As for me, I have this fantasy that all of a sudden, from one day to the next, he starts feeling things. He is no longer a psychopath. Yemaya, patron goddess of the ocean, organizes a tidal wave. And all his feelings of remorse, compassion, sadness, grief, anguish, devastation and bone-crushing pain come up like a flood. And his heart explodes with it all. No, I mean literally. His heart explodes from feeling too much.
A month before the show premiered, the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami caused devastation in Southeast Asia, and beloved Bob died of a heart attack. Now Oughton’s heart had stopped. Only he knew whether it was from feeling too much or too little. A week before the face-to-face meeting, a group of theatre students at the University of Montana had staged The Trigger; this very monologue had been performed while Oughton sat in need of triple bypass surgery.
A heron flew low in the sky above the farmland on our way to Bowden, round bales of alfalfa and clumps of birch trees, their green summer leaves turning to autumn hues, interrupting the vast golden terrain. Abbey mentioned the Nirvana Outcome, which rarely happened and consisted of the offender offering a heartfelt apology to his victims. Laura and I both laughed and reassured Brad and Abbey that we were expecting no such thing from Oughton.
We walked through the entrance and were greeted by the guard, a female senior citizen, with a gruff:
“Why didn’t you leave your purses in the car?”
After we put our notebooks through an X-ray machine, walked through a metal detector, and got frisked for weapons, the four of us made our way to the chapel, where the meeting would be held. We walked by two small cottages, built for prisoners to stay in with their visiting families, and a sad little playground in an abysmal state of abandonment. Several First Nations inmates were gathering stones into a pile at its centre, in preparation for a sweat lodge. Others sat at picnic tables. A stereotypical con, what with his shaved head, homemade tattoos covering his neck and face, and cold look in his probing eyes, passed us. The sun rose over two parallel barbed wire fences to our left, lighting up the willow trees that lined the path to our right. An inmate mowed the lawn underneath them.
“The sound of a lawn mower is a trigger for me,” Laura said, swallowing. “My father was mowing the lawn when I got home after the assault.”
The white chapel came into view, and we noticed that red police tape with the words Danger do not enter written across it blocked its front doors. Laura and I saw the humour in this. A bird’s song reached me from a birdhouse hanging from a tree branch.
“The sound of birds is a trigger for me, but in a good sense. There was a robin singing in the branches above me right after the rape, and it brought me so much peace and comfort,” I told Laura.
We spoke of how these two triggers that had presented themselves to us were connected to the immediate aftermath, not the assault itself.
We entered the building through the back door, and were greeted by the chaplain, a warm, pleasant, middle-aged man with a firm handshake and gentle eyes. A couple of inmates read on a couch in the office area, and the chaplain escorted us into the chapel itself. A sign on the door said No entrance during Muslim Prayers. When we entered, I noticed a painting of the Last Supper next to a poster entitled Major Jewish Holidays. Another poster asked, Celebrate Recovery: When was the last time you did a house cleaning of your soul?, and a box labelled Wiccan Group sat on a shelf next to a wall hanging with the words Psalm 98:4 Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth: make a joyful loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise embroidered on it. A painting of Jesus behind bars also caught my eye. More than one sign implored: Do not steal from the chapel.
We set up the tables and five chairs, placing Oughton, due to arrive any minute, across from Laura and me. Three young corrections officers, two women and a man, walked through the chapel, making no pretence as to what brought them here: they wanted to get a look at Oughton’s victims. Inmates took turns looking through a small window at the far end of the room. Moments before Oughton entered, a lone fly landed on the table in front of us. We looked at each other and laughed.
“Maybe it’s not his grandmother. Maybe it’s mine,” Laura offered.
He entered with a cane, the chaplain following with a box. We stood. He offered me his hand.
“I’m John. Nice to meet you.”
“I’m Carmen. Nice to meet you again.”
It was the oddest thing to say. And yet both parts of the latter statement were true. Oughton had come into my life to teach me what I was made of, and for that, I was grateful. It was also not the first time we’d met.
“May I offer you snacks? Cheezies? Crackers? Orange Crush? Root beer? It’s part of my Buddhist practice to make an offering,” he clarified.
He wore the beads on his right wrist, a gold-coloured watch on his left, and a red string around his neck. The silver stud still lived in his left ear, and silver-rimmed seventies tinted glasses covered his eyes. His white hair was combed back, his white moustache trimmed. A greying white T-shirt covered his torso, jeans his legs. Once we were all seated again, he talked about the cane he used, which to the naked eye looked like wood but was in fact made of paper. By him.
“How do you do it?” asked Brad.
“I change the molecular structure of paper and cardboard to make a cane that holds me up. I make boxes, briefcases, you name it. I am a master replicator of all Buddhist altars. I’m actually an accomplished artist under a different name. I have showings in galleries in Vancouver. I hate everybody equally. I’m an artist in his cave.”
He chuckled, pleased with himself.
