Sweet Hell on Fire

by Sara Lunsford

  But my revenge wasn’t worth letting my children grow up without a mother.

  Protecting myself was another story. If he came to my house again, I’d shoot him and deal with the fallout.

  I wasn’t going to tell anyone else what happened. What good would it do? They’d either see me as a victim or they wouldn’t believe me. And either way, I had enough shit to deal with without other people judging me.

  But I realized that was like lying.

  So I told my mother, my husband, and a good friend. He wasn’t my boyfriend yet; we’d talked about dating when my husband and I divorced.

  My mother said that she’d always told me that someday, someone would be stronger than me. I don’t think she meant it to be as shitty as it sounded, but it hurt. So I told her that all the time she’d smoked, I’d always told her she’d get cancer and hung up on her.

  The future boyfriend asked me the same questions the police had, and to put the icing on that cake, in a later conversation he said that he’d talked to friends about what I’d said and that they were convinced I’d made it up for attention. That again, I didn’t act like a rape victim.

  That’s because I’m not a fucking victim, cocksucker.

  And how the fuck would they know? Have any of them been raped? And if they had, how could they say that about a woman they don’t know? Everyone deals with trauma and pain in their own way.

  How am I supposed to act? Never leave the house again? Cry? Stop eating? Stop going to work? Stop living? I won’t deny I was screwed up, but how would any of that help me? The only thing it would do was give my rapist power over me. And I didn’t let him have it while he was violating me, so why would I give it to him later? Fuck him. Fuck that. Fuck you.

  I thank him for that now. For making me realize no one was going to get me through this but me. For making me see I had to stand on my own legs even if they were broken. And for making me see that he sure as hell wasn’t the man for me.

  But my husband? He just held me and told me it would be okay. That’s all I wanted, and he just knew. He didn’t make it about him, or about our relationship. For him, it was about me.

  On one of our first dates, we’d gone to see The Faculty. One couple showed up throughout the movie and they were always pushing each other, saying, “Do something.” And after the movie, we’d done the same thing to each other. It was a running joke. We used to wrestle around, spar and practice moves together. I discovered I couldn’t do that with him anymore when I went over to his mother’s house and we were talking and he nudged my shoulder. So, I nudged him back a little harder. “Do something,” I demanded and laughed.

  When he took me down, flattened me on the floor, I lost it. I don’t remember what I did, but everything went black, and when I woke up, he was holding me, telling me his name over and over again, and promising it would be okay.

  It was because of this incident that I sucked it up and went to a therapist that my psychiatrist friend recommended. I didn’t want to be that woman, I didn’t want my life or my relationships to be defined by what one person had done to me.

  But it was a waste of my time.

  I only went to one session and the therapist was a twat. She was so condescending, and when she asked me how something made me feel, I realized I couldn’t pay a woman that stupid to be my friend. That’s what therapy felt like to me. I was paying her to listen to me. How did that make me feel? Well, you stupid bitch, I was raped. How the fuck do you think that made me feel? What a stupid question.

  I get that the point of therapy is to talk about your feelings and that’s what I was doing. I didn’t need to be prompted. I was spilling my guts, talking about my feelings, and then to ask me that dumbass question? Nope. I was done.

  I’d dealt with everything else thus far on my own, so I’d deal with this too.

  My first day back to work after it happened was tough.

  When the door clanged shut behind me in the sally port, I grabbed the edge of my coworker’s jacket. Panic rose in my throat like bile. I hadn’t told anyone else what had happened, so he asked me if I was okay and I nodded and let go. I acted like I was playing our usual game of trying to snatch something out of his pocket or his lunch box without him noticing. I’m sure he knew the difference; I’d never just grabbed his sleeve like some lost little kid. He let it go because he wasn’t the type to pry, but he put his arm around my shoulder in a gruff hug to let me know he was there if I wanted to talk.

  But I was okay. Not because he was there for me to grab his sleeve, but because I was going to make me okay.

  The other door opened quickly and I was behind the walls.

  I worried that they’d smell it on me. Like I was some gazelle who’d been culled from the herd and I was crawling on my belly through the savannah leaving a trail of blood behind me for the lions to follow. I didn’t want to meet anyone’s eyes. I thought for sure they’d see it if they couldn’t smell it already.

  But this was my job. No one was going to put food on my table but me. So I had to suck it up, pull up my big-girl panties and go to fucking work, and I couldn’t act any different than I had before I’d been raped, or work would get a lot harder.

  Once I was back in the cell house though, I found that if I didn’t think about it, I could do it. I had the keys to the cages; I was the one in control. I was the one with the power.

  About a month after it happened, after I was raped, I was in a cell house and an inmate tried to cow me. He got very angry with me because I wouldn’t let him use the phone. He was on restriction, which meant no phone privileges. He wanted to call his daughter on her birthday. But I’d already seen this asshole’s file. He was in prison for molesting her. I’m sure a call from him was the last thing she wanted on her birthday.

