The phone died and Michael immediately turned, expecting someone to be creeping up behind him. The street was empty. He climbed into the car, slammed the door shut, locked it, and shifted the Porsche into drive. Only then did he feel the chill breeze on the back of his neck. His hairs stood on end and icy tendrils of fear clawed his spine.
Michael turned and noticed two things simultaneously. His rear passenger window had been busted out and there was someone in the back seat...someone very large with a knife. Michael jerked forward, startled, terrified. He pulled the door handle and stepped one leg out onto the pavement. That was as far as he got. The man grabbed him by his hair and jerked him back into the seat. Michael yelled. His cry choked off suddenly when he felt the cold steel against his Adam’s apple.
“Shut up and drive.”
“Don’t kill me!”
The blade cut into his skin and Michael yelped. A warm wet trickle dribbled down his neck.
“If you don’t shut that fucking door and put your foot on the gas, I’m going to give you a second smile. You got that shit?” The voice was deep, gravely, angry. It didn’t have a hint of bluff in it. If anything, it sounded like the man was doing everything he could to restrain himself from slitting Michael’s throat.
Michael obeyed, closing the door and driving farther into the park. The man frisked him quickly, roughly. Michael wept like a child.
“No gun? You’re a cocky son of a bitch ain’t you? You rape a woman and it never even occurs to you that someone might want to retaliate?”
“D-d-don’t h-h-h-h-hurt me, duuuude. This was...this was just a misunderstanding. I didn’t mean to hurt her. We were all just having fun. She wanted it. I’m telling you, she wanted it.”
There was silence from the back seat. Michael looked into the rearview mirror and could only see a dark silhouette, a shadow that was darker and more solid than the other shadows.
“You hear me, dude? I didn’t do shit!”
“Don’t call me dude. Turn left right here, motherfucker.”
The man guided him through a series of turns down familiar streets, finally leading him into Golden Gate Park.
“No way, man. I’m not going in there!”
“I’m going to make this real simple, Michael. If you do as I say, I won’t kill you. I’m going to hurt you. I’m going to hurt you a lot. But I won’t kill you. But if you fuck with me. If you don’t do exactly what I say, I’m going to gut you like a fish. You’ve only got a few seconds to decide how this is going to go. Then I start making you bleed. I didn’t kill your little sidekick and I could have. But I promise you, if you don’t do exactly as I say, I will cut your fucking head off, slice open your belly, and decorate this nice eighty-thousand dollar sports car with your internal organs. Now, drive!”
Michael stepped on the accelerator and piloted the Porsche into the park.
“Turn off your headlights.”
“But...I won’t be able to see the road.”
“There’s a full moon. You can see just fine. Turn off your fucking headlights.”
Michael began to tremble. He felt some mild relief knowing the man hadn’t killed Farrad. Whatever this man had done to him, Farrad was still alive. It had been less than an hour since Michael had spoken to him. But Farrad said the man had done “things” to him. That’s how Farrad had put it. “Things.” As if whatever was done to him had been too terrible to verbalize.
Sobs escaped Michael’s quivering lips. He began to snivel and weep as his imagination conjured up visions of castration and other, more terrible forms of genital torture. He’d once seen a picture in a body modification magazine of a man who’d had his penis split in half, a row of rings pierced through each side. Michael’s testicles shriveled up tight against him, a whimper escaped from his lips.
“Stop the car.”
They were in an area of the park that wasn’t visible from the main road. The dense trees and other foliage formed a thick canopy that blocked out the stars and moon. The streetlights didn’t reach this far, so the darkness was absolute. No one would see them and no one would hear them. Michael could hear the sound of crashing waves from the San Francisco Bay. It was an isolated, lonely sound. A hopeless sound.
“Please don’t do this. Don’t do this!”
The back door opened and Michael began to cry as the huge black man with a very large knife wrenched up his door and dragged him out of the car by his hair, punching him in the face repeatedly as he pulled him down into the dirt. Michael’s face cut, bled, bruised, and swelled.