We let him talk for the first while, get it out of his system. He rambled about having his pilot’s licence but being afraid of heights, of ghosts in his room, of burying the dead birds he found around the institution, of converting to Buddhism the day a nun saw him save a mouse from being mauled by a cat. He seemed much calmer than ever before. He had always been agitated, defensive, unpredictable. Now he sat still, the cane laid out on the table in front of him. I took note of the fact that there were no guards in the room; if he did snap, this wooden object made from paper to hold him up could be a swift, hard weapon.
“I’m still in the nosebleed section of Buddhism, but I’m learning compassion.”
The lone fly landed on my open notebook.
We took a break at the two-and-a-half-hour mark. The meeting was to be five hours.
Laura shook her head over lunch. “He didn’t just change the molecular structure of paper, he changed our molecular structure.”
When we walked back, it sounded as though dozens of singing birds had taken over the tree that stood outside the chapel. The sun was hot on our skin, and a ladybug crossed our path.
His Buddhist altar was set up now, and he wore his burgundy sash. We took our seats and he poured some oil into a small wooden cup that sat on the altar, placed a tiny little harp in another cup, and an Oreo cookie in a third.
“I’m offering Buddha liquid, food, and music. Would you like a cookie?”
“So you made everything we’re looking at here from paper?” I asked.
It all looked like wood.
“That’s right.”
“Even the harp and the cups?”
He nodded. “Even my briefcase.”
Brad steered the meeting towards a conversation as opposed to a mere monologue. When Oughton had agreed to the encounter, his only reluctance had centred around my presence. According to him, I was not his victim. He had been charged with eighteen offences and convicted of fourteen. Laura was one of the latter. I was in neither the former nor the latter group. So he stood steadfast by his statement:
“She is not my victim.”
I was not his victim. There was some truth to this, for there was so much more to my identity than being the Paper Bag Rapist’s victim. I went anyway, of course, aware of my unofficial status. Now that we were back from lunch, Laura talked to him about her attack, and the effect it had on her and her parents.
To my surprise, he was visibly affected by her story, his eyes welling up. But he said he remembered none of it.
“I have problems of losing space and time,” he explained.
When it was my turn to speak, I told him that I understood that he denied being my attacker, that I nonetheless believed he was my attacker, and that we could agree to disagree on that. And then I spoke to him about the effect the rape had had on Macarena, my parents, my siblings, my friends, my community. And I said that that was what caused me the most pain. I told him I didn’t feel comfortable going into my intimate life, and the effect the rape had had on me and my relationships.
“You are not my victim,” he challenged, looking me straight in the eye.
I inhaled and kept my pupils on his. Themes of invisibility seemed to weave through my life: to have my immigrant story disbelieved by the mainstream since arriving in Canada, to have hidden my true identity during my underground years in South America, to have the man who had changed the course of my intimate, erotic life deny that he was the antagonist of one of my key narratives.
“You are not my victim because I don’t remember you and because you are not white. All my victims are white.”
“I remember your voice,” I countered firmly.
“What were you wearing?”
“A white wraparound skirt, a white cotton blouse, and brown sandals.”
“No. I don’t remember. There were hundreds. I don’t remember.”
He started rocking back and forth a little, shaking his head, breathing hard, beads of sweat forming on his forehead.
I plowed forward. Talked about the axe, the gun, the psychological torture, the threat that he’d kill my family. I omitted the rape itself. And I could see his clogged-up, scar-tissued heart knocking at his chest, his T-shirt trembling, his face flushing, his eyes getting wet again. It was shocking to see him moved. The only other time I’d been this close to him, he had been so cold and calculating that I’d known in my bones from the moment we fell into his hands that we were at the mercy of a psychopath, rendering our situation hopeless. But now I saw him feel. And the foundation of my conviction that he was, when all was said and done, a heartless creature was shaken. I marvelled at the soul’s capacity to transform, and wondered at the terrain of the journey the past three decades had taken him on, culminating in his heart attack and this very meeting with Laura, the star witness at his trial, and me, the embodiment of so many of his faceless, nameless victims.
“You say I did that to you?” he asked in a barely audible voice.
“Yes.”
“These are stories I hear in group.… I blindfolded you with your shirt?”
“Yes.”
“Did I ask you to do it or did you do it yourself?”
“You asked me to do it while you held the gun to my head.”
“I don’t own a gun. I own a rifle.”
“You told me it was a gun. It could have been a stick for all I know—that’s beside the point. I never saw it.”
“And I held it to your head while you tied the shirt around your face?”
“Yes.”
“Well, now that rings a bell.”
It was more than I ever could have expected from him. I nodded and exhaled.
The meeting had gone well enough—he had actually listened to our stories and been touched by them—that for a fleeting moment the Nirvana Outcome seemed within reach.
“We would like you to apologize for what you did to us,” Laura said.
“I can’t give you that. I can’t because I don’t remember any of it. But I understand the concept of compassion for my victims. Not viscerally, but cerebrally.”
“There’s a need for genuine remorse, John,” Brad pushed. “What some might call a godly sorrow.”
