Garrote

GARROTE Maureen Tolman Flannery Small, unobtrusive tool offine wood, patina golden with the wear ofwheat, its point, like the sloughed-offantler ofa yearling buck, whittled to a smooth gentle tip that would slide under twine ofa hay bundle and twist it to a binding tightness. It was pleasing to the touch ofthe sixteenth-century peasant who worked with it harvesting crops. What inventive inquisitor devised to use it on accused women, saw in it an instrument ofexecution, first employed it to twist breath from the neck ofa heretic with the same firm torque the hand ofa working woman used to fasten her wheat into taut bundles? [Meridians:feminism, race, transnationalism 2002, vol. 2, no. 2, p. 249]©2002 by Wesleyan University Press. All rights reserved. 249 ...