Never Tell

Chapter Eighteen

Second Acts: Confessions of a Former Victim and Current Survivor

“NEVER TELL”

I almost called this post “Speaking Truth to Power.”

The title was intended to be ironic, the phrase itself vacuous. It came to use in the mid-1950s, courtesy of Quakers who were trying to resist international violence. These days, the phrase is invoked constantly by those who want to be seen as standing up to oppression: the Tea Party against what they see as the “elite,” the left against whoever dares to disagree, Anita Hill as a title to her memoir.

But what is power on the Internet?

Many of you will have noticed that in the past few days, our little discussion group here has drawn the efforts of someone who craves attention from others. From what I can tell, he—or I suppose, less probably, she—checks the site one or two times a day for new posts from me, and then tries to respond with some sort of intimidating comment.

If you haven’t had the privilege of reading the artistic contributions of this particular writer, here’s a sample of the work in question:

Wait until you see what I have planned.

He should have made you bleed more.

I will show you damage.

I want to thank you all for the moral support you have shown me here. You give me courage and strength to continue to share my experience with you, and I hope it helps you in turn.

But whoever has been making these destructive comments deserves no attention. Some of you have tried to scold him or shout him down, but please just ignore him. I have been tempted to erase the comments, which of course I have the ability to do, but even that gives this person a form of attention—the knowledge that I digested his words sufficiently to decide to erase them, the accomplishment of being the one member of the message board to have his comments moderated.

And so I have left the words there on the screen—capable of being read by you or me—but hopefully ignored upon first glance. These are the words of a person who has his (or her) own shortcomings. His (or her) own secrets. His (or her) own insecurities. Whoever that person is, he does not have anything “planned.” He will not make me “bleed” or “show me damage.”

Because some of you loyal readers may have called the police in response to the activity of my website, I suppose law enforcement might become involved. But I will not delete the words. Nor will I stop writing my own.

I choose not to delete those heinous comments because they are a badge of honor. Those words constitute evidence that I am speaking truth—not to power, but to those who crave it, no matter what the cost.

I will not delete the words because I recognize they are an attempt to silence me, no different from that man’s words so many years ago, threatening to kill my mother and me if I spoke the truth.

The title of this post is “Never Tell” because that is the lesson I was taught by my abuser all those years ago. In my particular case, he made the threat explicit, but he didn’t need to. Never Tell is the universal, underlying rule that all survivors intuit and then internalize.

The phrase is beautiful in its efficiency, isn’t it? Two little words, but they convey so much more.

Never tell. Or else.

But here’s the thing. When does it happen? When do we actually read in the news about women who are killed for daring to speak of the harms committed against them? It doesn’t happen, at least not here, where we are privileged to live in a modern society. Words have been used by these abusers to silence us for too long, but the cowards never follow through on their threats. They are the ones who are weak. We are the ones with strength.

They choose to threaten. I choose to call their bluff. I will not be silenced.

Back at the downtown gym with complacent staff and a public computer, those words were inducing their own kind of threat. This endeavor was proving more difficult than previously envisioned. She had not only continued to blog, she had defiantly kept the threats visible in the comments section. Now she was raising the possibility of a police investigation.

Although it was tempting to reconsider strategy, there seemed to be no other option but to leave another response.

“I look forward to proving you wrong. I know your name. I’ve seen your family. And I know where you live.”

In his rented room at the Tonawanda Motor Inn, Jimmy Grisco finished reading the last of the letters. He hadn’t thought about these things for fifteen years, but seeing the yellowed pages now had him remembering how he’d felt back then.

It was ironic. He’d been out for two months. He’d searched as well as he could—asking around, checking the phone book, that sort of thing—but had gotten nowhere. Then, yesterday, the prosecutor had hauled him into her office. Why is this person calling the prison? she wanted to know. Keep your nose clean. You got a second chance, James. Don’t be causing yourself any trouble.

And then he’d seen that note next to the lawyer’s computer. The name and phone number just sitting there for him, better than if he had planned it himself. He pretended not to see, but, man, how he’d started repeating those numbers in his head over and over and over again. Picturing the layout on a phone’s touch pad. Imagining the shape. Anything to keep that number locked up in his mind.

Finally he’d ended up in the courthouse elevator with that guy scribbling file notes with his left hand. He asked to borrow the pen, using his own forearm as a scratchpad. Fifteen years ago, when he’d gone in, a phone number could only do so much. These days? On the Internet a phone number could get you everything.

He packed the letters away into the same Adidas shoe box he’d stored them in all those years ago. He still couldn’t believe the police hadn’t paid more attention to them when they searched his apartment back then. Goes to show they didn’t really care about the whole story.

He’d found the shoe box in his uncle’s basement last month, when he’d finally gone through all the crap that had been stored there since his arrest. He had almost thrown it out. Now he was glad he hadn’t.