The Power of Testimony

The Crime
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The leader had taken Karen. The rest of us were tied together like
prisoners, in one long chain. The other intruder marched us up
the stairs.
Our feet were bare, and the shuffling noises they made sounded
piteous. I was almost glad to take my place in the dining room
again, in sardine formation, on a carpet. This time I noticed how
much floor space we took up. How could we be so many and yet so
helpless? I also saw that the phone had been disconnected. I hadn’t
even thought about the phone as an escape route, only the door.
My foolishness pierced me. They had caught us unaware and unprepared.
No wonder they could prey upon us as they liked.
Events began to blur together. Over and over, one of the intruders
would return to the dining room with the latest victim and
choose the next. I could no longer catalog it all, like a dream that
drags on. Each moment is so unreal, so intensely colored that you
think you’ll never forget it. But that very intensity pushes the previous
moment out of mind.
My prayers lessened to a trickle. I could no longer hold everything
in my mind at once. And what was the point? So I was a good
girl. So what?
At one point I smelled cigarette smoke and turned my head to
watch a red circle of ash travel through the darkness.
At another point an intruder brought Cheryl into the kitchen,
saying he wanted a sandwich. I heard the refrigerator door open.
Then came the angry shout: “You ain’t got nothin’!”
“There’s peanut butter,” Cheryl said diplomatically.
“I don’t want no peanut butter! Ain’t you got baloney?”
“There’s no baloney in this house,” Cheryl said. “We don’t eat
processed meat.”
Decades later, I remember that line exactly, along with her prim
tone of voice, because wouldn’t you?
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