by Eve Ensler
But I did not think or feel any of this then. I was losing you. I was panicked. I could feel your suspicion emerging, a new hesitation and doubt. You were a sweetie pie, Evie, but also a fierce and defiant child. I could no longer trust you to remain faithful to me. I had to exert control, so Shadow Man took charge. I don’t know if I can go further. I wonder if telling you what happens next is really doing you a service, Evie. Yes, I realize there is no apology without a meticulous accounting. But I seriously wonder if unearthing the depth of my cruelty and confirming it to you might be more devastating than curing. Will knowing the harsh specifics of my vicious actions serve your self-hatred, or your freeing?
At the time, everything had its own logic and trajectory and was fueled by my diabolical anger. You had betrayed me. You had pushed me to become like this. You were threatening to kill me by withdrawing your love. This was life or death. I had to do anything and everything to keep you in my power.
That night, Shadow Man came to your bed but his rules had changed. He was impatient and aggressive. He ripped back the sheets. He pulled your legs quickly and forcefully apart. He moved you roughly in the bed. He took what he wanted.
He no longer pretended to be a healer: he was a hunter; you, no longer a patient, but his prey. You were terrified. Your shock and judgment shamed Shadow Man and further provoked his fury.
This night was the dissolution of any pretense of parity. He was the boss. He would call the shots. You motioned for him to stop, tried to push him away, you were panicked and had clearly stopped breathing. Your eyes wide open seemed to be screaming.
His fingers, now hawkish talons, went further. They tore through your tightness. They ripped at tender flesh. They plucked off delicate feathers. They clawed and clawed at the golden gate of your precious garden, and when you refused entry, they forced their way in. You reeled from his depravity. You fought and fought and then you stopped fighting.
Shadow Man was ravaging the tenderness he craved the most. The tenderness that had made him helpless and exposed. The tenderness that had made him your prisoner. He would not be held hostage again. This was his territory and this his grand invasion.
Even as I touched your private places with my hands and force I was only sometimes aroused. I never put my penis inside you. I rarely got hard. I was oddly detached and uninvolved. And why am I telling you this, Evie? So you will think better of me? That I did not do the unimaginable? That I would not go so far?
Well, that is wholly disingenuous. I raped you, Evie. I raped you as a daddy doctor and I raped you now. I raped you with my seductive healing and I raped you with my rough fingers. I penetrated you again and again. Getting deeper and deeper into the place where you could be most hurt. Coercing you, forcing against your will. You were the country I was claiming. The land grab. The spoils of war. It didn’t matter that I was despoiling the earth and all that grew there as long as I owned it, as long as it was mine. Better you be broken and bending. Easier to capture. Easier to control.
You had humiliated me by asserting your independence and autonomous thought, calling into question my behavior and loyalty. You had unmasked my selfish brutality and heartless cruelty and thus my true nature as a criminal and fraud. And you had threatened to withdraw your love. All these were high crimes in the Arthur Ensler court. Did I think my new tactics would win you back? Did I even believe that that was possible then? Or was it just plain ruthlessness and an exercise of brutal power? For what is rape but this? It is a grand mistake to confuse it with sex. It is a rage spasm, a violent overtaking, a desire to dominate and destroy. Like a heat-seeking missile it searches for the most vulnerable part of the victim’s body in order to render the most damage. It is punishment, it is dominion. It is the eradication of the threat, the willing demolition of all the boundaries that make us human.
And it all felt necessary and preordained. It came like a groundswell from inside the depths of my body. It was ancient with its own trajectory and course. It was a fiery snake uncoiled, a confined stallion at the gates, now in full motion. It was inglorious and triumphant. And, like a nuclear cloud, terrifyingly awesome. Rape is the twisted refraction of all that has been denied and disallowed in men, unleashed at maximum velocity. What privilege looks like on a rampage. These savage nights went on too long. Shadow Man defied all danger, but the aftershocks were everywhere.
It began with night terrors. You would wake the house with terrifying screams, thrashing, babbling madness in your sleep. You mother would go to comfort you and you would push her away, shouting, “Get your hands off me. Let go. Get out. Don’t touch me.” Darkness and terror had seized you. You were haunted. These night terrors went on and on and seemed to get worse. You hardly slept. You lost your appetite. Your mother began to worry that something had possessed you, and of course it had. She wanted to take you to see someone but I insisted that we had a history of sleep disorders in my family. The signs of my ghastly pedophilia were beginning to bleed through.
Then the terrible infections started. Your mother would find you in the bathroom crying in the early hours. Burning, you said you were burning, and you would hold yourself between your legs and rock and whimper and rock and cry. Nothing could soothe you. You were hysterical. At least three times your mother took you to the doctor. Chronic urinary tract infection was the diagnosis. But no one could explain how they had started. “What has happened to our girl, Arthur? How could all of this have come over her at once?” I could smell her suspicion. And at the same time as I was nearing being caught, it was clear some force had seized you and was taking you in a very bad direction. Your demeanor changed. You were suddenly sullen and unresponsive. No longer carefree, chatty, and inquisitive, you became depressed and withdrawn.
