by Winnie M. Li
He jumps up, stares towards the path along the ridge and thinks he hears sirens, maybe. No, he’s imagining things.
It’s just the wind in the trees, the clattering river.
He’s got to go. He’s got to hide.
The dark clawing, his cock still throbbing and angry. His head pounding and his heart, too.
Don’t go to the caravan, she’s gone that way. The other direction, then. At the bend in the road, he nearly smashes into a fat woman and her man, out on a stroll in shell suits. They look at him, he tears away, wants to burst into a run.
Don’t run. Don’t make them suspicious.
Head down, get yourself up the road into town.
If only he could fly, legs leaping into the air, wings pumping, away from Belfast and the whole fucking mess of forest and town and hills, till they are specks – tiny little specks on the great broad land below him.
*
She’s cleared the woods now, the tangled undergrowth, the path with upturned stones, and she’s heading across the field. The field she never managed to cross the first time she got there.
If she were following the trail she’d keep to the right, alongside the glen, but she makes a definite turn left. Straight towards the busy road.
Out of the shade of the trees, bright, disorienting light floods her vision. It’s still only mid-afternoon, though it feels as if she’s lived an entire day in the past half hour. The green grass of the field pulses in front of her. She wobbles, she’s exhausted, she’s tempted to sit down. But no, reach the busy road first. Get some distance between you and that place.
Somehow, in her mind, she equates the busy road with safety. Anonymity. Drivers and passengers cruising past in enclosed vehicles and moving on to far-off places.
Between her and the road, a clutch of trailer-vans occupies the green field. There’s even a few people out. A woman, hanging up laundry on a clothesline. A toddler stumbling by her feet. A man with dark hair shoveling something into a bucket. She hadn’t been expecting this; she hadn’t been expecting people so soon. She’s almost tempted to turn back to the trail. Who lives in these trailers? Is it safe to approach them for help? Can she trust them?
They stop and look at her, but she keeps stumbling past, very aware of their eyes on her. She skirts around, keeping a healthy distance from them. Knows she sticks out, knows they probably don’t want her here. She’s trespassing in their backyards, isn’t she? And yet, part of her still wants to run up to them, plead with that woman for help. Tell her what’s happened. Say it. Say the words out loud.
Help. I need your help.
I’ve just been…
I’ve just been raped.
Is that the word? Has that really just happened to her? He was just a kid.
She keeps on walking. She instinctively doesn’t feel welcome here among the trailer-vans. Doesn’t think they want this sobbing, foreign woman thrusting her problems upon them.
Tears are drowning her eyes, and she puts her head down and keeps walking forward to the busy road.
Everything is so bright in the sun. She needs to go somewhere and rest, but she doesn’t know this terrain, not even the name of the road. She’s somewhere in West Belfast, somewhere near Glen Forest Park. Her breath jerks in uneven gasps. Her mind spins with half-formed thoughts, flitting and ducking: what should she do? What should she do next?
She needs a plan.
You’re a producer. You’re a backpacker. You can handle this. Form a plan of action. Control your sobs. Control your sobs. Control your breathing. Just walk. Just get to the busy road. Call Barbara. Just get to the busy road.
She leaves the people and the trailer-vans behind to her right. Twenty, thirty feet more until she reaches the road.
But she doesn’t want to wait that long. She needs to speak to someone now, or she’ll never tell anyone. She needs to put it into words to confirm them, confirm to herself what just happened.
She stops and gets her phone out of her backpack. Grateful he never took it from her, never even tried to take that or her iPod or her wallet. Relieved when she sees three bars of reception at the top of the screen.
Barbara. Call Barbara. Who is still in Belfast.
She calls Barbara. Barbara is surprised to hear from her.
“Hey, how’s it going?”
She attempts to be chatty. Doesn’t want to freak Barbara out right away. “Barbara, how are you… what are you up to right now?”
“Oh, I’m just finalizing some of the press releases for the event last night. Making sure our publicist is on track, stuff like that.”
There’s a pause. She can’t break it.
“How… how are you?” Barbara asks.
She hesitates. “I’m… I’m not doing that good. Actually, I… I think I need your help.”
Get it out.
“I… I think I’ve just been raped.”
There. She said it. She crumples into tears, but she’s passed on the burden to someone else. She doesn’t have to deal with this on her own anymore.
There’s a pause, then Barbara leaps into action: fast, decisive, efficient.
“Oh my God. Where are you? Is he nearby? Who was it? Are you safe now?”
A flood of questions – logistical, practical – and that’s what she needs to pull her out of this mess. A safety rope, thrown down, and all she has to do is hold on and follow instructions. She grabs onto the questions, tries to answer them even as her answers dissolve into sobs.
“Yes, yes, I’m safe now. I don’t know where I am.”
And again, more tears. But she has to be practical. She controls her sobs, gets her breath in order. Tries to tell her as much as she knows.
“I went hiking… I went hiking, and this kid just came up to me. I’m in Glen Forest Park, or somewhere just near it. I’m not in the park anymore. I’m by a busy road. I don’t know the name of the road. It’s surrounded by fields, it’s got to be the only road in the area.”
