Hello, Jennifer
For context: This piece is a reflective look on the 1978 rape revenge film, ‘I Spit on Your Grave’. It includes detailed descriptions of rape and the trauma which follows.
Hello Ms. Jennifer Hills,
Jennifer, I know you’ve been through a lot. I have, too. Please, if my words become too much, do not feel obligated to me. Your healing is more important than any words I could put across.
Jennifer, I don’t know how to talk to you. I don’t know how to talk to anyone, really, but especially you. How do I tell you what you mean to me? How do I explain what I’ve seen of your life? How do I express what you’ve done for mine?
Can I express it?
Jennifer, I bet a lot of your letters curse you. I bet many say you deserved what they did to you. Maybe some are charitable. Maybe they say that you didn’t deserve that but you shouldn’t have taken the law into your own hands.
People don’t understand what the law does to us. They think it can do no wrong. In my experience, all the law does is wrong. People say that even if there are flaws in the system, at least it helps us poor victims. It doesn’t. If you’re lucky, you have to unravel before them before they take scraps of the aftermath. What was once a body is now a crime scene. But you can’t complain because there is no other way. And people wonder why silence is our main route.
I want to be respectful, Jennifer, because you are more than my martyr. You have feelings. You must have them. You wouldn’t have gone to those lengths without them. You couldn’t have. Why would you have acted in such glorious retribution if you weren’t torn inside out? You wouldn’t have risked yourself if all sense of self wasn’t drained from your body. If you didn’t care, the anger in your eyes wouldn’t have overcome the golden-brown haven that once resided there.
I had a blue-green haven of my own before he touched me. I’m sure he saw it before deciding that I was the perfect subject for his sadism. He looked at me the way the leader of the gang stared at you. Smirks manifesting on their faces as they comb through their imagination, thinking of how sweet we taste. Their dirt-brown desert eyes never fully meet our havens, they merely glaze before noticing our more gratifying attributes. They took our smiles, mistaking them for invitations. When we assured them there was no party, they entered anyways.
I wasn’t torn apart like you were; not physically, at least. He entered despite my consistent pleads of “no not yet” by distracting me with promises of love that never arrived. I felt I had no choice which became a consistent pattern in the relationship. These promises of passion were never fulfilled. Instead, I was a toy. I can’t think of a time I ever wanted to. He never asked me if I wanted to.
Like you, it was more than one man. Plenty of men barged into my messages in online spaces to tell me how I was such a beautiful, fresh young thing. They would go further, demanding to see the places not even I was fully aware of. Some of them were good with their tactics, coaxing me into it. Others threatened me with blackmail. I was fifteen. My romantic and sexual appetite ate me inside, making it so easy for them to join the feast.
I watched them feast on you, Jennifer. I’m ashamed to admit that I stood there all three times they ravaged you. I could’ve looked away. I couldn’t stop it, not with their muscles and guns. I could’ve looked away, though.
I know my regret bears no weight on you. It’s not like I’m the only one to have gazed at their greasy bodies overtaking your porcelain shape. Many others, both victims, predators, and neutral parties, have watched as they bent you over the stump. We watched them jeer at your damage.
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Personally, my stomach twisted like barb wire on the last time they caught you. You should’ve been safe. You bravely walked your way to the cabin. Naked, you trekked through those woods, evading beasts. You got home. Your once pale-white, now bruised-purple legs couldn’t stand. For a brief moment, solace was in your sight. They destroyed that when they rushed in with their howling voices. They hadn’t convinced the runt of the pack, Matthew, to violate you before. This was his last chance.
Matthew seemed so sweet. He could be irritating, sure. But he couldn’t be a wolf. What wolf would happily bring you groceries any time you rang? But who would surround themselves with wolves except for one of their own?
I can understand why people believe he was just as violated as you. The leaders of the pack wouldn’t give up on their mission. The yells hurled in his direction may have infiltrated what seemed to be a kind mind. I agree that it wasn’t completely his choice. Though I can’t deny his enjoyment of your defilement.
