by Winnie M. Li
“He didn’t even call back, he just decided that’s the end of it, we don’t need to be in touch anymore!”
Listening to this, she’s silently toying with her uneaten lamb, twiddling her fork around the gristle and the fat.
Serena isn’t saying much either.
“Well, you know, just forget about him,” Stefan says.
“I mean, how much more of this do I have to put up with?” Magda asks.
The old her would have agreed. Chatted along. But now she’s amazed at how self-absorbed Magda sounds.
She stays quiet. Slices another roasted rosemary potato, chews and swallows it.
Just then her phone rings.
“Sorry.” She goes over to her bag, rifles around for the phone.
The number’s been blocked, and with that now-familiar wave of nausea, she knows it must be the police. Their numbers are always blocked, every time they call.
“Hello?”
“Oh hi, Vivian, it’s Thomas Morrison with the PSNI. Is this a good time to talk?”
She looks around. “Hold on a second.”
She slips down the hallway, pauses in front of a framed print of a Francis Bacon painting. Head IV, according to the words on the matting. “Yes, I can talk now.”
“Ah, so I have some good news,” Thomas says, trying to sound cheerful.
Good news from the police. A bit ironic, really. “What is it?”
“He’s been found, and he’s been arrested.”
The nausea turns into something else – a dour, ghostly version of relief, grinning like a medieval grotesque.
“Really?”
“Aye, that’s right. So you can rest safe now. He hasn’t said much yet, but I just wanted to let you know we’ve found him.”
“Thanks, Thomas.”
The detective mumbles a few other things. The community’s organized a candlelight vigil in her honor, which will take place Saturday in the park. So people in Belfast are thinking of her. Everyone’s relieved the boy’s been found.
But it all seems so surreal. His arrest is a minor victory in what feels like a doomed war. What is she supposed to do? Run delighted into the next room, announce the good news, jump for joy?
And this community vigil… complete strangers sending their well wishes, but what good will that do her? She never wanted any of this. She cannot feel joy. Nor gratitude. It feels wrong to even smile.
So she stays in the hallway a moment longer, hesitating. She hears the murmur of mundane conversation from the lounge, and she can glimpse the outline of her reflection in the glass, a pale shadow layered over the Francis Bacon portrait. The painting is a face with no eyes, just a mouth, gaping wide open and hungry, the head itself vanishing into thin air.
She stares and stares. And she expects her own face to vanish too.
*
At the sight of the handcuffs, he wants to retch.
Do anything, get out of there, push your way out of that room and out the front door, run free, anywhere, down the street.
But Da’s standing right there. And he knows he can’t bolt, he can’t retch. He just has to do what he’s told.
He holds his wrists out like a coward.
The handcuffs snap round them, cold and hard. The metal scrapes his skin.
“John Michael Sweeney, you are hereby arrested for the assault and rape of Vivian Tan on 12th of April of this year. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?”
Not really no, but that don’t matter. Like they fucking care.
And the dark clawing takes over now, he can’t breathe, he can’t think or speak. He can only let himself be clawed apart, here in this small bare room.
PART
THREE
I know what you’re gonna say. That I was bound to do something like that sometime. You don’t know when – what day or what bitch or what you do to her. But sometime, one of these times, it’ll come and get you. And you’ll regret it.
Do I regret it? Regret’s one of them words they’re always trying to hammer into you from the outside. Another trick to make you feel bad about yourself, because you’re a tinker and you’re dirt. Only, regret don’t mean nothing to me.
They ask all the time, ‘Do you regret what you did to that woman?’ How about all them other girls? And all them purses and phones I grabbed, am I supposed to feel bad about them too? Am I supposed to feel bad about my whole life? And why should I, just cause they don’t understand what my life is about and don’t really care neither. Not till your life interferes with one of theirs.
But if I hadn’t messed with her, if she hadn’t said nothing to the peelers, I’d be just fine. Cruising along, just this pavee in the shadows, and no one paying no attention to me.
So yeah, thinking back, should I have picked some other beour? Yeah. Someone younger. Someone who didn’t blab. Other boys never get caught, still wandering free as they please. But me? One bad choice, Johnny, and your life is fucked.
Unless it was always fucked from the beginning. So let’s just pretend this pavee boy’s not really there, hey.
Truth is, I’m not there. Not until some beour decides to moan about something I done. Then they think I’m something to be fixed. But I was there all along. They just didn’t see me.
*
She’s used to it by now, the look on peoples’ faces when she tells them what happened. She’s used to telling it the right way, the safe way. Because the truth is, they don’t really want to know all the different positions he made her use. And that’s maybe a little too private for her to reveal.
But even the censored version makes them flinch. There’s no point, in them knowing every single gory detail.
That knowledge is for you alone. And the police. And your therapist.
But friends… in some weird way, they need to be protected. Otherwise, it might freak them out too much, shatter their safe middle-class lives.
