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A Hidden Riverby Nellie Levine |
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She showed Herself to me in the green shimmer of leaves and in the swirling, salty expanse of ocean.
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She knows already. She knows and she watches, and does she hang her head low, her eyes closed, swallowing what she must feel when she sees her daughter's stories? I can see her in profile, an image in my mind, perhaps one I held from a small black and white photograph I kept as a child. It's a serious look, her face severe. What must she be thinking? I have not told her my stories. I have never said to her, this happened, or look at me, my pain. But she has seen. She has been there, in darkness, in the background, and it is only her face that I wish to see now. I think of what my own anger would be, had my daughter been me, and I my mother. And if I could have seen, watched, witnessed, these stories, my fury would fly like a flame across the sky, wishing to burn something out, right to the ground. But this is she, my mother, and these stories mine, and it has been her fury that instead has burned within me, dissolving my own rage and defiance and private misery. Somehow, her hand has held mine, in a quiet prayer, a silent recognition, and she has never given me the bitterness that would have locked me in the past. Instead, she has pointed to that place in me where she herself must always be, that place from which I have heard my own stories. It is from this place that I can look out now, and listen to each word and each cry. And maybe more easily I can see my stories from this place beyond pain, beyond memory, beyond despair. It is this that she has given me, her rage, her fury, not burning like a deep wound, but her truth, illuminating within me a hidden river of strength and peace. I will look for her face, always wishing that somehow, sometime, she will confirm to me my feelings, showing herself as she was. But I do know that in finding my own peace, she has been there, witnessing, holding, and ultimately, showing me the way in. *** When I was sixteen I was sexually assaulted. That sounds quite simple, as if when I say that I mean something immediately recognizable. But of course, everyone's story is different, is their own, is to the bearer a tremendous, individual burden. This assault of me, of my sex, of my womanhood, girlhood, was committed by a boy/man I thought was a friend. I can't say what would be scarier, an assault by a stranger, or by one you've come to trust who suddenly seems a victim of psychosis. I was told to remove my clothes, but I did not. So I had them removed. I had my bra cut away from me. I received a warning, quick cuts made on my wrists with a razor blade. I was stuck to the spot, my mind not getting around the fact that this was a friend... wasn't he?! I feel now that I can look in at the scene from above, discerning my shape, my flat girl-tummy, my bony hips, my round breasts, and I watch it unfold. Where was I? As he examined and explored my body, as he sought something I may never understand, as he humiliated and hurt me? I was certainly elsewhere, in some landscape I devised as protection, defense, survival of mind and emotion. The threat of death, or serious injury, was unexpected. When he held a knife over me, fear entered me, a spirit I am grateful for now, and moved my limbs, opened my mouth in a scream. The knife descended, and I rolled, pushed by someone from someplace else, rescued, awakened. That action seemed to awaken him as well, startled though, and scared maybe, and I was able to get out. I walked home on shaky legs that found their own way. It was many months later, that sometimes feels like years, that I fully embraced the truth that I had not deserved, nor caused, that night. Self-blame and shame left me, as I grew within, recognizing that I am She, I am Her. She is every woman, wise and beautiful, strong and powerful, and into Her eyes I looked; and into my own. I found something within me; I found my woman's heart. This embrace was a mother's. She held me in Her wide and generous arms, held me to Her breast and nurtured me. She showed Herself to me in the green shimmer of leaves and in the swirling, salty expanse of ocean. She came by moonlight, into my dreams, and upon drumbeat within my visions. Her song was the caress of wind, the falling of light and the waking of day. I found Her also, in the memory of my mother, in my mother's presence that had never truly left me, in the clarity she had bestowed me with even from death. I have walked twenty-three years of life since my mother's death; I am still a young woman. My mother has helped to bring me peace. She has come into my heart, and drawn me into my center. She has shown me what beauty lies within, what eternal spirit that cannot be destroyed. It is but one story, and I fear the hundreds of others being written everyday. I can pile my stories to the sky, a makeshift, wobbly tower, and it will still be shadowed by many more whose stories echo from across this globe, across this Mother Earth. I know what has happened to me, but I have found within that river of strength, I have embraced a beauty that shatters any pain, a power that turns abuse to dust, a passion that burns away all but the truth. I have found faith. In Her, in my mother, in me...
Nellie Levine, '98
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