CHAPTER TWO: THE GRAND JURY

The two state troopers who were resting were quickly alert after feeling
Theresa’s assault upon the cruiser. Looking at the source of the noise, they saw
a filthy street person staring dumbfoundedly at them. They were about to shoo
her away when she shouted, “he’s drowning him, he’s drowning him.”
Instinctively, although unhappily, they sprang into action. They exited the
cruiser and tried to calm her down. After unsorting her confused and rambling
statements, they reluctantly put her in the back of the police car and headed
over to the river. She tried to get out but was unable.
Later that morning she found herself in a room with another man. She
was in agony as the cursed demons of sobriety began to run around inside her
body pinching and stabbing at her. The man was asking her questions. She told
him her name but little else. He seemed to know more about what happened
thatn she did. He’d tell her something happened and ask her if she agreed. If
she disagreed he accused her of lying to him. He’d persist until she relented and
agreed. She was not only fighting him but also those demons.
All she wanted was a drink. She was not at the point where whatever she
had to say to get a drink she would say it. She only wanted the man to let her go
back to her shack where her stash was hidden. After what seemed five life times,
the man told her to come with him. They left the room. Outside were many
police officers in uniform. They referred to the man who had been questioning
her as lieutenant.
The lieutenant told her he was going to find her a place to live. She said
she had one. He asked her where. She was afraid to tell him because she feared
the police ransacking and destroying it as they had done in the past. She said,
“nowhere. I live nowhere.”
“I thought so,” he said. “You’re just a tramp.” He took her by the arm
squeezing it harder than she thought necessary. He pushed her into the back of
his car and drove off. A short while later they came to a large building and he
pulled his car up onto the sidewalk outside the building. “Get out,” he said.
She did and the took her into the building, passed a reception desk, and
down a long hallway. He unlocked and opened the door of a room. He put her in
there saying, “you’ll stay here for a few days.” He left locking the door behind
him.
 Shortly after this, two burly women came in. They told her before they
could give her the sheets and towels she would have to clean up. She reluctantly
went with them. One talked about getting her some of the institutional clothes
and either fumigating or discarding those she was wearing. The other lawughed
ans said they should fumigate her.
They talked in front of her as if she were not there. She barely was after
descending into her shell prior to the attack and having her enemy sobriety
furiously fighting to gain ascendancy over her body by tearing up her insides.
She followed along, dazed and confused, until they reached what seemed to be a
locker room. She looked beyond the lockers and saw a room with showers in it.
She realized they planned to put her in a shower and she panicked with the fears
of drowning coming back over her.
She tried to get away. The two women acted to subdue her. They
succeeded when a third, an older woman, came to their assistance. Theresa had
little strength or reserve energy so her struggle was short lived. She was carried
into the shower by three women and held there until she was thoroughly cleaned,
the three women though clothed took the shower along with her. She was given
the institutional type clothes, brought back to her room, and she escaped her
sufferings by sinking into the sleep of the exhausted.
When she awoke, she found it was because the lieutenant was shaking her
shoulder.
“Wake up, I’ve got something for you,” he said.
She opened her eyes. He stood over her grinning at her.
“Get dressed, I’ll be outside,” he said and left the room.
She did as told. When she opened the door he indicated she should follow
him. They walked down a corridor and into another room. This room was a room
with a table that had chairs around it.
“Sit down,” he said. They sat on opposite sides of the table. He took from
his jacket a pint of whiskey and placed it on the table. She lusted for it.
“Once we go through this, it’s all yours,” he said.
He took out some papers. “Here’s what you told me when I interviewed
you earlier. I want to go over it with you.” He started to read it. He’d say, “I
asked you,” and he’d read a question from the papers in front of him. He’d then
say, “you answered,” and he’d read her answer.
 She had no recollection of saying most of the things he was putting in her
mouth. As a matter of fact, most of what the lieutenant said conflicted with her
memory of what happened. When she tried to tell him this, he would get very
angry.
“I didn’t think that happened,” she said.
“You calling me a liar?” he’d respond.
She’d quickly back down especially when he’d look over to the bottle
making her fear he was about to take it away.
When he got as much out of her as he believed he could, he’d give her the
bottle. She’d have to drink it in front of him since he wanted to take the empty
container with him. When she finished, he took her back to her room. She’d go
back in and climb into bed. She could hear him lock the door from the outside.
The wine got her through the night. Her meals that were brought to her
helped her through the days along with the thought that wine would be coming
after the evening meal.
Theresa had been put in the Sarah Franklin House, a women for single
women in the South End section of Boston. It had set aside a handful of rooms
for law enforcement to use where they could temporarily house women who
needed shelter who were victims or witnesses to crimes. Some, such as Theresa,
were locked in their rooms. All the girls who were so kept were told they could
leave at any time they wished as long as they first cleared it with the person who
brought them in. This made their stay voluntarily and covered the House but in
actuality none ever left without the permission of the person who brought her in.
For about two weeks the routine did not vary. The lieutenant would arrive
after dinner and the lesson in remembering the lieutenant’s reconstruction of the
events would begin. It would end with the return of the empty pint bottle.
