Colours in Her Hands, page 11
“What happened, Mina? Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she said gravely. She seemed either medicated or awed by the high seriousness of being in the hospital.
“But what happened? Was it Pierre?”
“He hit me.” Mina whacked her hand through the air. “Comme ça.”
“Mina!” A petite woman with a piercing voice bolted into the room. “I’ve just spoken to the doctor! The important thing is you’re not hurt.”
“My b-b-bum hurts.”
“But nothing’s broken. You’re not bleeding.” She was looking at Iris. “I’m her social worker, Faiza. You’re . . . ?”
“I’m Iris, I’m a friend. Mina called me.”
“Iris,” the social worker enunciated. “I could never make out your name. I always thought she was saying Arse — which didn’t make sense. But she’s told me about you. You bring her thread.”
Iris was pleased to hear that she figured in Mina’s hierarchy of people. “Can you tell me what happened?”
Again the door was flung wide and there was Bruno, looking haggard. A man who’d crossed deserts and scaled mountains to get there as fast as he could.
Mina’s face distorted. “Pierre h-h-hit me!” And now she began to cry.
Bruno turned to the social worker who quickly gave him the details. A neighbour had called the police. Pierre was in the er too. “She hit him very hard in the groin.”
“What did he do to you?” Bruno asked Mina.
“He —” Her mouth worked, lips trying to shape sounds but nothing articulate came out.
“Tell me slowly,” he said. “Calm down.”
From her stammering he understood words that he repeated back at her, fishing out the details. Pierre had attacked her from behind and pulled down her pants. He hit her bum and pulled out his — Mina scrunched her mouth with revulsion, flapping a hand at her crotch.
Even through Iris’s alarm at the story unfolding, she noticed how well Bruno understood Mina and how completely she trusted him. She hadn’t told Iris or the social worker how she felt; only Bruno when he arrived. Mina always scoffed and said Bruno was stupid, but she clearly knew he wasn’t.
“And you punched him the way I showed you?”
“Yeah.”
“You told her to punch him?” the social worker shrieked.
“Not him specifically. Anyone who attacked her. Sounds to me like this was an attack. She has to know how to defend herself.”
“But she really hurt him!”
“Too bad. Let him keep his pants zipped and his hands to himself.” To Mina he said, “Is this the first time he tried to have sex with you?”
She scowled but didn’t answer.
“The truth, Mina. It’s important. I know you’ve had sex with other boyfriends.”
She still didn’t want to speak but he persisted. “I mean ordinary sex. Did you have ordinary sex with Pierre?”
Iris felt a readjusting inside herself. How was it that she knew Mina — who was an adult — had a boyfriend, but it never occurred to her that she had sex?
Mina was wrinkling her nose. “White stuff. I don’t like . . .”
“I know,” Bruno said. “You’ve told me. But did you have sex like that with Pierre?”
“Yeah.”
“And usually, when you had sex with him, did he hit you?”
Mina’s eyes widened with indignation. She might put up with sperm but definitely not with hitting.
Most people wouldn’t have known where to begin, Iris thought, but Bruno cut right to the chase. He knew what questions to ask. She remembered how quickly he’d responded when she called him about the swastika. He must have dealt with it too, because she’d never seen it again.
“So what happened today?” the social worker asked Mina. “Did you argue with him? Did something —”
“What are you saying?” Bruno cut her off. “She nearly got raped — sodomized against her will — and you’re trying to figure out how she’s responsible?”
The social worker drew herself up. “I’m trying to see the whole picture!”
“I don’t give a damn about the whole picture. She’s my sister and I’m concerned about her — even if she started out wanting to have sex, which I gather is not the case here.” He looked at Mina. “Who took his penis out of his pants, you or him?”
She gave him an affronted stare.
“Just say it, okay? You or him?”
“Him.”
“And after this, you’re not going to have anything more to do with him, I hope.”
She jutted her lips and with a regal hand knocked the mere idea of Pierre to oblivion.
Iris was quietly astonished and impressed. Bruno was really good with Mina. They were obviously closer than Mina made it sound when she complained about him. He was also more good-looking than she remembered. The gap between his top teeth was even sort of sexy. An oddity that lent interest to his otherwise regular features. His hair was dark brown like Mina’s, though his was edged with grey.
“How much longer do we have to wait around here?” he asked the social worker.
“We’re waiting for a sexual trauma therapist to be assigned to her.”
“To what end?” He raised a palm as she puffed herself up to object. “She doesn’t know the therapist and won’t listen to her, and is the therapist going to understand anything she does say? You know how long it takes for her to trust a new social worker. By the time she might agree to trust the therapist, she won’t be thinking about Pierre anymore. She’ll already have a new boyfriend. It would make more sense to sign her up for boxing lessons.”
“The therapists are trained —”
“To help women, yes. I agree, I agree. But Mina is a unique case. Aren’t you, sweetie?” He squeezed her foot through the sheet. “I’m going to find a doctor to get us out of here.”
In the silence after he left the room, Iris sat forward to take Mina’s hand.
“Ouch!”
“Is your hand hurt?”
“P-p-punching.”
