The Knitting Circle Rapist Annihilation Squad Read online

  Red-faced and mortified, Marilyn said of course she didn’t have any need for it. She was just curious. But had Brigitte’s protection ever failed?

  Brigitte said, “Yes, once.”

  “What happened?”

  “I ran down to Baby-B-Gone faster than you can say, ‘Not every ejaculation deserves a name.’”

  The eavesdropping elder, unable to contain his righteous fury, burst into the room and banished the evil women from his church.

  After that they heard of a Satanist church offering a free room for use. Since they were just going to knit anyway, they didn’t much care what sort of church it was, so long as it had a free room. But when they arrived for their first meeting at the “church,” they found it was in fact a sixteen-year-old-boy’s basement in his parents’ home, “complete” with black light, black bean-bag chairs, and the boy’s original drawings of Led Zeppelin posters. When the boy said they looked best under black light, Brigitte wondered, but was kind enough not to say in his presence, if they wouldn’t look even better under no light at all. After that came a succession of dusty back rooms behind failed storefronts: wedding stores that seemed to fail as often as the marriages themselves; a second-hand store started by someone who’d lost her job in the failing economy and who thought it might be a brilliant idea to reopen a second-hand store started by someone else who’d lost her job because of the economy and who then lost the second-hand store; and a small, dirty, noisy room behind a chocolate factory. They put up with the crowding, the filth on the floor, the spider bites, and even the occasional fright by a rat in exchange for their ability to spend a few hours a week swimming in the smell of pharmaceutical grade chocolate: one week dark, the next week milk, and semisweet the week after that. But even chocolate couldn’t help them rationalize staying after they overheard the owner yelling at his daughter for a bookkeeping mistake, calling her stupid, and then hitting her. He kicked them out after they turned him in to the police.

  When the room at the cheese factory became available, the members of the knitting circle, still leery after the unfortunate cat pee fiasco, were concerned that their sweaters would smell like cheese. But they had nowhere else to go. Happily, the cheesy fragrance didn’t seem to permeate the yarn too awful much. The only even remotely cheese-associated consequence of knitting in this room was that they all unaccountably seemed to make friends more easily with dogs, cats, and people from France.

  This week the factory smells like smoked mozzarella. Brigitte is sitting next to her best friend Gina, the mother of Marilyn. In spite of, or perhaps because of, Gina’s long-time closeness with the flamboyant Brigitte, she normally dresses as her opposite (in a style she terms sensible and Brigitte silently labels dowdy; of course she is far too polite and kind to ever say this aloud). Mary, an avid gardener, favors floppy hats. Christine is famous for neatness. It is rumored she can walk through a hurricane with not one hair out of place, not because of hair spray, but from sheer force of will. And the youngest members, in their early twenties, are Jasmine and Suzie. Inseparable, these two friends nearly blind passersby with sparkle, glitter, and embellishments, from their metallic hair scrunchies to their iridescent eye shadow to the tips of their rhinestone-adorned toenails.

  On this particular day, although everyone else talks happily about food, clothes, crazy relatives, politics, and so on, Mary is silent. So silent that it becomes impossible to miss. Finally, Suzie asks what’s wrong.

  Mary stops knitting, sits still a moment, as if deciding whether to say what she is thinking, and then says, “I’m sorry. It’s just … my granddaughter was raped a couple of days ago.”

  There is a moment of stunned horror, before the room fills with expressions of condolence. Oh my god! No! How terrible! Goodness! How is she?

  Mary says, “As you’d expect. You know.”

  “Poor thing. How awful. Oh, no,” everyone murmurs.

  Brigitte asks, “Who did it?”

  “The counselor at her high school.”

  All faces harden. Knitting needles click very fast.

  Christine says, “No!”

  “That’s where I went to school. I could always tell he was a creep. I could just tell,” says Suzie.

  Jasmine shakes her head. “I thought he seemed nice.”

  “Just because he fools some people, doesn’t mean he’s not a rapist,” Brigitte says.

  Gina nods. “Don’t I know that one!”