Barbara’s voice is firm.
“I’m going to call the police, Viv. Stay on the line, don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right here, but I’m going to call the police.”
She tunes out, doesn’t want to hear Barbara on the phone reporting a rape. Too many exacting details.
But two, three, four more steps… And finally, at last, she’s at the road. Not really busy. In fact, it’s empty at the moment, the macadam stretches in a great grey band across the fields to the horizon. But it’s calm and safe. Nothing can happen to her here, in plain view of the cars that might be driving by.
She crosses the macadam, an invisible border separating her from that place behind her. There’s a mound of green grass, waist-high, and she collapses upon it.
Just wait. Now, she can just wait.
Barbara’s speaking to her again. “Hang on. Stay right there. The police are going to come find you, and I’m coming, too, but the police need to speak to you to get more details on where you are.”
There’s a beep on her phone. Call waiting. Must be the police.
How does call waiting work again? Which button does she press?
And then she’s speaking to the police. It’s a male voice, the Belfast accent heavy and hard to understand but at least he’s friendly. Where is she?
She describes again. Glen Forest Park. She took the bus west, past Andersonstown, along the Falls Road. Walked up the glen…
“We’ll get there as fast as we can,” the policeman says. “It may take a while, but we’ll get there. We do apologize, but please just be patient and wait there.”
She’ll wait here all day if she has to. She doesn’t have the energy to go anywhere else, or even to get up again.
She takes another sip of water and fixes her gaze downward. At the ground. The sun is too bright. She can’t look up. Just look at the ground and wait. And wait.
Cars race past her on the busy road. Do they see her, this girl sitting by the side of the road, looking down? What do they think she’s doing there? She doesn’t wa
nt them to stop, doesn’t want them to ask if she needs help, if she’s okay.
She’s not okay. She’s just been raped.
Yes, she can use that word now. Has used that word now. Will use that word again in the future.
Rape rape rape rape rape. She’s just been raped.
Never thought she’d use that word, ever. That it would apply to her in her lifetime.
Of course, she’d heard that word before. Had on some level, like all women, always carried that fear that comes with the meaning of that word.
Other women had been raped. Women in news stories. Nameless friends of friends of friends. But not her. Not her. It wasn’t something that could happen to her.
But now it has.
Now she’s been…
Raped.
The word itself is the worst. This label slapped on her like some cheap and tawdry fly-poster that can’t be ripped off. A hot iron-brand, stamped painfully into her flesh, burning burning burning burning. Permanent.
Raped.
This afternoon. In this place. With the sun so bright, still so bright, forcing her gaze down to the ground.
The wail of police sirens. She looks up.
The police have arrived. One car, two. Yellow-and-white vans with sides checked blue, sailing onto the scene. Blue lights at the top of the vans, flickering in the sunlight.
They get out. Two women, two men. They are here. Casting lean shadows on the ground like sheriffs in a western.
Are you Vivian?
She nods.
One woman squats down next to her, looks into her eyes.
Are you okay? Can we help you up?
She squints against the sun. Nods.
And one of them leans down, offers her his hand, which she takes, and pulls her onto her feet.
The policewoman speaks with a thick Belfast accent she can’t understand.
Authoritative questions twisted around words, the vowels all distorted. “Can you describe what he looked like? How tall was he? What colour were his eyes?”
His eyes were blue. Ice-blue. That detail she can’t forget.
Other things, height, build, age… These facts swim around in a viscous mire, difficult to grab. She guesses, admits she’s not good with estimating distances, heights of people.
Freckles, ginger-brown hair.
Not huge. Medium to slim build.
And age? And age.
She has no idea how old he was. He told her so many different versions. Realistically, how old could he be?
Sixteen? Seventeen?
He said he was sixteen, and again, she wants to vomit. She just had muddy, unasked-for sex with a sixteen-year-old.
She’s sitting in the police van and they are asking her these questions. One policewoman is filling in a form on a clipboard. Outside the sunlight is still blinding, but Barbara has arrived, and sits next to her in the shaded interior of the police van, holding her hand.
She’s spitting out details, trying to provide as much information as she can. She’s an open collection of facts, exposing everything she can for the police to sift through. Here, take whatever you need: descriptions, estimations. No emotions, no human feeling.
Did he say where he was from?
He said a bunch of things. None of which might be true. He said he was back and forth between Dublin and here. But that he went to Armagh a lot. He said he’d raped girls in these woods lots of times before.
Did he have a Dublin accent?
No, it didn’t sound very Dublin.
So it was more of a Belfast accent?
Well, no, not quite. The accent wasn’t from here.
So it wasn’t a Belfast accent?
I don’t think so, no.
Was it an Armagh accent then? Or more like an Omagh accent?
What? I…I’m not sure.
Barbara pipes up. “For Chrissakes, you can’t expect her to know the difference between these kinds of accents!”
She’s grateful for that.
Listen, all I know is that he didn’t really have a Northern accent. Didn’t twist his vowels the way you do.
That’s the best she can do.