“Please. Please. Please. No. No. No. Noooooo!”
The punches weren’t the worst of it. Once out of the car, the man began cutting off Michael’s clothes. Michael tried to resist, but each attempt to protect himself was met with punches that made the world spin. Michael blacked out several times. The last time, he awoke to find himself naked, face down, duct tape around his wrists and ankles, the huge black man violating his anus with the hilt of the huge buck knife. Michael screamed as the man rammed the leather-coated knife handle deep in his bowels without any lubricant but his own brute force. It felt like his anus was being cored out like an apple. Blood squished from his rectum and ran down the sides of his buttocks as the man continued to rape him with the knife. The duct tape around Michael’s mouth muffled the sound of his agonized screams, not that anyone would have heard him this deep in Golden Gate Park.
The man dragged a large duffel bag out of the car and withdrew a baseball bat, then he reached back in and took out the bottle of Grey Goose Michael had brought with him from his father’s bar. He withdrew the knife from Michael’s anus and replaced it with bottle of Grey Goose, easing it in deeper and deeper, using Michael’s own blood and feces as lubricant. Michael’s guts cramped as he felt the cool, glass, bottle fill his vandalized rectum. Then the man rose, placed a foot on the small of Michael’s back for leverage and to hold Michael in place, then lifted the bat. Michael screamed and tried to squirm away, knowing what was about to happen next. The man swung the bat down hard, hammering the bottle into his colon and shattering it.
What felt like a hundred shards of glass embedded themselves deep in Michael’s hemorrhoidal tissue. Then the man used the business end of the bat to grind the glass in deeper, putting his shoulders into it and grunting audibly with the effort. He shoved the bat in as deep as he could, managing to get nearly six inches of it into Michael’s anus, rupturing blood vessels as jagged shards were embedded deep into his rectum. Before climbing back in the car, the man urinated all over Michael, taking care to aim the warm stream at Michael’s face.
Michael was still conscious, screaming in a hell of indescribable pain, when the man leaned down and whispered in his ear. The man’s face was all shadow. Eyes and a mouth surrounded by darkness that bled into the surrounding night. It took a moment for Michael to realize what he was looking at. A ski mask. His attacker was wearing some sort of black Lycra ski mask.
“I could have castrated you permanently. I should have castrated you. You will not fight this in court. Even if you tell the police what I did to you. Even if they catch me, one of my dear friends will come to visit you, and they will take from you, whatever I want them to take. Cut it off and bring it to me. Do you understand?”
Michael nodded, still sobbing and sniveling.
“If you fight the charges in court. If you try to make Natasha out to be some kind of slut who asked to be raped. I will be angry. I will come for you again. Do you understand?”
Again, Michael nodded.
“Now, when you get to a phone, I want you to call the hospital, ask for Natasha, and I want you to apologize to her. I want you to beg her to forgive you. If you don’t, I will come for you again. You understand, you piece of shit?”
“Yes! Yes, I understand! Don’t hurt me again! Don’t kill me!”
The man in the black mask climbed into Michael’s car and drove away, leaving Michael naked in the park with the baseball bat still protruding from his blee
ding asshole.
CHAPTER XV
The phone rang and every nerve vibrated in sync with the chime. I wanted to scream. My head was cloudy from the pain meds, but the pain was still there, pounding like thunder between my ears. A migraine the magnitude of Mount St. Helens.
I remembered where I was. Why I was there. Attempted rape. It was an old story, but one I thought I’d put behind me. Meeting Kenyatta was supposed to mean the end of drunken date rapes. He was supposed to keep me safe, but he hadn’t been there to protect me.
Hours passed. Nurses came and went, checking my vitals, asking me how I felt and whether I needed something for my nerves. I watched soap operas and game shows. A psychiatrist came in, looked at my chart, then asked me if I was having nightmares, trouble sleeping, if I would be afraid to leave the hospital and go home, and then, finally, the big question: “Have you had any suicidal thoughts?”
