1. Backwards on a Zipline
“Ziplining would be fun,” my husband said while reading an alphabetical list of Things to Do in Southern Italy.
“Yeah, let’s do it,” I said without hesitating. Exactly how high or long the zipline was, I didn’t think to ask.
We were celebrating our fifteenth wedding anniversary, and he had taken on most of the trip planning, including museums, historic sites, and the occasional outdoor adventure. Volo dell’Angelo, or Angel’s Flight, is one of the longest, highest ziplines in the world, and its name refers to a tradition in Venice where “Mary of the Carnival” glides suspended from a cable running from the belltower into St. Mark’s Square. Usually, I don’t go in for bungee jumping, kitesurfing, parasailing, skydiving, volcano-boarding-type activities that involve thrusting your body into situations with maximum risk and minimum control. The exceptions, from a catalog of nearly seventy extreme sports listed on Wikipedia, include boxing (one lesson), kayaking (in calm waters and close to shore), rafting (again, only once), and mixed martial arts, which I’d done years earlier but never competitively.
So, we drove our rental car up a long series of switchbacks toward the village of Pietrapertosa, an ancient stronghold against Saracen warriors. Rolled boulders were the primary weapons villagers used to fend off invaders climbing the steep hills. Quartzite, as well as dolomite, limestone, and gypsum, had shaped the karstic geological formations in these peaks, and there was no shortage of rocky terrain.
Pointing practically straight up, my husband said, “There’s the zipline.”
Other than a long cable of orange balls near the mountaintop to warn airplane pilots, I saw no sign of a zipline.
“No, that’s it,” he said. “Mounted alongside the orange balls. Looks a lot higher than in the photos, doesn’t it?”
Keep in mind, the only other time I’d been on a zipline was in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains on a hundred-yard cable whizzing about thirty feet in the air, so when my husband pointed to the top of the mountain, I got queasy. Jaw clenched, I swallowed hard. I followed the zipline all the way to the next peak, far above the oak forest, far above even the kestrels, kites, swallows, and ravens sweeping the air above us as though flying were natural, as though flying were easy, as though tearing across nine-tenths of a mile at roughly 3,000 feet elevation was not a suicidal death wish. Here is when I should have backed down. Gravity’s nothing to mess with. For the rest of the drive, though my eyes flitted from mountain peak to valley floor, steel cable to stony scree, I told myself, It will be fine, totally fine, maybe even fun. Except I didn’t have to worry—the tour operators canceled because the weather was too rainy, too windy, might freeze.
Despite this reprieve, a window opened in the weather, and they strapped me face-down into a sling attached to the steel cable, asked me my weight, held a finger up to test the wind, and hurled me head-first, sixty miles an hour, into a sudden snowstorm with winds so biting they stopped my flight just shy of the landing, and I slid backwards, dangling helplessly. Cars stopped on the one road below, cameras and phones emerged, and for one vain second, even though I was way too high for them to even see my face, I told myself to smile. But I tightened my grip on the tethers behind my back and wondered how long until the tour operators rescued me and if they would rescue me. As if hanging thousands of feet above the valley weren’t bad enough, storm winds picked up till the zipline buckled and galloped and flailed my prone body right along with it.
2. Riding a Chairlift
Two days later in Anacapri, everyone said we must take the chairlift to the top. The view is spectacular.
I was still shaky from the zipline and didn’t want to go.
“It’ll be okay,” my husband assured me. “I’ll hold you.” The only other time I could remember feeling afraid of heights was on a Ferris wheel with my sister, so I was embarrassed now that I needed his protective embrace. The truth is, the zipline changed me. Was it nerves, or did the experience stir something deep and unrecognizable? All I knew was I still felt unsteady, nauseated, and like I might fall, even when standing on solid ground.
