Back     5th Floor Up 3rd Window Over I stood over my bed and looked out the window at the courtyard below. Several people were hanging out at a table, radio blaring, laughing and goofing off with each other. A couple was sitting on a bench nearby arguing. Several yards away, some men were tossing a football to each other and a couple of women were sitting in the sun, basking in the fresh, warm, salty summer air. I drifted into another world as I mechanically stripped the bright blue Garfield sheets off my bed, dumped them into my laundry basket and proceeded down the five flights of stairs to the humid, crowded laundry room of the navy barracks. Later, as I re-made my bed, I wondered for the 100th time why I bought those blue Garfield sheets. I reminded myself for the 100th time that the bright blue background and vibrant rainbow pattern on the children’s sheets helped brighten the sterile environment of the barracks I called home. I remember smiling to myself and assuring myself as I finished making the bed that it was okay for a 19-year-old woman to own Garfield sheets. I rose up to retrieve my pillow, turned around, and there he stood. I had left the door to my room open, a common practice among residents when the weather was fresh and the building stifling. I knew him only as "Phil." I knew nothing more. He had closed and locked the door, and in a demanding and slurred voice ordered me to take off my dress. I told him no, but with very little conviction in my voice for I was incredibly frightened, my vocal chords constricted from the pang of fear. He moved closer to me. I was petrified, my racing heart the only evidence of movement in my entire body. He smelled of sweat, cheap beer and salty ocean water. His eyes were bloodshot, a combination of wind, sun, and alcohol. Again he told me to take off my dress and again, meekly, almost silently, I said no. He grabbed my wrists and pushed me down onto my back, onto my freshly made bed, my head hitting the hard cinderblock wall as I went down. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t yell. The impact of my head against the wall left me shaky and disoriented. The weight of his body crushed me—I was helpless against his strength. Even if I had known any defensive moves I can’t say with any certainty that I would have been able to employ them as fear had gripped me tightly around the throat and left me gasping for air and fighting for breath. He tore off my dress, my favorite white summer dress with the lace bodice that I had bought when I had gone on my first excursion into Mexico since being stationed in San Diego. I don’t remember how he got my panties off, only that he did. His skin was like coarse sandpaper against mine as he had just come from the beach where granules of sand had stuck to his skin. The smell of his sweat, the cheap beer, the ocean salt, and the smell of my fear mixed to form a putrid aroma that engulfed my nostrils and made me gag in disgust. I will never forget the smell of terror. In the back of my mind parental voices warned me that it wasn’t polite for girls to get angry or to offend. His hands were large and he was able to restrain both of mine with one of his while using the other to spread my legs as easily as pulling apart the fragile wishbone at a Thanksgiving Day feast. He pushed himself on me and at the same time forced himself inside me. A jolt of excruciating pain tore through my body. I think I screamed. The sand on his body raked my flesh. Part of my white stomach, which had never been exposed to sun, was rubbed raw from the friction of his invasion. This man, his penis covered with granules of ocean sand that had adhered themselves to it and dried when he left the water, viciously ground up the delicate smooth of my vaginal walls. Sanding, grinding, taking bits of delicate flesh, the abrasions filling in with my blood. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t scream. I was terrified of this half-drunk man dirtying my freshly washed linens, dirtying me. I wondered how long it had been since the ceiling had been painted. His smelly hot breath became more rapid and more intense on my neck as he thrust harder and harder, his coarse sandpaper block rubbing me raw inside. The only relief I got came from the blood of the cuts that lubricated my vaginal passage against his rasping grating penis. I asked God to make the man leave me alone. I begged God to let me die. My hands tingled from the lack of circulation in them and my feeble attempts at breaking loose only angered the man. After what seemed an eternity, he was spent. He laid on top of me, still restraining me with full force while his sweat dripped onto my body, running down my raw stomach, its salty base burning me. He pulled himself out of me, released my numbed hands, stood up and fastened his shorts, then swaggered out the door. As I watched him leave, I slowly pulled my aching legs back together. My hands were still numb, I couldn’t do anything but lie there in pain, bleeding. When the feeling in my hands returned I slowly got up and awkwardly pulled a pair of jeans over my aching thighs. I either didn’t care or didn’t notice until later that the crotch of my blue denim jeans had become purplish in color, saturated with blood. My blood. I nonchalantly pulled a shirt on over my head, every muscle in my neck and back stiff and in pain from tension. I stood over my bed and looked out the window at the courtyard below. Several people were hanging out at a table, radio blaring, laughing and goofing off with each other. A couple was sitting on a bench arguing. Several yards away, some men were tossing a football to each other and a couple of women were sitting in the sun, basking in the fresh, warm, salty summer air. I drifted into another world as I mechanically pulled the bright blue Garfield sheets off my bed, dumped them into my laundry basket and proceeded down the five flights of stairs to the humid, crowded laundry room of the navy barracks. Copyright © the author. All Rights Reserved.   All contents © copyright 1999-2004 Her Legacies Foundation and/or respective authors and artists. All Rights Reserved.