  He tried to act like he wasn’t going to go to his cell after I’d told him no. He said I was messing with the wrong man. The same overused, overtired litany of shit I heard day in and day out. He stepped into my personal space while he was yelling, and I wrapped my fingers around my radio ready to crack him in the head with it. I didn’t back down. I thought for a moment I was going to have to call an alarm, but he stepped back and went to his cell when he saw I wasn’t intimidated by him.

  Later in the night when I was running doors to let guys out for religious callouts, he crept up behind me. I still don’t know what his intentions were; he swears he was just trying to talk to me, but everyone in prison knows better than to sneak up on an officer or even another inmate. Further, inmates and officers both keep a reasonable, professional distance from each other unless direct contact is necessary.

  I don’t know if I felt his presence, if some sound alerted me to him, but I knew I had to fight. I didn’t even take the time to turn around before I engaged. I stepped back hard on his instep, brought my elbow back with all the force I could manage into his gut, and spun around and shoved him as hard as I could to put as much distance between us as possible. It was a move for my safety and also so I could analyze the threat and have a few more seconds to decide my next action.

  He lay on the ground where he’d fallen and put his hands behind his back to be cuffed. At that point, my second officer should have called an alarm, but he didn’t. He didn’t do anything but stand there slack-jawed and stupid. I had to tell him to go finish letting inmates out for callout and locking up those who’d returned.

  I could have called an alarm here as well, but I didn’t think the situation warranted it after I already had the cuffs on him. I walked him to the office and called the Captain to let him know what happened.

  The inmate ended up staying in my cell house rather than going to Seg, and I was okay with that. We’d each made our point and my dick was bigger. He was just a bully who thought he could intimidate me into giving him his way.

  I had sex as soon as my stitches healed.

 
Sex had always been a good part of my relationship with my husband, even when we were separated. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other.

  I remember one night before this happened. He came into work and was on his way to his post when it just struck me how absolutely delicious he was. I passed him on the yard, and I couldn’t help but drag my hand over his shoulder and bicep. He was so strong and tall—formidable.

  He has this thing he does when he’s in a situation where he needs to make it clear he’s the alpha male. It’s not even a conscious thing, but he swells. He puffs up like a blowfish. Everything on him gets bigger. He gets measurably taller, his muscles flex, and he carries himself in such a way that makes him look bigger too. It’s sexy as hell.

  I would have dragged him out into the parking lot if I thought I could’ve gotten away with it. He knew too. That’s something else about my husband, he’s so confident. Sometimes it comes off as arrogance, but he wears it well.

  I needed that strength again when I decided I wanted to have sex. I knew it would be with him, whether or not we got back together. He was the only one I trusted with that.

  Logically, I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. I knew sex didn’t have to hurt and it wasn’t about pain. One man had done something bad to me, but it was my body and I was going to use it as I saw fit. I’d enjoyed sex before and I wasn’t going to let him take that away from me either.

  So I told my husband what I wanted. He didn’t ask me if I was sure, didn’t ask me if I wanted to talk about it, or pick it to death like some rancid scab. He just accepted what I said and came over.

  He brought me a rose and rented a movie. It was almost like when we were dating. I can’t count how many movies we rented, starting watching, but never got more than ten minutes into because we always ended up naked.

  The first time he kissed me that night, I wanted to scream. When I closed my eyes, I saw my attacker. So I kept my eyes open. It was a little weird to kiss him with my eyes open, but it was irrefutable truth the man kissing me was my husband. The man’s hands on my body belonged to him. I wanted them there; I’d invited them to be there.

  It still hurt like a motherfucker.

  It was like I was a virgin again. I didn’t tell him that though. And I think he deserves a whole box of cookies for not being weirded out when he opened his eyes and saw my eyes were open and knew they had been the whole time.

  He just accepted that as what I needed to get through this.

  It was completely unexpected how considerate and tender he was. We’d never been like that in bed. It was always intense and all about building the physical feeling. It was never slow, patient, and gentle.

  When we’d split up, we didn’t even like each other. I’d felt nothing but relief that he was gone, but now I only felt that relief when he was close to me. He asked me if it hurt and I said no. I didn’t want him to stop.

  I was going to take my life back and nothing was going to stop me.

  I finally told Sunshine what had happened.

  She told me she was proud of me, for how strong I was to be moving on with my life. She didn’t say she was sorry for what had happened to me, she didn’t treat me like a victim. And she asked me if she could share something with me.

  Whenever she’d offered advice in the past, it was never what she would do in the situation. It was what she thought I should do. What would be best for me, not what would appease her ego. So I said yes, that I was ready to hear it.

  Sunshine told me I could choose happiness. That was the best thing of all—it was within my power. It wasn’t some dancing butterfly to flit away from me, but it was heavy and solid. Something I could decide to hold onto, and it started with being thankful.

  We’d had this conversation before, but I hadn’t been ready to hear what she had to say. While it began identical to the previous conversation, the place we ended up was completely different.

