"Language is the greatest resource of a culture.  It is the repository of thought and the expression of dreams." - Rita Mae Brown

 

The Dollar Store was published in the poetry journal, Lucidity.  Following that is an essay in verse.   And finally, an essay published Fall 2007  in an anthology entitled, Silence Kills.  Silence Kills was just released on audio book.

 

Want to read something lighter?  Check out and excerpt from Frankenbite Me in the sample book proposal under Selling Your Book.

 

The formatting does not import, so if I'm missing any punctuation, please bear with me...

 

 

Do No Harm

reprinted from Silence Kills

 

     I hadn't looked into a mirror in a long time; I had no reason to see myself. I was not someone I wanted to know. But in his eyes I saw my reflection. In the horror and the disgust, I saw what he saw.

     "My god, what happened to you?" He stood just inside the exam room, exactly where he had pivoted after closing the narrow wooden door. He asked the question as if the answer would determine whether he would stay or leave.

     I hesitated, confused, afraid. "I, ah, broke my jaw." He wore leather shoes. They stepped toward me. I felt him lift the sleeve of the cotton gown the nurse had given me. I tried to tell her it was just my jaw, but she insisted I take off my clothes and put on the gown. I had become a person who did not argue.

 

"Every nine seconds in the United States a woman is assaulted and beaten. Four million women a year are assaulted by their partners. Every day, four women are murdered by boyfriends or husbands."[i]

 

     My posture was so hunched that the gown fell open in the back. That had become my bearing, curled to protect my stomach and face, eyes down, invisible. I could feel him looking at me, even as I looked at my bare feet. He half-moon walked around me--moving the gown, prodding a little as he went--because the heavy exam table blocked him from circling. I sat on the end like when I was a kid on the edge of the diving board, waiting to jump in. I felt small like that, my bare feet dangling.

 

"Domestic violence is most prevalent in women 16 to 24."[ii]

 

     "Who did this to you?" He touched my jaw for the first time, not hard, like the heavy steel of the .45 automatic that had left it dangling, knocked loose. I could still talk, which kinda surprised me; I just wasn't sure what to say. So I lied.

     "I fell."

     "From the look of it, you've been 'falling' for a long time." He said, "falling" in that sarcastic way that popular kids use to be mean to the unpopular ones. He was right though, I knew. It had been a long time, although I can't tell you how long, even now, looking back. Then, I had no time, I had nothing to mark time by, no reason to know.

     He asked me who did it. I asked him for help. He kept asking, in that voice that said I was wasting his time. I told him I was afraid. I told him that I couldn't tell him why. I don't know how long this went on. I remember crying. I remember the way he looked at me.

 

"Treating battered women tended to evoke more negative emotional states than treating patients with infectious disease. Both [primary and non primary care physicians]exhibited negative feelings when confronting battered women."[iii]

 

     He walked to a phone hanging on the blue-green wall. The cord was tangled. He lifted the receiver. "I'm calling the sheriff."

     I looked up into his face, his eyes. "Please, please don't call the sheriff," I begged him. I didn't tell him, but I had called the sheriff once. I told him I was being held in a farmhouse by a man who was going to kill me. He asked me how I knew him. I said we had dated, before, but I had broken up with him. He'd said in his Texas drawl, "It sounds like a domestic dispute to me, little lady." He asked me how old I was, then told me I had a lot to learn about men. He said, "If he has a short fuse you'd best learn not to make him mad." I told him about my family, how he planned to kill my little brothers and sister if I got away. He said maybe they could hold him overnight. Overnight. I hung up.

 

"Victims of domestic violence are reluctant to report abuse. Women very reasonably fear retaliation..."[iv]

 

     But that was not the only reason I didn't want him to call the sheriff. Ken, the man who owned the pistol so clearly imprinted on my face, was a few steps away in the waiting room, high on cocaine, surrounded by women and kids waiting for immunizations or whatever people wait for in small town doctor's offices in rural Texas. He'd tried to get into the exam room with me, but the nurse in the small clinic refused. Before he went back to sit down he squeezed my arm, looked at me then glanced at the waiting room. I looked at them, the innocent ones, and knew what he meant. Before he agreed to take me to a doctor he'd stuffed a knife as long as my forearm, in a leather sheath, into one ostrich-hide cowboy boot, the pistol that did this into the other and another pistol into the back of his jeans, under his suede jacket. He had a real flair for arming himself. He dropped extra clips into his pockets. He was not going to jail, even on the outside chance that any man in rural Texas in 1973 would think that he deserved to be there.