Yes, joy was rightfully absent from him the first two times. Fear invaded him as they invaded you. I’m surprised he never ran away. That fear turned to nervousness when his body twisted into yours. Whenever I think of that moment, I wonder: Was this nervousness born out of ethical issues or was he just nervous to enter a woman? Perhaps the aforementioned fear wasn’t out of seeing such a barbaric act of violence. Maybe he had never seen a naked woman. I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll ever know.
Do you know, Jennifer?
I know that his unsure looks turned into certainty the more he went into you. Just like his predecessors, he smiled. Instead of a crooked smirk, he took a slimy, almost boyish expression. It was like he was on a roller coaster. Each pump seemed to fill him with more energy, sucking the little that was left from you. He didn’t care for your tears. He didn’t worry about the bruises. He only cared for entertainment.
When he was done, your body was so stiff that they assumed you were dead or at least a breath away from it.
Nothing like this has happened to me. Regardless, I still felt so seen in these moments. My first abuser, and many of those men online, never let me alone. No matter how drained I was, they tended to come back. I’ve been harassed more times than many would think possible. Some think that most didn’t count because I accepted the invitation. Or they believe it wasn’t really harassment because it was online. The fact that I was a teenager being coerced into revealing my most sensitive parts doesn’t always sway them. It doesn’t help that many believed I wanted it.
He told you that you wanted it. He blamed your kindness along with your beauty just as they blamed my desperation. But instead of taking it, absorbing that information until it made your soul combust like I did, you took a gun and said, “No” with its powerful shot.
Blood sprayed from the gun, powdering the pavement but not before it painted a smile on your face. I smiled with you. I couldn’t stop smiling as you went on your trek for revenge.
Matthew’s hanging and your eloquent disposal showed me how capable you were of thought and how foolish your critics are for saying your knowledge is non-existent. Your methodical nature never ceases to amaze me.
I can’t deny fear rose in me when you were with Johnny in the bath. You are smart but he is a cunning man who has already destroyed you. I was worried when you helped gratify him. How could you do that for your monster? Then the sweet, silver blade appeared in your silky hands. Oh, you hid it so well, Jennifer. Even I found myself surprised when crimson overtook the bland water. No amount of soap could dispel such a gorgeous color. I didn’t think there was anything more beautiful until I heard his scream. The horror in his voice, a horror once matched in your own, flooded the room. I seem to remember his pleas of “HELP! HELP!” that accomplished nothing. Rapists can’t get help in a cabin miles from town. Those screams couldn’t reach your eloquence, though, Jennifer. You didn’t flinch. You simply put on an opera and let the brass and vocals defeat his screams until he lost what little soul he had left.
I don’t know if I prefer that to your final, iconic kill. Before the rape, they chased you with an overzealous speed boat. You laid in your canoe, letting nature influence your prose. They disrupted with a roaring engine and hellish hollering. What seemed like an inconvenience turned into a game of cat and mouse. When you had your chance, you showed them that you are capable of this game. Stanley and Andy, two of your other rapists, went to kill you. You were waiting with their boat. They swam, attempting to catch up to you. What fools they were. Andy was met with an axe, tearing him like he was nothing but a block of wood. Stanley went to the motor when you saw your entry. You remembered the words he once proudly ordered to you, “Suck on it, bitch”. With a hearty reclamation, you jammed his body into his weapon of intimidation before driving off with a silent smile.
The reversal of roles you pulled showed me that victims can reverse their stance as a way of revenge. Of course, I can’t kill any of my predators. I can’t physically harm them. I never even want to see them. I can be different than I was when I was their prey, though. I can have a partner who acts in reverse to my rapist ex. I do. He’s the best man I could imagine. He is consistently asking for consent, doing what I wish to do while treating me like a genuine person. I am not the struggling, unknowing, little girl like my predators wanted me to believe. I have more social and academic education that most could ever dream of. But I don’t need to prove them wrong. I am proving to my younger self, my victim self, that she is better. She is better. Jennifer Hills reminds her of that.
Thank you, Jennifer.
