Voiceless

I have lost my voice. I lost my voice as my body revolted against the onslaught of fear and grief that overtook me on the day I had planned to go cast my early vote for our first female president on this nightmare of a presidential election.

As I was showering last Friday, thoughts of Mother and how excited she would have been to vote for a female president (I remember how proud she was of voting for Obama. Twice!) floated around my head. The next thought was of Trump and the Tsunami of vitriol he has unleashed on our republic. Flashes of recent news descended on me: voter suppression in the South, his calling for his followers to intimidate voters at the polls, vowing to jail his opponent, Trump’s vile and immature response to criticism, his treatment of women, his and his followers’ dehumanizing of the “other,” and on and on and on and on… I was transported to a moment in time my brain has worked very hard to keep from coming to my consciousness, and recently unearthed during a therapy session. Because a week later Mother began her end of life journey it was once again  forced into the peripheral of consciousness. So, while I was in the shower ruminating on the affront to the core values of our democracy, when I felt myself open a door from almost forty years ago: There I was, somewhere between ten or eleven years old - a skinny, hungry child, with dirty and scraggly hair, clad in a stained blue and white checkered dress with a white pocket that had been sent to me from my family in the US. - holding the green aluminum door to my home, staring dumbfounded at the three Descalzas talking to me. It wasn’t until I smelled the foul breath of one of them close to my face that I realized I needed to speak. I was working so hard to concentrate on not releasing my bladder that I couldn’t get my vocal cords to work. I could feel the warmth of the urine running down my legs and hoped that they would not buckle. He screamed at me again, “Donde esta el maricón?!” Oddly enough, for a split second, there was a feeling of relief. It gave me the strength to open my mouth and provide the interrogators their answer. I told them were to find one of my mother’s married boyfriends who frequently visited our home.

I wish I could remember his name, but I can’t. Considering that I provided his executioners with his location, it feels disgustingly disrespectful to not be able to bring forth the memory of his name. Even worse, I can’t manage to recreate a clear picture of his face. I also can’t remember the whereabouts of this location. Now, I understand trauma. I understand that during traumatic events one’s brain gets all wonky as it’s focusing on keeping one alive and therefore the imprint of the moment gets stored in random places of one’s brain. Sort of like shoving a bunch of crushed up papers into a house with many rooms full of other crushed up papers and later trying to put them in order. The memory will never be a linear frame-by-frame memory. Ultimately, I’m not sure the details are of much consequence. Dead is dead and these particulars don’t matter.

I can feel the hairs on my arms stand and shuddering with the revulsion in my body from his closeness to me. His smell, his whole entire being smelled of putrid sweat, soiled clothing, and the 36% proof Tic-tac on his breath. And the fear… I recall the fear with immaculate precision. Every cell in my body is awake. A chill begins to drape my body from deep inside, out to my perspiring pores causing me to shiver from coldness in 95 degree El Salvadoran weather. My heart is pounding out of my chest, echoing in my ears causing my head to pound so loudly I can see flickers of light. I can barely gather enough strength to inhale and the warmth between my legs begins to spread downward creating a pool at my feet. I remember the “Descalza’s” warm and rancid breath on my skin as I open my mouth to speak. End of scene. The rest is a mystery that will come someday, I’m sure.

All I know that the day the Descalza came, I was free of her and his crazy wife. Our nameless victim never came back to my home. Neither did his wife who used to knock on my door rather frequently looking for her husband. I wish I could say that I did not feel relief for not having to be at the end of her accusing me of being her husband’s lover. “Puta maldita,” she would scream at me as she accused me of depriving her children of their father. I would yell at her that I was only ten years old and it didn’t make a difference to her because it only proved that whores are born and not made, according to her. I was ripping her family apart. Nothing I said would expedite her exit or afford me her not coming back. She would leave when she was tired of screaming at me and come back when her husband was gone. Why she never came when he was actually in my house fucking Mother upstairs is a mystery to me. Maybe she didn’t mind him fucking around if he did it within walking distance. Who can rationalize these things? This I never forgot. Working through the anger and resentment I had towards Mother for putting me in this position, and especially for not caring when I relayed the events days or weeks later when she remembered she had a home and a daughter to feed, was part of my trauma work fifteen years ago.  

Logic tells me that I did not kill this man. Intellectual knowledge about human nature informs me that as a ten year old child, in the midst of a country being torn apart by civil unrest, I truly had no choice. All my psychology training has taught me that this is a normal reaction under extreme duress. Yet, I also recognize that part of me wanted this man and his wretched wife gone out of my life. I didn’t want someone telling me that I was born a whore because I was one. I whored myself for food and safety. The irony was that her husband was not one of my customers. A Ten year old cannot rationalize the cruel irony of this complex situation. A Ten year old just wants bad things to stop. And Ten year old me did just that. I made her screaming and calling me a puta stop.

Trauma makes us selfish. It really does. Here I am almost Forty years after contributing to someone’s torture, dismemberment and execution and all I can focus on is my guilt and shame. That’s the selfishness of Trauma. So, as the wave of nausea overtakes my present body with yesterday’s fear, I vomited the contents of my empty stomach. I heaved and pissed myself. I retched until my legs gave out and well past spewing blood.

I didn’t make it to the voting booth that day. I chose to spend it with people who love and protect me. I voted the following day after waiting an hour in line. When I reached the counter to secure my ballot, I gleefully informed the voting official with a barely audible, scratchy voice, “Trump stole my voice today, but not my right to vote!”