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MEMORY, CONTEMPLATION, RETROSPECTION, AND DEATH BARBARA J. ORTON Minds Innocent and Quiet Clumsy at two, I slipped in the tub and cut my chin wide open. Bright blood ran into the tepid water. My parents took their child and rushed her into strangers’ hands and a straitjacket. Did I feel pain? All I remember is that I was bound, and enraged at being bound, while the doctor fumbled to stitch the cut. That choked fury was worse than pain. If only I could have kicked or bit or run, or flailed out with heavy boxer’s hands. But I was no athlete. I was a sort of child. When I was nine—my parents’ smallest child— I had dark wet thoughts of women bound, exposed, and tortured in strangers’ hands on pains of being shot or choked or cut, or simply bound too tight to kick or run. Their helpless shame was more acute than pain. For seven years I sank into my pain like a deep chill bath. From grim child to dismal adolescent, I ran into trouble, or made my own. Bound for hurt, I took razor blades and cut my legs and arms, with shaking hands. Then the change came. I held the world in my hands. Ecstatic, beyond all thought of pain or price, I knew at last I’d cut the bonds that held me. No longer a child, but free as children are supposed to be, I’d bound higher than I’d ever imagined, run and run and run and run and run and run until I ended up in strangers’ hands with my wrists and ankles bound carefully, so as not to cause pain. For two months I was penned in like a child until the strands of resistance were cut. Last night I dreamed you ran to me and cut the bounds of my flesh. The pain was not so bad. These are not the hands of a child. ...

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