by Winnie M. Li
So she tells them. From the very beginning. That morning, when she set out from the bed and breakfast near the university. The bus she took after she had bought supplies for the hike. During the bus ride, she texted a few acquaintances to try and make plans for that evening in Belfast.
She got off the bus and started walking through the park. She passed a few people, and then she saw him, standing right there in a bright white jumper against the green. And he approached her.
When she’s finished, the policewoman, Detective Joanna Peters, thanks her. “You’ve done very well. You’ve given us a lot of information we can work with.”
Yes, information. That’s what she is. A database of facts for you to download.
They have a map. Can she point out where these things happened? Where he approached her first, the second time, and the final time? Where he dragged her into the bushes?
The map is a blow-up of the area around Glen Forest Park. She’s good with maps, but this map isn’t great. Though the streets are clear, the park itself is patchy, a mess of green and tree-icons, with no trails marked out. And no topographic markings. The river is just a thin blue line.
She gets annoyed. Either with the failure of her map-reading skills or the vagueness of the map itself. Or both.
“This map isn’t detailed enough,” she says, frustrated. “Can you get me a map with topo lines on it?”
She’s practically demanding it. A map! With topo lines! How difficult can that be?
The police hesitate. They’ll try. She knows they must think she’s crazy.
But what they don’t understand is the topography of the place is key. The hollow of the glen itself and the rise of the land, steeply, along the slope up to the level plateau.
Without that topography, she can’t retrace what happened.
This map depicts everything as if it were a level playing field. Flat, undynamic, static. But in reality, there are bends and dips in the land, ridges and valleys. Places for people to hide, places for people to lose themselves and never be found.
*
Not in the city centre no more, with the straight streets and the glassy shops and the loud families and the big old City Hall. Naw, he followed the river, started walking along it. Grey warehouses and bridges with cars going over them. Grey water trickling past.
Walking. Walking. Most of the time forget what he’s walking from.
Then it might break through to him. The woman, her long dark hair, scrabbling with her in the mud, her soft throat under his fingers, flashes of sun through the trees.
But it’s all right. She was fine with it. She weren’t angry toward the end.
She wanted it. Like all them bitches.
No just keep walking. Don’t let it catch up to you.
Keep walking.
*
The forensic exam. This is something she’d never thought she’d be part of in her lifetime.
These are things you see on television, in oppressively lit movies set in chilly Scandinavia. These are not events meant for her to experience.
Yet here she is, in the exam room. Bright fluorescent lights and grey-green walls.
The examining doctor is a warm, maternal woman by the name of Bernadette Phelan. Late-fifties or early-sixties, with soft padded hands and a gentle way of speaking.
“First, I need to ask you to comb your hair very slowly with this comb.”
Doctor Phelan presents her with a plain straight plastic comb, the kind they used to give out in school. She is to comb this very thoroughly through her hair, over a piece of stiff grey paper, which will catch any dirt or other bits of potential evidence.
She stares at the comb. She hasn’t combed her hair with this kind of comb since third grade. Slowly, painfully she draws the comb through her thick hair, which is matted, tangled with who knows what she picked up while forced down onto the forest floor. The fine comb-teeth snag on her hair, rip out a few strands, shaking loose dirt and mud. She does it again and again, showering crumbs of mud onto the paper.
Doctor Phelan promptly curls up the paper and tips any evidence into a labeled bag.
“Next we need to take swabs from you, so we can get samples of any genetic material he may have left on your body.”
They’ve taken notes on where she said he touched her. So they swab her neck (when he started to choke her), her hands and wrists (when he pulled her into the woods). Her lips, her fingertips, and her mouth. They swab her mouth thoroughly, cotton buds going in and out.
And now she can finally have a sip of water.
There will be more swabs later.
“But for now, the photographer will need to take pictures of you. We need this as evidence, to document the injuries you’ve sustained.”
The doctor apologizes the photographer is male. He was the only one available just now. Will she be okay with that?
She nods. She doesn’t have much choice.
Stand on this piece of paper. There’s a white backdrop behind her, blank and clinical.
Bright flashbulbs flare into her face and she’s momentarily blind. Again and again. A few shots from the front. Now turn around. Now to the side. And the other side.
Now, very carefully, take off your clothes. Slowly, so we can catch any evidence on that paper beneath your feet.
She takes off the long-sleeved blue hiking shirt. It’s difficult getting it over her head, there’s something like whiplash setting in her neck, her back, stiffening up her body. But she has to do it on her own. No one can help her and risk accidentally getting their genetic material on her while they’re collecting evidence. Eventually, she gets the shirt off, drops it on another piece of thick grey paper.
She is photographed with her shirt off, showing the torn bra. Looking straight ahead, face neutral, tired, wishing she weren’t here.
It’s rare she’s ever taken a photograph and not tried to smile. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do for photographs? Say cheese? She’s been saying cheese since her first kindergarten photograph at the age of five.
But she’s definitely not smiling now.
She looks straight ahead, eyes dull and blank, staring at the wall and nothing more. Perhaps she should be holding up a sign with a long number in front of her. Like a Holocaust victim. Like an arrested criminal. Awaiting whatever lies ahead.
