Rebecca's Voice

The Violence Against Women Act

2012-02-17T12:01:00.004-05:00

The Violence Against Women Act, or VAWA, was drafted by then Senator Joe Biden's office and signed into federal law by President Bill Clinton in 1994. Originally, the law attempted a number of great things, from legally defining the literal crimes of Domestic Violence to creating new system responses nationwide.
It was first reauthorized by Congress in 2000, with the added measures of focusing more community-coordinated responses to acknowledging and further supporting the efforts of shelters and crisis centers to initiating protections for battered immigrants.
It was again reauthorized in 2005, with added clauses such as broadening service provisions for the inclusions of children and teenagers to developing culturally-aware programs for communities to creating the first federal funding stream for the support of rape crisis centers.
The VAWA law was just up again for review. Every Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee voted for the reauthorization. Every Republican member voted against the reauthorization.
Why on Earth you ask?
Reasons cited were concerns over providing protection for undocumented immigrants, as well as for members of the LGBT community. Also of great concern to the conservatives was in questioning the authority of Native American tribes to prosecute crimes themselves.
Thankfully, but with no thanks to the GOP whatsoever, the law was authorized once more.

The efforts of every single member of the Republican Party to deny assistance to Domestic Violence Awareness programs and lifelines, and for no other reason than basic racist and sexist prejudice, is astonishing. I invite all readers to contact their senator and/or congressperson directly, and let them know how dire is the need for the continued existence and expansion of this law. Remind them that xenophobia should never be a higher priority than the safety of any human being.
This is NOT a partisan issue.

The Garbage Dog Lady

2012-01-28T10:48:00.002-05:00

The Dark Side of the Moon

2012-01-28T10:46:00.001-05:00

a future

2012-01-21T13:07:00.004-05:00

I have added a paypal donation button to the right sidebar here, with each and every contribution going directly to our mother's bank account. Know that any offering will go to the continuation and growth of Rebecca's Voice as an organization. What does this mean?

Eventually, we hope to self-publish a proper collection of Rebecca's writings. And of course, we will in our own ways be doing what we can to spread awareness of Domestic Violence-related issues. We have done the "organizing and participating in demonstrations and rallies" thing in years past, and that will continue where appropriate, but now we all hope to find newer ways of sharing the voice. I always wanted this to be a sort of middleman group, connecting those in need with whatever non-profit and apolitical entity best suited to respond. My mom, my younger sister Catherine, and I all have a world of ideas.

Look for updates here soon, including some more watchdoggery on the political sphere, and more personal anecdotes regarding my big sis.

IMPRISONED IN A MEXICAN JUMPING BEAN

2011-11-24T13:30:00.003-05:00

She kisses earthquakes
won't even give you what you take
orgasming for something to shake
washes her cunt out every second day-
while leaning over the sink in Chevron.

She hides her face
always and never leaving a trace
of red wine on her breath
mixed with the purple dandelions of death
wanting everyone to love her
and yet never ascending the caution of fear.

FUCKING in cold air
never bothering to say-
"I can feel nothing".
it was only to touch another's flesh;
only to taste a different person's sweat
just a pause for the earthquakes to come
and her body could shake and shake.

Only at that second that she could scream
when the ultimate phallus would shoot
medicinal caress of numb, fragranted breaths
a voice could scream
SEX IN THE VEINS! SEX IN THE VEINS!
and then wipe the blood from her arm.

Electric young, yet molding old
she flew through the sky
since no one had told her
it couldn't be done
the stars foretold
even as they were entangled
they all called her by name:
"MADDENED!" CRAZEE!" "INSANE!"

It wasn't Prozac,
the kiss of the pope,
county hospital,
nor state
that could change the taint of curse
marking a corrupted fate;
The birth of American pampered discontent
sodomized her spoken-for innocence.

When she looked
in the mirror
only to be aroused
by dying eyes
IMPLORING ACTION
she wasn't sure why,
but she took out a steak knife
and sliced off her lips-
just because she
felt like it.

Then, the uninvited intruders came
and locked her
in a Mexican jumping bean.
they claimed it was an amendment
of the constitution;
that no freedom-given American citizen
could cut their lips off
without permission...

trapped in a Mexican jumping bean
it was only a penetration
to the heart
nine sides to the head
coming a-p-a-r-t
stalked by sin,
so they all assume,
EJACULATION
smiles of conformity and compliance,
invitations
in a girl's head to-
join the discriminating alliance.