As it turned out, the chairlift had an open-air bench seat designed for one person, not two. The quarter-inch bar that rested over the lap was the only safety measure to keep passengers from toppling out. The chairlift operator nudged me onto the platform. Hurry! The bench hit the back of my thighs, the bar dropped, and I was airborne, lurching up the hillside, above the trees, over houses and gardens, gazing across the city and out to the sea. My fingers tightened around the bar. To keep from looking down, I stared up the mountain. Sunlight glimmered on bougainvillea, lemon trees, and persimmon. I breathed in a potpourri of sage and pine. In the distance, the Mediterranean glowed, luminous and translucent, as though lit from within. And soon enough we arrived at the landing, where I jumped off the chair and play-berated my husband for his false promise to hold me and how there are better ways to get your thrills on a second honeymoon. But I also wiped my palms on my jeans, and he said, “You know, you might have a little PTSD.”
Naw, I lied to myself. It’s not that big of a deal. I’m fine. But I wasn’t. Even now, I still feel the jerking motion of the chairlift, the bucking zipline cable, my body knocked about in the wind.
“Well, if I do have PTSD,” I told him, “I’m going to need an emotional support kitten.”
3. In a Cloistered Cell
We hiked the goat path down the hillside and stumbled upon a shrine to the Virgin Mary. Local stone, concrete, and mortar formed the built-in altar. In a tiny cell with a gridded, padlocked metal door stood a statuette of Mary dressed in blue and white, hair covered, eyes downcast. Fresh orchids, Queen Anne’s lace, pinecones, and wildflowers adorned the shrine. Mary’s arms reached out, palms toward heaven, but her face tilted down in permanent supplication.
In town, tiles decorated the walls edging white-stuccoed homes. Many of the hand-painted tiles depicted Mary with hands clasped, sometimes with forearms pressed together, elbow to wrist, ostensibly in prayer but also as though offering themselves up to be bound. Like in the shrine, Mary’s eyes were downcast or closed. An image to be gazed upon but who never stares back.
Later, our Airbnb host told us their building originally served as a Carmelite nunnery to the church next door. The choir practiced in our third-floor room. Forbidden from interacting with the outside world, the cloistered nuns knelt there during mass and listened through a small window, now a locked cabinet, high above the nave. Carmelite nuns are known for their visions, yet they were not allowed to see or be seen by the rest of the world. Before Mass, they were ushered into place to prostrate themselves till services ended, the pews vacant before the nuns could stand again. Unlike the church, with its famous floor of intricate mosaic tiles, their room, now our bedroom, had simple terracotta. But those nuns lived here centuries ago, I thought. And though many nuns continue to live sequestered in monasteries throughout the world, I reminded myself I had my freedom. I had independence. I had agency. Still, I knelt on the tiles and felt their coldness against my knees, under my calves, along the tops of my feet.
4. Reflected in a Mirror
The thing is, like nearly all women, I’d experienced far worse trauma. So why was the zipline so unsettling? Was it the similarity with getting stuck on that Ferris wheel with my sister, Jenelle? She was age six, I was five, terrified, high above peanut vendors and pony rides. We screamed and screamed till, twenty minutes later, they got us down.
Then there was my car spinning out of control in Seattle’s Alaskan Way Viaduct, before I slammed headfirst into the concrete wall, certain I’d end up dead or crippled. But I walked away just fine.
And what about the ex-boyfriend. He’d never lived with me, but certain belongings had migrated into the condo I shared with my then-young son, Jeff. This was the man I’d thought was the love of my life, the one I started a business with, who helped me out of several dangerous scrapes, but who’d also had a psychotic break.
Jeff had been playing in the living room when I answered the door. Because I no longer trusted the former boyfriend, I followed him room-to-room as he gathered the last of his things. In the bathroom, he rooted through drawers and cupboards. When he looked at me with that same old desire, for just a moment, I almost felt it rise in me, too, but it was quickly replaced by revulsion. I looked away, and he turned to leave. Instead, he placed his palm flat on the door and closed it. No, I said. It’s not happening. It’s over. But he was a ninth-degree blackbelt who could not be stopped by me and certainly not by my young son. Held prone in front of the mirror, I imagined my silence formed a shell around Jeff’s innocence. I had no option but to stare at my own reflection, the glass cold, my eyes cold, trapped in this hard but clear choice, a no-choice, hard, clear surface of silence.
