Brennan - Sister Maple Syrup Eyes

SISTER MAPLE SYRUP EYES

Ian Brennan

Warning: this book contains graphic violence

and potentially disturbing descriptions.

Books by Ian Brennan

HOW MUSIC DIES (or LIVES):

Field-recording & the battle for democracy in thearts

ANGER ANTIDOTES:

How Not to Lose Your S#&!

HATE-LESS:

Violence prevention & how to make friends with af!ed up world

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced,in whole or part, in any form, except by reviewers, without thewritten permission of the publisher.

Print ISBN 978-0-912887-33-3

LCCN: 2015934540

Design and Cover byDanielMurphy

Illustrations by Ian Brennan

Pleasure Boat Studio books are available through

your favorite bookstore or online retailer andthrough

PLEASURE BOAT STUDIO: A LITERARY PRESS

Pleasure Boat Studiowebsite

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New York, NY 10024

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This book is dedicated to anyone whose life has beenaltered by sexual assault, a number far too vast, by anymeasure.

Acknowledgements

I owe an incalculable debt to the memory of BettySolomon and her unceasing passion to inspire her writing students.And the subsequent editorial contributions of Daniel Caffrey areimmense.

Thanks also to Jason Hadley for his additional copyediting.

Special thanks

To my parents, Jim and Marilyn, for always standingby my side.

And to Marilena Delli for lighting the way home, atlast.

Preface

Though this is a work of literary fiction, it isinspired by my own life-altering experience at age 21 when my firstlove was horrifically beaten and raped in her apartment by a familyfriend.

That experience destabilized the entiretrajectory of my young life, reshaping everything since and,retroactively, all which came before.

In more than twenty years of working as aviolence-prevention trainer, I have had to confront my ownundeniable male privilege and the consequential and, sadly, nearlyinevitable abuses of power that it enables.

Rather than the defensive, 'I am not one ofthose types of people, the expression would more accurately be, 'Iam not as bad as some people or as I could be.'

More than learning to be a man, thisexperience has hopefully helped teach me simply to behuman.

Like many major traumas both emotional andphysical rape is not something that can ever be completely'gotten over (nor should the quest for domination of it evennecessarily be the goal), but it is something that can be livedwith.

Though in no way intending to diminish ormake comparison with the devastation of the primary victim, I cansay that from my own experience, no one whose life is touched bythis type of tragedy goes unharmed usually in deep, delayed, andineffable ways. Among the damages is the revictimization that newacts of violence often vicariously trigger in previoussurvivors.

There is more than one victim for everyrape.

It benefits no one.

Even the perpetrator ultimately suffers andis reduced by the action.

That so many women have to regularly think ofthe unthinkable (that a complete stranger may want toviolate and harm them) is at the heart of a national-securitycrisis of epic proportions that has far-reaching and incalculablerepercussions. This status quo has created a hostage state, wherethere is no refuge even in peacetime.

We cannot truly be free when more than halfof our populace lives in danger and fear, in a culture whichtolerates images of disrespect for their very being. True HomelandSecurity would first-and-foremost ensure that all citizens are safein their own living space, their own bed, their own community,regardless of gender.

prologue

Your mother named you Dawn because she thought it wasthe prettiest time of day. Morning was just moments away when youwere raped.

Traffic lights outside our window flashedpre-programmed patterns and the poles weaved slightly in thewind.

Once you screamed No just as the lightturned from yellow to red, but he did not stop, he only hit harder.A woman in a car below waited for the signal to change, turned herradio louder and drove on.

He'd entered through the bathroom window, theone with the faulty lock that the landlord never got around tofixing.

You awakened to find him on top of you,pinning your shoulders to the bed with his knees and hitting you inthe face repeatedly. Your eyes soon filled with blood, until youcould no longer see. You were certain you'd been blinded.

The sun was rising as he left. It was throughhim that you learned to fear each new day.

Chapter 1.

I was standing at my hotel window watching the policeroust a homeless man from the gated doorway of the laundromatacross the street. It was nearly midnight and I couldn't sleep. Insome way, I must have already known.

Id met this same man earlier that day. He'dbeen sitting on the sidewalk exactly where he was lying now, andasked me for some change. He had a glass eye. It was lighter inshade than his functioning one. A childhood friend's father had hada similarly mismatched eye, and this man resembled an aged,distressed version of him. I stopped to assure myself that itwasn't him.

His name was Francis. He carried a PurpleHeart from Korea with him, one of his few possessions. He'd foughtto defend this country and, in doing so, sacrificed half hisvision. Now he had no place to sleep at night.

When the phone rang I thought someone hadmisdialed. I wasn't expecting a call, but how do you prepareyourself for such a call? When she said shed been raped, it tookminutes to react, the first in a long chain of small reactions thatwould unfold slowly over time. It would be many years before Icould fully comprehend what shed said. The information wouldarrive incrementally, syllable by syllable, word by word, until oneday I would, suddenly, as if through divine intervention,understand, or at least begin to understand, its full meaning.

Our phone conversation bounced off asatellite 50,000 feet above in space. Her voice echoed across thatvast distance, disembodied like an hallucination.

Static dropped in and out, until finally wewere cut off. I was sent reeling back, untethered, into thedarkness of the room. I knew she was falling away from me, towardssome opposing gravity. I threw open the window. There was no one onthe street below. Francis, the police, everything that had beenthere just moments before, were gone.

the before

Chapter 2.

Dawn's boyfriend had blackened and closed her righteye. Her upper lip was distended to over twice its usual size, hercheeks were streaked with long, thick mascara tears, and her hairwas tangled and matted with blood, yet, somehow she was still themost beautiful woman I'd ever seen.

He'd beaten her after she'd tried toleave.

'He told me he was going to break my hands soI couldn't write anymore. Stupid asshole! You don't write with yourhands, you write with your mind.'

Protocol was, female nurses were assigned towomen who'd been battered, but that night I was the only personavailable.

She was tremulous from cold and adrenaline.It'd been raining when he'd thrown her onto the front porch andlocked the door. She had no shoes on and the jeans and T-shirt shewas wearing were still damp. I draped a blanket over her shoulderslike a cape to shield her from the overhead vent.

'The wrist is only sprained. It should befully healed in four to six weeks.'

Her fingers were unusually long and delicate,enlarged at the very ends. As I bandaged her wrist, her thumbnailbrushed the top of my hand and, on contact, I felt a small, almostelectrical charge. I was drawn towards her as if along aninstinctual migratory path, recovering something lost, yet neverbefore encountered. I struggled to restrain myself from kissing herinjured hand, the way a parent does when their child has fallen andscraped a knee.