*
“Gerry,” he says, shivering on the doorstep. “Gerry, I think I done something.”
Later that evening. It’s dark, finally. Somehow he’s found his way over to Gerry’s neighbourhood, then his street, then his house, wondering if he was back yet from his job at the building site. Peeped through the window, and there he was, feet up, watching telly. None of Gerry’s family was around. Safe enough. He knocked on the window.
“Jaysus, you look a wreck,” Gerry says, pushing the door open.
He looks around. No one else here. Steps inside, where it’s warm and bright and smells like cheap air freshener and cigarette smoke and old fry-ups all mixed together.
“What happened to you?” Gerry’s got a tin of Carlsberg and a bag of salt-and-vinegar crisps. Which he starts to chomp down on. That yoke’s worn off, finally. He just knows he’s been walking all afternoon, all over Belfast, and now he’s cold and hungry and his feet are still wet.
He says nothing, so Gerry points to the mud on his jumper. “Look at the state of you.”
“I think I done something, I’m not sure what,” he repeats, between crisps.
Gerry looks at him funny. “Well, start from the beginning.”
He sits down on the couch. It creaks.
“There was a girl…”
Gerry laughs. “That’s how it always starts.”
“No, well, it didn’t go the same way.” He can’t put this into words. What was so strange about it? About her?
“This one was different.”
Gerry snorts. “What d’ya mean?”
He and the lads have always thought there are three types of girls: our
girls, the settled girls, and the tourists.
Our girls: the ones you grow up with, in the caravans next door, their virginity watched over by angry mothers and placid images of Mary, even though our girls may show their navels, wear tight shorts and thick makeup, you don’t touch our girls. Not until marriage. Or at least that’s what Michael’s always told him.
Settled girls: fair game. You need to be smart about them, though. Only go for one when you’re in a place for a few days, or about to leave – and then, scram. Clear out of there. You never know when settled girls will blow the whistle, scream for their da because they regret shifting some tinker, and then the last thing you want is the peelers after you. Peelers always hate us.
Tourist girls: now there’s your golden ticket. They’re here on holidays, spending money like fools, like they have too much of it and don’t know what to do with it. Out for a laugh, a bit of craic. Make sure they’re drunk, give them a bit of the Irish charm, a wink or two, and they’re yours.
‘Tourist girls – they’ll lie down in nettles for it,’ Donal used to say.
And it was true. How lucky had the lads been these past few summers? Michael – he’d struck gold with all those hen parties over from England. Ridiculous girls with too much make-up on, gabbling like a flock of eejits, yours for the price of a Bacardi Breezer or two.
And somewhere down the line, if they protest, try to get out of it, it won’t matter. Too late for them. You’ll still get what you want. And in the end, they’ll never call the peelers, Michael says. They don’t want to ruin their holiday. They’ll leave town in a couple of days, fly back to their posh life in Manchester or Liverpool or wherever, and you never have to worry about them again. End of. Easy takings.
“Tourist?” Gerry asks him, pulling him back to the here and now.
“Yeah, of course.” But he can’t remember what it was about her that made her so different. Everything was mixed up, them yokes still floating him high and his head pounding when he shouted at her, pushed his hand up her shirt.
“This one was Chinese.”
“Chinese?”
“Yeah, like, long black hair and all that.”
“Sexy.” Gerry nodded approvingly. “Like your one in the porno?”
He nods back, swallows a swig of beer. Yeah, but not quite.
*
She peels her clothes off, one by one, in order to be photographed. FLASH FLASH FLASH. Now the trousers, down to her torn bra and underwear. She turns around, to the side, the other side. So they can get the best shots of her bruises and cuts. FLASH FLASH FLASH.
“Get a close-up of the right foot.”
She looks down. Her right foot is covered in dried mud and there are scratches and scrapes all along it.
They don’t ask her to remove her underwear. Not in front of the male photographer.
Eventually, he leaves. Then they ask her.
She pulls her underwear to the floor. It’s cold in the examination room, and she stands there for a moment, naked, on top of the collecting paper.
She looks down at her body and only then notices all the bruises and scratches and surface cuts. There’s a giant bruise on her right thigh. A chain of them all down her right calf. A big scratch on her abdomen. Her arms, both left and right, are covered in bruises. Both knees are mottled brown and blue, almost unrecognizable.
It’s as if she’s looking at someone else’s body. She can’t register these injuries as her own. She can hardly feel them.
Her underwear and all the clothes are taken away for evidence. The paper she stood on is taken away for evidence. They need to swab her some more for evidence. Her breasts, the finger-shaped bruises on her arms and legs where he grabbed her – these places are swabbed by Doctor Phelan, all for evidence.
They give her a thin paper gown to wear. It does little to insulate her from the cold of the room.
And now, she is sitting on the examining table.
She remembers how traumatizing pap smears have been for her in the past. The metal stirrups. The dreaded speculum. Every time she had one scheduled, she dreaded it for days, cried whenever she had to open her legs for the speculum.
