives it above my head and pins it there. His grip is so tight that feeling starts to ebb from my hand. “Listen,” he snarls at me, “you think I cannot hear your bloody TB lungs … you want to get kicked straight back to the street? … One word from me and you will be back there in a minute. Now, little girl, I just want a little …”

  No! I know I am the vessel of all men but he will not have me by his will. I am wriggling and pushing against him with no effect. I turn my head and sink my teeth into the forearm holding my wrist. I tighten my sharp teeth and bite down as hard as I can. My! How the swine hollers. He throws himself backward but he is still sitting on me. Blood is trickling down his arm. His face transforms into crimson and his nostrils flare wide. “You little bitch whore,” he cries. I smile at him, and spa! I spit in his face. By reflex, he raises his bloody forearm high and swipes my face with his open right hand. The sting is agony, but my head will not fall off and I feel a pulsing in my cheek—another bruise. He wipes my spit from his face with the sleeve of his shirt. “Oh, how you will regret that.” But as he wipes his face, his weight has shifted and I push against his knees and I have slipped free. I jump off the bed and race to the bathroom. I slam the door shut. My hands are trembling uncontrollably. I am trying to lock the door, but no! The key has gone. I look frantically on the sink. It is not there. Despite the futility, I throw myself against the door with all my weight. Bam!—the door flies open and I am driven by its force onto the floor. I am stunned as my head bangs on the stone, but I am conscious. I look over and he is standing in the bathroom entrance, a sweaty mass of flesh spewing torrential anger.

  He stomps over to me, his belly trembling with each step, grabs my hair, and lifts me to my feet, drags me to the sink, and pushes my head down into the basin, which is still full of water from when he washed his hands. I breathe out and feel the random, haywire bubbles on my face. I can taste soap. He has me fixed. I try to thrash my head but he has a handful of hair and pushes my face down harder. I draw the disgusting water into my mouth as if I want to breathe it in, but know that I cannot. I relinquish my body, for that is all that is left. All tone washes from my muscle and I start to see gray “Ooosh.” He pulls my head out. I gasp for air. I pant. He is pulling the robe off me—off one arm, off the other. I am naked. He laughs and jams my head back into the sink. This time, though, the sink is far emptier than before and I can suck a jet of air through the corner of my mouth … if I turn my head just a little bit. He kicks my legs away and pushes my head harder into the sink so that my face is now pressing right down on the plug hole. My legs are floating in the air; I do not even think to kick out. I feel his hand between my legs. He jams his fingers into me and drives them back and forth fast … jam, jam, jam, jam, jam. I am pinned, held, bent over the sink, as he pushes his bhunnas into where the metal instrument had been minutes before. His flesh variant is small and barely penetrates compared to the metal and in seconds I feel his poison on my thigh; I guess he did not use the rubber-johnny in his pocket. More enduring, however, is the mixed taste of blood and soap in my mouth.

  He raises my head from the sink by my hair and throws me to the stone floor like a vicious roll of the gambler’s dice. “That wasn’t so bad now, was it?” he says, and roars out laughing. I hear his zipper and he is waddling from the bathroom. I lie on the floor. There is rummaging around in the main room. I lie still, listening. He is leaving. A few minutes later, I hear the key in the door and then it slams shut and he has gone.

  There is a specific silence that follows the exit of a person; the air is more silent after a person has left than if he had not been there. There is a tangible silence now. I listen to it while lying on the bathroom floor and my mind starts to disconnect as random thoughts and colors enter it. I think only a few minutes pass before the door is opening again and Hita’s voice awakens me. “I am back, Batuk. Where are you?” I say nothing and lie still. I hear her call, “Batuk … Batuk.” Hita walks into the bathroom with a large bundle wrapped in brown paper. She looks down at me, horror-struck, but does not drop the package. “What happened to you?” she shrieks. “The doctor,” I say. Hita’s brow furrows in disbelief. “Dr. Prathi did this to you?” My head nods. “Don’t be so stupid; you obviously fell.” She pulls me up and helps me stand and then she sees me and shrieks, “He bruised you, he bruised you. You are bleeding. That bastard!” She is white with anger and half carries me to the bed. The lime green bedcover is now smeared in blood. She sits next to me, dialing on the telephone; her finger pounds out the number. Hita is barely coherent. “It’s Dr. Prathi … yes, that doctor … he attacked the girl … he bruised her … raped her … her mouth is bleeding … yes, I think that is all right … she will be
fine … she is conscious … her arms, her back … I will … bye.” I can hear a man’s voice crackling through the telephone but I cannot hear what he says. Hita replaces the handset and sighs.