5. In Chains
In Capri, I came across a sculpture by Young-Deok Seo. Formed from a rusty iron chain, the figure appears to be female, nude and crumpled, cheek to the ground with arms folded behind the back and privates exposed to open air. The body position and title, Anguish 190, suggest a trauma so recent the person is still frozen in distress. A person so violated they may have felt there’s nothing left to protect and no point trying. I circled the sculpture. My response ranged from anger at the artist for portraying a person this defenseless to admiration for bringing attention to the anguish of gender violence. I did not yet see the irony of forming a rusty chain into the shape of someone who appears to have been bound, if not literally then figuratively, by those who would exploit weakness and vulnerability. And it would not be until months later, when I viewed the photos on my phone, that I noticed the rust pooling beneath the sculpture, its stain over time.
6. Under a Shopping Bag
Before dinner, my husband and I strolled chichi avenues and viewed window displays for the world’s top fashion houses. The Moschino winter collection exhibited a surprise of cartoon-couture. Dresses and shopping bags sported images of crying women and girls, tears dripping from oversized eyes while they pressed tiny fingers into wet, open mouths. Cutout letters, similar to what you might see in a ransom note, formed words like HOT, LICK, BOTTOMED, SPANK, and DADDY and were plastered across the dresses. In one cartoon face, a woman’s eyes popped wide with fear—each iris and pupil positioned over the wearer’s breasts, reminiscent of oversized nipples. White tears dripped like milk from another pair of eye-breasts.
I pictured customers behind the dressing room doors, slipping shifts over their heads, wriggling them into place. How did it feel, silk to skin, soft and slippery, sexualized, compromised, reading the words, Oh, daddy, juice-filled, love, wow? Did they run their hands over their freshly-branded parts? The open mouth plastered across the pelvis like a target? The tongue bullseye-red?
In Gucci, oversized glasses rested on the nose of an eyeless, mouthless mannequin. A ski mask with only half-inch tall eye slits covered the face of another. The Antica Sartoria mannequins literally had bags over their heads, like the not-so-funny joke. The same scenario too often found in real-life murder scenes.
Outside the stores, families strolled the narrow walkways. Children held hands with their parents. I watched to see how the parents would explain the women being depicted eyeless, mouthless, blinded, and bagged. But the families sauntered past.
7. At Dinner
After dessert, my husband stepped outside to take a call. I pulled out a bank card and tried to catch the attention of the male owner or one of several male servers. They had cleared the Chianti glasses, the gnocchi and vitello tonnato plates. I gestured politely. “Mi scusa, signore,” but the men looked past me at the empty tables with their white cloths and cruets of oil and vinegar. The sole female server averted her eyes, too, before ducking into the kitchen. Was my womanhood, my apparent self-sufficiency, really that threatening? I did not wield as much agency as I thought. At any time, I could be excluded, secluded, cloistered, and invisible. Frozen in time, captive in my cell—scusami, perdonami—forever a supplicant. Powerless, yet viewed as dangerous. A sexual stiletto, a siren so potent she must be confined by and welded into chains. Kneeling. Face to the floor. Vulnerability revealed. A temptress. Seductress. A statue. A stain.
When my husband returned, the owner rushed to hand him the bill.
8. In Conversation
I was stuck on the zipline fifteen, maybe twenty, minutes. That’s not so long. In twenty minutes, a person might submit her resume, deposit her paycheck, or squeeze in a sparring match with her trainer. In less than fifteen minutes, I might pull together a simple dinner, change a tire, run a mile.
Back home, rifling through my closet, chopping kindling, and walking the dog, I second-guessed myself. Why should fifteen to twenty minutes on a zipline affect me for days, weeks, months? After all, I got rescued. And it’s not as though I haven’t been in worse situations or faced my own death many times before. But this had nothing to do with degree or severity.
It’s not considered polite to talk about sexual violence. But a zipline experience gone awry? Of course, we can talk about that. At work, over coffee with friends, at a dinner party. People will ask about the ordeal. Questions like, “You were trapped, face-down, and couldn’t move?! What did you do?!” Questions they could, but never will, ask about my rape. Rape demands solitude. Rape demands secrecy. Rape demands courage and strength. And the people who would blame me for my rape would never blame me for getting stuck on a zipline.