Do YOU KNOW how it FEELS to ALWAYS know
that there's something wrong?
(every breathing second,
roboting along)
"You're one of those girls
pretty enough to be on Maybelline!"
"We're not looking at your ass honey,
just injecting it
with Thorazine."

the doctor looked
between her legs
with his eyes;
he had the nerve to state it.
"Oh you gangrene cunts,
full of neurotic ties!
keep her in her restraints-
so that she'll never rise!
One day
she'll save the taxpapers money-
when she dies..."
and
then-
SMUGLY
no apologies
You CAN'T be
FIXED.

she never quit trying
to shake
the earth
while hitting her head
on the walls
of her Mexican jumping bean.

Unsuspecting Legs Are Impregnated

2011-11-23T11:59:00.004-05:00

Note- This piece was composed for the Spectrum, the school paper for Spalding University, where Rebecca was taking classes. I am not sure if it was ever used, as my stack of old newspapers is incomplete. I do remember the exact evening this was written though, and the many giggles its creation generated heard from our shared studio apartment. It is based on an absolutely true story.

Richard Miller Bukowski of the Highlands, recently thought that he had been attacked by a militia of ravenous mosquitoes at an outdoor Music Festival. However, after a couple of weeks, "the bites grew in size and it felt like there was something alive crawling underneath my skin", said Mr. Bukowski. The bites covered both of Mr. Bukowski's legs. Afraid to sound silly, he kept his itching agony a secret. "I could definitely feel that there were several small creatures growing under the skin of my calves and thighs. I felt so alone. I didn't know who I could talk to", said Mr. Bukowski.
One month after discovery, the sores erupted. "I broke out with intense sweats and it felt like there were steak knives stabbing my legs. The pains lasted for about two hours. When I looked down at my legs, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. There were several small bright green miniature aliens coming out of the sores on my legs. Each alien was about an inch and a half tall. I knew that nobody would believe me, so I put all of the aliens in an empty peanut butter jar", said Mr. Bukowski.
Louisville Police have been contacted and the jar of newborn aliens has been confiscated. "I feel like a mother whose newborn baby was taken away. The government has no right to take my children away. I was chosen to carry those baby aliens for a reason. Everyone has forgotten that I am the man that had the labor pains", said Mr. Bukowski.
Officials are speculating why the aliens might have chosen the Highlands neighborhood. Was it the weird art, musicians, piercings, and odd bumper stickers? Maybe, it was just the strong cappuccino.

sweet jane says she talks to angels

2011-10-30T14:45:00.001-04:00

the fourth

2011-10-30T05:30:00.003-04:00

"The creators realized this was the fourth baby, and they remembered it was every fourth baby that received the mark. So the creators pulled out their ink jars and needles, and the creators proceeded to create art on every fourth baby's skin."

This fourth baby came out
of one of those families
the ones that aren't really spoken of
just a look passing by
was more than enough.
How many public school teachers
had really wanted to know
what the quiet boy
who never met their eyes
went home to?
he was marked
by his clothes
he was interpreted as coming from failures and
failure was his tattoo
there were no skills
that had been passed on
so he said he would
join the marine corps,
and then, it was college
and then, he was
going underground
and hide in the woods like Thoreau had
but all his plans fell through
he'd tried the factories and fastfood
alcohol and drugs could
easily become a career,
but
he'd seen both of his parent's teeth fall out,
their backs hunched,
the bones in their feet
rubbed raw
daddy blowing whiskey bottles and
mama gone crazy after too many years
of praying the lottery and the rosary
both had retired from life by forty,
trying to make sense of all those 50 hour
paychecks that would never do
and this boy grew
to slip through all the cracks,
he got to where
that place becomes a part of you
feeling so blue all the time
all you can do is breathe and start
looking forward to daydreaming
about long, uninterrupted sleep.
His opportunity
never came knocking,
but he never stepped on anybody, or maybe,
THAT was the problem.

He became consumed
with getting himself some new skin
and he dreamed about becoming a snake,
and shedding
all those years of oppression.
Starting new, he dreamed and
dreamed and dreamed
about it,
but his dreams couldn't come true
because he was tattooed
There are many people who will tell you
that the logic of the creators will
have to do,
but those are the same people who never
received the mark,
never remembered the ink sting
staining
what could have been a 2nd or 3rd baby tattooed,
and those people just thanked the creators
that they weren't born
the fourth.