  To which Mary replies, “You, too?”

  “Not that ‘nice’ guy, but another.”

  Christine looks at her, her face soft. “Gina, you’ve been raped, too?”

  “Too? You mean you were?”

  Christine nods, lips pressed together. They each put down their knitting, get up, hug briefly, then return to their chairs.

  They knit quietly for a few moments before Jasmine says, “The guy who did it to me seemed nice, too. At first.”

  “Mine never bothered to pretend,” says Suzie.

  Mary stops knitting. “Nor mine.”

  Gina glances from once face to the next, her brow furrowed. “Wait, have we all… ?”

  Silence. They all look at each other, appalled as each hesitantly raises her hand. After a moment they slowly resume their knitting.

  Gina says, “It was my cousin.”

  Suzie, “A cop.”

  Mary, “My abusive ex-husband.”

  Jasmine, “My ex-boyfriend.”

  Christine, “My prom date. That was a long time ago. Later it was a priest.”

  Brigitte, “A country-western singer. Afterwards he even wrote a song about it.”

  The room is silent except for the clacking of knitting needles.

  Christine turns to Mary and asks, “Will your granddaughter go to the cops?”

  “Cops won’t do anything. They never do,” Mary says.

  Jasmine asks, “Never?”

  Gina snorts in derision. “Did they in your case? Rapists never get what they deserve.”

  “Who do you call when the one who did it is a cop?” asks Suzie.

  No sound except for the needles.

  Suzie says, “Anybody in this room whose rapist went to jail, raise your hand.”

  All knitting stops. They look at each other. No one raises her hand. Knitting resumes.

  Gina says, “I used to work at a rape crisis center. Guess what percentage of rapists spend even one night in jail.”

  Jasmine says, “Half?”

  Gina snorts again, “Try six percent. They almost always get away with it.”

  Christine shakes her head. “That’s just not right. Somebody needs to do something!”

  Suzie shakes her head, too. “Good luck. That will never happen.”

  No one speaks while they knit.

  Another group of women might have let it drop there. Another conversation might have ended the way so many conversations like this end—somebody should do something, but nobody ever will, and that’s a sad fact of life, so let’s adjust to it the best we can.

  The women knit quietly for several minutes. Then Suzie says, “My mom always tells me if you want to get something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself.”

  The clicking of needles stops as they digest this. Brigitte smiles to herself. The clicking resumes.

  Christine hesitates before saying thoughtfully, “I read a book about village life in China under Mao, right after the revolution. Women formed patrol groups, and when they saw a man beating a woman they dragged him out of the house and beat him up. If he was caught doing it again they increased the punishment. Wife-beating stopped very quickly.”

  The women let their knitting fall to their laps. Only Brigitte keeps knitting calmly, smiling.

  Christine continues, “And more recently, the Gulabi Gang in India has been doing the same thing. Can you imagine several hundred women in pink saris chasing men who beat women?”

  The women smile broadly.

  Jasmine asks Christine, “What do they do when they cat
ch them?”

  “Well, they don’t give them candy kisses, I’ll tell you that much. Oh, and they also beat police who steal from or falsely accuse the poor.”

  “That’s the coolest thing ever,” Jasmine says.

  “Why don’t we ever take justice into our own hands like that?” Suzie says.

  The women stare at the walls, the ceiling, the floor, a few inches to the side of each other—anywhere but into each other’s eyes.

  Finally, Brigitte says, “Um. I did.”

  The women look at her in shock.

  Christine gets a sly look in her face and says, “Spill it, sister.”

  Brigitte spills the story of stopping her mustachioed attacker.

  Suzie asks, “Weren’t you scared?”

  “Of course. That’s why I did it.”

  Jasmine asks, “Do you think you might get caught?”

  Brigitte looks at each of them and says, “Not if you don’t tell.”

  They both use their knitting needles to cross their hearts. Everyone else in the room nods grimly.

  Finally, Suzie begins to giggle. When everyone looks at her she asks, “What did you do with the weapon? Are you using it right now?”