  Hita turns to me. “Come, let’s clean you up! You stupid girl, you didn’t need to fight him … he is an old idiot! Look at you … look at you.” She helps me to the bathroom as I am still unsteady walking by myself. She runs warm water in the sink (the one I was almost drowned in), tests it with her hand, and leaves it running. She turns on the faucets for the bath, and we examine me in the mirror. As I look at myself in the mirror, I reach out to touch me. I feel glass but I know that I am not made from glass. If I were, I would be broken.

  My face looks like a garden; a purple flower here and a shrub there. Plant more or till the soil, it will always be a garden.

  There is a bruise on my left cheek. Although there is dried blood on my face, there are no obvious cuts on the skin; the blood is either from cuts inside my mouth or his arm. She gently wipes my face with a cloth soaked in the warm water. By the time she is done, apart from the discoloration under my left eye, I look perfect, though my right shoulder is badly bruised and there are bruises from his fingers on my wrist. My back and hip hurt from the fall. She makes me sit on the closed toilet seat, parts my legs, kneels in front of me, and peers between them. She shows a hint of a smile and tells me to get into the bath, even though it is not full yet.

  Hita’s makeup has rendered the bruise on the left side of my face almost aesthetic, as it now matches a pigmented discoloration on the other side of my face. I love staring at myself in the mirror, and as Hita reassembles me, I do so for well over an hour. I peer into my eyes to try to see myself; stare hard into the black holes but inside of them there is nothing. “Where am I?” I think. I try to gaze into myself from all different angles and catch reflections of one aspect of me off another aspect. How do I define what exactly I am, as opposed to what reflection I appear to be? The more simple way to argue, though, is that I am as I appear to be now. In this way of thinking, everything is exactly as it appears to be and nothing else. Feelings, the emotions that course through me, thoughts, and the nine senses are irrelevant as I am simply what I appear to be at this moment: a bruised fifteen-year-old prostitute being made up by a woman in a luxurious bathroom.

  In this fashion we can similarly look at how others perceive us. I am a straightforward entity because everyone sees me the same way. I make sweet-cake and I am nothing else. I eat, breathe, and move to fulfill that role alone. Others have more complex functions. For example, consider the peddler who walks on his route along the Common Street every day. He carries a basket around his neck that contains batteries, shoes, laces, cigarettes, and other bits and bobs. He tilts his large straw hat to shadow his face so that all you see is a tuft of white hair at the back of his head. The interactions he has with his customers are wholly anonymous; they point, he utters a price, they pay, and he gives them change. This is his appearance to his customers: a straw hat, white hair, and a voice. Appearance one: the peddler. He buys his products from a dealer somewhere, and then he is a customer. Appearance two: the customer. At home, he may be, although I doubt it, a passionate man or even a family man. Appearance three: the father. You see, even the old peddler is a multiheaded animal; with so many different appearances, who is he? Is he the vendor of cigarettes on the Common Street, a customer of others, a passionate lover, or a loving father? When does one role stop and another begin, or do all these roles coexist in a single person? Of course you argue that he is one person supporting multiple swirling roles. However, do you not see that there is an alternate explanation? A man has only one appearance, namely the one you see at the moment of time that you see it; when he sells cigarettes in his straw hat, his sole role on earth is to be a vendor of cigarettes (he is not a father or husband at that moment but only a vendor of cigarettes). Our external reality is exactly what we are at that moment in time; history and the future are irrelevant.

  This is the philosophy of the prostitute. I am who I am only at this moment in time; my past does not hang from my shoulders and my future is indefinable and so cannot be a concern. I am nothing else and there is nothing else. As I look at myself in the mirror, it dawns on me again that the tree was correct—all is created for me alone. I close my eyes tight and hear the tree laughing.

  Up to now, the pace of my new existence in the Tiger Suite has had an unmetered quality; time has simply been prancing by from event to event. Things were occurring but not in a paced fashion, and Hippopotamus was not keeping record. This was different for me, as hitherto my life was by the clock. When I first started in my nest several years ago, I would become anxious if the clock ticked too many times without my producing sweet-cake. Over time, on the Common Street, I developed an inner rhythm that I tuned my body to, and life followed this beat. In the Tiger Suite, things are different; the clock has stopped. I inwardly watch the second hand and know that soon it will tick, but do not know when. Many times I have prayed for time to stop, but beware of such dreams because should it do so, events will then move along another plane. Without the tick of the clock we are confused and get lost. In order to wait for a bus that never comes, I must sink my roots into the earth to sustain me, but still enter the upper air to see.

