to read, such a prissy and intolerant hee-haw; and I again
learned the power of listening, this time because of someone
who listened to me.
Her name was Dr. Frankel-Teitz. I had found out that when
you told people your husband was beating you, they turned
their backs on you. Mostly they blamed you. They said it
wouldn’t be happening if you didn’t want it and like it. You
could be, as I was, carrying al you could hold in an effort to
escape or you could be, as I was, badly hurt and bleeding, and
they stil told you that you wanted it. You could be running
away fast and furious, but it was still your will, not his, that
controlled the scenario of violence: you liked it. You could ask
for help and they’d deny you help and it was still your fault
and you liked it. I’d like to wipe out every person on earth
who ever said that to or about an abused woman.
I had a lot of physical problems from having been beaten
so much and from the tough months of running and hiding,
including terrible open sores on my breasts from where he
burned me with a cigarette. The sores would open up without
warning like stigmata and my breasts would bleed. Finally
women helping me found me a doctor. “Al the lesbians go to
her, ” they said, and in those days that was a damned good
recommendation. I went to her but was determined not to say
I had been beaten or I was running; I couldn’t bear one more
time of being told it was my fault. Stil , I said it; it fel out of
me when she saw the open sores. “That’s hor ible, ” she said -
about the beatings, not the sores. I'l never forget it. “That’s
horrible. ” Was she on my side; did she believe me; was it
horrible? “No one’s ever said that, ” I told her. No one had.
A few years later, back in the United States, I sent Dr.
Frankel-Teitz a copy of
her for her help and kindness. She replied with a fairly cranky
letter saying that she didn’t see what the big deal was; she had
only said and done the obvious. The obvious had included
get ing me medicine I couldn’t afford. I thought that she was
the most remarkable person I had ever met. “That’s hor ible. ”
Can saving someone really be that simple? “That’s hor ible. ”
Horrible, that’s hor ible. What does it take? What’s so hard
about it? How can the women who don’t say those words live
with themselves? How can the women who do say those
words now, thirty years later, worry more about how they
dress and which parties they go to? In between the early days
and now someone must have meant what she said enough so
