The Illusionist (19 page)

*  *  *

I lie there on the gurney in the paper gown under the thin white blanket, my teeth chattering and my body shaking so hard now I can hear my bones rattling inside my skin and I'm afraid my bones are going to break. A woman pokes her head between the curtains. “Lily?”

Got to straighten this out. “Dean.”

“I'm Debbie. From the Rape Crisis Center.” She is maybe forty. Got a wide face and dark curly hair down to her shoulders. Wears jeans and a pink sweatshirt, and you can tell immediately she's a lesbian. You can always tell. There's this seriousness in the eyes. Anyway all those Rape Crisis types are lesbians. She carries a clipboard in her hand. I can tell she's new at this.

“I want to get out of here,” I tell her. “I want to take a shower.”

“You got to hold on till the police come, honey. A shower'll wash away all the evidence.”

At this, I sit up on the gurney. “I don't want the cops!”

She takes hold of my hand. “It'll be okay, Lil—” She corrects herself. “Dean. I'm here to help you.”

Once probably she'd been pretty. Probably had grown children, then found herself as a dyke and now she is doing this work, in which all men are brutes, to prove her point.

Just then, a Chinese guy dressed in a white coat comes into the cubicle. “I am Doctor Chu.” Sounds like he's not even sure who he is, says it almost like a question. “I will have to examine you.” He's afraid too, I think. Looks too young to be a real doctor.

“No!”

“If there is a rape, you must be examined,” he says. Like he's reciting something he's learned in a textbook.

“No. Go away.”

“We must look for injuries,” he says.

Debbie says, “Dr. Chu has to examine you, honey. He's gotta take slides for venereal disease and get a sperm sample for the DNA.” A little catch in the back of Debbie's throat, her voice is deep, womanly.

“It hurts. It's bleeding.”

But the doctor's pulling on his rubber gloves, like an executioner getting ready to do his work, I think. Drapes the blue cloth over my legs and slides his stool up to the gurney. She's holding my hand firmly, and I realize I'm a prisoner here. “Please,” he says. “Please bend your knees.”

And now he's looking there, peering in at me where no one's ever seen before except my mom. “Laceration of the hymen.” he says. “Bruising of labia majora consistent with forced penetration . . .” Like he's talking to himself or something.

Meanwhile, she's standing at the head of the gurney, gripping my hand while my nails dig into her flesh and my toes are curling in terror and she's acting like she isn't interested in what he's looking at.

The doc stands up. “Please move down to the end of the table toward me.”

Then his hand reaches way inside me, and I'm pulling away up to the top of the gurney, almost falling off it. I've never had this before. “Shit oh shit oh shit!”

“Please, you must push down toward me. I cannot do this . . .” He holds his hand up in midair, looking to Debbie for help.

“He can't do it, honey,” she says, “unless you cooperate. You gotta move down.” I'm a prisoner here, this is legal imprisonment, I got to do what they say.

So I slide down toward the doctor, giving in giving in, but squeezing the muscles between my legs tight as I can. I feel him force his fingers into there and I try to cut them off with my muscles but it's no good. His hand deep into me. He presses the other hand down on my stomach. “Try and relax please . . . the stomach muscles . . . I cannot do it unless you relax the muscles . . .”

“You gotta be kidding!” I yell.

He's looking at the wall as he works. I can feel this little hard thing inside me like a bony tail attached to the end of my spine that I've never known about before and he's flipping the nubby thing back and forth with his fingertips. And now it isn't just pain, it's beyond pain—just unnatural. As if they haven't done enough to me and now they're
doing this. “Shit oh shit oh shit. Why do you have to do this to me?” And I burst into tears and my face is all wet and I feel like this baby helpless collapsing inside like I'm just nothing and they're just trying to hurt me.

“No internal lacerations . . .” Still reciting, at the wall.

“Just hold on to my hand,” Debbie says. “We all hate this. Coupla seconds.”

And now he's got this steel instrument like pincers that he's holding in the air. “What's that?” I cry.

“Speculum,” he says.

“So he can really see inside,” Debbie says. “Doesn't hurt. Looks worse than it is.”

But I'm sobbing like a baby now. Debbie smooths my hair back from my forehead with her fingertips. “I know, I know,” she says. “You never had one of these before?” she asks.

I can't talk just shake my head from side to side.

Then at last, he slides the thing out of me. “Now we take care of your face,” he says.

*  *  *

After he's sewn up the wound under my eye, Debbie brings me hot tea in a paper cup. “I got to get out of here,” I tell her.

“You have to wait for the police. They'll be here in just a minute. They're short-handed because of Christmas.”

“I don't want the cops,” I say.

She stands looking down at me, trying to figure out her next move. Somewhere she's rehearsed all this, they taught her how to do this in Rape Crisis School or whatever—the frightened patient not wanting to go to the police, terrified to testify. They probably have training sessions on how to deal with hysterical victims.

“If you don't report this,” she says, “they're gonna do it to someone else. Sure as I'm standing here.”

“I don't care. He's gonna fuckin' kill me.”

Just then, there's a knock on the outside wall and the curtains part. Why, it's fuckin' Officers Jubey and Payette! Hideous Jubey, round-
shouldered, buck-toothed. Squatty little Payette with her bright orange hair.

“Get them out of here!” I cry. “I'm not saying a word. Now I'm really not talkin'.”

I see Payette look at Debbie. “She's reporting a rape?” Payette asks.

That gets my goat. “I'm not ‘she'!”

“You know her?” Debbie asks.

“We just arrested her on a stolen check charge, and for criminal impersonation,” Jubey tells Debbie. Jubey pulls his notebook from his breast pocket, moistens his lips 'cause his mouth is always open 'cause of his big teeth. “When did this happen?” he asks.