I laughed. I don’t know why. I just thought it was funny. Almost every day of my life, the idea of suicide had been there. I even found it comforting to know there was always a way out of this madness if it got too rough. But not now. As crazy as it might seem, Kenyatta had given me something to live for. I had a goal. The idea of checking out before achieving that goal was the furthest thing from my mind.
The psychiatrist left and I tried to sleep. My dreams were all fantasies as I drifted in that twilight between waking and deep slumber; I dreamed of Kenyatta coming to rescue me, taking me back to his house and bathing me like he did that night before the slave auction. Treating my wounds, rubbing me with lotions and scented powders and dressing me in furs. I smiled and wept. Then the phone rang. I snatched it up quickly, hoping it was Kenyatta. I almost said his name until that loathsome voice came whining through the phone. Only this time it was less unctuous, devoid of all threat. It sounded weak. Wounded. It was barely a whisper, but I still recognized it.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I—we—didn’t mean to hurt you. Please...tell him to stop. Okay? Tell him we’ll confess. Okay? Tell him...we’re so sorry. Just call him off. Don’t...don’t let him...don’t...”
I hung up the phone. There was no question who it was, the same asshole who’d called and threatened me before. Only now, someone had threatened him. He sounded completely broken. Terrified. And I knew who had done it. I smiled. I even laughed. Tears of joy ran down my face. Kenyatta still loved me. He was still looking out for me, protecting me. Sleep came easy now. I rolled onto my side and curled into a fetal position. I think I was still smiling when I fell asleep.
“Kitten? You okay?”
He was here.
I woke up and there he was, smiling down at me. I hugged him, pulled him down into the bed with me, and cried on his chest.
“You’re here. I thought you weren’t coming. I missed you so much.”
“I missed you too, Kitten.”
I held his hand to my chest, then I looked at it. The knuckles were bruised and swollen. I kissed them and whispered to him. “Thank you.”
He smiled back and nodded.
“They are discharging you. They said you didn’t suffer any major injuries. Just some minor bruising. No broken bones or anything. They didn’t find any evidence of rape either. No vaginal or rectal bruising or tearing. Delia must have gotten to you before they could...”
“Take me home, Daddy. I want to go home,” I whined, holding Kenyatta’s hand to my face as I wept.
Kenyatta recoiled, snatching his hand away from me. The look on his face was one of shock and disgust. He was looking at me like he’d caught me spreading my legs for another man. I could feel his body tense up. The atmosphere in the room changed. It felt like all the oxygen had been suddenly sucked out. I felt confused. My body trembled.
“Are you quitting? You’re giving up?”
“I—”
“Then say the safe word, if you want it to be over.”
“Kenyatta, I-I was almost raped!”
That seemed to make him even angrier. I didn’t understand. What was going on? Why was he treating me this way? I looked at him, mouth open, unasked questions hovering on my tongue. Delia walked into the room and I looked over at her, my eyes pleaded with her for help, but she would not look at me. As if out of thin air, Kenyatta produced the book, 400 Years of Oppression. My heart sank, knowing what was about to happen.
“In Africa,” he began, “a woman’s primary role had been to raise children. Mothers held an honored place in most African societies. On American plantations, this role was perverted with African women being forced into sexual relationships with other slaves, and even with the slavemaster himself, for the purpose of increasing the valuable labor force and satisfying their white master’s lascivious desires. The children born of matings with the plantation owners and their female slaves were automatically enslaved. The average female slave gave birth to her first child at nineteen and bore at least one child every two and a half years for as long as she remained fertile. Many of these children were born of rape. Slaves were prohibited by law from defending themselves against physical and sexual abuse and would be subjected to vicious beating by their masters or mistresses for doing so. Rape by their slavemasters and other white men was therefore a constant reality for female slaves, a reality that was ignored by white Christian society.”
Delia turned away, looking down at the floor as Kenyatta slammed the book shut, the last word on an argument that had not truly started.
“This is part of my ancestors’ reality. All of it! You can’t take it? You know what to say if you want out. Say it!”