He became agitated again, rocking harder, shaking his head with more force, his voice tight.
“No. I don’t feel that. I can’t offer that. How can I feel remorse over something I don’t remember? I would have to be a fly on the wall to see it all. But I’m learning compassion.”
We nodded and decided that what he was offering was enough.
It was time to leave. In parting, I said my piece.
“John, I have spent many years pondering why you did what you did to me. And I know why. It was to teach me compassion. Even in the moment, during the actual attack, I could feel your pain. I could feel it”—I patted my heart—
“right here. And so I want to thank you for teaching me compassion.”
My heart expanded in my chest, and I thought of the ending of The Trigger again. It wasn’t his heart that exploded from feeling too much, it was mine. Every chamber opened and filled with blood, with love. His eyes brimmed with tears, and in a broken voice that dark soul that was searching for some semblance of light responded with:
“Well, thank you for saving my life.”
His statement was in reference to my show of gratitude, but also alluded to the rapes. He had mentioned that if it hadn’t been for the attacks, he would have turned his hatred inward and killed himself.
We shook hands in parting, he invited us to come back any time, and I accepted the package of Cheezies that he offered. On our way to Calgary airport, as I munched on his gift, I remembered the words Marc, John’s brother, had spoken all those years before, and realized that that had been our Nirvana Outcome.
“I’m sorry for what my brother did to you,” he’d said after hearing our stories.
Now, Laura announced as she read a message on her phone, “Look. Rick wrote back.”
She’d asked him why my rape kit hadn’t been used to prove that I was indeed Oughton’s victim.
“Because we never knew there was one,” was the answer.
I let out a laugh and shook my head.
I looked out the car window at the passing farmland, ranches advertising rodeos, and recalled the short story I had written when I was sixteen, only ever shared with Alejandro. In that rudimentary piece of prose, Oughton had apologized profusely and I’d forgiven him. I’d written the Nirvana Outcome before he’d been caught, in the prequel to his having a face and a name.
It had been nine years since I’d been in a relationship, and 90 percent of that time had been spent in celibacy, finally coming home to myself, learning how to love my own company, surrendering to solitude until I’d found a love so immense inside my own heart that there was no more void to fill, no more seeking affirmation outside myself.
I finished off the Cheezies and thought of Robert, dear friend and theatre school classmate who had happened to be on the same flight to Calgary when we were on our way to meet Oughton. I’d told him what Laura and I were about to do and he’d offered his support. He’d been one of the peers in the circle during that pivotal voice class when I’d relived the rape for the first time, when my knowing, crucial body had first told me that it was ready to release it, twenty-four years earlier, almost to the day. Robert’s clear blue gaze had met mine when I’d opened my eyes after that catharsis, and after all that time he stood before me at Calgary airport, giving me a bear hug before continuing on his way.
A week later, I would go to Britannia Beach again, a place I hadn’t visited for a decade. Walking through the old gallery, admiring the paintings of bison, bears and cubs, birches, the Vancouver skyline, cherry trees in full bloom, a five-foot-long raw wool dream catcher hanging at the entrance, lutes, ukuleles, and accordions leaning in the corners, the big house silent now, the German family no longer there to play the classical music I loved so much, the only sound that of my shoes on the oak hardwood floor, I meditated on how far I’d come since I’d wept my way through these rooms, expelling the remnants of Oughton from my bloodstream, guts, and womb. Upon leaving, I would notice an antique axe propped up against a windowsill, the landscape of a temperate rainforest meticulously painted on its blade. I would shake my head through a smile, stroll down to the dock littered with cigarette butts, and behold hundreds of flies feasting on the pink flesh o
f a sliced-open salmon laid out on the rock.
During our send-off from the chapel, Oughton had complimented Something Fierce.
“My aunt read your book about the underground. She really liked it. Maybe you can write my story someday.”
If there was one thing I’d learned from being raped after smoking a stolen cigarette under the canopy of my childhood rainforest—cathedral, playground, witness—on a faraway Sunday afternoon, it was to never say never.
When our plane landed in Vancouver and I walked through the airport’s automatic doors, I was met by the sight of hundreds of sparrows flying in and out of the crown of a tree, zooming and diving, all of them chirping, the chorus of their song overpowering the roar of the planes above, the hum of idling cars, the greetings and goodbyes of the travellers coming and going, the pentameter of my own overflowing, embodied heart.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my writing group, who heard excerpts of this book throughout the writing process and offered invaluable feedback. In alphabetical order, they are: Leanna Brodie, Lucia Frangione, Meghan Gardiner, Gilles Poulin-Denis, Jovanni Sy, and Marcus Youssef. I would also like to thank fellow writer Dawn Dumont of the Okanese Cree Nation for providing helpful insight into chapter nine. Friend and colleague Quelemia Sparrow, of the Musqueam First Nation, on whose land the University Endowment Lands are located, walked Fairview trail with me and pointed out the names of the flora that surrounded us. An eagle flew above that day, and a hummingbird greeted us when we reached the spot where the rape had taken place.
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