"I Wouldn't Mind if She Got Pregnant"

by Kathleen Hoy Foley

Image credit: Wiki Sinaloa on Unsplash

…my sister-in-law

after her granddaughter was gang raped.

A crude pronouncement

made from the safety of her cozy living room

adorned with crucifixes, icons and holy water.

I wouldn’t mind if she got pregnant.

Such easy words

from someone who was not subjected

to the stench of rotting teeth and flop sweat

forced into her body.

Someone spared air reeking of pig musk

and the barbaric grunts and snorts of a savage.

And the tiny whimpers of collapsed prey.

An ordeal my sister-in-law never suffered

and should her luck hold out, never will.

I was not so blessed.

I am well acquainted with the violence of rape,

including its most evil consequence—

the morbid trauma of a rape pregnancy.

That recurring, haunting echo

of the rapist feasting on

the blood under my skin.

Swaggering inside my adolescent body.

Seizing tissue and fiber.

Guzzling my oxygen.

Commandeering every single cell

as I disappeared

into the hollows of wretched grief.

Embedded inside me,

the rapist raged—

a gluttonous, insatiable animal—

leaving me no place to hide

not even within the smooth, interior corners

of bones barely holding me upright.

An enemy planting his flag

into the swells of my soft flesh.

A cancerous tumor

sucking my breath

while I suffocated in the ruins,

panicked and terrorized,

as the growth exploded

beneath my baggy sweater.

Growing bigger and bigger.

More and more powerful.

Until I stood disfigured and grotesque—

a monument to the rapist’s perversion—

shackled to permanent, inconsolable shame.

Willing my lifeblood

to gush from me

in a torrent of merciful relief,

leaving me in peace

to fade into a stain

on the floorboards beneath my feet.

When our broken, beautiful, tenderhearted relative

tightened a belt around her neck

and strung herself up

from the bathroom door,

I became gripped

with noxious envy,

coveting her rape-victim courage.

Courage, that in my youth, I could not summon.

My cowardice

to claim the terms of my own destiny,

my failure

to wrench my life from the

will of rapist sperm

is still a living, gasping regret.

Had abortion been legal

I would not have been stalked

for ten years

by a crazed stranger

brandishing their adoption records

with my girl name spelled out

in black and white

across the leaked document.

I’ve carried

an iron yoke of shame

across my shoulders

into my old age.

The cost of rape is unbearable.

With gratitude to the hero family pooch,

a broken child survived that dark day in the bathroom.

But with my sister-in-law’s impenetrable conviction

that rape pregnancy is a gift from her god,

my love for her died.

For which I am grateful.

My sister-in-law chose the rules of her church.

I chose the light.

***

Kathleen Hoy Foley

Through my writings, I bear witness to the unallowed truths of abuse trauma – my own and others.  Exposing the invisible, elemental secrets of trauma allows for the possibility of seeing and understanding for both individuals and our culture. I have authored a trilogy of books about the legacy of sexual abuse trauma. To obtain a free PDF version, just log on to https://mediumsinart.weebly.com/free-pdf-books.html and click on the tab for the book you wish to see. If a paper copy is desired, just fill out the contact form on the site, and we will happily mail a copy.