 

"In 2000, 1247 women were killed by an intimate partner... which accounted for 33.5 percent of the murders of women Women are most likely to be killed when attempting to leave the abuser. In fact, they're at a 75% higher risk than those who stay."[v]

 

     The phone made that off-the-hook beeping sound that throbbed in rhythm with the pain in my head. But he didn't hang it up. "If you won't report the man who did this to you, I won't treat you." He was angry, but I knew he wasn't angry because I was a skinny twenty-year-old kid covered with bruises and burns and scabs, crying and begging him to help me even though I couldn't tell him why I wouldn't talk to the sheriff. He was mad because I was wasting his valuable time. Because I wasn't worth that time. I wasn't worth helping.

     I don't remember what he said after, "I won't treat you." Maybe he didn't say anything. I just remember how I felt. I don't know what I expected.  I knew no one doctor could save me, I wasn't a fool, but maybe walking in there I had hope. I was still a person. Walking back to my abuser, my jaw still displaced, still in pain, denied the most basic human compassion, I had no hope. That doctor confirmed what my abuser had told me over and over: I wasn't worth the air it took to keep me alive. I deserved what I got.

 

"Many battered women experience social, institutional, and provider barriers to obtaining help from the healthcare system for ... domestic violence."[vi]

 

     After that I stopped fighting back. I stayed with him because I could see no other place for me. I could never go back home to my family, whose lives I had put in danger by dating a madman, to school, to friends, to the shadow of a life I did not deserve. I resigned myself to being whatever he told me I washis girlfriend, his property, his whore.

     I fantasized about suicide like some women fantasize about a trip to Paris--with true longing. I never asked anyone for help again.

 

"In 1998, 30,575 Americans took their own lives... The researchers found a strong connection between intimate partner violence and suicidal behavior..."[vii]

 

     If there had been a "Least Likely to be Victimized" category in my yearbook, my school picture would have been there, showing a blonde in a hippie dress with an SDS fist button prominently displayed on it. Although it is a fallacy that race factors into the battering of women, or that women from the middle and upper classes are somehow immune to abuse, I was also a tough cookie, a liberated, self-aware, politically-active kicker of metaphorical asses. I would never let a man hit me.

     And I didn't, at first.

     I met Ken through a girl I had known in high school. Amy and I hadn't been close friends, but she was a stoner and I was a radical, and in the 1960's that was enough to make us both outcasts--counter-culture friends by default. I'd lost touch with her when I'd dropped out of high school and hitchhiked to Boulder, Colorado, when I was 16. After a year of working at an FM underground radio station and having adventures, I returned home to get my GED and attend an alternative college.

     I had high hopes for college, and life in general, but the reality of working a crappy full-time job, paying 100% of the costs of school, living with parents who required I baby-sit my younger siblings to earn my keep, and going to school at nights and on the weekends was just beating the shit out of my idealistic dreams of adulthood. I had failed to find another radio job, and being a 17 year-old high school dropout with a sketchy work history didn't qualify me for any fun job. This surprised me, although I now can't imagine why. I took a sales job in a boutique near the university. The pay was awful and the owner was, in my easily-expressed opinion, a monster. I had been a poor, but cool, person of some stature in Boulder, but in Tucson, I was a putz. Responsibility sucked. Poverty sucked. Anonymity sucked.

     And then Amy called. It was my twentieth birthday and I didn't have a date, or enough friends or money to rate a party. She had the solution, and he would be there at seven to pick me up.

