Читать книгу Speaking Like An Immigrant - Mariana Romo-Carmona - Страница 7

at government center i sat down exhausted and stared at the tracks. i was sad. sad, because there were indentations along the subway cave and i knew what they were for.

i imagined myself, caught along the cave somewhere, running, inhaling the dusty air, breathing all that air full of dirt and soot, and running. running along the track, hoping to make it to the next stop before a train came by and flattened me. before a train zoomed by and whisked me off and threw me under the tracks and shredded me.

all of which couldn’t have been any worse than if those six huge, blond, white men had whisked me off into an alley (if they thought they should bother, that is) and raped me, for being a woman walking around the old city admiring the architecture, or for being a woman walking home carrying three bags of groceries, or for being a woman walking around the old city HATING THE ARCHITECTURE it wouldn’t matter to them.

but the point is (because there always is) the point is that if i had been caught in the cave of the subway i would have been able to stay alive, unshredded, by squeezing against one of those cutouts they have along the wall. there is one of those little spaces every so often just big enough for a person, that looks so much like the cutout space along a church wall, where anthony fits in, or the virgin—

the point is (there must always be a point) that if i had been trapped in the cave of the subway, i would have been able to survive. the point is that even in an unlikely place for a human being, such as the cave of the subway, men have made little anthony spaces for people to step into just in case they happen to be running along while there might be a train coming, threatening to shred them—

the remaining point being (you see, a point did remain) that as i was walking along the incredible streets of the old city, without three grocery bags, without wearing alluring clothes, and without the thought of a man in my whole body, six of them leaped out behind me and quickened their step, started to talk about their pricks, started to laugh, walked around to look at me I scowled— they didn’t like that— i was admiring the architecture —so they let me alone for a block or two because I scowled and their pricks probably shriveled, the poor sensitive, easily shreddable things, and walked towards a more populated area, but before i could reach it, they were behind me again, figuring that they didn’t care whether or not i liked the architecture, or that i scowled, or wore unappealing (to pricks, that is) brown pants — they managed to get themselves adjusted to their roles, into their tracks, into their trainlike personalities, and they followed me down the street, around me and behind me, at top speeds, where no one had provided little st. anthony spaces for a person in peril to flatten her body against while the train passed!!

it was my fault.

what right did i have to walk around admiring anything, without a gun to protect me? without sharp claws and fangs to shred their dicks off? without fire in my breath to singe their very souls as they approached me?

i tried to imagine the danger, to weigh rape against death and my muscles ached. to weigh rape against murder and my vagina tightened. to weigh rape against death against murder against life in pain against life in any possible shape against the taste of their blood in my teeth and my vagina tightened and i sweated and exuded the most hate i have ever hated and walked resolutely past the six of them toward the subway station clutching my key between my fingers ready to shred skin like i’d been doing it all my life.

(1981)