Lizzie kissed Diana on the cheek.
Diana said, 'Let Toshi stay.'
'Sure,' Charley said.
Lizzie said, 'Come on, Gonzales.'
#
As Charley fed anesthetic into her iv drip, Diana felt as if
she were suffocating, then a strong metallic smell welled up
inside her. She was aware of every tube and fitting stuck into
herfrom the iv drip to the vaginal catheter and nasopharyngeal
tubeand they all were horrible, pointless violations of her body
nothing fit right, how long could this go on?
A tune played.
The melody was simple and repetitious, moderately fast with
light syncopation, and sounded tinny, as if it came from a child's
music box. Then came the song's bridge, and as the notes played,
she remembered them; the primary melody returned, and now it was
familiar as well, and she hummed with it, thinking of herself as a
small girl hearing the song from her great-great-grandmother,
whose face suddenly appeared, younger than Diana usually
remembered her, impossibly alive in front of her, then spun into
darkness.
Shards of memory:
Her mother's arms wrapping her tightly, Diana sobbing
Her father holding a fish to sunlight, its silver body
glistening, rainbow-struck
A girl in a pink, mud-clotted dress yelling angrily at her
A small boy with his pants pulled down to show his penis
On they came, a cast of characters drawn from her oldest
memories, of family long dead and childhood friends long forgotten
or seldom recollected each fragment passing too quickly to
identify and mark, leaving behind only the strong affect of old
memory made new, the taste of the past rising fresh from its
unconscious store, where the seemingly immutable laws of time and
change do not prevail, and so everything lives in splendor.
Then every bodily sensation she had ever felt passed through
her allimpossiblyat once. She itched and burned, felt heat
and cold; felt sunlight and rain and cold breeze and the slice of
a sharp knife across her thumb felt the touch of another's hand
on her breasts, between her legs; felt herself coming
Then she lived once again a day she had thought was finished
except as context for her worst dreams:
In the park that Sunday people were everywherefamilies and
young couples all around, the atmosphere rich with the ambience of
children at play and early romance. Sunlight warmed the grass and
brightened the day's colors. Diana lay on her blanket watching it
all and luxuriating in the knowledge that her dissertation had
been approved and she would soon have her degree, a Ph.D. in
General Systems from Stanford. Tonight she was having dinner with
old friends, in celebration of the end of a long, hard process.
She read for a while, a piece of early twenty-first century
para-fiction by several hands called The Cyborg Manifesto, then
put the book down and lay with her eyes closed, listening to a
Mozart piano concerto on headphones. As the afternoon deepened,
the families began to leave. Many of the young couples remained,
several lying on blankets, locked in embrace. A group of young
men wearing silk headbands that showed their club affiliation
directed the flight of robo-kites that fought overhead, their
dragon shapes in scarlet and green and yellow dipping and
climbing, noisemakers roaring. The wind had shifted and appeared
to be coming off the ocean now, freshening and cold. Time to go.
She passed by the Orchid House and saw that the door was
still open, so she decided to walk through it, to feel its moist,
warm air and smell its sweet, heavy smells. She had just passed
through the open entry when a man grabbed her and flung her across
a wooden potting table. Stunned, she rolled off the table and
tried to crawl away as he closed and locked the door.
He caught her and turned her on her back, punched her in the
face and across her front, pounding her breasts and abdomen with
his fists, crooning and muttering the whole time, his words mostly
unintelligible. She went at him with extended fingers, trying to
poke his eyes out; when he caught her arms, she tried to knee him
in the crotch, but he lifted a leg and blocked her knee. His face
loomed above her, red and distorted. The sounds of the two of them
gasping for air echoed in the high ceiling.
He ripped at her clothes as best he could, tearing her blouse
off until it hung by one torn sleeve from her wrist, hitting her
angrily when her pants would not rip, and he had to pull them off
her. Holding the ends of her pants legs, he dragged her across
the dirt floor, and when the pants came off, she fell and rolled
and hit her face on the projecting corner of a beam. She tasted
dirt in her mouth.
In a voice clotted with rage and fear and mortal stress, he
said, 'If you try to hurt me again, I'll kill you.'
He turned her over again and stripped her panties to her
ankles. She tried to focus on his face, to take its picture in
memory, because she wanted to identify him if she lived. She
smelled his sweat then felt his flaccid penis as he rubbed it
between her thighs. 'Bitch,' he was saying, over and over, and
other things she couldn't understandthe words muttered in
imbecile repetitionand when he finally achieved something like
an erection, he cried out and began hitting her across the face
with one hand as with the other he tried to push himself into her.
She could tell when he was finished by the spurt of semen on her
leg.
He stood over her then, saying, 'No no no, no no no,' and she
saw he was holding a short length of two by four. He began
hitting her with it as she tried to shield her head with crossed
arms.
She awoke in the Radical Care Ward of San Francisco General,