     The moment I saw him at the door to my parent's house, I was uneasy. It wasn't his long hair, parted down the middle like those velvet pictures of Jesus, or even the cowboy boots, skin-tight Wranglers, huge silver buckle, western-cut jacket, or felt cowboy hat in his hand. Although the combination of those things in 1972 seemed odd, it wasn't enough to dissuade a girl in a serious dating drought on her birthday. It was his eyes. Deep-set, dark, evil eyes. Pull the wings off of doves, follow you around the room, scary eyes. I looked beyond him, at a huge black Pontiac with black tinted windows and new dealer tags that hulked at the curb.

     "Pam?"

     "Yeah?"

     "Ken Cummings, maam," He tilted his head as if he would have tilted his hat, like John Wayne, if it hadn't already been in his left hand. "Mighty pleased to meet you." He revealed a dozen yellow roses from behind his back. "Happy Birthday." He extended them toward me, and I opened the screen door.

     Roses. No boy had ever brought me roses. Of course, he was no boy. He must have been near thirty. Amy had told me he was from Texas and that he was rich, although I assumed at the time that one meant the other--everyone from Texas was rich. He was in business with her 'old man.' I knew what kind of business, the only kind that brought men like this to a border town like Tucson:  dope. I didn't care though. He was supposed to take me to a fancy restaurant, and it was one night. What could happen?

     I'd never been to such an expensive place. On the way we'd smoked a joint while listening to quadraphonic sound in his cushy, velvet upholstery, so I was starving. He ordered for me. I didn't think anything of it, since I wouldn't have ordered the most expensive things, and he did, so happy birthday to me. He lit my cigarettes with a gold lighter and opened the doors, even in the car, though he had to kind of jog around to beat me to it and he almost wrestled the waiter to pull my chair out for me. I knew enlightened woman didnt allow such nonsense, but he was from Texas, and being liberated wasn't getting me anywhere lately.

     I ordered a Slo Gin Fizz, even though I didn't drink, because I thought it made me look more grown-up and sophisticated and even though I was underage, the waiter never asked me for ID. Ken called me "maam" all night, which was kinda creepy, and after dinner he opened a little amber glass bottle and offered me cocaine. Cocaine, rich man's speed. Everyone knew that it wasn't addictive, so I said OK. I liked it. I liked everything about the night, except for him. He gave me the willies.

     He talked some about Texas and a lot about Vietnam. He really hated "Gooks," but I felt sorry for him, being sent to that unjust war and not being educated about the true nature of the conflict. I explained it to him, because that's what I do, I explain things so people can see how misguided they are, especially about politics. He nodded like a bobble head, like he wanted me to shut-up but was too polite to tell me.

     I waited for the obligatory hand to stray "accidentally" onto my exposed leg or around my shoulders, but it didn't happen. I prepared an excuse for not wanting to go to his apartment, but he never asked. He didn't try anything. He just jogged around the car in front of my parent's house to beat me to that door handle--although by then I knew I was supposed to wait. I didn't want to put him into goodnight kiss territory as I squeezed by him to get out the car door, but he didn't try for the kiss. He just took off his hat and thanked me. I beat-feet to the front door and vowed never to see that freak again. But by the next weekend, after I'd ignored a couple of his calls, I couldn't remember exactly why I shouldn't go out with the rich guy who was so polite. He had so much, and I had so little, I deserved to be treated nice. And so it started.

     Over the next few months, every time we went on a date it was the same: he took me to great places, got me high, never got fresh, and I ignored the voice I my head that said I should be afraid of this guy. The only thing that changed was that from the second date on, before I left him for the night, he would press a little amber bottle into my palm. My present. My payment.

     Finally, one afternoon I went with him to someone's house. Only it wasn't a friend. It was a Mexican dope dealer. They argued, Ken pulled a gun on him, and the world spun out of control. I wanted to get away, I wanted to go home. He took me to his apartment instead. That night was the first time he paraded his weapons, a padlocked closet full of them, and told me the story of how he had fragged a young lieutenant in Nam and got away with it. He laughed. He acted out the scene with a machine gun-looking weapon which I no longer recall the name of. He hated greenhorn officers telling him what to do. The second time he killed one they sent him stateside, to a military hospital in Corpus Christi for a few weeks, then they gave him a medical discharge. He was too dangerous to go back to Vietnam, but not too crazy to be released into the population. He was ready for his new life, although he missed killing Gooks. "Semper Fi, motherfucker."

