Ten Words No. 19:
Rez Rape
A Short Story by Bloce Kaibab
(See 10 Words Intro for an explanation of the concept.)
The random words:
savored, leathern, mugs,weakening, ailments, pregnant,
latching, acyclically, petters, stitched
savored,
savored,
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He was a grunter, this one. God, how she hated grunters. A fat, hairy grunter. Reminded her of her mother-in-law’s pigpen. The only pigs on the reservation and she had had to live three years with their ugly noise, night and day. This one, though, was almost finished. He was breathing faster, a couple of hard
shoves, one long grunt, and he was done. She didn’t know which was worse, the kissers or the petters. She turned her head, her eyes still closed, and said, "Come again anytime." None of them ever got her little joke. She put her hands on his chest and pushed lightly. He got off her and out of bed. She swung her feet to the floor on the other side and took her robe from the chair while he discarded the condom and put his clothes on. She looked at her watch. Three more hours. The bed sagged and sloped as he sat down to put his shoes on. "You ever think about moving north, let me know. Got a friend with a big station on I-90 up in Montana that’s always looking for quality girls." Jesus. She was so tired. She said nothing, just wanting him gone. "Not much Indian pussy up that way. You’d get a good price. They go for stout girls, especially the ones that look almost like they’re pregnant." He snickered. She held her robe in her lap and fumbled by the bed for her shoes. He was finished, standing at the door. "No need to get huffy. Just trying to be friendly." She turned, gave him the best smile she could come up with, managed a wave. He left. The shower was hot, and she savored the smell of liquid Dial, luxuriated in the smooth feel of the soap on her skin. It was the smell of freedom, the shower being the only time in her 12-hour shift when she was safe, alone. The buzzer that George had by the counter outside could sound at any moment, but until then she was free. Drying off, she came back into the windowless room, put on her robe, slipped into what she thought of as her leathern slippers that her daughter had made for her last year in third-grade crafts class. She ran her fingers along the irregular stitching and listened to the sound of trucks outside, the whir and pinging of gas pumps, muted voices. She sat in the easy chair, left the TV off, and picked up her book. For a year and a half, she had been working her way through James Fenimore Cooper, thinking (foolishly, she knew) that maybe if she read the white man’s old books she could come to a better understanding of what had happened. Cooper wasn’t helping her much with understanding but he was giving her words she had never seen. Old words, such as "leathern." She tried to lose herself in the story, but it was becoming more and more difficult. She was beginning to doubt that she would get through the three remaining volumes in the reservation library. The East Coast people were, well, a whole different tribe. She laughed at the thought. A whole different tribe. And the lush forests in Cooper’s books were another world, compared with the rocky land just outside these walls. In her mind she saw the high desert covered with velvet mesquite and black creosote bushes, falling away to the north toward the distant Verde River. At least there, a few minutes’ walk from her house, were proper trees, Arizona sycamores bending in the wind. She imagined Joe propped in bed, the TV going, staring out toward the river. Daughter would’ve brought his supper by now, and soon she would ask if he wanted to transfer to the chair and go outside for a while. With the sun gone, the breeze would cool quickly, and they would talk, and Joe would remind her that her mother would be coming back from her Phoenix job tomorrow for the weekend, and maybe they would make plans for a picnic by the river. Joe was good at giving Daughter small projects, little bits of hope. It was a skill he had developed only after the accident, something he seemed to have learned in the months in the hospital: you live best, with the least pain, by dividing time into short increments. Make plans only for tomorrow or the next day. Anything longer was too dangerous to think about. The buzzer tore into her. Jesus. She came back to the room with a start. She rarely let herself think about that world when she was in this one. To do so was to tiptoe too close to the question of whether Joe knew that the whole Phoenix "career" as a paralegal was a lie, whether he knew about the truckstop. She punched the intercom. "Yeah, George." "I need to come talk a minute, OK?" "Sure." What was up? George almost never came into the room. He met the customers, took the money, sent them in, then sent them on their way. She would see him when she arrived and when she left she would stop by his office to pick up her share, but after two years they had little to say to each other. It was strictly a working relationship. George ran four girls. Two on twelve-hour shifts during the week, when the trucks were rolling, and two for the weekends. A profitable arrangement for them all. On an average shift she would have six to eight customers and depending on what they wanted she would clear 40 to 80 dollars each. She had once been in George’s office, a storeroom actually stacked high with boxes of tourist souvenir kitsch—Valley of the Sun mugs, posters of desert sunsets, t-shirts with gila monsters—and got a look at his tax return visible on the desk, and she had realized that he was clearing as much, tax-free, from his little one-room whorehouse out back as he did from the entire huge operation of the truckstop with its 20 gas islands, its store, and restaurant. Everybody in the valley knew George, and knew what he did. He had been here since