This process of repeating over and over the lieutenant’s words had its
effect. Theresa’s attempts to cling to her memories of that evening became
more and more confused. She started to doubt the correctness of her memory of
Jake. Was he unlike anyone she'd ever met? Had he been kind to her? Had he
not used or abused her? She couldn't be sure. She could not be certain whether
a Jake existed or whether she had just conjured up this mental vision. Was he no
more than some figment of her imagination? Perhaps he and the time with him
had the same reality as those dreams which she had in the days immediately
following her banishment from her childhood home. The dreams of being
welcomed back to a warm, cheerful, and clean house by a kind, indulgent and
smiling mother. The dreams that always ended with her twirling in front of a floor
length mirror in a brand new pink taffeta dress with her special red shoes that
had been given to her by her hardworking loving father.
For Theresa, reality and dreams often merged. This was how she'd
managed to exist on the streets for almost half her life in a semi-drugged and
constant alcoholic daze. She'd learned to clutch onto only the most essential bits
of information: - the location of her shelter, the potential eateries and sop shops.
She was incapable of holding onto memories except as those as were forced
upon her as a means of survival such as recalling the ritualistic steps leading up
to being ravaged. Everything else had no meaning. She destroyed forever
memories of her wasted and wanton life trying to live without yesterdays. Her
reality needed continuing reinforcement. She knew Jake once because he was
her constant companion. Now, not having seen him for several days, he'd slowly
climbed out of the gaping holes in her memory. She lived only in the now. There
was no tomorrow, her future was the next minute.
The story the lieutenant pounded into her mind by his carrot and stick
system of threatened punishment and delayed reward at one time bore no
resemblance to her staccato memories of that evening. But slowly it began to fill
the interstices pushing out conflicting images. An impartial observer might have
thought Corrigan was attempting to have Theresa perjure herself. But Corrigan
knew the truth and he was actually trying to prevent her from perjuring herself.
At the fifth meeting when she again could not adequately recite what
she'd been taught, he picked up the bottle and said: "O.K., Theresa, have it your
way. That's all right. You can pretend you can’t remember the truth. But that's
all right. I'm not going to put words in your mouth. You remember it like you
want. Right now I'm going." He slipped the pint into his pocket and walk toward
the door. She panicked and called him back.
After several brutal days, she'd developed the ability to hold on to the
responsive answers to the lieutenant’s questions, at least while he was there. To
her, the reality was the bottle he provided and the script that he wrote. She
worked to insure there were no fading scraps of contradictory reality to interfere.
The lieutenant’s story had become one of those essential bits of information, like
knowing the location of a liquor store. Yet through it all, she deeply yearned for
the opportunity to escape back to the freedom and anonymity of the streets.
 One day Theresa found herself sitting on the 6th floor of the New
Courthouse building. She had been given a new dress that loosely hung over her
frail skeleton and a pair of new red shoes which she kept staring at. She was
delighted when she saw them. They seemed to smile at her and they brought
back memories of youth, happy dreams, and her father. She hoped she'd get to
keep them for they were like those in her dream. Maybe they were they only
loaners and she’d have to give them back. What the hell could she do with a
dress anyway that made no difference but she did want to keep the red shoes.
Twice now, in a little over two weeks, she'd been cleaned up. First was
when she arrived at the Sarah Franklin House and then again, this morning,
before going to the grand jury. Force sometimes conquers fear. The
overwhelming force of the staff at the House forced her to go into the shower
temporarily displacing her morbid fear of water. "What'd they say the shower
was the first time?" she asked herself. "Oh, that's right, the fumigation stall.
Yeah, me and my clothes were gettin' fumigated together."
At other times, greater fear sometimes conquers lesser fears. That
morning her fear of the lieutenant’s wrath forced her into the shower. To her
surprise, the shower was not as bad as she expected it to be.
While thinking this she cowered like a whipped puppy into the end of the
hard wooden bench fixing her eyes on the shoes with her arms wrapped around
her knees. She feared the reproachful eyes or curious stares of the many
strangers who seemed to be fill the corridors like waves pouring in and out of the
room. She escaped from the hubbub into the dullness of her mind.
Still lost in her mental numbness she heard, "Good Morning, Theresa."
She looked up and saw the lieutenant standing over her, next to him stood
another man, a man whom she had met on two prior occasions when the
lieutenant brought her to see him. He asked her questions, seemed unhappy
with her inability to answer, and she left. She stood up and nodded. Her arms
felt clumsy and heavy. She grasped the edges of her dress.
"Are you ready?" the lieutenant asked.
She looked up and shook her head affirmatively.
"Fine," he answered. "I was just in there and I told them what you were
going to say. So you just remember everything that happened now, all right
Theresa?"
She nodded.
 "All right, Mr. Curley will take you into the room and you'll tell everything
to the people in there what happened that night."
The lieutenant stepped to the side and Curley said: "Follow me Theresa."
Curley was about Theresa’s height, on the heavy side with longish dark
hair and a beard. He was wearing a suit. He asked, “did Lieutenant Corrigan tell
you what to expect?”
She nodded. He said, “follow me.”
