He hit her again, slapping her sharply across the face and shoving her down onto the pavement. Then he was tearing at her clothing, hungry for her, impatient. She heard him breathing heavily and she started to struggle, pushing and clawing at him with her little hands. Then his knee shot into her stomach and it hurt, hurt so badly that she closed her eyes and stopped struggling, unable to move or feel or even think about anything but the pain that was shooting through her body.
He tore at her blouse and ripped off her bra, his hands digging into her flesh so that she ached to scream her lungs out. She had to make him stop but there was nothing she could do.
“She’s nice,” one of them said.
And then it happened. When she couldn’t struggle any more he took her, forcing her, hurting her, and a stab of pain screamed through her. Nothing existed for her but the pain. She wished that it would stop, hoped that she would die so that the pain would be over, but she didn’t die and it didn’t stop and her whole body was twisting and crying and dying inside until finally, finally it was over.
There was hardly a break. Before she could think, before she could fully realize that he was through with her, the second one was taking her and hurting her all over again. This time she couldn’t struggle at all.
She lay on the cold sidewalk inert while the two remaining boys took their turns with her. She thought that it was going to go on this way forever, that the rest of her life would be one continuous rape, a never-ending succession of pain with hard bodies pressing down upon her.
After the fourth boy had finished she lay alone on the pavement waiting for a fifth, until the realization came that it was over, that she had indeed lived through it.
“Let’s go,” one of them said.
“Jesus, that was nice.”
“C’mon.”
She listened to the footsteps as they left, still hearing the voices and not bothering to figure out which way they were headed. Finally as the footsteps faded away she opened her eyes.
The drunkenness was long gone. Everything was gone, everything but the pain. Laura was gone and the boys were gone and now even her virginity was gone. The thin membrane that was the last sign of innocence had been torn from her.
She had nothing left.
Slowly, painfully, she hauled herself to her feet. She pulled the shreds of her clothing around her to cover herself as well as she could. She seemed to be bruised all over, and she wanted to go somewhere, anywhere, some place where she could be all alone with no one to see her and no one to talk to her and no one to hurt her any more. She walked south on Thompson Street, not going any place in particular because there was no place for her to go, because it no longer mattered in the least where she went.
She had lost more than her virginity. She had lost her innocence, and perhaps that was a good thing. Perhaps the pain and the horror of it all was something good, something to be thankful for, something important to her.
Because she knew that she could never be hurt again. She had endured everything there was to endure and she was still alive, still able to breathe and walk and think. She had passed through Hell. It burned and it would leave scars, but she would never be burned again.
She would never love either. She’d get tough as shoe leather and kick the hell out of anyone who got in her way. Nobody would hurt her. Nobody would make her cry again.
Never.
She wouldn’t be sweet little Peggy, not any more. She’d be one hell of a tough little bitch, a real bitch on wheels. She wasn’t too sure where she was going, but no one would keep her from getting there.
The city started to wake up around her. Windows opened and alarm clocks rang in rooms. Cars passed her on Thompson Street. The city woke up but she didn’t notice it. She didn’t let herself respond to anything.
When the sun came up over the East River and cast her shadow on the pavement she didn’t pay any attention to it.
13
Shadows
Scattered by the sun
Melt.
Black against grey,
Dodging the wind,
Fearing the heat.
We
Looking for love—
We too are shadows...
It was terrible, she decided. She had something to say, something which was fairly important no matter how many times it may have been said in the past. But she didn’t know how to get it across. By the time the message was on paper it had turned into a pretty bad poem.
But there was a poem in it. There was a poem and a painting and a symphony, but she couldn’t turn the idea into words or music or anything. She could think and feel but something was continually lost in translation. She couldn’t communicate the thought or the feeling, and without communication there was no point in writing or painting or composing, no point in anything more involved than the thinking and feeling itself.
Alone in her own apartment with her poem, she couldn’t even translate it herself.
To hell with it. She folded the slip of paper and placed it between the pages of a book, banishing the poem from her mind. It could wait. Later she could return to it and either straighten it out or tear it up. But there were other things to think of now.
Like Laura, for instance.
It was Thursday night and she hadn’t seen Laura for hours, not since early in the morning. She had slipped out of bed while Laura was still asleep, planting a kiss on her shoulder and leaving a note saying that she would be back by nine in the evening.
Now it was a quarter to nine. In a few minutes she would walk to Laura’s apartment and there would be so many things for them to talk about, so many things to tell Laura.
After breakfast she had walked all over the city, through Little Italy and Chinatown and across to the Lower East Side. She had wandered aimlessly without looking for anything in particular, not going anywhere special, her eyes taking in everything she saw. She walked and bought things and stared at store windows and glanced down dark alleyways and talked occasionally to people that she met. She ate a bite here and a bite there, trying to taste everything, trying to gulp down New York and get it digested and absorbed into her bloodstream in as little time as possible.
And then back to her apartment to put herself into a poem. It was her poem, and she wondered how Laura would react to it.
Should she get going? No, she decided, not yet. A few more minutes, a few minutes by herself before it was time to go. It wouldn’t even hurt to be a minute late, and it was pleasant to sit by the window and look at Barrow Street.
When she saw Mike approaching the door she wasn’t overly surprised. By this time Laura had convinced her that he would come again and that he would continue to come to her until she managed to kill whatever hope remained in him. So she was not surprised, and she was ready at the answering buzzer before her buzzer sounded and at the door before he knocked, not dreading this visit as she had dreaded the others in the past.
She opened the door, noticing as she did that he looked much different than he had the last time she saw him. His clothes were still the same and the guitar was slung over his shoulder as usual, but there was a look in his eyes that was strange.
Before she could say hello he said, “Know what tonight is?”