Throwaway People

Pain and Hate

December 22: Greenacres Camp: 5:00 AM

"Girl, you've had the same nightmare for the last three days." Crow told Keyote. "You say you don't remember it, but it scares the hell out of you. You don't want to tell Jim and Patty about it, but you say they helped you get through the other nightmare you were having."

"It hurts them, okay." Key said as she sat on the bed across from Crow. "I see it in their eyes, the pain, every time I tell them about what happened to me."

"You got pain too, girl." Crow said. "I heard Jim teaching you how to meditate, that man has got some smarts on the subject. If he helped you remember your abduction through meditation, maybe he can help you work through this dream."

"I'm afraid, Aunt Crow." Keyote said. "I'm scared of what it is, it's bad. If it's worse than when Andy raped me, it's got to be bad."

"You've got to face it girl. Got to get it out in the light." Crow said holding Key's hand. "You've got to drag it out of the closet in your mind and make it show itself. If you don't, it will rot inside your mind, and drive you crazy."

"Mai helped me drag out my monsters in my mind. I met her after I was raped. I had gone to a group therapy for sexual assault survivors. I'd had private counseling, but it didn't seem to be helping. My therapist wanted me to meet other survivors. She thought it might help if I knew that there were other people out there who understood what heppened to me."

"Mai was raped?" Key asked. "You never said that before."

"It was a couple years before I met her. She had formed this survivor group where people like us could go and share their stories with others who understood." Crow explained. "I was so angry, bitter, and hated the world."

"Ah, you're all that now." Key said.

"Watch that smart mouth, child." Crow squawked back at Key. "I'm just old, impatient, and cynical these days. I was angry, so angry, when I was younger."

"So, what did Mai do that helped you become less of a bitch?" Key asked.

"That will cost you a dollar for the swear jar, but lets take that out of my fifty." Crow sighed. "Mai showed me that it wasn't my fault. She showed me that I had to stop hating myself. Hating what was done to me, hating who did it, that was natural. Allowing that hate to encompass and control my life, that wasn't."

"More than that she taught me that I had to stop being afraid of what happened and of being judged for it. Society is unfair. It judges you for things you have no control over." Crow let a few tears fall. Normally she tried to remain stoic when she talked about these things. "I didn't want those men to rape me, I didn't ask for it."

"Do you know what the Policia said; that I deserved it. The judge said it was my fault. That I solicited it. This was Mexico City, I was a foreigner. To them I was one of those American sluts who came down to Mexico flaunting myself. That I deserved to be raped."

"The truth was, I was working on my college degree, I had a job working at a museum in Mexico City. I was doing basic curator stuff. My field was Ancient Native American Archaeology. The job was giving me practical experience."

"I found out that the maintenance men were stealing low level artifacts. Museums have a lot of artifacts that may spend years in storage. Records got lost, things disappeared due to careless management. The maintenance men found out that they could sell some items without anyone noticing right away. Only I noticed; because I wasn't bribed, didn't know any better, and wasn't a good old boy who was expected to look the other way."