You do not share these fears with anyone. There is a vague unwritten rule that forbids the discussion of fear and anxiety. You share moments with other cops, but they are moments centered on fighting: swinging nightsticks, high-speed chases, drawn guns. Your common language is one of profanity, technical information, and terse commands. You trust them with your life but not your frailties. Cops aren’t supposed to be frail.
You can spend hours with these men and women discussing the peculiarities of other people, but you don’t touch upon your own. You have slowly lost your civilian friends. They see only your badge and gun; you are sure they cannot comprehend the brutality of your world. So you draw closer into the circle where other people’s pain and secrets are an everyday occurrence to be dealt with. Your own are tucked away.
Silence presses in. You push away from the gun, from the table, stand up slowly, and brace yourself at the kitchen sink, bury your head in a wet dish towel. Over and over you lift cold water to your face, as though the chill will carry up to the brain and freeze forever the events of last night, the last month. You are stopped by your image in the small silver mirror hanging near the door, the mirror your husband bought on your honeymoon in Mexico. Everyone says you favor your mother: the widow’s peak, the sharp chin, the dimple in your right cheek. But it is your father’s eyes that stare back at you, dark and bloodshot, full of an angry, familiar pain.
Gratitude washes over you. Your daughter has her father’s eyes.
You spend ten hours a day, four days a week, working in a world of mostly men. You are their buddy, their partner, their backup. You are your father’s daughter.
One day you fall in love. With a cop. With his steady intelligence, his fierce devotion to right and wrong, the long second before he laughs, the taste of his upper lip. His disdain for violence first intrigues, then amuses you. He is a cop, but not a cop. He carries a gun, but his work is in the labs, part of the crime scene division, analyzing violence already committed. His is a safe job, but you would never tell him this.
You aren’t sure why he falls in love with you. He smiles when you swagger your female appropriation of macho-male copness. He calls you pet names. And he holds you tight to his chest in the quiet of the bedroom.
As time passes, you laugh at his frown or pretend not to notice his disappointment when you drink too much or talk of bashing heads. He walks out of the room when you snap in anger or scream in frustration. He puts a sign on the kitchen door: LEAVE THY WORK BEHIND. You laugh and attribute it to his sensitivity, something your father would agree with if he were alive.
Your father was the job and nothing more, your husband says.
He was a good cop, you say.
But he wasn’t a good man. He wasn’t a good husband or father.
But he was a good cop, a damn good cop.
He looks at you, your husband. And that’s enough for you?
There is now a single bullet in the chamber, and you are spinning the cylinder round and round with your thumb, popping it back and forth. You palm it closed and open your eyes, wincing when your knuckles hit the edge of the table as you reach for another drink. They are raw from being punched through Sheetrock last night, after he walked out.
Turn your head and bury it in your shoulder—inhale. You are wearing one of his old T-shirts smelling of sweat, gun oil, and baby powder, a hint of the aftershave he wears. The smell cocoons you in his gentleness. He is a gentle man, your husband the cop. Everyone says so.
Put the gun up flat against your cheek. Let the tip of the barrel rest against your nose. Blowing off a piece of your face would not begin to atone for last night. So the question becomes, What would? You think of your father and the way he steadied the rifle on your shoulder, the stock tucked tight against your cheek as you took aim at a target.
With one hand you reach out for the bottle of rum and pour more in the glass. The gun never wavers in your grip, flush against the soft contours of your face.
Last night he said you were dangerous. As he threw you back against the wall, he said you were out of control. Screaming in your face, he told you that you were a lousy mother and a lousy wife and a lousy cop. As he yelled, you watched your child, yours and his, become even more rigid and wild-eyed. Drawing within herself, becoming invisible.
Then he went rigid and quiet too, barely quivering in his anger. My God, he whispered, the words reverberating long after he left, What have you done to us? A muscle fluttered along his jaw as he stared at you. And you stared at your daughter. Then he turned and scooped up your child, yours and his, and walked out. And you don’t know where they are. And you don’t know if they’ll be back.
