Dearest Johnny,
They have found a way to break me. Rape a fifty six year old bag of bones. There is not worse and don’t believe otherwise.
The attendants do it. Others do it. Not every day, not every week, maybe not even every month. But they do it. Someone I don’t know always comes. When it’s dark. Late. I’ve learned not to scream, screaming gave me hope and unanswered hope is shattered hope. Think of your Haitian. It is far saner to choose rape than shattered hope. So I submit and I drift.
I let caprice and a certain degree of free association take me away. Sometimes I’m still away long after it’s done, after he’s gone – the stranger, the attendant, the custodian, the janitor, cleaning man, waiting man, dirty MAN – the night tidying up for him.
I’m in hell giving in to heaven where I sometimes think of your beautiful father with his dreamy wings and only then do I allow myself to cry. Not because your mother was raped (again) but because she loved so much what she could never have been allowed to keep. Such a silly girl.
You must save me Johnny. In the name of your father. I must escape this place or I will die.
I love you so much.
You are all I have.
P.
A FACE IN THE CLOUD NO TRACE IN THE CROWD (random capital letters)
It took me two hours to fully decode this letter. The letter on the page does not make a lot of sense but if you take the first letter of each word this is what you get. My professor was the one who pointed it out to us in class. I would have to say that this letter is really creepy. I almost wonder if Johnny’s mother was controlled by something or someone. The part that makes me think this is the end of the second paragraph where she writes “Such a silly girl.” This could be something a rapist would say. It would not surprise me if the rapist himself sent this to Johnny to mess with him. Who knows what was happening to her.