The policewoman nods. Scrawls something on the form.
Okay, would you be able to come with us now to the scene of the crime? To explain what happened where?
The scene of the crime. That place in the woods, along the trail, before you reach the field.
Yes, she can go. Doesn’t really have a choice now, does she?
That place in the woods. She’ll go back if she has to.
So she ducks down as she gets out of the police van, and shields her eyes as she steps out. Back once more into the bright sunlight.
As she walks back across the field with the police, she notices the people standing outside the trailer-vans again. There are more of them now. Not just the woman and the toddler and the dark-haired man. But a few more women, an older man. All standing outside, staring.
They stare at the police entourage. This criminal investigation tromping right through their backyard.
Right through their backyard and toward the woods.
This is where he confronted me.
She points this out to the police. Tries to explain what happened. She was walking, he came out of the woods.
Then over here, he became… what’s the right word… threatening.
Then over here, he grabbed me, dragged me towards the woods.
And then right here, in this spot.
You can see where the stones are upturned, the mud scuffed up.
The police take out the familiar tape – the kind you always see on television shows – POLICE BARRIER. They cordon off the area.
The bright, fluorescent tape stretching around thin tree trunks, blocking any further passage along the trail.
Over here, this is where he was choking me and I was lying on my back, before any of my clothes had come off.
Over here, he had me in this position.
And then over here, in this position.
And on and on.
This where he… where he wanted doggy-style.
And over here where he, um, wanted anal.
The police nod, understanding. Barbara isn’t with her, she was asked to stay in the vans. She’s glad of that.
“We’ll be bringing dogs out now,” the policewoman says. “To see if they can pick up a scent.”
Police dogs. She imagines a whole horde of them, sniffing their way down the trail. Barking and sniffing, straining at their leashes. Because up ahead runs a solitary figure. Frantic, desperate, out of breath. That pathetic, miserable, scumbag boy with a pack of dogs and the police on his heel.
Could they still catch a scent even now?
She glances at her watch.
It’s not even 4pm. Another hour that lasted forever. How time slows down now.
She’s suddenly tired. Can she go?
Yes, we’ll take you back to our special Rape Crisis Unit on Ladakh Street.
Isn’t Ladakh in India? Tibet? She nods. Tibet, wherever. As long as she can sit down.
She turns to go.
“Oh.”
One more thing.
“One of my water bottles came out of my bag during the struggle and it fell down the slope. You might find it down there.”
She gestures to the weeds and undergrowth carpeting the steep side of the glen.
The police mumble something generic. They’ll have a look. Maybe they’ll find it.
Maybe it’s not important to them.
She turns away, and the lost water bottle, undrunk, nestles in the undergrowth of her mind.
She looks back to where she needs to walk. Back across the field, past the people who stand outside their trailer-vans, staring. And she wonders what they’re thinking.
*
All the way into town he’s walked now. No buses, no money for it anyway. Walking fucking miles through Andersonstown, then down the Falls to the city centre, and here he is on Castle Stre
et, people out doing the weekend shopping. Kids who won’t stop whinging, pulling at their parents. “Mummy, I want this, I want that…” Oh, fucking shut it.
Never comes into town during the day, but here he is. City Hall looming up, never seen a building that fucking big before, back when he first saw it.
He shouldn’t be here, should he, right the fuck next to City Hall after what he’s just done.
But what has he done? Nothing bad, right, no, nothing out of the ordinary. Not me.
No, no it’s good. You’re fine. Look at all these people, in their faces. Anyone suspect? No, you’re just some kid.
You just blend in. You’re nobody.
*
In the police van, on the way to the Rape Crisis Centre, the rage sets in.
“That little fucker, I’m going snap his neck in two,” she seethes to Barbara.
She sees his face before her, the ice-blue eyes, the cheeky expression. She wants to throw a solid square punch right into that freckled smirk. Split his face open.
She’s never punched anyone before, never felt the urge. But now she feels it. Something vital and relentless, implacable.
How the fuck did this just happen? It’s about to be Saturday evening and right now she is muddy, scratched up, confused, exhausted, because some scumbag teenage boy has just shoved his penis inside her when all she wanted to do was go for a hike.
How dare he?
And now she’s in a police car, heading somewhere unknown. All her plans have been ruined, shredded, and a new terrain has suddenly opened up. Unexpected, unwanted.
And something tells her: this is only the beginning.
Inside the Rape Crisis Centre on Ladakh Street.
The lights are dim, the furniture in earth tones, muted. She’s sitting on a soft brown couch and it feels like the lobby of a spa. Racks with women’s magazines. Dried grass arranged artfully in vases. She half-expects someone to bring her a glass of cucumber water.
But no. They’re not offering her anything to eat or drink. They can’t until they’ve examined her body for evidence.
Oh, she says. I already ate an apple and had some water.
That’s okay, they say. But best not to have anything else until after the forensic exam.
She wonders about what the exam will be like, but there’s no time, they’re asking her question upon question. Tells us what happened again. In as much detail as you can possibly remember. Even the tiniest detail could help us find him.