But she had been chattering so. On and on, weaving in and out between your feet. Questioning this, wanting that, whining, bumping up against you, twirling that lion round and round with arms outstretched. And you felt like a real lion, pacing in this kitchen, drinking too much, smoking too much. She chattered on and on and pulled and tugged at you, holding on to your legs, weaving in and out, around and about you. Every step you took, there she was, underfoot, wanting something. She wanted to know how come you hadn’t gone to work like Daddy and was it true you’d been a bad girl and how come she had to have peas for supper, she’d had those last night, and she wanted Daddy to feed her and Momma she wanted more juice now and you whirled, slapping her—very hard and very fast.
Not as hard and as fast as you hit the prisoner last week, the thirty-day-suspension blow. Too many recent incidents of unwarranted aggression in your folder, they said, too many complaints. You need to learn to restrain yourself. You have a problem with drinking, Officer. You have a problem controlling your temper. Never mind that the prisoner you backhanded had just set his four-year-old son down on a lit stove burner. You should control your emotions, Officer. You aren’t the judge and jury on the streets, sweetheart. Maybe you should seek some help, they all said.
To hell, you had yelled back, to hell with all of you. I’ll take the thirty days.
You slide the gun along your cheek and place it against your lips. The danger is that your aim will be off just enough so that you won’t die instantly but do considerable damage and bleed to death. Or live. It all depends on the angle of the gun when you put it in your mouth.
You feel your heart thudding, taste the staleness, the dryness in your throat. You place the gun in your mouth and tilt it up slightly so the bullet will slice through the brain instead of following the curve of your skull. The gun tastes bitter and oily; it is heavy against your teeth. Close your lips around the cold metal; it is unbearably, soothingly foreign. A thick, wet silence wraps around you, drifts into your ears, fills your skull.
You tighten your right thumb on the trigger, hold the gun with both hands, your left thumb hovering above the hammer. A distant voice tells you steady pressure on the trigger will ensure a perfect shot with little recoil. Continual, steady pressure, the familiar voice says, don’t anticipate the sound of the gun going off. And you see your father again in that moment before the trigger gives, a quick montage: his hand raised, descending; his head framed in the sights of your gun; his flesh twitching just below his eye; his body twisted and bleeding, dying alone on the barren strip of roadway, fingers clawing the cement. Turkey buzzards circle overhead in sync with the revolving lights of his unit. Just like her old man, you hear the whispers, echoing voices across the stretch of years as the trigger releases, the hammer flies forward.
The pain of the hammer hitting the thumb of your left hand is as sharp and sweet and real as the gentle folding inward of yourself, this giving in to life.
The gun grows heavy in your hand. Your lips and cheeks feel bruised. Ease your thumb out from under the hammer. Slowly pull the gun back out of your mouth. Open your eyes and look at the gun. Carefully push it away. Listen to the hum of the refrigerator, the uneven drip of the kitchen sink. Briefly, for an instant, another vision: your mother leaning toward you, offering you your daughter’s stuffed lion in her outstretched hands.
> CATHY
It is in our darkness that we find our truth.
—Kenneth Robinson
SOMETHING ABOUT A SCAR
The first time I saw Marjorie LaSalle she was kneeling on her bed naked, hands gripping the sheets to help support her weight, a nine-inch steak knife embedded deep just above the spot where the flesh parts to rise and become breast; the place where a child or lover would rest his head in grief, in need, in utter devotion; that place the tips of fingers caress and feel both implacable bone and sweet, full softness—a place of promise, of absolution, the center of ourselves.
Her house was impossibly full of men, overly loud voices, and too much artificial light for 2:52 in the morning. All those police officers—five out in the yard, three in the living room, two talking in the hallway, one taking pictures of the nightstand, another speaking into a portable radio by the walk-in closet—and not one touched her or sat by her or held a sheet to cover her. Only two paramedics hovered nearby, talking briskly and efficiently as they set up an IV and discussed how best to move her to the gurney. They eased her onto her back as I finally stepped into her bedroom, handling her body, it seemed to me, as though it were separate from her soul.