  I asked her what if I didn’t have anything to be thankful for, and she said I just wasn’t looking hard enough. To start small. With something seemingly insignificant. To take something I was unhappy about and find the good in it. When she couldn’t find a job, she said she was thankful for the desire to work. Something so tiny, but it led to other things. Yes, Sunshine had said this before too. I’d tried it, and it had worked. But with this? It couldn’t possibly.

  I started with being thankful for the desire to be happy. It’s a small thing, and you’d think everyone has it, but they don’t. Not actively. When I was face down puking canary yellow mixed drinks out of my nose like some tropical island fountain? I didn’t have that then.

  Then I was thankful for my friend, for her lessons that brought her the knowledge to share with me. I was thankful that I wanted to be a better person. I was thankful for the width and breadth of the hearts of the people I loved and that they could forgive me. I was thankful for the story idea brewing in my head because I knew I was going to write again.

  She was right. Happiness was just like misery. It would build on itself over and over again until you had a pile of shit or a pearl. Finally, as my awareness of my blessings kept building, I started crying again. But this time, it was because I was happy. I’d built my joy to such fervor that when I finally got to the big blessings like my family and my friends, I was overwhelmed with the sheer beauty of everything. It was like another kind of high, but it was healthy and good.

  It gave me hope that I hadn’t just been blowing smoke up my own ass and everything really would be okay—better than okay.

  Even after everything, I could be happy.

  Small spaces were not the problem, so it wasn’t claustrophobia in the traditional sense. It was any space I didn’t have control over. Since the sally port had bothered me, I wondered if I’d be okay in the tower. The towers were small. Enclosed.

  But I had control over my space, over entry and exit. Unlike the sally port, where someone else controlled the gates.

  That’s always been one of my biggest triggers, the loss of power. Only now, it was magnified ten thousand percent.

  I’ve had a harder time coming to terms with my debilitating and gut-wrenching terror at being confined to any space that resulted from the rape than I do with the rape itself. Yes, he took my power away by raping me, by forcing me to submit to a physical act that was unwanted. But the fact he was in my head, that I allowed him to be in my head, that was the cardinal sin. Because I was supposed to have control of myself. I choose my actions. I choose my reactions.

  But I didn’t choose. I was being swept away by this tidal wave of fear and that was so far beyond unacceptable to me. I’d always been fearless, strong, armored in a sense. I was the one who always had an answer and a safe, warm place beneath her wing for those who weren’t as strong as I was. Craven weakness had always disgusted me more than stepping in a pile of warm dog shit with bare feet, and now I was the one with broken wings out in the cold.

  I know some people would say it wasn’t weakness, that I needed time to heal, that my reactions in the situation were perfectly normal. Maybe they were. For other people. Not for me. I’m the one who ran down Independence Avenue in my bare feet after my ex-boyfriend chased me with an axe and laughed about it later with the Mexican gang members who saved me. I’m the one who was a single mother who went back to work two weeks after my daughter was born to take care of my responsibilities. I’m the one who stood between a friend and her abusive shit-bag ex when she finally decided to leave him and when he took a swing, he was the one who got his ass kicked in the most cliché way possible, a dirty frying pan on the stove. That was me. This sniveling, needy, broken thing was not.

  But it was.

  And I hated it. I was so disgusted by myself. More so than even with the drinking because when I realized I was self-medicating with the alcohol, I just stopped. I said I was going to quit and I did.

  I gue
ss my mother was right and someone was, finally, stronger than me.

  While on some level I knew my husband and I were going to work it out when in the middle of Best Buy he pulled me close to him and we started dancing to Etta James, I hadn’t been ready for it then.

  I wasn’t ready to acknowledge it until the night I came home from work and he was waiting for me in my apartment. That was the reason I didn’t want him to have a key to start with, but I found I couldn’t be angry with him for being there, even though I wanted to be.

  We finally talked about everything. He admitted who he’d slept with and I admitted who I’d slept with. Then it got ugly. All the confession wasn’t good for the soul; it just hurt. We said some horrible things to each other. I guess to really take you there, I should describe them. Tear the hole wide so you can see everything, but it’s not just about me and I don’t want him to look like any less the knight in shining armor he is now. It’s okay if you know what an asshole I was because that’s mine to tell.

  But the details of what was said don’t really matter. What matters is when everything was said and done and he was ready to walk out my door for what would be the last time, I couldn’t let him go.

  I asked him to stay.

  He said only if he was staying for real. Only if he could move in. Only if we were together.

  I said yes.

  In two weeks, we had the kids living there with us too.

  It was a shitty one-bedroom matchbox, but it was ours. We were together.

  Boy, were we together. We gave the kids the bed and we slept on a broken-down futon. Once we lay down for the night, that was it. There was no wiggling, no stretching, no turning over. We were forced to sleep snuggled up together. That wasn’t something we’d ever done before. If we didn’t keep all the weight in the middle, the leg would collapse.