Regardless, we survivors must stand again. We must reassemble our breached and broken parts. Eventually, we will pull up, tuck in, and smooth over. We will replace the soap and dish from where they landed on the floor, wipe the counter and mirror, smooth back our hair, turn the knob, and walk past our sons and daughters in such a way our children will never know. So, dangling from pulleys and straps in the Lucanian Dolomites or waiting invisibly in a restaurant in Capri isn’t foreign to us. We’ve had centuries of practice. Shh. Shh. Stai contenta, the world tells us. Silence is our altar, our shield and protector, silence is our metal grid and our lock. Silence is a Gucci ski mask and Antica Sartoria paper bag. Sometimes silence is our no-choice choice. The decision to protect—not ourselves but others. Or not a decision, but the stone-faced muteness of shock. Silence is a coping mechanism that gets used against us later. If that’s true, why didn’t you say something at the time? Silence is a weapon, an accusation, an indictment of guilt. Silence is our verdict and sentence, our trapped and terrified, eyes-averted, molded and rusty chain.
9. After Being Rescued
The pulley apparatus made it impossible to lift my helmeted head and see up the zipline. So when a voice asked, “Va bene?” meaning, Are you okay? I thought, There is a God, and immediately after, And he speaks Italian! A pair of men’s shoes and faded jeans cuffs slid into view, close to my face.
“Si,” I said with relief.
Metal clanged and something tugged at my back as he latched a carabinier onto my pulley. Soon we both lurched up the line as the mountain gradually rose beneath us. The rest of the crew pulled us onto the platform. I climbed out of my gear, and one of the men gestured toward a chair in their small hut. A woman stood next to a computer and tripod mounted with a 35mm camera. Her monitor displayed photos of my midair rescue, which she could send for eight euros. I dug the cash out of my pocket. Maybe I’d forward the pictures to my now-grown son.
The workers must have thought I didn’t speak Italian. For the most part, they were right. If I could trust my meager vocabulary, they recounted stories to each other of previous Americans who had gotten stuck. They’d come off the line sobbing or shouting insults. Some threatened lawsuits. The workers’ conversation looked animated in the way of Southern Italians, but also in the way of people after something frightening, something that could have gone very wrong—now everyone could laugh, we could let go of our pent-up anxiety, we could vent our relief. Except the “we” did not include me. I did not laugh. After a while, their excited state settled. They stared out the wood-framed windows and double doors.
One of the women hand-rolled a cigarette. I hadn’t smoked since I was twenty, but now I wanted one. “Un’ café?” she offered.
“Si, grazia.”
She brought a murky shot of espresso in a demitasse-sized red Solo cup. “Zucchero?”
I declined the sugar, preferring not to make a syrup of the espresso, and she raised her eyebrows, not at me, but at the others, as if to say, See, this one’s different, and the others raised their eyebrows in response.
When I finished my coffee, I asked the crew, “Quello che è successo? Qual'era la problema?” What happened? What was the problem?
“The wind. You were too piccola,” the camerawoman said.
My rescuer stood in the doorway. In Italian, I asked him how he did it.
He gestured, hand-over-hand, to demonstrate pulling us both up the cable.
I wondered how many times he’d put his life on the line, ventured out above that deep canyon with nothing more than a cloth seat harness and pulley on a cable to drag people like me nearly half a mile back to the landing. Was it heroics or just to be expected? As in, someone’s in danger, that’s what you do. But how many of us have the bravery and mettle to be a rescuer? “You’re very courageous,” I said.
He looked down at his feet.
I stood and zipped my coat. “Mille grazie per il salvataggio.” Thank you for rescuing me. He nodded as if it were nothing. To me it was everything. He walked to the table and reached for rolling paper and a pinch of tobacco.
The winds let up. The zipline flights could resume. I stepped outside the hut’s double doors to wait for my husband’s flight. The snow had warmed to a soft rain. It felt good to stand in the now gentle breeze, feet planted terra firma, despite the lingering sense of nausea and my trembling, watery knees.