“I was raped,” she finally announced. The statement broke my heart at the go. “It all happened six months ago, a few days after you spent the night at my hostel,” she continued in a more collected manner. I think the cans of tears behind her eyes had now emptied completely. As she spoke, she stared at me, as though searching for any sign of any knowledge about what she was talking about. I’m sure she didn’t find any because there was none.
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My mind had never been so empty than it was at that time. I didn’t know what to say to her. I failed to find a way of sympathising, or doing whatever reaction was called for at the sound of that. I went dumb. I got an acute headache from the battle of the millions of words trying to find their way out of my mouth but in vain. There was a heaviness in my heart: a weight sinking down every bit of sanity in me. It was so hard for me to digest the fact that some imbecile had ‘helped’ me with the prey I was dillydalling to chew.
“It was so painful,” she continued, breaking into fresh sobs. “It’s so unfair that I had to lose my pureness in such a disrespectful and profane manner.” Every word she was able to speak was a sharp dagger re-injuring the same spot in my bleeding heart. Despite the fact that I was too silenced to say a single word, I made myself useful by engulfing her whole frame within my trembling arms—my arms had lost their stamina to choler.
My mind was curling around the feet of only one name—Ronnie—because of the ‘friend’ aspect in her claim. He was the first and only suspect I knew. But why would he do such a thing, I wondered. There were thousands of questions birthed by the answers so far given to me by Rachael. I wanted to know more about what she was talking about. I wanted to learn every detail she was keeping in her memory.
“Tell me everything that happened, Rachael,” I cried, trying so hard to tame the earthquake in my voice. The request was too big for Rachael to fulfill at the go. Actually after putting myself in her shoes weeks later, I realised my request was inappropriate at that moment. That explains why she took over thirty minutes before replying me. We spent each of those minutes wrapped in each other, speaking the same languages—sadness, agony and anger.