before Interstate 17 came through. Halfway between Phoenix and Flagstaff, the location became a goldmine when the Interstate opened. And everybody knew about George’s little sideline. In school on the reservation, just ten miles away, everybody knew. All the girls thought all the boys went there all the time, but she had learned the truth. In her two years she had not had a single native customer. Which hadn’t surprised her. Her mother had taught her the truth, telling her again and again that the reservation was a prison. Sure, she would say, the gates are always open, but the lock is here—and she would tap her chest over her heart, and that just shows how clever the white men are. Tapping at the door. She let George in. Remarkably free of the ailments of age—she figured he was at least 80, George sat on the bed, and motioned her to the easy chair. "I got a strange one for you. I don’t want you to do it if you don’t want to, OK? Guy called from Phoenix. Says he was here last month and liked you. Wants you down there for a party tomorrow night." She was already shaking her head. "Hold on. The deal is, I go with you, sort of like security. He’s doing what he called an Indian-theme party. All he wants is for you to be there, mingle with the guests, just talk. Nothing else. But you gotta do it without clothes." "George, why are you—" "Just a dang minute, all right? I checked the guy out with some people down there. He’s big money, big house in Scottsdale, all legal. I told him it would be your choice entirely." She felt herself weakening, knowing that George was holding back the punchline. Otherwise he would never have approached her with this. "How much?" George grinned. "Five thousand. And because this is you going way out of the way, I figure instead of our usual 50-50, we go 20-80. You walk away tomorrow night with 4,000. Just for standing around talking for a couple of hours." She nodded, thinking. Usually she got home Friday evening. This meant she’d have to wait till Saturday morning. She could call Joe and let him know. "Money up front?" "Of course." "OK. But there’s no need for you to go. If the guy’s as legit as you say, I’ll be OK." She couldn’t accept the picture of George standing around at the party with her naked on the other side of the patio, or bumping into him in the living room. George looked at her in silence. "Whatever you say." "I get the money before I go?" "The man says he’ll courier it up here tomorrow morning." She smiled, knowing George was trying to be real casual, using a city-word like "courier." "OK, George. Cash in hand tomorrow, and I’ll go." She took the valley exit at Cordes Junction, made the odd little dogleg around George’s station after she turned off the access road, and headed north. Not even aware of the frequent signs admonishing drivers to "go slow, keep dust down," she drove at a habitual 15 miles per hour along here as everyone from the reservation did. Her mind was empty, her body on automatic, controlled by some instinct she hadn’t known about until today, something that said go home, go to the land, and don’t ever leave. She had stood, sat, walked around at the party. No one spoke to her. When she arrived, the host, middle-aged and paunchy, had thanked her for coming, told her to mingle freely, but asked her not to speak, and said that the guests had been instructed not to speak to her. She was, he said, "living decoration." The house, one of the old estates in the hills, was fully lighted, and open to the night. She had wandered through rooms full of art, sat in a living room larger than any house on the reservation, then found a xeriscaped garden where she watched the stars. The several dozen guests came and went, avoiding eye-contact, but she knew they all looked at her. At last she had found that at the edge of the large patio, she could stand with her back to the house, looking out into the sweet darkness of the desert night and become less aware of the visual violation that was occurring. As the hours passed, something inside her built and built, a pressure, a deep pain she had never felt before. Only the thought of the four thousand dollars locked in the glove box of her pickup outside and what it could buy for Joe and Daughter kept her from screaming. Finally, around four a.m., the last guests had left, the host had thanked her again, she dressed, and drove away. A smaller dirt road forked to the right. She stopped at the gated cattle guard. The gate was never locked, only latched. Why lock it? The white men could come whenever they wanted to, which wasn’t often. The red men could leave whenever the centuries-old wound healed, which as far as she could tell wouldn’t happen anytime soon. She climbed out of the pickup, leaving the engine running, the door open. She watched her hands unlatch the gate and swing it forcefully wide. Behind, she heard it clank against the front bumper of the pickup. She took off the fuck-me pumps, threw them to the ground, and stepped gingerly across the hot metal grid of the cattle guard. The black cocktail dress chafed against her skin in the hot sun, but she had nothing else to put on. The road, its dust just tinged with the red that painted this part of Arizona, stretched arrow-straight in front of her, disappearing in the distance where it plunged toward the floor of Verde Valley. She reached back and pulled the clasp clumsily from her hair, which fell free in long straight strands to her waist, and started walking. After a few minutes, she stopped, turned, and looked back at the pickup, like someone who’d forgotten a book of matches on a restaurant table. It wasn’t important. Just leave it. She couldn’t imagine a time when she would ever go out that gate again. She started walking again, knowing that in a few minutes she would see the tops of the sycamores down by the river. END
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