The truth for you is different. Everything has changed.
So she gives them the safe version of what happened. When some friends ask for more details, she’ll answer dutifully. Others say, “I’m sure you don’t want to talk about it,” as if that’s their excuse for not asking questions.
But how could she not want to talk about it? How could she possibly ignore the enormity of what happened to her on that Saturday afternoon?
To do that would be lying on a colossal scale.
And that’s a kind of deception she can’t pull off.
*
“Johnny, let’s take it step by step. Tell me where you were on Saturday, what you were doing. Let’s start with the morning, shall we?”
He’s sitting in that same small room, only more cramped than before, because this Detective Morrison is asking him stuff, along with another peeler, and then Uncle Rory. They wouldn’t let Da sit in on this part, something about him being too close. So it’s fucking Uncle Rory, and next to him is his solicitor, Mr McLuhan. McLuhan’s all wiry specs and gray suit and shiny watch, the kind of buffer he’d try to snatch a wallet from, if he saw him alone on the street.
But now McLuhan’s on his side. He’d said: “I’m only here to help you. Try to get you the best deal so you don’t have to stay in custody for very long. But I need you to cooperate with me and tell me what you know.”
So he did. Told him a version of the whole story, all with nice frills and ribbons this time, and now he’s here telling the same story again to Detective Morrison.
Morrison’s youngish. Brown suit, round face. Looks like he’d be a dopey young da on a telly advert, but here he is asking him questions with a face that means business, and the other peeler scrawling it all down, even though it’s all being recorded on some machine. Morrison writes something now and then, but it’s not like he can read it. Sweeneys aren’t known for their learning.
There’s a cup of wat
er next to him on the metal table, but if he wants to drink, he has to ask someone to hold it up to his mouth and let him go glug glug glug. Pure class, huh?
“Take your time,” Morrison says. “Take as much time as you need.”
“I woke up in the caravan that morning.”
“Which caravan is that?”
Jaysus, this is gonna be a while.
*
The other stories trickle in, unexpected. And after a while, no longer so unexpected. Because this is how frequently it happens, how often individual lives are blighted by rape. And she’s only realizing this now.
A friend’s friend.
An aunt.
A sister.
A classmate.
A woman was camping with her friend. She went to use the bathroom at the campsite, and two men were lying in wait to see who would come by. They attacked her right there.
A woman decided to go on a personal holiday volunteering in El Salvador for an NGO. On the last night, she went to a bar on her own, and somehow, two beers showed up at her table. The next morning, she woke up on a dirty mattress in a room she did not recognize. She knew she’d been raped; she hurt down there. But all she wanted was to get back to the hotel, catch her flight, and go home, go somewhere safe. Besides, the police in El Salvador weren’t going to be able to find anyone. Rape happens all too often. It’s hardly news.
A woman who had drunk too much was helped home from a party by a male friend. Who then raped her once he got into her house. He left her in shock, half-naked on her couch, at 4am. She called the police later in the morning, but she couldn’t handle the officers crawling through her house, searching through her knickers. It felt like too much of a violation, after what had just happened.
There will be violation upon violation. This much she has come to realize in these past few weeks.
*
Not nearly as fun as watching it on telly, this ain’t.
On telly, the criminal would be some big tattooed hard-man, head shaved and all, and he’d flip the table, and him and the detective would stare daggers at each other. Here, it’s everyone crowding round him, waiting for him to answer the dullest questions ever.
“The caravan you live in with your da and Michael, where is it?”
“It’s up by the road there, the one just above the Glen. You can see the waterfall and all.”
“Okay good, Johnny.”
Scratch scratch goes the peeler’s pen.
“And what time did you wake up that morning?”
He shrugs. No clocks at home and no watch.
“Can you try guessing at all?”
Who the fuck pays attention to the time so much?
“I just woke up, is all.”
“Was it… 9 maybe? Or 11? Try and remember, Johnny.”
“I dunno. I don’t look at the time.”
The peeler stops, clears his throat, looks at McLuhan.
“If my client can’t remember, I don’t think it’s fair to push him to name a time.”
“Fair enough,” Morrison says. “Well, do you think it was before or after midday?”
“Before, probably.” Seemed like morning to him, the way the air was.
“And what did you do when you woke up?”
“Hung around the caravan a bit.”
“Did you speak to anyone else?”
“Naw, me da and Michael weren’t around.”
“And where were they, if they weren’t around?”
He pulls a smirk and wants to laugh, but a look from McLuhan reminds him sharp.
“Me da was prolly out on a job. Michael… I dunno.”
“But they weren’t at home, so you were just in the caravan on your own, correct?”
“Yeah.”
“And did you speak to anyone else up at the halting site?”
“There’s this woman next door. Nora Callahan. She’s got a little kid, too. I was with them some. Had some food with them.”
“She cooked you a meal, did she?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Does she often do that, cook you food?”