“I'm not saying nothing. They'll kill me.”

“But they always say that,” says Debbie. “You got to think about the next victim. The police will protect you, won't you, Officer?” She looks at Jubey.

Jubey says, “If there are any threats, we can arrest—”

“Aren't they better off in jail than out there where they can do it again?” Debbie says.

“I want them fuckin' dead,” I say. And then, in spite of myself, I feel the tears welling up again, and they spill down my cheek, burning the torn skin, the place where he's stitched the cut. And I know I don't count for nothing and I just have to do what they say.

Jubey flips open the cover of his notebook. “Ma'am, what is the name of the person you are accusing?”

“I'm not ‘ma'am'! It's fuckin' Brian Perez and that asshole Jimmy Vladeck.”

“Can you give us an address?” Jubey asks.

“How should I know their address!”

“Were there witnesses?”

“Only fuckin' Jimmy.”

“Where did this alleged event take place?”

“It isn't ‘alleged.' It's real. In the back of my truck in the parking lot at the Wooden Nickel. Out on Old Twenty-Seven.”

“Anybody drive by while you were there?”

“Nope.”

“About what time was this?”

“I don't know. I don't have a watch! I didn't keep track of the time for God's sake. Carl, the bartender, he saw us when he was closing up. Then, after the other two had gone, they—did it.” And suddenly I can't even say the word, what “it” is.

“We'll talk to them,” Jubey says. “We'll attempt to locate them.”

“You got to arrest them,” says Debbie.

Jubey looks at Debbie, hesitates. “Well, this— . . .” he begins. “We already arrested this person. She claimed she was a man. . . .” His voice dwindles like he's afraid of the whole subject.

“But she can still be raped,” Debbie says.

I lift my head from the gurney. “I'm not gay! I'm not fuckin' gay.”

I see Jubey swallow, his big Adam's apple rippling down his long neck, which is curved like a turkey's. He nods in my direction. “This a man or a girl, Doc?” he asks.

Dr. Chu clears his throat. “Well, we have no sign of a phallus or testes. The examination is consistent with a normally developed female, late adolescent, approximately twenty years old.” Pompous ass.

Payette is still standing there like a fool, gaping at me. “We'll attempt to locate the parties,” Jubey says, finally.

*  *  *

They're gone. Debbie leans over close to me, and I can feel her big, soft breasts under the dark pink sweatshirt, breasts like my mother's, against my shoulder.

“I'm gettin' out of here,” I tell her.

“Doctor has to sign you out.”

She puts her hand on my shoulder to keep me down, but I push her aside and slide down off the gurney and as I touch my bare feet to the cold linoleum floor, I hear ringing in my ears, and I have to steady myself. My clothes are draped across the chair. I start pulling my jeans on under the hospital gown.

“Just a minute!” Debbie says, and she starts for the curtain. “Just let me get the doctor.”

I let her go. But as soon as she's gone, I'm out the door. And I am vanished!

Dec. 16. I hope he burns dear god, I hope he burns. Burn burn burn suffer suffer suffer. I know that he must still love me somewhere. . . . How do I know? Because when I lay underneath him with my legs spread apart, wide as wide as angel wings I open my eyes a moment and he's smiling pleasure I never knew anyone who liked it this much, he says, because he's found his purpose in life. . . . And I took care of him. You're so good, so fine, he tells me. He really loves Bobby—I wish he were mine, he says. I wish I were his dad. I supported him. She cannot support him. . . . When my head is roaring with pleasure, when it's like I'm riding the waves of a great . . .

—From the diary of Terry Kluge

At Christmas, I shopped in a daze. Had to make a Christmas for the sake of Bobby and my dad. Because otherwise I'd kill myself. Bought presents for my dad to give to me and to Bobby, and for Bobby to give to him. Everything an effort, as if I had two-hundred-pound weights on my legs dragging me down.

Christmas Day at my dad's house, I made roast chicken, because there weren't enough of us for a turkey. Easy, the stuffing ready-made, you just add water, chop the apples.

After we'd eaten, we watched reruns on TV, twenty-five years
of Christmas specials—the Smothers Brothers, Bing Crosby, and Ed Sullivan. Then I cleaned up the dishes.

I wondered how many more Christmases there would be with my dad. Doctor Vakil wanted him to go down to Albany for pulmonary tests. Dr. Vakil didn't have the right equipment in his own office, he said, but Dad kept delaying calling for the appointment. He insisted he felt fine, though his flesh hung in bluish folds from his skull, his eyes were watery, and I could hear him wheezing as he moved. That was his generation—they always felt fine. Wouldn't go to the doctor unless they were actually dying. After New Year's, I'd make the appointment for him myself, take a weekday off, drive him down to Albany myself. You become like a parent to your parent.

Around five, Bobby and I left. Now, on Christmas night as we rode home, it was already dark out. So brief the day. I was going straight to bed when I got home, all that food had made me real tired. Maybe Bobby would go down early for once. I glanced at him behind me in the car, strapped in his seat belt in the back—I always sat him in the back for safety.

He was wide awake. Sitting absolutely still, gazing out the window at the darkness of the landscape. In that temporarily lulled state that the car always put him in. Practically the only time I could hear myself think was when he was riding in the back of the car and distracted like this.

I drove out toward West Taponac. We passed the white frame church with the wrought iron fence around it, the graveyard, the gravestones sticking out of the snow, their lettering all washed away by wind and water. The little settlement was even more melancholy in the late winter afternoon.

And as I drove, staring out ahead through the windshield,
his
image seemed to be there on the glass, his boy's figure, short-haired, pale and cold in front of me—appearing without warning as it did every day now.