The+changes

=How Alice's relationships were affected...= --Charlotte Wright

__Her new relationship with her rapist:__
(Where the idea of writing letters to your rapist came from)

A poem taken straight from Lucky:

//"If they caught you long enough for me to see that face again maybe I would know your name. I could stop calling you 'the rapist' and start calling you John or Luke or Paul. I want to make my hatred large and whole.

if they found you, I could take those solid red balls and slice them separately off, as everyone watched. I have already planned what I would do for a pleasurable kill, a slow, soft, ending.

First, I would kick hard and straight with a boot, into you, stare while you shot quick and loose, contents a bloody pink hue. Next, I would slice out you tongue, You couldn't curse, or scream. Only a face of pain would speak for you, your thick ignorance through. Thirdly, Should I hack away those sweet cow eyes with the glass blades you made me lie down on? Or should I shoot, with a gun, close to the knee; where they say the cap shatters immediately?

I picture you now, your fingers rubbing sleep from those live blind eyes, while I rise restlessly. I need the blood of your hide on my hands. I want to kill you with boots and guns and glass. I want to fuck you with knives.

Come to me, Come to me, Come and die and lie, beside me."// (page 98-99)

Although it is creepy, it clearly shows how her relationship with this rapist has shifted her whole life into another dimension, from which she would never return.

__Her relationships with men:__
(Also see "Alice and Males" )

The night that Alice was raped, her friend's (Diane) boyfriend was there to show his support. Since her rapist was black, and Victor was black, the interaction was foreign to her.

//"I looked at Victor. This was too much. He was not my rapist, I knew that.  That was not the issue."// (page 24)

//"He held me until I had to pull away and thenhe let me go. He was miserable, and I cannot even now imagine what was going on inside his head. Perhaps he already knew that both relatives and strangers would say things to me like 'I bet he was black,; and so he wanted to give me something to counter this, some experience in the same twenty-four hours that would make me resist place people in categories and aiming at them my full-on hate."// (page 25)

__Her relationships with her mother:__
Before she was raped Alice thought of her mother as different than the rest of the mothers in her neighborhood, she was the only real person.

//"I saw a movie with my father on night on television, //The Stepford Wives//. My father loved it; it scared the hell out of me.  I, of course, thought my mother was Katherine Ross, the only real woman in a town where every wife was replaced with a perfect, automated robot of a wife.  I had nightmares for months afterward.  I may have wanted my mother to change but not to die and never, never to be replaced."//

But when Alice needed her the most, when she needed someone to share her story with, her mother couldn't stand to hear the gory details of what had happened to her little girl.

//"'I need to tell you what happened in the tunnel,' I said. Place mats were still on the table from dinner. My mother fumbled with the corners of hers. 'You can try,' she said, 'but I can't promise I can do this.' I began.  I told her about Ken Child's house, about taking pictures in his apartment.  I got into the path in the park.  I told her about the rapist's hands, how he grabbed me with both arms, about the fighting on the bricks.  When I got into the tunnel,  started taking off m clothes, when he touched me, she had to stop. 'I can't Alice,' she said. 'I want to, but I can't.' 'It helps me to try and talk about it, Mom,' I said. 'I understand that, but I don' think I'm the one to do it with.' 'I don't have anyone else,' I said. 'I can make you an appointment with Dr. Graham.'"// (page 76)

__Her relationships with some people of the world:__
Her mother made her an appointment with the family psychiatrist, so that she had someone professional to tell her story to, in order to move on.

//"Do you want to tell me why you've come to see me, Alice? she asked. She knew already. My mother had told her on the phone when she called for the appointment. 'I was raped in a park near my school.' Dr. Graham knew our family.  Knew both Mary and I were virgins. 'Well,' she said,' I guess this will make you less inhibited about sex, now, huh?' I couldn't believe it.  I don't remember whether I said, ' That's a fucked up thing to say.' I'm sure I just wish I had.  I do know that was the end of the session, that I got up and walked out."// (page 77)

The fact that a professional psychiatrist would say something like that to a young girl who has been raped is disgusting, but many people changed their thought of her from "Alice, the cute girl" to "Alice, that girl that was raped," which is a sad reality of trauma like this, it makes you a distorted celebrity.

//"They were watching my life as if it were a movie. In their version of the story, where did they fit?  I would find out over the years that in a few versions, I was their best friend.  Knowing the victim is like knowing a celebrity. Particularly when the crime is clouded in taboo.//" (page 25)

All of the above quotes where taken from:

Sebold, Alice. Lucky. New York: Back Bay Books, 1999. Various Selections.