You moved like a ghost. You rarely lifted your head and hardly spoke. You never washed your hair and it was always stringy and dirty. You were unable to concentrate in school and did poorly in class. You could not pass an exam. You seemed unable to remember or contain anything at all. You were becoming stupid. You were demoted to the lower ranks and lost your closest friends. Other children could smell your desperation and avoided you like the plague or teased and taunted you. I despised you for this weakness. But how could I admit that I was responsible for your decline? How could I tolerate the visible outcome of my brutality? Instead I humiliated you further and made you feel your badness had made this happen. That my sweetie pie had, through her assertion and rejection, become a dirty shameful girl.
It was around this time that we were called in to your school one day. You were around ten. We found you in the principal’s office, your eyes swollen from crying, your little dress muddy and a mess. Two boys had chased you from school at the end of the day and there, in the center of the square, had thrown you to the ground and pulled your panties down in front of hundreds of onlooking children. You were inconsolable, whimpering and pathetic. I was furious and blamed you. I told you to stop your crying. How could you provoke this and let this happen? What slutty thing had you done to make them do this to you? I imagined you were playing them as you had played me. The tables were turning. I never asked you to explain what happened. I did not comfort you or take your side.
That night I came to your bed. Did I imagine I would undo all this with just a gentle corrective? Did I truly believe that with a few comforting words and a soothing touch you would suddenly change back? Talk about magical thinking! I had smashed this delicate china cup into a million pieces and no amount of sweetness or charm would make it whole again. Immediately upon entering the room I could feel a poisonous energy. You were turned away on your side, seemingly glued to the wall. Shadow Man touched you and tried to turn you over, but you were cold, rigid as a corpse. Even Shadow Man stopped. He shook you and prodded you like a panicked dog with an unresponsive master, whispering, “Turn around, Evie, turn around. Wake up. Look at me.” You remained frozen. No breath, no movement, no warmth coming from your little body. It was as if you had left yourself and gone looking fo
r another family somewhere else. As if you had left me and were never coming back. “Evie, wake up, turn around, come back. I’m here.” Not a breath, not a movement, not a sound. Had you actually died or were you like a possum protecting yourself from a predator, willing yourself into a state of thanatosis?
I felt a sickening dread. I had done it. I had killed you, murdered the soul of the being I most adored, the one who had given me life. I had violated her body, betrayed her trust, I had ripped the burning wick out of the brightest candle. I wanted to get on my knees and howl and beg forgiveness. I began to shake you and shake you as if to bring you back. “Wake up, Evie, wake up.” Your body remained rigid and stiff as I rolled you over. I shook you harder and harder.
And then you opened your eyes. You did not blink or look in my direction. Instead your eyes were staring off, far off into another universe. A world that would hold your deepest secrets. A world that would house your wounded heart. A world I would never be invited into. I had lost you. Soul murderer.
Shadow Man was many things but not a necrophiliac. This was the last time he visited your room at night. You had willed yourself dead so he could take no more life. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t angry and vengeful. Several days after, you cut off your hair. You furiously chopped it into hideous mess. After that you refused to wear dresses. You dressed only as a boy. Overnight your personality changed. You became defiant and obstinate. Your answer to every question was an insolent No. You never smiled. You demanded that the family call you Eve and refused to answer to Evie, my moniker of endearment. You never asked for help or expressed any needs. You let no one in.
Your pretty face lost its pretty. Your lips pursed, your cheeks and forehead tensed in a permanent scowl. You slumped and refused to stand up straight. Your table manners were disgusting. Your once sparkling brown eyes were now a muddy river of self-pity and sorrow. Your hair, what was left of it, lost its shine. You were quickly becoming a flat, disturbing, embarrassing child.
And I despised you for it—my murder victim tormenting me by residing in my house, forcing me to witness every day the decomposition and rot of her young being. Forcing me to face the consequences of my despicable actions. It was intolerable. It was madness. Where had my Evie gone? My sweetie pie? But of course I knew the answer. Her trust, her force of light, her goodness, her beauty were too much for me and so I violated, invaded, smashed and disfigured them and her. Then, after she had become this bitter damaged creature, I was disgusted and blamed her. I withdrew my love. Yes, I withdrew my love from you. I never gave it back. I lived to hurt you after that. To hurt you for your unconcealable hurt. Thus began the reign of punishment, violence, and terror.
I vividly remember the night it began. You were standing in the den and you had just turned ten. You were slouched and had on a dirty T-shirt that I had asked you repeatedly not to wear. You were asking if you could spend the night at your girlfriend Judy’s house. You were manipulatively sweet, hoping this honey-coated plea would conceal your desperation. I said no. I said it right away. I don’t know why. Perhaps it was because I knew it was something you wanted so frantically. Perhaps because you were daring to manifest your autonomy. Perhaps because there was nothing about you I liked anymore and I wasn’t about to reward you with anything.
