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Published in Bellevue Literary Review, Spring 2004
 
Copyright Debra Anne Davis 2004
 
 
Fissure
 
“Is this your first time?” A voice addressed me. I looked up from the magazine I was reading. The voice belonged to a middle-aged woman sitting to my right. She was wearing a shiny blouse with bright flowers. She was smiling broadly at me, which was somewhat disconcerting.

“Yes,” I answered. I left the magazine open in my lap.

“Well, you’ve come to the right doctor!” she said. “Dr. B— is wonderful; he’s very gentle.”  This was actually reassuring to hear. She opened her eyes wide when she spoke of the doctor, and she smiled confidently. “I wouldn’t have let him operate on me twice if I didn’t trust him,” she continued. Then she told me about how she had a “wandering” colon and about how much better her life was now that she had a colostomy bag. She obviously wanted to tell me about these things, these things that are not generally discussed in polite company, especially between strangers. This would have been awkward, even rude, in a different situation. But here, she was speaking out of generosity. We were, after all, both sitting in a proctologist’s waiting room

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 “If you don’t mind, may I ask why you’re here?” she asked. There were tiny lines around her mouth when she smiled at me. Maybe she thought I, in my mid-20s, seemed too young to be here? Maybe she was just nosy? Maybe she thought I looked nervous and needed some help? It’s true, I was nervous. I saw that she could help.

“I’ll tell you if you want,” I began. She nodded for me to go on. “Something very bad happened to me,” I continued on in my customary and—as I’d already learned, in conversations over the past week with my parents and my boyfriend and my boss and my friends—completely ineffective way. She sat there still listening, her head slightly tilted, her mouth mildly smiling. “I was raped last week,” I told her. “The rapist had anal sex with me, and now I’m bleeding. That’s why I’m here.”

Not even a pause. “I’m sorry,” she said. Her face stayed mostly the same, though the little smile went slack. She didn’t lean further forward or pull back from me. She didn’t say “Oh!” or “I’m so sorry.” Her calm surprised me. She was sorry that this had happened to me, I believed. But she did not pity me. She was wise, I felt, and her empathy came from that.
 
I had been noticing blood on the toilet paper, a bright red streak down the soft white tissue. He’s still making me bleed, I thought. Still. The bastard. There had been a dull soreness, too, and sometimes sharp pain that seemed to shoot straight through the center of my body, pain that reminded me of the attack. Tears would well up in my eyes, though not from the physical discomfort. I felt sad, pity even, for my poor, hurt body. And so, six days after I’d been raped vaginally, orally, and anally by a complete stranger in my own home, I went to see a proctologist.

The Police Department’s Victim Services counselor had called and made the appointment for me. The nurse had told her that I’d need to take two enemas before my exam. I’d never bought an enema before, but when I went to the drugstore, I found that there was a whole shelf of them. The brand I’d been told to buy was even on sale. I bought two of them.

I’d been staying at friends’ houses since I’d been attacked. Carrying my little white paper bag, an Rx emblazoned on the front, I knocked on my friend’s door.

“You don’t need to knock,” Derrick said when he saw it was me. It was both a practical and hospitable comment. Derrick lived with two other guys, a guitar player and a bass player; Derrick was a roadie. They never locked the front door of their bachelor pad. So there would be, in fact, no need for me to knock. I would be able to walk in any time I wanted to. And, I was welcome to.

After greeting me at the door, Derrick returned to his place on the couch. He took another bite of the 7-11 Danish he was eating for breakfast. He was watching some soap opera.

I sat in the big brown recliner next to the couch. We chatted. We watched the soap opera. These were normal things that normal friends did, I knew. But this was not normal. Not at all. Because I kept thinking, I really should go do the enema thing now. But I sat through a set of commercials, and then another set. I didn’t want to do what I had to do. But what choice did I have? As usual, none.

“Uh, Derrick?” I forced myself to say as the third set of commercials began. “I need to go use the bathroom for a while, if that’s okay.”

“Sure,” he said.

“I have to go take an enema,” I said and rolled my eyes—can you believe it?  He pushed a button on the remote and the TV screen went blank. He turned to face me.

“I have to go to a proctologist this afternoon,” I told him. I had been avoiding telling him because I’d thought I would feel embarrassed when I did. But instead I just felt sad. This was yet another in a seemingly endless series of humiliations, burdens, traps I’d had to endure since I’d been raped. A weight spread across my chest, heavier than a lead vest. I knew I’d have to act, though, in spite of it.

Derrick did not seem disgusted by my revelations, was not squeamish, as I’d feared he’d be. “Sure,” he said. “Go ahead.” He turned the sides of his mouth up, trying to make a little smile, but his eyelids, the true mirrors of his soul, drooped lower. “Do you need anything?”

