here in the sweatshops of Philadelphia, New York, and Pittsburgh,
those other houses of strained female compliance.
she remembered her dog. yes, her dog. let others, those abstract
painters, laugh but bertha knew the details and intricacies of life, no
single line or fact was hidden from her view, for life was life, each
day of it and every living thing of it, one after the other, and she had
loved her dog heart and soul, this dog had been her friend in straits
where people fled and no one could convince her that in any canvas
her dog did not figure.
bertha had given this dog away, with her own hands led it to a
huge dark building, left it abandoned like a child wrapped in swaddling clothes, its mother wants it to live but cannot feed it, there is a light, a stranger, a promise that is implicitly a threat, there is the
darkness of midnight, the despair of the next morning without food,
there are the tears that never no matter how many come wash away
the sorrow, there is the wretched agony of the heart, the dog not yet a
skeleton but too thin its bones showing while she had turned to fat,
the dog that would follow her anywhere, lick the tears of its own
abandonment from her face, the dog that had cowered beaten by the
same hand that had beaten her, and together, after, when he had
gone they had huddled together, both cowering in dread, insides
bruised beyond all knowing, this dog that had her eyes, the eyes of a
beaten woman, her eyes looking at her now as she led it trusting
perhaps to be gassed or mistreated she would never know.
dogs too, bertha knew, were conceived in suffering, this dog had
been bred, bred they call it, those cold calculators of markets and
worth, this dog had wailed out as a huge penis had plowed into it, a
wail that could have shattered bones, a wail that could have made
the dead rise and march, her husband had sat laughing drinking a
beer while the huge german shepherd a stranger off the street found
by her husband loved by him right away because its penis was so big
because its shoulders were so broad because its teeth were so sharp
because it sniffed and salivated from the smell of female blood had
come into the living room where the females were, she and her dog,
and her husband had held her back while the huge penis had plowed
into the swollen sore vulva of her bitch he called it and the wail had
come from this beast he called it, a wail that had shaken her bones
and reminded her of the screams of Dachau as she had always heard
them inside her. then the hour afterward when the dogs were locked
together, the females vagina clamped iron tight in rage and in fear,
and the husband had laughed as the bitch he called it cried and
whimpered and was paralyzed and impaled, bertha had known to
kill him then, instead she cried twisted her body around her dog
chained locked into the satisfied monster saw the skeletons of a
million dead and raped in the anguished eyes of her dog, its eyes
her own.
having had his fun he, the husband, had wanted to put out her dog
and keep the huge penis, the large fanged mirror of himself, she had
used everything to keep her dog, begging, tears, threats, her legs
opened on the very same floor that had seen her dogs stabbing
wounding rape, her eyes lowered, her mouth sucking his penis, her
breasts tom into by his teeth, her back ripped open by his teeth, her
ass tom into, with no wail, no screams, only sighs and moans
enacted, timed, disgust disguised, her own blood oozing from her ass
his price, an ad in the paper, the owner, another stud who needed
the huge penis not his own, money into her husbands hands, reward,
an understanding between them, 2 of a kind, sorry he had missed
the fun.
then, feeding her those next weeks to feed the young inside her, her
whole bottom hanging down, ready to drop out from under her, hard
to walk, harder still to run, the days of chasing balls over, her eyes
glazed and worried, she wanted them all to die inside her.
her time came, she refused, no contractions, she wouldnt let them
out, she wanted them dead, so the vet cut her open and squeezed
them out of her tubes, wet ratty things, she was tied down, her belly
facing upwards, awake, her belly cut open, her tubes hanging outside her body, he squeezed out 10, sewed her up.
she wanted them dead, hated them, tried to eat them, to kill them,
she was wretched with fever and being sliced open, the husband who
had done this to her held her down, all sentimentality and maternal
concern, bertha, sick with powerless suffering, forced her to eat,
kept her teeth from ripping apart the terrible ratty things that
crawled all over her. finally, broken, she gave in, let them feed, indifferent. the biting started after that, children, she hated them, let the abstract painters say she couldnt know, she knew.
bertha, hating the anguish of her silent foremothers who had not
studied Torah, had married a Christian, apostate, bertha had
thought a Christian would let her talk, was it a secular fist then that
smashed her when her opinions, in rebellion against that sad past,
would not be silenced? was it a secular penis that argued Law and
War and Supremacy in her mouth, in her vagina, in her ass? was it a
secular beer drinker who spent all night also on hard wooden
benches gambling away all their money, spent a thousand midnights
screwing the Christian women while the Jew waited at home? was it a
secular vanity that had demanded a dog—she, Jew, was afraid of
dogs—a german shepherd—she, Jew, was afraid of german
shepherds—taking her after threats to buy this dog, female because
all the males had been taken, this female dog left, assured by the pet
store owner that this dog would grow and become fierce and powerful, but it stayed delicate and weak and afraid like her, the Jew. was his hatred of this cowardly dog a secular hatred? or was a Christian
always a Christian, was it a Christian fist, a Christian penis, a Christian beer-drinking-gambler-stud, a Christian vanity, a Christian hater of the weak, and all the weak were Jews, and all the Jews were
female, and the smell of Jewish fear and female fear were the same,
dizzying, exciting, so that vengeance was sex and the wail that shattered bones was the payoff? bertha and her dog cowering in silence having been beaten the dog shivered its skin quaked on its bones
bertha too silent and quaking no wail could shatter the Christians
bones but any wail shattering enough could bring the Christian to
orgasm, was it a lust for Jewish blood that had made him marry her
and did her dog, german, betray him by reminding him of her and so
he had had it raped and had had to beat them both?
allies, they had run away together, the cold pavements, the
downpouring rain, the ice of winter, nothing could make them abandon each other, they had each others eyes and the same trembling day and night.
for months, on nothing, they had lived until in the dead of a clear