The notion of inserting anything cold and metallic and mechanical in there now, after what she’s just gone through… She instinctively flinches.
Doctor Phelan unloads the metal stirrups from the corners of the examining table.
The nausea builds to a breaking point.
“Wait,” she says.
She knows she can’t get out of this. She knows this is a necessary part of the process, that inexorable process which was set in motion hours ago when she decided to phone for help. But to have to be subjected to this, the burrowing and the mechanical scraping inside the most vulnerable part of her body…
She tries to calm herself down. “Can I… can I ask for my friend to come and sit here so she can hold my hand?”
That’s the best she can hope for in this situation.
“Yes, of course, love,” Dr Phelan replies.
So Barbara comes and sits down next to her. “You squeeze as hard as you need to, sweetie,” she says reassuringly.
And she squeezes. Harder than she could ever imagine squeezing in her life.
In that place in the forest, with the boy, she was numb, devoid of any feeling or sensation because there was so much adrenaline, so much confusion and fear about what was happening.
But here, in the cold, silent examination room, she feels everything.
The speculum slides in, forcing a wider space open between her legs, and she shuts her eyes and silently, she cries.
*
“Never had a Chinese girl myself. What are they like?”
Gerry’s saying this as he munches on crisps, but he’s in no mood for joking. He can remember, in flashes, her small soft tits, the softer pussy, but there’s no pleasure no more. Instead there’s that something clawing at the back of his mind, jabbing into his memories, flapping and blocking out the light.
“Come off it, Gerry. She was fine, I guess. But something’s not right.”
Gerry shrugs. “She’s Chinese, don’t worry. She’ll just go quiet. When’s a Chink ever raised the alarm on anyone?”
“No, but, she weren’t just Chinese, she was American, too.”
Gerry stops, puts down the beer. He’s got a funny look on his face, like he’s trying to imagine this one who’s Chinese but also American.
“American?”
“American. It was like… she knew what she wanted. She had this deep voice, spoke straight at you. She didn’t cry, she didn’t beg, she didn’t giggle. None of that.”
“Where’d you find this one?”
“In the park.”
“What was she doing in the park?”
“I dunno, just going for a walk.”
“Anyone see you?”
“No.” There wasn’t a soul around. He’d made sure of that.
“So what’s wrong? Think she might blab?”
“She was a bit older,” he adds.
“How much older?”
And he can’t remember. It was all a blur, seems like forever ago now. He knew she was older and he liked that about her. Knows he asked her how old she was, and she answered straight away, no hesitating the way the other girls do. Only he can’t remember what she said.
“I dunno. Twenty-something.”
“Like twenty-one or twenty-eight?”
“Jaysus, Gerry, I can’t remember! I was still rolling. She was older than she looked.”
“And she looked like she was in control?”
“Well, yeah, sorta. In a strange way.” Even though he had to punch her a few times, choke her to get her to listen.
Gerry don’t say nothing. The Carlsberg is empty. He goes over to the fridge for another. There’s only one left, so he sets the tin halfway across the table, so they can share it. Cracks it open and the foam fizzes out, down the side of the tin.
“You nick anything from her?”
“No.” This time he’s ashamed. He’d had her down on the ground, doing everything he wanted, and he forgot to take her purse. Remembers now that silver watch on her left wrist, flashing like a fish just out of reach, when she bent the branches away. And he regrets not ripping that off, too, claiming it his own.
“You didn’t even try?” Gerry looks at him like he’s mad.
“I forgot.” Everything had been so confusing.
Gerry shakes his head. “Well, I reckon that makes it safer. Less likely she’ll tell anyone. If you’d taken her purse, an American like that might’ve gone to the peelers. How’d you end it? When you were done with her.”
“It was strange, like. She took out this apple and just sat there and started eating it.”
Gerry starts to laugh.
“I told her I wanted her to go down the path, but she was having none of it. Just sat there eating this apple.”
“You said she didn’t cry?”
“No, didn’t cry, didn’t seem angry. Just sat there.”
“Did she say anything?”
“Not much.” Then he remembers. “She did say something, she said, ‘Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.’”
That don’t sit right. Why’d she say that?
Gerry seems cagey, too.
“And you don’t trust her?”
He hesitates, then shakes his head. “I don’t know.” And why trust her? Or anyone else?
Gerry sucks in his breath, studies one of the beer coasters. “I don’t know, boy. You may just be fine. She may just get on her plane tomorrow and be off and you’ll never have to worry about it.”
He nods, unsure.
“I’d say, sit tight for now. See if anyone blabs in the next few days.”
“And if she does?”
“Then I think you need to run.”
But where to? Back down to Dublin? He’s been walking around town forever, and he’s suddenly so tired, fucking knackered from the past day. And where’s Michael and where’s Da? And how’s he even going to get down to Dublin with no money?
Gerry puts a hand on his shoulder. “Jaysus, lad, you’re about to burst. I didn’t mean to upset you there. It’s just a girl, don’t worry. My guess is, she won’t make a peep. And you’ll be just fine. Just fine.”