I met her again that day, the woman with the glinting eyes, the combative woman. She pushed me with a booted foot into the pond outside my house. I still do not know how she had arrived there, having never given her my address.
As the water overcame me, I remember feeling rage and resentment toward her. She had ruined my neat little bandage, had jeopardized my injured hand, and had wounded my pride. But she is like that, is this woman.
It was then that I pushed her into the water as well. It was satisfying to do so. It represented more than just the act. In a sense, I wanted her to suffer along with me. Perhaps if she did she might feel a little empathy.
I knew she was rifling through my things, I knew that she had been peeking through my possessions as I attempted to change my dress in the other room. I could hear her doing it, could hear the soft rustle of paper, the way her feet padded on the carpet. I was no fool.
She read aloud my own words to me, quoted me in her unpretentious accent: There is something strange that I do not understand. An odd feeling in my chest and in my belly. There was ire in her tone, and something of spite as well. I felt my own words wound me. But I could not pretend to care, I could not let her know that she had hurt me with my own words.
She asked. She asked if it was he. It was. It was he. I could not mince words, I could not make light of it. I could not lie. It had been him, but things were so much different now. Things are so much different now. I couldn't feel anything for the man, even if I wanted to. And I don't.
She understood me, I think, to an extent, for she shared with me a secret I dare not relate even here. No, I could not speak what had become precious to me in her telling. I do not even know why she told me such things. But she did, and I felt for her.
I understand now that I cannot help but feel. That I cannot but be a grand mechanism of feeling. I cannot help but empathize, as I had told him all that time ago. It seems like it had been at least a year ago that I told him, but it was only a matter of a week or so.
I offered to cast the broken writing into the fire, then tore it into two, and gave part of it to her to toss into the fire. It didn't work. She told, and she told. I felt as though she were opening her heart to me, and I could not figure out why. Why was I deserving of such vulnerability when she often dismissed me or threatened to hit me in some way?
And then it happened. She let her hand to the fire, she placed it there, just above the flames. I could do nothing but react. I could do nothing but take all of the energy, all of my strength and try to pull her from there. I did not wish to see her suffer, though I knew she wanted to suffer. In suffering there was a kind of pleasure to her, as there has been to me, but in a different way.
We locked horns, and she threatened me yet again, but I showed her my hand, my hand which she had attempted to re-bandage less than an hour ago, my hand which had been cast in stitches by that man...I had torn the stitches in my struggle. I could see the way the crimson seeped against the white of the linen cloth.
She was upset and angry that it should have been so. She nearly feared the idea of me coming to him with the wound, and telling him how it was acquired. But I told her it needn't be so. I would have to discern what to do, what to say. To the physician I must make haste.
Rue, why must you be this way? And why must I take and feel all your pain and everyone else's too?