  Gina sputters, “That’s disgusting!”

  Everyone stares at her.

  She explains, “It had his blood on it. Who knows what nasty disease she could have caught!”

  They laugh, all except Gina, who digs in her purse for an alcohol wipe, then gingerly takes Brigitte’s knitting needles and sterilizes them before returning them to her.

  Suzie pantomimes putting needles on her head, says, “She could have mounted his head on the wall, with two knitting needles for antlers.”

  Jasmine catches the fever: “We could all become big game hunters!”

  Suzie: “Have a contest!”

  Jasmine: “Go on safaris!”

  Suzie: “Issue licenses and set bag limits!”

  Gina stops laughing and says sharply, “No!”

  “Absolutely not,” says Brigitte, in an even stronger tone.

  Everyone looks at them, wonders why they’re spoiling the fun.

  Gina says, “No licenses. No bag limits.”

  Brigitte adds, “It’s got to be open season.”

  Everyone laughs. Knitting resumes.

  Finally, Gina asks, “So what are we going to do about that school counselor?”

  1 Translation: I’m horny as a toad in heat, and even the vulnerable young ones in class have turned down my sexual advances.

  2 Translation: I need a confidence-builder something fierce. And you’re not half bad.

  3 Translation: When one can’t find quails, one eats crows.

  4 “This is the moment,” Marilyn tells her students, “when the whole story turns. If this story were being told not by Brigitte or me or someone like us, but rather by Riversong or by others like him” — and here she lists off a whole string of writers and filmmakers, people like Nabokov, Miller, Lean, Kazan — “the point of the story would not be Brigitte’s resistance, or how awful rape is, but rather how the woman actually wanted the man the whole time.”

  Her students are inevitably befuddled by this insanity. To exemplify this insanity in storytelling emphases and purposes, she contrasts, for example, the rape scenes in Dr. Zhivago or Straw Dogs — where the woman starts by repelling the man’s violent advances, but in the end pulls him close, showing that’s what she wanted all along — with the rape scene in Deliverance, where because it is a man and not a woman being raped, the rape is not romanticized or trivialized or made to be just another form of foreplay, but rather is shown to be humiliating, violent, and violating. At no point does Ned Beatty’s character pull the rapist closer, nor whisper that he loves him.

  CHAPTER 2

  A couple of weeks later, Mary is in her kitchen mixing green enchilada sauce into ground beef for meatloaf. Her second husband, Theodore, is in the living room watching the “Believe-It-Or-Not Super-Thrill-Filled News-O-Tainment Hour.” She half listens as the newscaster details the latest tabloid-style spectacles: “Mother asks police to handcuff her five-year-old child and send him to the pokey! Believe it or not! Two middle school students were caught having sex in class! Believe it or not! Miss USA contestant almost stumbles on her gown! Believe it or not!”

  Then she hears something that makes her pay attention: “Police have reported that James Noggle, counselor at Westwood High School, was found dead today in his office. He had been stabbed in the heart with a knitting needle. There are no suspects as yet! Believe it or not!”

  Mary smiles and whispers, “Thank you, Christine.”

  A few nights later, Suzie is in her family’s living room with her parents and her nine-year-old brother. He’s an okay brother, except that he still picks his nose. That is what he is doing with intense concentration as the newscaster announces, “Police have reported a second bizarre knitting needle murder. Todd Kurz, a decorated police officer, was stabbed in the line of duty last night. The following photo of the crime scene is graphic, and viewer discretion is advised. Please send all kiddies, puppies, sentimentalists, Hallmark card enthusiasts, and for entirely other reasons, communist sympathizers from the room. Or at least cover their eyes.”

  Suzie’s father says to her little brother, “You heard him, Bub.”

  Finger still in nose, her little brother replies, “I’m not a comminis simpa-sizer.”

  Her mother reaches to cover his eyes. He removes his finger long enough to push away her hand. She wipes her own hand on a handkerchief she keeps ready for this very reason.