There wasn’t much blood, and this small detail bothers me even today: a smear on the portable phone, the sheets wet with red in places, but not drenched. When the phone rang, wrenching me out of sleep, and the flat male voice said, “We got a VS request on a stabbing and sexual assault in Southdowns,” I’d expected to walk into a small pond of blood. Half awake, I’d stumbled over my still slumbering dog and put on old stone-washed jeans and a black polo shirt with my name, CATHY, and VICTIM SERVICES embroidered on the front, clothing that could handle cold-water soaking and heavy detergent.
On the short drive into Southdowns, I rehearsed the Victim Services’ list of rules in my head: do not touch anything, do not interfere with the police officers, do not make judgments or offer opinions, use a soothing voice, do not volunteer information about yourself, do not touch the victim without asking the victim first, do not ask what happened; focus on active listening, compassionate support, and contacting the friends and relatives the victim wants notified. This was my first solo call out, and I still believed in the rules.
As soon as I turned off Perkins Road, I knew I was close to the scene: taillights, spotlights, and flashing red and blue lights punctured what should have been dark, calm, sleepy: a simple middle-class neighborhood in the heart of Baton Rouge where during daylight children rode bikes, dogs trotted aimlessly in neighbors’ yards, couples bickered lightly on porches, and lawn mowers puttered every weekend. Generally a safe place, or as safe as any place can be.
But now police cars lined the block, along with a fire truck and ambulance. Some neighbors stood on the edge of their driveways or in doorways, peering toward all the activity, dressed in hastily thrown-on clothes and bathrobes. I felt a momentary thrill that unlike them, I would walk into the crime scene; unlike them, I would have access to the intimate details.
The intimate details were this: Marjorie LaSalle awoke to a thud on her chest—the sound, she would say later, was what woke her—then pressure, a sharp pressure that made her think the cat had landed on her chest, claws digging deep. “Huh?” was all she managed before she saw him, a thin, shadowy outline at the side of her bed. And even then she thought she was having a waking dream, until she smelled him, heard him, felt his hands on her legs, and she sat up. He stepped back, to the doorway, turned on a flashlight held high, shone it in her face. She squinted, swallowed a scream, scrambled backward, her spine crammed against the headboard.
“Don’t hurt me; please don’t hurt me,” she whispered.
The light changed directions, traveled down the hallway, and he was gone.
She got slowly to her knees, panting, realizing suddenly holy mary mother of god that she had a knife in her—so deep, the doctors would tell us later, that the blade tip was embedded in her spine, that it took such force to remove it, even after carefully cutting away all the tissue, muscle, tendons around each serrated edge of the knife, that her body came up off the surgical table.
She called 911, whispered her address over and over in a high-pitched voice—because she knew that’s what they’d need first, how they’d find her—that she was hurt, that she needed help, the words tumbling on top of one another in a clatter of syllables, indistinguishable.
The dispatcher told her to be quiet. “Be quiet, ma’am. Just calm down now and let me find out what’s going on.”
Something clicked inside her, shifted, and Marjorie came back into her body, eased herself down onto the bed.
She spoke her address into the phone, quick clenched words, and her name when she was asked, and that she was bleeding, a man had hurt her, when she was asked what happened, and then there wasn’t time for anything more because oh sweet jesus the man returned, came to the side of the bed, pulled her knees apart.
“Shuddup, or I’ll kill you,” he said as she whispered into the phone, “He’s back.”
The dispatcher asked, “What’s happening?” and she said in a voice soft but clear, “His hands are on my legs.”
The dispatcher said, “Do you know the man?”
