Focus, I said to myself, the glass fuse cold in my hand, and then I heard a noise. I shut off my light.
It was outside. Against the door. People. Soon, by listening through the door to their Spanglish, I understood I would have to wait awhile. I stood two feet from them as he slammed her against the door. "Fuck me, bitch," he yelled. I stepped back as far as I could, but staying near the fuse box, what I had come to do, seemed better than going farther into the dark rooms of a sealed-off basement. Once the landlord's nephew had lived down here, my boyfriend told me. He had been a crackhead and someone had come in one night and shot him to death.
"That's why she won't rent to Dominicans anymore," he told me.
"But she's Dominican."
"Nothing makes sense up here."
Outside, the man grunted and the woman didn't make a sound. Then the two of them finished. They left. He called her some name in Spanish and laughed at her.
For the first time, I allowed myself to feel really scared. I changed the fuse and worked myself up to get back inside. My only goal was safety now, and inside the building upstairs was safer than down here, buried in the dust with the rats, the ghost of a murdered crackhead, and a door against which a girl had just been fucked.
I made it.
That night I decided to leave New York. I remembered reading that many of the men, upon returning from Vietnam, were drawn to places like rural Hawaii or the Florida Everglades. They were recreating the environment they knew best, where their responses to things seemed more natural than they did inside suburban homes scattered across the less lush and green United States. This made sense to me.
I'd always lived in bad neighborhoods except once, when I lived over a wife beater, in Park Slope, Brooklyn. New York meant violence to me. In the lives of my students, in the lives of those on the street, it was commonplace. All this violence had reassured me. I fit in with it. The way I acted and thought, my hypervigilance and nightmares, made sense. What I appreciated about New York was that it didn't pretend to safety. On the best of days it was like living in a glorious brawl. Surviving this year by year was an honor mark that people wore proudly. After five years you earned bragging rights. At seven you began to fit in. I had made it to ten, almost dyed-in-the-wool by the projected East Village shelf life, then, all of a sudden and to the surprise of those who knew me, I left.
I went back to California. I took Bob's job at Dorland while he was away. I lived in his cabin and took care of his dog. I met the colonists and showed them around, taught them how to light a fire in their woodstoves and taunted them with the specter of kangaroo rats, mountain lions, and the supposed ghosts that roamed the place. I didn't talk about myself much. No one knew where I was from.
On the Fourth of July, 1995, I was working on a story inside my cabin. It was dark out. The place was deserted. The colonists had gotten together and gone into town. I was alone except for Shady. I hadn't written much in the past two years, since the two months I'd been at Dorland as a colonist. It seemed unfathomable to me that it had taken so many years to come to terms with my rape and Lila's, but I had begun to accept that it had. It left me with a feeling I couldn't describe. Hell was over. I had all the time in the world ahead.
Shady ran into the cabin and rested her chin on my lap. She was scared.
"What is it, girl?" I said, patting her head. Then I heard it too; it sounded like thunder, a summer rain coming on.
"Let's go see what it is, okay?" I said. I grabbed my heavy black flashlight and shut off my lamp.
Outside I could see into the distance. The cabin had a porch and one chair. Very far away and partially obscured by the side of a dark mountain, I could see fireworks going off. I reassured Shady then and sat down on the chair.
The fireworks lasted a long time. Shady kept her head on my lap. I would have raised a glass if I'd had one but I didn't.
"We made it, girl," I said to Shady, rubbing her side. "Happy Independence Day."
Eventually it was time to move on. The night before I left Dorland I slept with a male friend of mine. I hadn't had sex in over a year. A self-imposed celibacy.
The sex that night was short, fumbling. We had gone out to dinner and had one glass of wine. In the kerosene light I focused on his face, on how my friend differed from a violent man. We both agreed later, when we talked on the phone from opposite coasts, that it had had a special quality about it. "It was almost virginal," he said. "Like you were having sex for the first time."
In some sense I was, in another this was impossible. But it is later now, and I live in a world where the two truths coexist; where both hell and hope lie in the palm of my hand.
Acknowledgments
The word lucky is my shorthand for blessed. I have been blessed by the people in my life.
Glen David Gold, my one true love.
Aimee Bender and Kathryn Chetkovich, my luscious titans. Great writers, great readers, great friends.
The master, Geoffrey Wolff, who saw the first forty pages and said, "You must write this book," then kept on reading, pen poised.
Ambassador Wilton Earnhardt, who, in my darkest, whiniest hour, said, "Send me that book, goddammit! I'm taking it to my agent!"
Gail Uebelhoer. Fifteen years later she did not hesitate. Her help with research was essential to these pages.
Pat McDonald. It all began on the thirteenth floor.
Emile Jarreau. While I wrote he taught me the true meaning of pain. It goes something like this: "Give me three more reps!"
Natombe, my wrinkled muse. She kept vigil on the rug beside me every morning, forgoing the walks she loved.
Eithne Carr. Brave.
I also want to acknowledge the institutions that have put food on my table or given me the gift of time: Hunter and FIND/SVP in New York, The Millay Colony for the Arts, The Ragdale Foundation, and especially Dorland Mountain Arts Colony and the MFA program at the University of California, Irvine.
My agent, Henry Dunow, because even after forty minutes of praise I still thought he was going to reject me and because, when I told him this, he completely understood the mind-set.
Jane Rosenman, my editor. I hope to be leaving lipstick traces on her shoes for years.
Those friends who appear in these pages and a few who don't: Judith Grossman, J. D. King, Michelle Latiolais, Dennis Paoli, Orren Perlman, and Arielle Read. Your support floods me with gratitude.
My sister, Mary, and my father, for being part of the show and sustaining the blows inherent in this. Never true believers in letting it all hang out-they let me hang a good portion of it out nonetheless.
Finally, I owe an endless thank-you to my mother. She has been my hero, my sparring partner, my inspiration, my spur. From the beginning-and I'm talking birth here-she has believed. The hard way, Mom. Here it is.
About the Author
Alice Sebold grew up in Pennsylvania. She graduated from Syracuse University in 1984. After a brief period at graduate school in Houston, Texas, Sebold moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan. She completed her MFA degree in fiction at the University of California, Irvine, in 1998. Ms. Sebold lives in California and is at work on her first novel.