  The television plays soft and tasteful yet still toe-tapping patriotic music—kind of like John Phillips Sousa on Valium. The photo that appears on the screen shows a police officer sitting in his patrol car, dead, a box of doughnuts and a bondage porn magazine by his side and a knitting needle stuck through his heart. A doughnut hangs from the needle.

  Suzie smiles and whispers, “Thank you, Jasmine.”

  Her mother says, “What did you say, dear?”

  “Oh, nothing, Mother.”

  Her little brother removes his finger, stares at it a moment, then puts it back in his nose.

  A few nights later, Christine sits up in bed, where she’s under her covers eating chocolate-covered ginger bits and watching television.

  The newscaster says, “The knitting needle murderer, clearly now on a killing spree, has struck for a third time. Police report that an elderly gentleman, Enver Alcatraz, was found dead in his home dressed in an ill-fitting tuxedo. He was stabbed with a knitting needle right through his boutonniere, which was composed of red carnations. Police also report that when he was found, he was clutching a corsage, and his CD player was still playing Neil Sedaka’s ‘Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen.’ The dance card of Mr. Alcatraz has, sadly, been punched for the last time.”

  Christine raises her chocolate in a toast. “Ha! Thank you, Gina!”

  The next week, a man sits alone on a wooden chair in the center of a large living room in a small mansion. The walls are decorated with paintings of cowboys at work and photograph after photograph after photograph of women—some beautiful, some not so, some young, some not so, some dressed, some not so—posing with the man now sitting in the chair. In the photographs the man always wears a cowboy hat. Now he wears that same hat, long white underpants, and boots with spurs. A guitar rests across his lap.

  His handlebar mustache is perky. His hat rests at a jaunty (yet practiced) angle. His spurs would still jangle if he could move his feet. But he is dead. A knitting needle protrudes from each ear. Trails of blood congeal on his neck.

  One of his songs plays on the turntable (although he’d put out a couple of dozen CDs, he was a purist to the end and owned only a record player):

  My baby, she didn’t say yes

  But she didn’t say no.

  A little hankyspanky

  And she was a-ready to go.

  Stolen kisses are sweeter than gold

&
nbsp; And stolen sexy-wexy

  It never gets old.

  The song reaches its end and so does the LP. Since there is no one there to turn it off, the record player makes a repeated clicking sound as the needle bumps against the end of the record. Chuk. Chuk. Chuk.

  Fans of this country western singer pack a church for his funeral. Most wear all-black western-style outfits bespangled with sequins. The jangles of spurs sound like hundreds of tiny bells helping to wing the man’s soul to heaven, or to some other place. Black cowboy hats are removed one by one as mourners enter the church and approach the casket, where they admire its carvings of horses and guitars, horses playing guitars, and men playing with horses. Inside the casket is the singer, now fully dressed, with his mustache even more personable and miraculous than that of the now-forgotten Riversong.

  Several women from the knitting circle are also in attendance. They are not wearing black, but bright pink. And they’re knitting. As they wait for the service to start, the clicking of their needles echoes in the cavernous holy space.

  The priest has not yet arrived.

  Time passes, and though the mourners want to pay their respects to their beloved troubadour, they also have meetings to attend, dogs to walk, partners to have sex with, people to e-mail, and in some cases special friends with whom they will combine the sex and e-mail. But the priest still fails to arrive. People begin to check their watches. Some send text messages. A few pull out laptops. A few of these make extra sure that no one else can see their screens.

  Finally a deacon emerges from a back room and approaches the pulpit. He wipes the sweat from his face with an embroidered hanky. He clears his throat nervously, says, “My deepest apologies. We can’t seem to locate the, um, priest. In the meantime, since the deceased was a singer, why don’t we all, um, sing a hymn? Does anyone have a suggestion?”

  One of the women in pink suggests a hymn of thanksgiving.

  Others, including many not wearing pink, snicker.

  The deacon disguises his own laugh with a cough, then says, “Ahem, why don’t we start with ‘Abide with Me’? Lenny, can you lead the mourners in song?”