“No,” I answered.

I went into the bathroom and locked the door behind me.

The bathroom was small. There were beard hairs in the sink.

I set one of the green and white boxes on the edge of the counter and looked at it. Fleet in large white letters, Comfortip® in small black letters. I read the sides of the box. The comfortip was “soft, prelubricated.”  Lovely. “Anatomically correct Comfortip® assures ease of insertion.” “Easy-grip, easy-squeeze round bottle.” On the back, an outline drawing of a man, with no expression on his face (his mouth a single straight line), is first lying on his side, one arm and one leg bent, and then below that, he is up on his knees, his cheek resting on the floor, his arm crooked beside his body and up against his face. In each drawing his other hand is inserting the enema.

I read through the instructions. “With steady pressure, gently insert enema with tip pointing toward navel. Squeeze bottle until nearly all liquid is expelled. Remove tip from rectum.”

I broke the tape sealing the top and opened the box.

I pulled my pants and my underwear down. I picked up the bottle of solution and got down on my knees. Holding the bottle in my right hand, I pressed my head down onto the bathroom floor. There were smears of white shaving cream, globs of green toothpaste stuck in the fluffy rug. I poked the tip of the bottle inside me. I was sore, the tip was cold, I was naked and on my knees on a dirty bathroom floor, squeezing this liquid into me—all I wanted to do was cry, but instead I kept gently squeezing.
I’d been told I had to take two full enemas before my appointment. I only took one.
 
The proctologist’s office was in a medical center which I’d driven past dozens of times since I’d moved to Austin, but I’d never been inside before. I arrived at the appointed hour, took the elevator to the appointed floor, opened the appointed door. I walked to the reception desk and checked in with the nurse. I was met with a knowing nod and a sympathetic look; she knew who I was. She asked if I could fill out some forms. I told her I’d try.

After I’d been sitting on the pastel floral-patterned couch for about twenty minutes, holding a magazine in my hands and pretending to read it, I saw the nurse walking towards me.  She asked me quietly if I’d like some Valium. Her offer surprised me. Did I look that upset?  I’d thought I’d been putting on a pretty good show, blending in with the crowd. But, yes, I realized, I’d love some Valium. I tried to smile up at her. She left but instantly returned with two little white cups, one containing a small peach pill with a “V” cut out of the center, the other containing water. I took both cups and thanked her.

As I relaxed back into the cushions of the comfortable, pleasingly-colored couch, I lost myself in the People. The office door opened and closed without my notice. Patients were called by the receptionist. I floated around in the world of Hollywood stars and the problems the rich and famous face.

“Is this your first time?”  A voice addressed me.

 
By the time the nurse called my name, I was feeling much better than I had when I’d first sat down. The friendly woman’s enthusiasm for the doctor had reassured me some, and the Valium was taking care of the rest. I was led into a small office crowded with heavy oak furniture. A fifty-year-old man in a white coat sat at the large desk. He rose to shake my hand and introduce himself, though I already knew this was the famed Dr. B—. I sat in the chair that was facing his desk.

He looked directly at me and said, “I’m very sorry to hear what happened to you.” I nodded my appreciation for his comment. “Would you mind if I got some information before the exam?” he asked. I tensed my shoulders, raised my eyebrows, and thrust my head a little to the side; this was supposed to convey okay.

He asked questions about my medical history, about my present symptoms, about the rape exam in the hospital. I listened carefully and tried hard [to] answer his mundane questions. I was feeling almost too relaxed from the Valium, but I knew these questions were important so I tried to get everything right. After a couple of minutes he called the nurse on his intercom and then led me into another room.

The examination room of course. The nurse held out a paper robe to me and instructed me to strip from the waist down. Once again, I did as I was told.

There was an exam table, but instead of asking me to sit or lie on it, the nurse told me to kneel at the foot of it. I stood still. She looked at me, wondering if I’d understood. I had understood; I wasn’t moving because I needed all my strength, at the moment, to keep from screaming. I told myself to breathe, to try and forget; but this had been the position I’d been raped in, against the foot of my own bed. I knew she was a nurse, he was a doctor. I was here because I was hurt and they were going to help me, but why, why did I have to keep doing these things? I moved one foot and then the other one, bent my knees and pressed them down on the little platform at the end of the table, leaned my body over the examination table, and pressed my face down on the thin, shiny paper that covered the vinyl pad.