“But you can move your fingers? Let me see.” Iris would personally castrate Pierre if he had in any way damaged Mina’s hands.
Mina wiggled her fingers well enough, though her mouth tightened as if with pain.
When Bruno returned with a nurse, Iris said, “Mina’s hand hurts.”
“She’s had X-rays,” the nurse said. “Nothing’s broken.” And to Bruno, “There’s no bruising on her buttocks yet, but there might be later. You’re sure you don’t want to bring charges?”
“Useless. Her word against his, and even if a judge can understand what she’s saying and believes her version over his, how will they sentence him?” And with a shrug, “Sorry if I sound cynical. I haven’t dealt with this particular kind of situation before but with lots of others. The world doesn’t make much effort to understand people like Mina.”
The nurse didn’t argue. “All right,” she said to Mina, “let’s get you dressed.”
Bruno left the room and the social worker followed. Iris stayed to help the nurse. Mina snuffled at the treat of having two people dress her. She made a game of poking her hands into her sleeves and dangling her feet over the edge of the stretcher, bunching her toes so her socks wouldn’t slip on. No one watching would think that she had just been assaulted.
When Bruno opened the door again, he had a wheelchair. He helped Mina get into it. To Iris he said, “Thanks for coming. I guess she had your number. There’s probably a message on my answering machine at home.”
“You don’t have a cell phone?”
“I know. The social worker is scandalized.”
He was pushing Mina down the hallway when a woman standing at the nursing station began shouting. “You, you tramp! What did you do to my boy?”
“Hey!” Bruno stepped in front of the wheelchair. “You back off or I’ll bring rape charges against your brute of a son.”
“He’s a good boy! I brought him up right. But she has a dirty mind.” Arm rigid, pointing at Mina. “What do you expect — not even living in a proper home, all on her own the way she is. It’s irresponsible!”
“He attacked her.”
An orderly moved forward. “Okay, okay, let’s calm down here.”
“I saw how she behaved at the wedding! It was indecent!”
More orderlies had materialized, stepping between Bruno and the woman.
“Cutting in on couples, wagging her big gut at everyone — thought she was dancing, did she? And Pierre, she left him by himself at the table. She was his date!” She shook a fist, but an orderly pulled it down and firmly led her away. She kept shouting over her shoulder. Another orderly was at her side, trying to quieten her.
“You should go,” an orderly told Bruno.
He stepped behind Mina’s chair again when a patient being wheeled past on a stretcher began shouting. “You cunt! You bitch!”
Mina flinched against Iris, who was walking beside her.
“I’m gonna fuck you so bad!” The stretcher had already been pushed around a corner but Pierre was still shouting.
Iris turned to see what the mother thought of this proof of her good boy’s manners, but she was no longer there.
* * *
The sleeves of Bruno’s coat were too long and it wouldn’t zip over her belly, but Mina was warm inside it. He’d snugged his toque over her head, almost down to her eyes. He sat in the back of the taxi with her. He never did that.
But where, she wondered . . . “Wh-wh-where’s Gabriela?”
“She doesn’t know you were at the hospital. I’ll tell her. How are you feeling?”
“D’okay,” she said, even though everything was strange.
At her apartment door she hung back. Even from the hallway she could see that inside looked different. The cushions from the sofa were on the floor. The table wasn’t where it was supposed to be.
Bruno put his hand on her shoulder and brought her in. He began picking things up and putting them where he thought they belonged. She went to the kitchen table and sat. She could see what he was doing but didn’t want to help. She felt tired, very tired.
“Do you want the TV on? You always have it on.” He switched it on but didn’t make it loud enough. “Your stitching . . . Is it still okay?” He’d lifted the hoop from the floor, the thread hanging. The green with the orange she was zigzagging across it.
“G-g-garbage.”
“You want me to throw it away?”
She pointed at the garbage can.
He took the knitting, hoop and all, to the garbage.
“No, the —”
He didn’t know what she meant and she held out her hand for the hoop, unscrewed the ring, pinched the knitting off, and held it out with the tips of her fingers.
He took it from her and dropped it in the garbage. “Gone,” he said.
But it wasn’t gone. It was still there. She could feel it.
He kept picking things up, but he was only making a different kind of mess, putting her hidden word puzzles in a stack so she didn’t know which one she’d been working on.
“Do you want a cup of tea?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Why don’t you make yourself comfortable on the sofa?”
From where she sat at the kitchen table, she considered the sofa. That was where it happened. But the sofa was also her place to sit. Under the angel. That made her mouth tremble. Mama saw what happened and didn’t stop it.
“I think I have to get you a new kettle,” Bruno said at the counter. “The cord on this one looks like someone played a game with a knife.”
A new kettle was good. She wanted a new kettle.
She pushed herself up from the table and walked to the sofa, staring at it hard, making a grim mouth. My sofa. Mine. My place to sit.
Bruno brought her a mug of tea and set it next to her. He knew to put in one Splenda and enough milk that it didn’t burn her mouth. She sipped it to check he did it right.
“Why is your clock on the floor?”
“F-f-fell.”
