Stoned

To have put up a wall of silence for so many years caused her to be immune to all that had been done to her. Before she realized it, she was a prisoner trapped and encased in stone, unable to cry out in her pain. She couldn’t move; there was no need to, who would notice? All that was once good had long been buried within the cold and now familiar shell she had become.

She had heard the rallying cry of women saying, “Me Too,” but she couldn’t open her mouth to add her voice, for it had been silenced for years when those hands that so many respected took advantage of her wide-eyed innocence and belief in happy endings. She knew there would never be a happy ending where she was concerned.

She tried to put it behind her, but how could she? His cubicle was across the room from hers. One thousand nine hundred and twenty hours per year he would be there, his eyes on her, knowing the secrets behind her mouth, the curves underneath her clothing, and her short, anxious, warm breath against his neck.

He never apologized or expressed any type of remorse or compassion. Her final stoning came while in the break room alone, which was something she had done her best to avoid happening. She knew before she even turned around that it was him. She tried quickly to gather her things and make a quick exit, but he was quicker and like a snake, wrapped his strong arms around her and pushed her against a wall clearly where they would not be seen. She prayed like never before for someone to save her from the probing, forceful hands.

That was the last time she was ever in the break room, and the last time she went to work. There was another layer of stone added, a thick, heavy, dark layer, so heavy that it caused a dark rust colored tear to run down her cold, hard face as she painfully made her way to a familiar place, the park bench, where she would often come to ask herself, “Why her?”

She now is the fixture on the bench, eyes now permanently closed to her surroundings, as she tries to remember the last time she actually saw another face, one filled with light and hope. She was able to remember a time when she smiled and was full of hope and light! It was when he actually asked her out that evening. He told her how beautiful her then long hair looked that day, how he enjoyed seeing her on the other side of the room during their afternoon breaks and how he had been watching her and how he finally got the nerve to ask her out for dinner.

She was now cold to the thought of how he turned her excitement and anticipation into fear, then sadness and finally isolation. The self blame, shaving her hair, walking away from work, friends, and family to a park bench where she became what she is today... STONED to the world around her and those who will never know of the pain she withstood both mentally as well as physically. He knew, though; he remembered her screams and pleadings for him to stop. He can’t stop hearing it or save himself from it now. He is stoned as well, not where she would ever have to face him again, but nearby; so close that he could witness what he had done and feel the heaviness of the guilt he felt and the inability to move past it and her. She was always there, up a ways just in his sight, sitting...Stoned, just like himself.

Donna M. Butler