Bam Bam 23

2011-10-30T05:19:00.001-04:00

Mama nicknamed him Bam Bam after Barney's son on the Flintstones. Inside her womb, he kicked ferociously, pounding her insides and demanding to be let out. Once he was born, I was extremely jealous. Mama always sang to him. "Itsy bitsy boofy goofy boy-oy." To make matters worse, my baby brother had blond, blond hair and blue, blue eyes. I had brown hair and green eyes. Everyone knew unless you had blond hair and blue eyes, you were no one in Hollywood. Even at age four, I realized it was all about Marilyn Monroe and Barbie. I yelled at my mom for getting the genes wrong.
Before he was two years old, I made plans to murder him. If I locked the door on the bedroom when mama laid him down to sleep, no one would be able to get to him. Eventually, he would starve to death. I could be the only child again. I remember kissing him goodbye forever, right before I locked him in the bedroom. Walking away nonchalant and innocently, accepting the fact in my head that I was soon to become a murderer. I never imagined mama would become so hysterical once she realized the door was locked and her hungry baby was shut in by himself screaming, "Wah! Wah! Wah!"
"Shut up stupid ugly baby and die!" I kept my fingers crossed. Finally, even I had to admit failure once the big, buff neighbor man kicked the bedroom door in, splintering wood, and freeing my baby brother from my attempted murder.
The real problems began as soon as Richie started talking. My mother was a closet lesbian and venomous man hater. To this day, the only two men she'll have anything to do with are the Pope and Rush Limbaugh. Mama always seemed overly silent and generally clumsy when dealing with my brother. She definitely pulled away from him when he was still very young. Once she changed his diapers and realized he had a penis, that did it in for him. She was very distant and far removed from her young son. Affection became too difficult for her to give him.
My father was completely terrified of Richie. How could daddy teach a boy to become a man when daddy was such a sick, ill, alcoholic, pent up, repressed, secretive, crippled, anti social, dysfunctional one? I remember my brother once asking my mom, "why doesn't daddy ever play sports with me like my friends' dads do?" That was one of those questions when the deaf, blind, and mute mom sank in. No answers.
I'd scream inside my head, "why doesn't daddy play sports with you? Because daddy drinks too much whiskey and pees the bed. He even gets so drunk, he pees in the refrigerator thinking it's the toilet. How can a person be that drunk? He can't ever hold a job down for more than three months and we have to move all of the time. Our daddy sits in the unlit corner, chain smoking Raleigh 100's and stinking the air, chain reading Isaac Asimov paperbacks, and nobody better come talk to him. Our daddy bathes once a week, and his teeth are rotting out when he smiles every once in a LONG while. Our daddy needs to go to church, but instead mama makes us go ten times too many, each week. Our daddy is crazy. That is why our daddy won't ever play sports with you."
Rich always got the most licks with the belt, even though he was such a strangely silent kid. He started withdrawing before kindergarten, always reading or quietly drawing pictures in notebooks. Our parents were frustrated by his quiet, speechless, physically emotionless, dead faced nature. One time, I thought they were going to kill him. Mama liked to name some obscene figure of belt licks. "You're going to get 43." It was never just five or ten. She'd like to see the skin peeling and ripping, and the blood slowly sliding. Then, she'd wipe him down with Witch Hazel so he wouldn't bruise as bad and he'd heal faster. My parents took turns. They switched back and forth for over an hour. Really our parents could have ran a highly successful B&D shop. Each time, Rich came out a little more quiet, and with a little bit more steel to his eyes.
When my brother turned thirteen, he refused to leave his room. It just started one day. He no longer went to school. No one was allowed entry to his locked room, and he'd never, never talk to anyone. For four years, he didn't leave the house. Wanna talk about how my family knows firsthand about Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis? My mom started putting a plate of food outside Rich's door once a day. In the beginning she'd tap on his door, but he'd only open it when she went away. I don't think he ever bathed.
I'd get a glimpse of him four or five times a year, I'd kick his door in. Screaming and insisting, "Rich talk to me! What is going on with you?" His hair was long, thick, and tangled. His clothes were hanging off him, and his eyes looked wild and unfocused. I don't think he ever saw me. I could get right in his face and scream, but he wouldn't flinch and never, never was there ever any response.
My dad no longer lived with us, but I'd yell at my mom. "What is wrong with you? This ISN'T HEALTHY! Mom something has got to be done! How on any planet, can you act like this isn't going on? Something is very horribly WRONG! We need to drag him out of his room forcefully, and get him some type of help!"
"Rebecca, I just don't want to talk about IT." I was puzzled because mom always institutionalized me on a second's notice, but once again, she denied and ignored my brother's existence. He was our little secret that we must not ever talk about. The dog we must not talk to. He only needs to be fed and watered once a day. The only way I could deal with the situation was to get my hands on as many illegal drugs as I could. I did any and everything to alter that reality. I don't know how it was that during those four years in his secret room, my brother never killed himself.
Eventually, a miracle happened. Some of my brother's poetry was stolen from his room. A better off relative of ours saw Rich's poetry and convinced my brother (rightfully so) that he was the next Rimbaud. Slowly, my brother started coming out.
The four years inside his room had deeply impacted him. Today, he is twenty one. Serious bouts of deep depression make it impossible for him to leave our apartment for days. He sits on the couch indian style, rocking his upper body back and forth, staring blindly at the walls for hours. Rich has a hard time holding a job.
A year ago, he experienced what he calls a stigmata. He said he was walking in the park, when a bunch of demons attacked him. The demons knocked out one of Rich's front teeth. The demons also put severe scorched burn marks all over my brother's body. It took a long time for those burns to heal. He said he never saw the demons, but he felt their force and multiple hands. A doctor would probably say he is schizophrenic. I'm not sure what to think. I guess it all depends on how a person views the idea of demons and angels. Even a fool can't deny evil at work, no matter what form they feel safe to classify it under. Evil can be defined scientifically as abnormal psychology, or it can be defined spiritually. Any person who doesn't know of demons even metaphorically is sickly sheltered. My brother is a devout atheist, but he started wearing a Saint Christopher medal after that.
One night he told me that when he was a child, on a few occasions he flew up in the sky at night. No one ever knew that he had secret wings and once he had soared. He screamed at me when he saw my hesitancy to believe, "It's true dammit, Rebecca. It's fucking true! I flew! It's not my imagination, it's not a lie. I'm not crazy!" I believe him. I believe him. I believe him. Everyone is insane, but I've known people crazier in worse ways.
Maybe, some people are so soft spoken, precious, and devoutly gentle; they were allowed to fly in secret. The rest of us wouldn't know because we're none of us as decent or tender as my brother. I realize it's very hard for him to live in this rough edged, survival of the fittest world. Really, he doesn't belong walking the ground where people are so cruel. He's been misplaced. The drunk gods zapped him into the wrong realm, this sadistic-to-nice-people earth.
Nowadays he listens to this punk rock song called "Richard hung himself" over and over again on cd. "Richard hung himself just the other day". This creeps me because Richard is my brother's name. Why does he listen to that song so much? We had an uncle Allan. He blew his brains out when he was twenty one. Rich has told me more than once, "Rebecca, I think Allan's identity is mixed up in mine. I feel Allan inside me. I might be Allan's reincarnation." What is a sister supposed to think about hearing that from the baby brother she loves? The baby brother she wants desperately to live. The baby brother that she'll have to try to understand if he decides it's his time to leave.
My brother got a large black inked number 23 tattooed on his bicep. Rich is twenty-one now. He keeps saying that it's all going to happen for him when he's 23. I'm scared to find out what that means. I won't think much about the sound a gun makes when it explodes, and the twisted irony of his very first nickname.