He stooped to pick it up. “The minute hand fell off too?”
She had another swallow of tea.
“I can stay and watch TV with you if you want.”
She held out her hand for the remote that he’d put on a shelf. He gave it to her and she turned the volume up. She would turn the other TV on and play an Elvis cd. She would lock the door and never ever ever ever let Pierre in again.
Bruno still stood, watching her.
“Go,” she told him.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” Once he was gone, she could put the chain on the door.
He put on his coat. “Call if you need something. I’ll come right away.”
“Bye.” She wouldn’t be safe until the door was locked with the chain on.
But even with the chain on, she didn’t feel safe. She finished her tea with both TVs on loud. Even Elvis was too far away.
She wished she had someone who sat close and held her and stroked her head. But the only one who had ever held her close like that was Mama.
And now she began to cry. Great, wet, aching breaths sobbing from deep inside her.
* * *
The air thundered with the roar of snow removal. First, the enormous plough that scraped the road so savagely that the houses trembled. Then the industrial snow blower that churned up the ploughed snow to shoot into dump trucks that rumbled alongside. Bruno usually appreciated the choreography of the monstrous machinery, but this evening the lumbering procession sounded like enemy tanks invading. He’d never liked Pierre but had never expected anything like this.
Perhaps more surprising was that nothing like this had happened before. He’d followed their mother’s lead in not interfering with Mina’s boyfriends. She’d said Mina should be allowed to like whom she liked. She couldn’t get pregnant because she’d had a hysterectomy at eleven years old — as the doctor had advised and their mother had agreed. Bruno had been too young at the time, barely an adult, to fully comprehend that Mina was being sterilized while still a child and too young to give her own consent. Later, he told their mother he didn’t think it was right. It would never have been allowed for a ‘normal’ child. Although he had to admit he was glad now that he didn’t have to deal with sanitary napkins or pregnancy.
Except that pregnancy clearly wasn’t the only possible consequence of Mina having a boyfriend. Her judgment wasn’t reliable and she was vulnerable. How was Bruno supposed to protect her right to make her own decisions while also protecting her from those decisions? That was the ongoing question with no absolute answer. With Mina every situation posed its own ethical maze.
He wished he could tell what she was feeling now, but he had never known how to get her to talk about her feelings. As well as he could remember, not even their mother had tried. When Mina was sad or agitated, their mother cuddled her, murmuring assurance until the upset passed. But that didn’t mean it was forgotten or had left no trace.
The lights were on at his house but Gabriela wasn’t in the living room. He found her in the bedroom with open boxes on the floor and the bed. She was shaking out a sweater and refolding it. Her hair was twisted up. Her normally soft, round features looked stern.
“I have to leave,” she said. “For myself.”
In that instant, confronted with the fact of her packing — seeing that she truly meant what she said — he didn’t know what he felt. Too much had happened today already. He leaned against the door-frame, fingers squeezing the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses to his eyebrows.
“It’s not just that I want a child. I want to be a mom.”
“And I don’t —”
“Yes, I know. You’ve made it clear you will not even consider having a child.”
She spoke evenly, but he could hear the edge of resentment. “It wasn’t me who changed,” he said. “It was you.”
From an open drawer she grabbed socks he’d folded into neat oblongs. “I never said it wasn’t me.”
“You know that I already have —”
“Stop that! Stop using Mina as an excuse.” Her voice trembled. “Taking care of her is not the same. I want to feel what your mother felt for Mina — not what you feel as her brother. Being a parent is not the same, Bruno, it’s just not.”
He exhaled. “I guess you don’t know that she was in the hospital today.”
Her eyes, large with concern, shot to him. “Is she all right?”
“She’s home again. Pierre attacked her but she fought him off.”
“Attacked her sexually?”
“Tried to but she socked him in the groin.”
Gabriela dropped the skirt she was holding onto the bed. “I’ll call her.”
“She’s not upset, so don’t upset her.”
“How can you say that?” she said sharply. “Of course she’s upset.” She strode past him to the living room. In a moment he heard the murmur of her voice.
Inside the closest box were scarves, summer dresses, her jewel-lery box. She was taking everything then. She really was leaving. He’d guessed this could happen and part of him was relieved the tension was finally broken, but it also hurt that she’d chosen what she wanted over their life together.
Gazing around the room, he met the eyes of the angel on the wall. Gilt wings and a mysterious four-hundred-year-old smile. No, he thought, only wood and paint.
When he heard the tap running in the kitchen, he made himself move. She stood waiting for the water to boil with a mug on the counter. “Do you want tea?” she asked.
“No. Yes.”
She looked at him.
“Yes.”
She reached into the cupboard for another mug. “I’ll go see her tomorrow. You’re right, she sounds okay — but she also kept repeating that the front door is locked, her apartment door is locked, and she has the chain on. If she has to keep reminding herself that she’s safe, then I don’t know how safe she feels. What if Pierre comes back?”
“I’m pretty sure his mother won’t let him.” He told Gabriela about the scene in the er and what Pierre had shouted. As he talked, he wondered how they could be discussing Mina so calmly, yet Gabriela was leaving.