  Time was inching forward in the Tiger Suite like the stooped old man creeping up the Common Street with his walking stick. I lay on the bed staring out of the window, knowing that the next event would follow the last, though when I did not know. As the sky darkened and the sun set behind the building, I got out of bed and walked over to the window. The electric lights on the promenade were coming on and the long lines of light illuminated the streams of tourists, the wealthy, and the beggars. I am not sure how long I watched, but it was quite a long time.

  Hita had been in the main room all this time and came into the bedroom. She asked me how I felt (“Fine, thank you, miss”) and instructed me to put on my new clothes, which she unwrapped from the brown paper parcel. These were clothes I had only seen on advertising billboards and in the old magazines that Mamaki would occasionally bring us. Hita zipped me into a long red dress that dipped into the breast line and fell away at the back. The trim was gold; it defined where the dress stopped and my skin began. I did not wear an undershirt or brassiere. The fabric of the dress was astonishingly soft. I ran my hand up and down my body loving the feel of it under my hand and the tightness of it against my skin. My breasts created gentle rises in the fabric. The tail of the dress was split, so that my left leg became uncovered if my leg moved. The shoes were made from black leather, shaped like a fish’s body and heeled so high that I could barely walk; in them I became a handbreadth taller. To top it all off, Hita hung white pearls around my neck. I was bouncing with excitement and at the same time toppling over as I attempted to accommodate her. “No panties, no lines,” Hita said. The makeup, besides hiding the doctor’s bruise, made my face look older; I bet Puneet would not have recognized me. Tiger was at a loss for words.

  Night fell and the stars sparkled outside my window. Hita ordered dahl and bread for me. It was brought to me by a food man who was different from the one who had brought me the paper earlier. I was hungry. Hita wrapped a towel around me before I ate so that my dress would not get stained, and touched up my makeup afterward. She was pleased with the product of her efforts—as was I. I sensed that the reason for the move from my nest to the Tiger Suite was approaching. Hita paced while we waited in the main room, and I chatted with Tiger.

  The first indication that the pace of this adventure was about to change was a commotion outside the main door. Then, almost as if by a volcanic eruption, the paired doors of the suite were thrown open. Three men marched into the room, led by the largest. Second in line was the man in the light blue suit (still in the same suit—or did he have many suits exactly the same?). Third in line was the youngest, shortest, and trimmest of the bunch.

  It was obvious that the man who led the entranc
e parade was in charge. He was beaming. Bubba was a one-man force of nature. He stood a head shorter than the man in the blue suit and a foot wider. He wore a gray Western suit; the material was soft and flowed and had delicate vertical white lines sewn into it. His tie was gold and his shirt was ultrawhite. On his left wrist he wore a bejeweled watch plus at least four gold bracelets. On his right hand was a gigantic gold ring with diamonds embedded in it. His right wrist bore a thick gold charm bracelet with what appeared to be teeth hanging from it, along with a host of gold shapes and trinkets. The enormity of his jewelry contrasted (pleasingly) with the delicacy of the white lines in his suit.

  His musical movement reminded me of the traditional dancing my cousin used to do for us. She would wear bells on her wrists and ankles so that each limb’s twitch carried its own tune and each dance’s whirl made its own song. When Bubba moved there was music; he was a song of dangling, clanking, and puffing to the beat of the whooshing of thigh against thigh. I loved him from the second I saw him. He was one of those people who could bolt a smile onto your face even if you felt glum. “Bubba,” he said to me, his hand outstretched. I smiled and tried to skip over to shake his hand, but my left ankle buckled over the shoe and I almost fell. He burst out laughing. Once I reached him, he dropped his outstretched hand and pulled me to him in a tight hug. He wore rich cologne and kissed my cheek. He let me go and turned to the blue suit and said, “She’s perfect.” Raising his voice even louder he called out, “Iftikhar, Iftikhar, where are you? Look at her. She’s here.” Out of the shadow of Bubba, Iftikhar’s head popped out. If, at that moment, someone had told me that Iftikhar was Bubba’s son (albeit illegitimate), I would have jumped on the table and pretended to be a donkey.