A Fine Line

The [police] sergeant kept asking me questions. I was wary of verbal traps and hidden meanings. I didn’t know how to answer him. The questions were too difficult. Where did I live? Was there someone I wanted to call? Did I have a boyfriend? Did I want to call him? The sergeant wanted me to answer. The other policemen seemed to be on his side. Several times it must have looked to them like I would speak, because one of them would start to reach for the phone. But nothing ever came of it.

Meanwhile, I had my own questions. Was the police sergeant really an enlightened being, someone I could speak to freely? What would happen if I said the wrong thing? Should I be talking to him at all?

Finally, he asked me a question for which there was only one possible response. Now, I could answer him. “Do you know where you were last night?” he asked me brusquely.

“In hell,” I told him.

He stopped asking me questions then. He must have given some sort of signal, because the next thing I knew, two of his policemen took me out to their car. I went willingly, until I saw that they wanted me to ride in the back. The wire partition made the backseat seem a cage. I balked. The two policemen talked to each other and then asked me if I’d like to sit in the front. That was fine, and I was skinny enough so there was enough room for the three of us.

I didn’t know where we were going, but I wasn’t worried about it. We stopped first at a deli. One of the cops got out and came back with coffee for him and his partner. For me, he brought back a cup of tea and a pack of cigarettes. They were Winstons. I didn’t think anything of it then, but I do now. The gift of it.

Our next stop was a local hospital. The policemen left me there with the emergency room staff, who wasted no time in giving me something that knocked me out. When I came to, I was tied to a bed. They had used one of those long stretchy bandages and wrapped it around my palm, and then around my wrist. They used the ends of the bandage to attach my wrists to the bedrails. They had spread my legs so they could tie my ankles the same way.

I knew they were going to rape me. Physically restrained, I couldn’t move—couldn’t run, couldn’t fight. I had never known such fear. It hit me in my belly, then snaked down into my crotch and through my thighs.

I kept looking at the hospital clock on the wall. How long before it would start? Whenever someone came into the room, I would think it was starting. People came and went. I lay there. After a while, they knocked me out again.

When I woke up, I wasn’t tied down anymore. I found myself in a ward surrounded by dull metal doors with little square, reinforced windows in them. The ones I tried were locked. One day I sneaked down to the doors at the end of the corridor, trying to escape. The corridor was dark, with a deep brown linoleum floor. I thought no one would see me. I reached the end of the corridor without being stopped. The area was empty, no offices for the staff or rooms for the inmates. No one was there. I could see a staircase through the little window in the doors. They couldn’t be locked. How else could you get up and down the stairs? I was pleased, but it was short-lived. Those metal doors wouldn’t open. They were locked, too. There would be no escape.

All the doors in my section were locked. At night I was locked into the room I shared with another woman. My roommate yelled and cursed at people who weren’t there. Though shorter than I was, she was hefty. I knew I would be no match for her if she attacked me.

Although there were plenty of locks in our section of the hospital, there was one exception: the bathroom. The toilet stalls had no locks. They had no locks, because they had no doors. Just a row of stalls with no doors. Maybe they were under construction. I mean, you couldn’t use the toilet without