2295 wds
My defense against the charge of rape is as follows;
A. I live in a poor neighborhood where girls are taught to marry very young, even to a drunk or abusive person, and to stick with him or die scorned as a woman who can't hold onto a man. Girls there are taught that unless they have children they have no place in the world, no one to love and be loved by. The people of this community often slaughter their own animals, repair their own cars and houses and carry on blood feuds over many generations. Included in their household chatter is often mention of ‘rutting time.’
B. Miss Glenda Reynolds is an innocent girl from this mold who seeks to break free into a more fulfilling life. I sympathized with her. I feel sorry for her for having to suffer the pressures of this society.
C. Miss Glenda Reynolds lives downstairs from me in the aforementioned community with her aunt, her gay male cousin, and an invalid uncle completely bedridden. I believe this uncle is so paralyzed he can only move his eyes. I mention Glenda's cousin’s homosexuality not as shameful but only a source of family discord. His many public conflicts with his lover, verbal and physical, have certainly influenced Glenda negatively. There was and is a high level of stress in Glenda’s family situation, yet her home life can be called typical of the area.
D. I live in this neighborhood for the cheap rent, not the ‘easy pickings’ among the teen girls, as my accusers stated. I am a solitary person and have lived in the same place for ten years without conflict with my neighbors.
E. At about the time of the incident resulting in the charge of rape against me, many strange events occurred. Many evenings when i returned from my work as a carpenter Glenda ~ i will call her Glenda because despite her accusations i think of her as my friend ~ would be sitting on my front door step listening to a
small radio. Because Glenda and her family occupy the lower half of the duplex, as i have said, and the two entrances to the building are close, this step is not an unusual place for anyone to sit. The step is on the edge of the sidewalk, my front door opens right onto the sidewalk one step up from the bricks. Many passing people rest there in the shade and i don't discourage anyone from doing so. I have often thought of building a more comfortable bench out there, for public use. I rarely sit on the step myself. I step over it and walk upstairs to my apartment and whoever wants that front step after i pass can have it free of charge. I never discouraged Glenda from sitting there and on some evenings spoke to her briefly.
F. About this time, a few days before the incident in question, Glenda’s cousin was severely beaten by his lover and required hospitalization. The added financial burden must have further strained a family struggling to support an elderly invalid man. Glenda has made her statement, but i think it was really penned by her aunt to obtain a monetary settlement from me. I would now like to tell the court what truly happened and how it happened on that day.
The evening in question ~ Sunday ~ i returned from a fishing trip to find Glenda sitting on my doorstep, weeping. I asked her what had happened and without answering she cried more and louder. Several bystanders took notice as did the crowd of idle boys who hang around the convenience store caddy-corner to our building pitching pennies against the wall or playing cards on the sidewalk. They stopped their games to watch.
To avoid their eyes i opened the door to my apartment and invited Glenda to come inside. We had talked before on the step but never at the kitchen table where i fixed her a cup of herb tea. I fixed this tea to relax her. It is called ‘Sleepy Time,’ is a well known brand name tea and not, as the prosecution maintains, a
‘potential aphrodisiac.’
Glenda stopped crying and drank the tea, but was still reluctant to tell her story. She herself thought the tea was, “really weird stuff,” and this should surprise no one since she rarely drinks anything but Pepsi. I remained silent and let her relax enough to talk, waiting, reviewing in my mind our previous conversations. Let me tell you what impressions these talks made on me.
Glenda is a very beautiful girl. She is tall and slim and her features are as pure as those of any fashion model in a beauty magazine. This is her goal, her ambition, to be a model. However, Glenda believes the only way to succeed is to be ‘discovered,’ and suddenly lifted to the peak of fame. This is her dream. To achieve the dream, realistically, she will have to move out of our neighborhood and work her way up among different people. I don't think she knows this and if she does she probably doesn’t want to accept it as necessary. Moreover, in our neighborhood malnutrition and bad eating and health habits insure that young women will quickly lose their teeth and become either very skinny or very fat. From this population group, do you know, can you imagine, how many modeling agencies would venture to recruit employees? None. Glenda’s chances of being discovered would be better at the bottom of the ocean than in our neighborhood.
Without any sense of how to succeed in the modeling profession, never encouraged at home or elsewhere to do anything except find a man, make babies and spend her life in the drudgery of serving them, Glenda nevertheless knew in her heart and could see in the mirror that none of the magazine faces were truly as beautiful as her own. She is just as good as any of them. Yes, on a few occasions, this one also, i told her how pretty she is, and who can deny it? I always said this in a brotherly way.
On that early evening when she came up for tea she slowly calmed down enough to tell me about her cousin’s recent hospitalization that cost the family so much, harsh treatment from her aunt who belittled her ambitions and her extreme dislike of caring for her helpless uncle, unable to provide for himself even simple personal hygiene. I sympathized with her and did at one point place my hand on her hand, after washing off the smell of catfish i had caught that day. This is very different from her aunt’s statement that we were ‘drinking hot pants potion, neckid as can be.’