You frowned and made a terrible face. You didn’t like my answer. I told you, “Smile when I tell you something, smile when I give you my answer.” You didn’t smile. You went on, “Why? Judy only lives up the street, I don’t have school. We made a plan.” Impertinent child. How dare you question my authority. “It isn’t fair, Daddy. What is the reason?” “I told you no, Eve. That is reason enough. I don’t need to give you an explanation,” and once again, I told you to smile. You didn’t smile. You stared at me with contempt. “I’ll give you one more chance.” My rage was boiling, my face on fire. And you waited as long as you possibly could, pushing and daring me to cross that edge. Then you turned your face into the most disrespectful smirk, a disdainful smile refusing and mocking my command.
And Shadow Man instantaneously leapt up and with all his might he smashed his hand across your insubordinate face. Your whole body went flying across the room until it crashed against the wall and you dropped like a flimsy rag doll to the floor on top of carpet fuzz and crumbs. And through your tears and shock, you smiled the sickest smile. You smiled and smiled as if you were some deranged robot doll. You wouldn’t stop smiling. You were no longer there. It was as if Evie had been displaced and this new Eve, emboldened ghost, was now in charge. Shadow Man versus Shadow Eve. War had been declared.
Your mother was speechless but oddly did not intervene. I think secretly she had been waiting and longing for this moment when the spell would be broken and I would denounce you and return to her. The whole family let out a collective sigh. They had a front row seat for this dramatic and brutal scene in which my obsessive adoration and all-consuming devotion to little Evie were publicly murdered.
And having been deprived and ignored for so many years, the family was more than happy to join my noble army. Eve was the enemy now. Not their husband and father. They wholeheartedly aligned themselves with me, arming me with information for my daily punishments and securing your permanent banishment. You were cast out of paradise that day. You, once held highest, were tossed from the roof to live outside alone in dirt. You, once the center of my melting heart, were banished into purgatory.
And telling you this, I am filled with horror and regret, feeling for the first time how you must have felt. The shock. The disbelief. The utter loneliness. To be exiled, to have been made to believe you were everything and then in one violent blow erased to nothing. How could you, at ten years old, possibly handle this? Who could you turn to for help when I had turned all against you? How could you not go mad when you were now taken to be the carrier of all that was deceitful and bad? Scapegoated and stigmatized, you became, in that moment, fall girl for your father’s sins. I see you wince. I warned you this would not be easy.
If it’s any consolation, the murdering of my fondness for you essentially murdered me. All that was bitter and hateful metastasized in me. I became depressed and chronically disappointed. I drank uncontrollably. As I grew into my sixties my charm dimmed. My impatience, arrogance, and intolerance shrank our circle. We were more and more isolated, and although your mother had me back, she was delivered a monster.
I realize that how my actions affected me is not your concern (may be painfully reminiscent of my telling you after each beating that it hurt me more than it hurt you), but I wanted you to know there was some justice. For if I have learned anything here in this torturous realm, it’s that there is no hurt we consciously inflict on another that does not come back tenfold.
I was well practiced and knowledgeable in the art of breaking people. Hadn’t I from early childhood been broken, severed from myself, forced into a grandiose and impossible persona? Hadn’t my parents, in pursuit of their Divine King, killed off any semblance of my vulnerability, empathy, humility, humanity, or doubt? Hadn’t they taught me through strictest Germanic child-rearing techniques that the job of the parent was to remove all willfulness and wickedness in the child through scolding and the rod? That disobedience constituted a war against the parent and any obstinacy must be met by blows?
The tracks of that training were deeply instilled in me, and the harrowing years with my brother Milton had provided me with additional tools for inflicting torment. I see this now. I was not conscious of any of this then. And it was in fact the denial of the violence and cruelty I had endured from my parents and Milton that allowed me to perpetrate deeper, more devastating violence on you. And there was an adjoining, pressing mission—to keep you submissive and quiet so you would never expose our secret. I became a righteous torturer.
I worked daily to destroy your character and break your will. I devised fault, failure, and mistakes in you. I became brilliant at it, always sussing out your weaknesses and moving in. For example, I knew
you were a deeply ethical child. You shared everything even when you wanted it desperately for yourself. You had an implicit and demanding sense of loyalty. You never told on your brother or sister, not even if it would benefit you. I could never get you to turn on the others. I knew how important it was for you to be good. I knew that in some way your life depended on it. So I made you wrong and bad. This was to destabilize you. Then I would remain in charge. Then I would maintain control over the family narrative, and I did until the end.
I made you believe things about yourself that were never true. First and foremost, I made you believe you were a liar. The irony was that you were a scrupulously honest child. But the threat of my ongoing terror and brutalization made it impossible for you to tell the truth to me, and each time you lied, it was proof and ammunition. And why was that honesty so important to me? Why was it my ongoing obsession? The answer is obvious now, after years of endless churning. When your own being is controlled by a lie, apply the tactics learned in the school of power and duplicity. Turn the tables. Make the victim of your lie the liar.
Commit wholeheartedly to this, embellish the story constantly, repeat the narrative faithfully and consistently so that you and everyone around you eventually forget the original lie and certainly lose the compulsion, will, or courage to pursue the truth. Isn’t this the story of so much of history? The powerful create the lie, package it, and propel it on its way for all eternity.