     I told I didn't feel well, that I needed to go home. He hit me hard enough to knock me down. Then he raped me on the floor where I landed. I fought him until he got that rifle against my neck, his weight bearing down on each end of it. I needed both hands to keep it from crushing my windpipe, and even then I couldn't get enough air to struggle. I honestly can't remember the details after that, I just know from the bruises and where I was sore, that he did a lot more to me than I can remember.

     When it was over he cried like a child. He let me leave the next morning, pretending I was only going to school. I wasn't about to call the police on a drug dealer--that was a death warrant. So I called Amy and told her what happened, told her to keep him away from me. She apologized profusely and agreed.

     A few weeks later she called and told me that Ken had ripped off the Mexican Mafia for a kilo of cocaine, and they were looking for me because I had been with him at someone's house and he had identified me as his "old lady." She said she felt terrible because I would be hurt when they found me. She said she felt responsible, so she had an offer for me. She and her old man, who had also been ripped off by Ken and had to leave town, would pay me a thousand dollars to accompany her on a quick run to Houston. She and I would fly in for one day and fly right back. And I'd get enough money to go somewhere safe.

     Her boyfriend was waiting with a car in Houston. I didn't even ask how he got there. I wasn't suspicious. As we drove away from the city, instead of into it, he had a rational explanation. So when we eventually pulled up to an old white farmhouse at the very end of a long dirt road, off of a series of narrow blacktop roads through the East Texas pine forest, I wasn't even paying attention. It wasn't until we walked up the steps onto the porch and the door opened that I figured it out. Ken paid Amy and her boyfriend one pound of cocaine, approximately half of the stolen kilo, for me. I begged them not to leave me. On my knees, in tears, I begged them.

     They never looked back.

     I did eventually escape. By then my abuser had lost some of his violent fervor for me, I was not the pretty, self-confident, know-it-all he had abducted to punish for the crimes of all sinful women, but an overweight, compliant shell, deadened to all emotion--including fear. My abductor had stopped threatening to kill my family, and I didn't care if he killed me. He needed money and sent me to work. Ironically, the job I found was as a receptionist in a doctor's office. Ken took my paychecks, but he couldn't take what I was really getting from my job: confidence. The doctor, who knew about the abuse and avoided the subject, and the rest of the people I came into contact with at my job, treated me with respect and dignity, and that reminded me what it was like to be a person. The doctor helped me with an advance on my salary and by cosigning for the utilities for an apartment, the location of which he and the staff agreed to keep secret.

 

"50% of the homeless women and children in the U.S. are fleeing abuse. The amount spent to shelter animals is three times the amount spent to provide emergency shelter to women from domestic abuse situations."[viii]

 

     I left with what little I had, and shortly afterward my abuser abducted another woman, a cocaine customer of his, and her six-year-old child. She leapt from his car somewhere in New Mexico. Although she also knew her attacker prior to the abduction, and that had been the criteria quoted by the sheriff for not helping me, she was in her thirties, and from a prominent local family. I suspect no one told her it was only a "domestic dispute."

     Ken went from jail to a forced 30-day commitment in a VA lockdown, which turned into a near twenty-year series of incarcerations. He was never punished for what he did to me.

     I suffered for many years with debilitating headaches, asthma, colitis, allergies, paranoia and vicious night terrors and was later diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

 

"Women who are battered have more than twice the health care needs and costs that those who are never battered."[ix] "Up to 64% of hospitalized female psychiatric patients have histories of being abused as adults."[x]

 

     I was too ashamed to return to my family and had no money for, or understanding of, therapy. For years I self-medicated my depression, insomnia and shame with drugs and alcohol.

     Some years later, my best friend, who is paraplegic, called to tell me that her boyfriend had beaten her up. She was at the emergency room, in her wheelchair, bleeding. He was at her house. By the time I got to her condo, a two-hour drive, I had acted out a hundred times in my head the scene that would take place. I had checked and triple-checked the weight in my pocket.