Domestic Violence Awareness month

2011-10-16T02:40:00.002-04:00

I had quite a bit to say on the current DVA troubles at play nationally right here.

Becky

2011-10-15T01:13:00.001-04:00

My family misses Rebecca immensely. Catherine, my lil sister, has run a Rebecca's Voice page on myspace for some years now. I helped my ma start a similar page on facebook, although I try to stay away from online social networking sites nowadays. Starting this blog was something I have wanted to accomplish for too long of a time.
Rebecca's Voice is an apolitical non-profit charity begun by the surviving members of my immediate family around the time that Benjamin Mills (Rebecca's murderer) was being sentenced. We have organized a number of rallies and demonstrations in the Louisville, Kentucky area (including participation in many Take Back The Night events in the region), as well as circulating petitions in order to inflict needed changes in local governmental red tape. While many of those activities have slowed down, we do have growing ambitions for our cause. It has taken us all many years to cope with the loss of such a spirited young woman, though of course time is only salt in the wounds.
This blog will be my personal attempts at remembrances, along with those of others who knew my Rebecca, and accounts from those who lost their own Rebecca. I will also try to include applicable stories and commentary from the news concerning Domestic Violence Awareness at the national and even global levels. I think sharing information is a key to coping with loss, as well as initiating any real problem solving.
Eventually, we would like to produce a collection of my sister's writings, but I will include assorted pieces here, from news articles for her college paper to poetry and miscellanea. She was a hell of a writer. When we were teenagers she tuned me in to the works of Henry Miller and Charles Bukowski. She was every bit on par with them, I believe, and would've gladly dared to traverse even farther. But no, she was killed. In her short life, many a soul came to know and like Rebecca and her energy very much.
And if you are reading this, I believe you'd really like her too.