Content warning: violence.
For the last few weeks, as I’ve pondered what I was going to say in this newsletter, I’ve been mulling over different patient encounters with consideration to what might be most impressive to you. Not impressive in a way that has anything to do with me, but impressive as in impressing upon you some aspect of the captivating humanity I have the privilege (and sometimes pain) of witnessing. I think it’s vital to tell the stories of people who would otherwise be overlooked or forgotten. There are so many people without a voice.
Tonight I’m thinking about a woman I visited who had been beaten. I didn’t even know it was possible for a person’s face to be so blackened by bruises. She had broken teeth and a broken nose, as well as other injuries that were less obvious that for better or worse, I’ve forgotten.
The perpetrator was a pimp. Not her pimp—she worked for herself—just some guy that had claimed the block she sought to work. After beating, robbing, and raping her, he threw her phone into oncoming traffic and then shoved her in the trunk of a car he told her he was going to light on fire.
“He warned me,” she said. “Then he fucked up my money maker, cuz who’s gonna wanna fuck with this?” she asked, pointing to her face.
She eventually broke out of the trunk and ran. Someone picked her up and took her to the police station. The police brought her to the hospital when she wouldn’t give them a name.
“Street law,” she said.
Throughout our visit she seemed to swing between sweet + plaintive and brazen + tough. She spoke for some time about how much she loves Jesus. Then she worried she was aging out, and wondered whether her nose would heal right so she could work again. She wanted to fall in love, she said, to have a real love. But she didn’t trust any man, and said she never would. She never could. She cried when she told me she knew she’d never have the thing she wanted most.
The woman told me the names of her Catholic grandmothers, with whom she shared beautiful memories of holidays together in the country where she was raised. I listened intently, glad she had some reprieve from the terror of her ordeal. And when she asked me to pray for a better way of life, I did so with conviction.
After the prayer she was quiet. She looked into my eyes.
“I can’t see you with that mask on but you look pretty,” she said tenderly.
I pulled my mask down. It was a breech of hospital protocol but I figured it was more important to establish our human connection. After revealing so much of herself, including her blackened face, I could at least let her see my chin.
She smiled and nodded. “That’s what I thought. You got a great face for the streets, girl!” Revving up, she added, “YOU COULD MAKE SOME COIN, GIRL!”
I’m thinking of that woman tonight, as the days are getting darker and the nights colder. To be honest, I think about that woman all the time. I wonder about her hopes for herself. I wonder about her life expectancy. Perhaps she’s died already.
Which is more tragic, for her to die, or to continue to live as she was?
What is the real tragedy?
Find my book, Men, Myself, & I: Revelations of an Opened Marriage in print, and on Audible and Kindle, HERE.