His car was out front. I silently thanked god. I don't know what I would have done if he'd left on his own, I was so pumped-up. When he answered the door, I walked in calmly. He never looked down to see what was in my hand until it was too late. I didn't want to kill him, I wanted to make him soil his pants. I wanted him to know what it felt like to be helpless, to fear for your life.     

     And I did. With a pistol shoved up into the soft flesh under his jaw, I made him believe. He wept and begged me not kill him. I made him promise to leave and never come back, told him that I would track him down and kill him if he did. I told myself that I was doing it for her, but that was only partly true. I did it for me. And I didn't feel bad about it. She came home from the emergency room and we got high and celebrated his extraction from her life. I had saved her. I was a superhero.

     I had told this story dozens of times before it finally dawned on me: normal people dont stick loaded guns into other peoples throats. I knew there was at least one gun in her house, what if he had called my bluff? What if he had overpowered me and shot me? What if I had shot him? There were many righteous responses to her situation, which did not necessitate brutality--at least not by me.

     I was not free of Ken just because my body was free; my submerged rage had a tripwire that was turning me into the twisted fuck that had taken me by force all those years ago--right down to the pistol and the little amber bottles of cocaine.

     I sought out treatment for my addiction and rehabilitation for my burnt soul and was fortunate to find free, community-based therapy groups that allowed me to address the PTSD and root causes in a supportive manner. Almost all of my associated medical conditions resolved by themselves.

     I haven't told the story of what I did to that man in over twenty years. I am no longer proud of it. I no longer own a gun.

     In my second year of therapy I had been told to pay attention to how I was feeling--and without drugs it was hard to dodge those feelings. I realized that I always got depressed around my birthday, and I wasnt yet old enough for my inevitable decay to be the cause, so I started to practice the techniques the group leader taught us. I sat night after night and wrote in spiral notebooks, just stream of consciousness stuff. "I feel like crap. "Life sucks. I don't know why I feel like crap." Until it came out of my pen, the story of the doctor who turned me away, I didn't make the connection. I'd turned 21 unable to chew, subsisting on what I could get through a straw, in pain--the pain in my jaw and head, and the pain in my heart where hope had once been. That was my special birthday, the official beginning of womanhood.

     Many women never get the help I got, and their low self-esteem traps them in the cycle of abuse and addiction even if they escape the initial violence.

 

"The silence was described as collusion between the abused women and other members of society: The unspoken agreement between battered women and other members of society not to disclose or address the battering."[xi]  

 

     The shame and silence that surrounds abuse fuels the problem. In spite of changing laws and education, incidences of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) continue to increase. And women continue to suffer in silence, invisible to the rest of us. Since 1993, when the American Medical Association launched its landmark "Campaign Against Family Violence," violence against women and girls has escalated. The free programs where I got help lost their funding and were closed.

My story was unique only because of the way I ended up there and not what happened to me once I was being battered. Now, with the education a person gets from watching TV, I would know that I could call the FBI. That traveling a girl over state lines--even if that state is Texas--is a major crime. The kind of crime for which they hold a person for more than one night. My life was forever altered not just because a homicidal Vietnam Vet targeted me, but because I could find no help, no hope. No reason to live.

     It is caring health professionals that need to be the frontline of protection for battered women. It is not just women that suffer, but all of us. When the fabric of civilized society is rent, we all feel the split. The British Medical Journal, in 2004, stated that: "Intimate partner violence is a major public health and human rights issue."

     Sadly, protecting women is a role that many doctors are loath to play. In a study of Australian general practitioner attitudes towards victims of domestic abuse, one rural female doctor expressed a common sentiment about the effective treatment of battered women:

 

"You often don't want to be too good at it because you get too many of them ... you might find people start referring them to you."[xii]

 

     By ignoring or humiliating patients who need help, by embracing the silence that is their legacy in a society that blames women for their own abuse, battered women will continue to be injured and killed--and their children will perpetuate the victimhood and violence they have seen and often experienced.

     Physicians need to understand their role in this cycle and practice the words of Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, who admonished physicians to make a habit of two things: "to help, or at least do no harm."[xiii]