With her head down, her body slouched over, she walked lockstep behind
him down a corridor, through two large doors, across a wide hallway that had
banks of elevators on both sides, through two more large doors and into a room
containing the grand jurors.
She hesitated after arriving in the room. "Over here!" Mr. Curley said
indicating to a chair that was placed behind a table. "You sit here and speak into
this microphone so that everyone can hear you. Do you understand?" She
nodded. Mr Curley was speaking to her in such a cold manner that she feared
she did something wrong. She sat, looked up, and found herself facing the grand
jurors. They gawked back at her. She lowered her gaze from them to the base of
the microphone.
Mr. Curley started to talk. She heard him say, "You have already heard
from Detective Gerald Corrigan. He's testified as to the statements which this
witness made to him shortly after the body of Edward Roberts was pulled from
the Charles.”
She then heard him telling her to stand and raise her hand. She did and
he said something about telling the truth. He told her to sit down again. He then
went on to say she had no last name. He turned to her and asked if she were
Theresa.
She nodded. He said she shouldn’t nod but she should answer yes or no.
She nodded to show her assent. He again asked her if she was Theresa and she
said ‘yes’.
Then she heard him saying something about knowing Jake. She nodded
but caught herself and said, ‘yes.’ She kept her head down not wanting to look
at the people who were staring at her. She was entranced by her red shoes. She
moved the toes of them in and out, in and out, as if dancing. She wa no longer
paying any attention to Mr. Curley. She pictured herself with Jake in a large hall
with huge chandeliers lighting the room and a band sitting on a stage playing
music. She was dancing round and round. The pressure of sitting in front of
these strangers, unable to run and hide in her protective hole as she'd done all of
her street life but watching her red shoes which seemed to smile up at her and
give her courage, caused her to focus her attention on Jake and her last evening
with him. Pieces of verbal pictures, broken pieces of recalled events of that night
that the lieutenant tried to chase away, tumbled back into her ken. Yes, now she
remembered. Jake stood up to help her. Now she remembered. Jake was not a
dream. They did have the month of being together. Yes, she could see it now.
She could hear it. Jake jumped up and yelled: "Don't touch her!" That's what he
said: "Don't touch her!"
He didn't betray her. He tried to help her. A warm feeling exploded in her
body stronger than the best slug of alcohol after a prolonged enforced
abstinence. A deep warm feeling without the burning sensation in her throat.
She stared at her red shoes anxiously hoping they would help her conjure up
more pictures of Jake. Mr. Curley’s voice coming from the distance interrupted
her reverie. She looked and saw him angrily staring at her. He walked closer to
her. She looked into his eyes. Thery were not happy. Not knowing what he was
about to do, she asked, “yes?” He stopped coming. She felt a slight bit of relief
when he backed away a couple of steps.
He asked her if she was drinking with Jake on the 4 th of July. She smiled
thinking of that day. She said she had been drinking. She remembered Jake
saying that. Her smile brightened. Yes, they were going to go listen to the
concert and have a drink to celebrate America’s birthday because it was the 4th
of July.
She then heard Mr. Curley say that Jake hit Eddie with a big rock. She
knew that was wrong. She stopped smiling. She denied that had had happened.
She did not remember anyone hitting anyone. Mr. Curley said he did and she
spoke back at him saying it didn’t. She did not understand why Mr. Curley kept
lying or why he wanted her to lie. She didn’t have to. He didn’t have any bottle
of wine.
He then began to ask her what she thought Eddie was going to do to her.
This brought back to her all the hated scenes of men attacking her. She
wondered why this man wanted her to talk dirty in front of these people. She sat
back down and withdrew into herself. She looked at her red shoes and smiled.
They told her it was no use going on. This was going to be a repeat of the same
old thing. This man was like all the others. He was making fun of her. Now he
wanted her to tell him what they do to her. Just like the others used to do after
ravaging her when they'd make her tell what she'd done to them and they'd all
laugh and some would want her to do it to them. They'd push her from one to
another laughing at her and forcing her to do more and more. She won’t tell him.
Her red shoes will save her. She’ll just dance away with them.
Her few short moments of interaction with the other world had shown her
the futility of trying to communicate it. They were no different than the others.
But this time she was different. She was bringing something good back with her.
She knew that Jake Jake was not a dream. He was real and she'd find him and
cling to him. There was one person who'd been good to her. He never hurt her
or touched her. He could be waiting for her back at their home. She wasn't
going to let them make fun of her anymore. "No more will they laugh at us," she
uttered inaudibly to the red shoes as she gathered herself into a tight ball waiting
for the expected attack. She didn't need them anymore. She had Jake Jake. She
had her red shoes. She was not going to let them take these from her.
She did not know how long she had been looking down but sensed
everything had become quiet. She looked up. To her surprise, no one else was in
the room. She waited a few seconds and then got up. She walked out the door
and found herself lin a corridor. She walked a few steps to a bank of elevators.
When one arrived she got on it. It took her down where she got off with some
other people. She followed them it seemed from one building into another. They
then walked out through two large double doors and out into a large open bricked
space. She kept following them across the space and down a flight of steps. She
recognized the area. Finally she was free again. She'd go back home and see if
Jake was waiting.