His eyes were angry. It frightened me, confused me even more.
“Do you want out?”
I dropped my head. My bottom lip trembled and tears flooded from my eyes in an endless deluge of woe.
“No. I’m still in.”
Delia handed me my outfit. Stuffing the sundress I’d worn during my ride to the hospital into a plastic bag, she pulled out the latex and leather corset, garters, leggings, and the studded dog collar that had become my uniform on the farm. I wept as I put them back on.
“It’s time to go,” Kenyatta said and together we left the hospital.
I held onto Kenyatta as he walked down the hall. I buried my head in the space between his chest and his shoulder, squeezing him as if I could hold him there by force and prevent him from leaving me again.
CHAPTER XVI
I returned to my plow and the days and weeks crawled by slowly. Mistress Delia cut me no slack after my ordeal and any laziness on my part was followed by a whipping. On some days, I hoed the fields and planted grape seeds. On others, I picked grapes until the sun set and brought them to the winery by the basketload. Inevitably, I was returned to the plow.
My body grew stronger, leaner. A diet of carrots, squash, onions, peppers, okra, yams, tomatoes, leafy greens, corn, black-eyed peas, rice, potatoes, watermelon, grapefruit, apples, and grapes, lots and lots of grapes. Meat of any kind was a rare luxury and usually consisted of very small amounts of pork, chicken and beef from parts of the pig, cow, and chicken I’d never before considered edible. Brains, tongues, intestines, eyes, jawbones, and feet were not uncommon sights in the meager stews I was provided. I didn’t know if this nearly vegan diet and the repulsive scraps of meat I was given were yet another chapter in my education on the lives of African slaves or Kenyatta’s plan to reshape my thick curvaceous body into one more in line with the modern American female aesthetic. That is to say, skinny. I asked Mistress Delia about it and was surprised when she produced her own copy of the book that had become my bible. It was the first time I’d ever seen her with it. She left the room and returned with it under her arm. The entire time she was speaking, I stared at the book, wondering where she’d gotten it from, if Kenyatta was in the house somewhere, watching me, and had given her the book to read to me. I was so deep in thought that my eyes must have glazed over. Mistress Delia brought me back to attention with a hard slap with the back of her hand that reddened my cheek and ma
de my eyes water.
“Pay attention!”
“Y-yes, Mistress,” I stammered, abruptly jarred from my fugue.
“Rice and vegetables were the primary staple of a slave’s diet in the South. Meat was a relative luxury and only provided in small portions consisting mainly of the scraps left over from the master’s table. These table scraps were the parts of the animal that were considered unfit to be eaten by the slave owners and their families. The legs, feet, jaw, eyes, brain, ribs, tongue, organs, skull, and intestines of butchered animals were given to slaves as a cheap form of nourishment. Better cuts were reserved for the master’s table. These undesirable portions were cooked with whatever herbs, spices, and vegetables were common to the area and could be easily scrounged up. Ingenious slaves transformed these animal scraps into palatable meals. Some of the dishes prepared by early slaves, such as pigs intestines (chitterlings) and chicken livers (gizzards) are now considered Southern delicacies.”
I nodded and never again complained about my meals. I was a slave and this crap was what slaves ate. I needed to be as ingenious as those early slaves and try to make something tasty out of these horrible scraps of meat, bone, and organs. I began preparing my own meals, experimenting with different herbs and spices until I was able to create recipes for almost every odd piece of animal flesh that was plopped in front of me. That helped make my servitude more bearable.
The police came to the farm once to inquire about the two men who’d assaulted me. Two officers showed up on our doorstep and Mistress Delia called me in from the field to talk with them. I had to take a moment to change my clothes. I was still wearing next to nothing. I joined the two detectives in the family room. There was a tall Asian man in a short-sleeved button down shirt and necktie and a short black guy who reminded me of Danny Glover minus five or six inches in height. They stood as I entered and introduced themselves. I forgot their names seconds after they’d left their lips.
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