The plastic gloves, the K-Y jelly, the metal instrument strategically inserted into the body cavity under question…a proctology exam is much like a gynecological exam in reverse. That nurse in the waiting room was a genius. If I hadn’t needed the Valium then, I definitely needed it now. It fogged my brain just enough to keep me from running out of the room. The doctor and nurse went about their jobs.

The exam itself was fairly brief, though it was as much as I could stand. When it was over, the doctor stood up and told me I could get dressed and then asked me to meet him back in his office.
 
I returned to my seat in front of the large oak desk. The doctor was waiting for me. There was a stack of papers in front of him. He smiled at me. I either smiled back at him or just stared blankly at him. My mind was stopped up with cotton and nails. The Valium numbed my nerves, knitting for me an outer helmet of fuzz; the terror of being once again on my knees, exposed and penetrated, this terror pricked relentlessly at the false calm, threatening to tear through. The doctor was talking to me.

He told me that I had something called an “anal fissure.”  He handed me a little slip of paper. I looked at it. The paper had his name and address at the top and then the title in capital letters, “ANAL FISSURE,” and under that an explanation: “A fissure is a cut or tear in the lining of the anal opening.”
 
Fissure:  a narrow opening or crack of considerable length and depth usu. occurring from some breaking or parting
Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary
 
 
The rapist had shoved me against the foot of my bed, torn my clothes off of me, and rammed his dick in my ass. Again and again, harder and harder still. The force of this, these thrusts that had caused me more physical pain than I’d ever felt before in my life, pain so extreme that I actually forgot for a while to be afraid, the repeated stabs of his body into mine, the way he slammed with all his strength, as if I were an enemy, as if I were the monster. This, this he’d done to me and this is what it had caused, a “fissure,” this medical term, a rip, a tear, an abyss. The rape was over, I’d thought, but now six days later, I was finding out that it wasn’t. I was torn, still bleeding, still bleeding from the barrage, the violence, his incomprehensible rage.
 
The small slip of paper the doctor had handed me contained a surprising number of instructions. “It is important to continue all the treatments until instructed to discontinue them.”  “Insert one suppository morning and evening.” “Keep suppositories in refrigerator. Lubricate with Vaseline or K-Y Jelly before inserting into rectum.” “Sit in hot tub morning and evening for 15 minutes.”

The doctor handed me another slip of paper, a prescription for the suppositories. When I had the prescription filled later at the pharmacy where I’d bought the Fleet enemas earlier that day, I got back a short, fat orange plastic bottle with a label taped on it.
 
Davis, Debbie
Anusol
Insert One Suppository Rectally Every 12 Hours.
 
This was not who I wanted to be. This was not what I wanted to do. More slippery K-Y Jelly, the suppositories wrapped up in foil so they looked just like little silver bullets, all doctor’s orders, all humiliating and disgusting, my knees bent, my hand thrust up inside me, I inserted them into my body, morning and evening.

Twice a day, I filled the tub with warm water, at just the perfect temperature, and slipped in. I love taking baths. I hated these.
 
The doctor gave me more papers, some reprints of articles to read, a list of  foods to eat and foods to avoid. He explained each piece of paper carefully before gently handing it to me. I had no idea what he was talking about. I accepted each slip and packet of papers, hoping I wasn’t missing some very important information.

In college I’d taken two terms of Japanese language classes. I listened carefully to everything Chiyoko-san had said, but understanding even the most basic words and phrases was a challenge for me. I now felt the same way, except that the doctor was speaking my native language. Sumimasen. Wakarimasen.  And why was he talking so fast? 
 
After the doctor had explained everything to me, and I’d nodded my goodbye, I went back to the waiting room. The kind woman who’d spoken to me earlier was no longer there. I sat on the gaudy couch, holding in my fist the papers he’d given me.
I watched as a dark-haired woman walked out of the doctor’s office and past the reception desk. She walked halfway across the room and then stopped and leaned against the wall. A middle-aged man with skinny legs and a big belly sprang up from his chair and walked to her. He stood facing her. She rested her head against the wall, closed her eyes, and told him something. His eyes were open; he listened without speaking. The doctor, I thought, had given her some bad news. She needed the wall for support, not because of her medical condition but because she had to deliver the news to this man.

Was she dying?  I wondered. The man reached out to her, put one of his hands on each of her elbows. Did she have colon cancer, and was it taking her away from him?  They were both seeing the same future, I thought; she would leave him, he would be left. Is this what there was in life? Breakings and cuts? I’d thought it was just me. But now I saw it was all of us. The problems may be different, but the pain is, mostly, the same: ubiquitous, unavoidable, engulfing.

I went home and did as I’d been told. I took the medicine, and I sat in the warm water. The medicine healed my wound, and the water soothed it. The fissure, though, deep and long, remained.

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