Shrugs again. “Yeah, now and then. If me da’s away and no food around.”
“Did you speak to her about anything?”
“About some stuff. But can’t remember what.”
“Can you try and remember?”
“Not really, no. Just like… where was me da, where was Michael. What her man’s been up to.”
Another pause. Morrison clears his throat. “Right. So can you tell me how you were feeling when you woke up that morning?”
“Hungry.”
“Okay and anything else?”
Pause and look at McLuhan, who nods. They spoke about this. It’s okay to say.
“I was… I was still feeling sorta high.”
“High?” Morrison looks up like this is something important. “Had you been on drugs the night before?”
“Yeah.”
The other peeler starts scribbling now like he’s hearing the Word of God, but Morrison just nods.
“What drugs had you taken?”
“Some yokes. Ecstasy.”
“Pills? How many had you taken?”
“Not sure. Two, maybe three.”
“And anything else?”
“Some dope. I smoked some with my friends.”
“When you say dope, you mean marijuana, correct?”
Seriously, how much do you gotta spell out for these peelers…
“Johnny, please answer him,” McLuhan says. Fuck him.
“Yes, officer, I mean marijuana.”
“How much did you have?”
“I dunno, we passed two joints around. Shared it between three of us.”
“So you were still feeling the effects of this when you woke up on Saturday morning, correct?”
“Guess you could say so.”
“Can you describe how you were feeling the effects of the drugs?”
“I guess I was feeling like I had a headache. And you know, everything all still, like when you’re stoned. You can’t remember things clear, ’cause you’re sorta dizzy.”
Maybe they’re gonna stop asking him these shite questions now that he’s admitted he don’t remember nothing.
“So, Johnny, I’m glad you’ve told me that. But I’m still going to have to ask you to remember things as best as you can. You’ve been arrested for a very serious offence, the most serious crime, short of killing another person. So it would be in your interest to tell me as much as you remember, so you can convince us that you haven’t committed this crime. Do you understand?”
“Yes, my client understands completely.”
Thanks, McLuhan, take the fucking words out of me mouth like I’m an eejit.
“So what did you do after you had something to eat with Nora Callahan.”
“I hung around the halting site some more.”
“Doing what?”
“Dunno. Just… whatever. There’s not much to do up there. Thought about ringing me friends.”
“But you didn’t ring them.”
“I mean, I maybe tried but no one picked up.”
“And these friends are the same ones as Friday night?”
“That’s right. Gerry and Donal.”
Morrison asks for their full names, writes them down.
“So what did you do when you couldn’t get through to them on the phone?”
“I dunno. I guess I decided to go on down the Glen to hang out at the park there.”
“And what time did you go down to the park?”
“Dunno. Afternoon. Like I said, I don’t have no watch or clock.”
“Yes, of course, Johnny. And why did you decide to go to the park?”
“There’s people there. More things to see.”
“And what did you see when you were down there?”
“Just, normal people, you know what I mean? People walking their dogs, people going for walks. That sorta thing.”
“Di
d you speak to any of these people?”
“No one, no.”
“Except for the woman?”
“Yeah yeah, except for her.”
*
She gets care packages from her friends in the US.
The first is from her friend Melissa. When the box arrives, she pulls back the cardboard flaps to find packets of jelly beans, pretzels, and lavender-scented bath crystals, boxes of macaroni and cheese, and a small plush pig.
The trappings of American middle-class comfort, nicely shipped to London via the US Postal Service.
Other packages arrive: organic soaps, exquisitely designed stationery, a Beanie Baby. All with a heartfelt notecard, a handwritten message inside: I am so, so sorry to hear what happened…
These small trinkets of love and friendship, which she displays on her nightstand and along her window sill.
After four weeks, she feels brave enough to stop sleeping on the air mattress in the lounge. She moves back into her bedroom, with the door that closes shut and seals her between those four walls each night. She reminds herself that it’s just eight hours of darkness before the sun rises at 5:30 the next morning. Just eight hours that she needs to get through with the unknown blackness pressing up against the window, the city lights piercing through like small beacons across a dark sea.
If you were to ask her what she does with her time every day, she wouldn’t be able to answer.
Sleep until ten or eleven in the morning. Then write down her dreams in detail, eat some food, take that horrific PEP pill, and then… what does she do inside the confines of her flat all day?
Just a few weeks ago, she’d get bored, even having to spend a few hours on her own inside.
But time runs on a different scale for her now. It is not something that can be filled with activities, made productive. It is just nothingness, a bland series of days and weeks, a lifetime of undefined joylessness stretching in front of her.
That is her future. And her present. Her past is no longer hers. It belonged to a different Vivian.
*
“And when did you see Ms Tan?”
“I dunno. I was just hanging around and we started talking, like.”
“Who started the conversation? Was it you or was it her?”
Pause. How to swing this.