I gave Glenda a pep talk. I was tired, i had been fishing all day in the blazing sun and i wanted to take a cool bath. So at last, when she was reluctant to go, i insisted she leave even to the point of threatening her (behavior she is used to, i am sure). Eventually she left, suddenly throwing her arms around me and leaving on my face an innocent kiss, not what her aunt described as a 'smear of sin and shame.' The lipstick she wore ~ and left on my cheek and part of my mouth was bright red, called ‘Devil’s Passion.’ I mention this to be sure the court understands that i did not name that lipstick.
After Glenda left i quickly undressed in the bathroom as the tub filled. I was reading a fishing magazine i keep for idle moments close at hand. About ten minutes had passed since Glenda had gone and i was just beginning to relax when there came a furious banging on my front door and shouting from the sidewalk below. It sounded like someone was pounding the door off the hinges!
I leapt from my seat, threw down the magazine and wrapped a towel around my waist, vaguely thinking this might not be enough to cover me, and ran downstairs. When i opened the door Glenda’s aunt, Mrs. Eleanora Cooper, and a friend of Mrs. Cooper began to shout in my face and shake their fists. I was relieved to see Glenda was not in the crowd.
They accused me of raping Glenda, as you know. Another couple, the Robinsons, who live just south of my apartment, joined them shouting. The Robinsons are about thirty; they have two kids, young boys, and are very suspicious of my ways. I don’t know why, but they never say hello when we pass on the sidewalk. If i ever greet them they smirk and look at me like i'm crazy. I think the Robinsons thought it was fun to shout at me on my step, i could tell by the way they snickered and smiled even while they said angry, terrible, hateful things.
Of course i was very uncomfortable confronted this way standing in my towel, but i knew i had to make the best of the situation, remain calm and in control, so i asked them several times calmly with my voice only slightly raised, to slow down and tell me what was the problem.
Mrs. Cooper, the poor girl’s aunt and legal guardian, spoke up loudly, shouting. She directly and graphically accused me of raping Glenda and then paying her twenty dollars to shut up. She held up a twenty dollar bill which i had in fact given Glenda, but not to keep her quiet.
During our conversation at the kitchen table Glenda told me of her frustration in the struggle to acquire expensive cosmetics required of a supermodel. She was upset by having to steal from her cousin who confronted her, humiliating her. Besides, she said, his lavender and mauve foundations and use of bright red (Devil’s Passion) high tones did not suit her subtle ability to evoke a mood.
I asked her how much she needed for the cosmetics and she said $38.71. I thought this an extravagant amount and only had thirty and needed ten for gas in the coming week, so i gave her twenty. I asked her to keep my gift secret from the members of her family because i thought they would take it for themselves. And they did. Apparently, she told them of my innocent gift or they found out by guile and trickery and took the bill from her. I believe they could imagine only one reason for me to give money to Glenda, and so confronted me at my door.
The crowd grew larger. The boys came over from the convenience store and several cars stopped and people got out, so i had to raise my voice to be heard at the back of the crowd. As i told my story in a loud voice to reach the faces in the rear Mrs. Cooper's friend, i never learned her name, crept up on me. She is hateful toward me because i laughed at her fuzzy little squarish dog that rides real low to the ground and called the pooch ‘Trimbench.’ This woman hates that name but the neighbors liked it and called the dog Trimbench so much now everyone calls it that and the dog must like it too because it won't come unless called Trimbench. You can imagine how aggravating this might be. As i spoke to the crowd this old biddy, Mrs. Trimbench, sidled slowly up within reach of me, lunged and jerked the towel off my body.
It was at this moment, before i stumbled back into the doorway and the crowd recovered from shock and a general wave of mirthfulness, that they saw the birthmark which i think they later described to Glenda so she could say she saw it up close and which the medical examiner of this court has photographed. They saw nothing more of me besides my unmarked backside as they chased me upstairs where i locked myself in the bathroom and quickly dressed again in my old catfish stinking clothes which i was obliged to wear until my release. No one attempted to break down the door, they just pounded on it. I believe most of the crowd was too busy looting my apartment while a few of those more dedicated to getting at me yelled at me through the door. Some of them brought chairs from the kitchen and stood on them to holler through the bathroom door transom. I said nothing, preoccupied as i was with getting my clothes on and escaping out the window. Among other things missing from the kitchen was my stringer of catfish. But that’s alright, since i did catch them in the Elizabeth River (so they have a lot of chemicals in them) and the thief who took them had to clean them.
As reported, when the police arrived and rescued me i was clinging to the ledge below my window, unable to escape to the roof. I have no differences with their report of my rescue and arrest and i urge the court to continue to question and examine me as i am sure my innocence can be established beyond doubt. In this statement i have merely tried to describe what truly happened that evening.
In addition to this i ask the court to consider the shame and theft done to me and my apartment when the neighbors came to visit and help themselves to my property. In every possible way i wish to reaffirm my innocence of the charge of raping Miss Glenda Reynolds and thank you for your consideration of these facts.
And he resumed his seated position at the defendant's table.
End of “Statement to the Court”