But Marjorie never answered, because the man hit her, hard, and the phone went flying, disconnected. He pried her legs open, his knees holding her down, two fingers fumbling to find her, trying to guide himself into her but unable to; her crying and fighting to stay conscious, knowing she had to stay conscious to live; him getting more agitated, pushing down on one shoulder, still probing with his fingers; her trying to remember whether the children were here at home or with their father, and, oh the relief, yes, they were with their father; him pushing, pushing, pushing.
She came up to her elbows, tears running down her face, breath catching in her throat, her throat was so dry, thought, Okay, this is going to happen; this is happening; I need to not fight him; I need to see him and remember. She squinted against the darkness, half blind without her contacts, and tried to see.
Black male, no shirt, long chest, thin build, tall, young, short nappy hair, small wire-frame glasses.
And what came out of her mouth then was so ridiculous she admitted later, over and over, so very ridiculous, but it’s all that came to her mind because if she lived through this, she didn’t want to die from AIDS.
“Are you wearing a condom?”
A long pause, him breathing into the darkness, the stale air from his lungs washing over her with the faintest hint of tobacco and spearmint. And then he was gone again, this time for good, the front screen door slamming hard behind him.
More slowly now, she moved back to her knees, carefully slithered onto the floor, found the phone, didn’t want to bleed on the antique rug her mother had given her, got back up on the bed, onto her knees. Stay conscious, she told herself; stay alive. Dialed 911 again.
This time she was calmer, her voice high and skittery but clear. Said, “I’m bleeding” when the police dispatcher, a different dispatcher, answered. Said, “I’ve been stabbed.” Repeated it again when he transferred her over to EMS, gave her address to the EMS dispatcher, said, “Please help me, please hurry” many times. The police dispatcher told her to stay on the line.
A slight pause and then the police dispatcher asked her questions, many questions, and you can hear her on the tapes that are now a part of the official case files answering softly with just the occasional hitch in her voice: no, the man was gone, just seconds ago; yes, she lived in a house; her age was thirty-seven; no, there wasn’t anyone else in the house; no, there weren’t any weapons in the house; are the police on the way; no, he hadn’t penetrated her; please send help; no, there was just one man; is someone coming; yes, she’d stayed conscious; yes, she was still bleeding; no, she couldn’t move to get a towel, she was afraid, the knife was still in her (and the dispatcher’s incredulous voice coming back, the only time you hear any emotion in his voice, “The knife is still in y
ou?”); okay, she’d wrapped the sheet around the knife; no, she didn’t know what kind of knife it was; please hurry; no, she didn’t know how he’d gotten in; no, the front door wasn’t unlocked, oh, wait, she thought he might have left through it, so it was probably open. Please help me, she said, please hurry.
But I didn’t learn any of this until much later.
“Please,” was the first thing she said to me when I walked over to the far side of the bed. “Hold my hand, please?” Her green eyes wide, her teeth chattering, her hazelnut hair cut just below her ears and slicked tight down one side of her cheek. Three tiny diamond studs traveled up one ear lobe. Her arms and shoulders were muscular, like a swimmer’s.
“I’m Cathy,” I said, kneeling down on the floor so I could meet her eye to eye, so I wasn’t looking down and seeing the knife too. Her skin was rough and moist. The paramedics barely acknowledged me. “With Victim Services.”
“Just hold my hand,” she said, her words more short snaps of air than sound. One eye was slightly larger and darker than the other.
“Yes.” I wanted to cover her nakedness but knew that definitely constituted interference.
She nodded back at me, her stare intense. There was fear in her eyes, huge fear, but also something else, a kind of steel glinting at the corners that wasn’t anger but something deeper. She smelled like laundry detergent and another, stronger, more acidic odor I couldn’t place.
I gently squeezed her clenched fist. “It’s okay.”
“Yes?”
“Yes,” I said, trying not to look directly at the knife—all I could see was the hilt flush against her flesh—but drawn to it in spite of myself. One paramedic held a huge pressure bandage around the edges of the knife while he adjusted the flow on the IV drip; the other talked to the hospital via radio, using medical terms and acronyms I didn’t understand.
Anything You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You Page 10
