There was nothing surprising in Rene Nicole Good’s death.

Not even in the public nature of it - the millions of onlookers, witnesses.

Haven’t we always been witness to the ‘righteous’ subjugation and abuse of women who do not obey?

Nothing changes if nothing changes.

I just watched the 13 Reasons series on Netflix at the bequest of my sixteen year old grand-daughter. It is an opening into her world.

It is a peek back at mine at sixteen.

But it doesn’t end after high school..

That’s where it began. A week before my fifteenth birthday.

A boy holds a camera taking shots of me and another boy having sex. If I don’t give him some too, he will send the pictures to my parents.

This would destroy any girl. But a girl born into a fundamentalist religious cult seeped in purity culture?

After he took what he wanted, I looked at that boy dead in the eyes and said, You just ruined my life.

And he did. I like to think I had some control. Don’t we all?

I like to think I made something of it — that I turned the shit to honey, lead to gold.

And I did. And I didn’t.

Yeah. These are not stories we’re allowed to tell, are they?

Greg is on the roof of the house on Willamette Street, the green Victorian where you rented an apartment, the one around back, up the rickety steps with the peeling paint.

Greg is on the roof with a chair. You don’t know where the chair came from or how Greg came to be perched precariously on it, rocking back in it, on the asphalt grey shingles of the slanted roof, on the flat part, but near the edge.

Greg is on the roof drinking his rotgut T-bird, yelling. Names, orders, you don’t know—something erased them all from your body and all you hear is the venom in the words and the hate and the way you know that soon, Greg will come down from the roof.

And you are eighteen and you don’t even know enough to want to see him fall. Instead you cry, beg, and plead to save him.

“Come down,” you say, your throat raw.

Greg is on the roof and the sun is sinking down before the green Victorian house on Willamette Street. The sky is turning red and the pink grey tinge of light that’s left as you squint up at him—throwing his blond head back to drink again—is fading.

And soon you know it will be dark.

And Greg, who’s on the roof, will come down somehow and find you.

— from an essay originally published in The Rumpus.

Boys, then men, never stopped hurting me. Or my daughters. Do I think my granddaughters won’t be hurt too?

Of course, we are hearing the character assassination of Rene Nicole Good, now. Every female victim is blamed. She not only caused it, she DESERVED it.

Fucking bitch.

I didn’t really fight back. Not for years and years.

Why? Because I was a fucking bitch. I deserved it.

My father loomed in the doorway of the bathroom in our family home where, fifteen, I was looking in the mirror, fixing my hair. I could tell he wanted to say something. His face was twisted in hatred.

I don’t care if you’re a slut, but if you ever hurt your mother again, I’ll kill you.

Mom was a godly woman, stayed faithful to the cult until she died, age ninety-three. I stayed rebel.

So Mom was the Madonna. I was the whore.

After the first punch then, the wooing.

Here, take this. I’m so sorry. I love you.

I love you so much. So much.

He acted like he was your old boyfriend.

I learn that wooing, loving comes after the hurting.

First, pain.

—-from an essay originally published in The Manifest Station

I really get it now, Mom. Why it was safer to submit.

I was a good girl. That’s why I couldn’t. I suspect Rene Nicole Good was too.

Women like us? We end up dead. Believe me, I could list hundreds of moments I could have.

I’m still alive.

When I was 37 I was at the peak of my youth. I had two grandsons. I lived in a little one bedroom above a typewriter store with the KFC sign pulsing light nightly into the corners of the living room. I drove a little dodge colt held together by rubber bands. I went to jail that year for driving without insurance. I walked to a nearby lake or biked, went to Common Grounds to write. I was finishing my teaching degree. An adult daughter was assaulted. I took her to the police station. The other daughter was running the streets. I shopped at thrift stores. I went to 12 step meetings daily.

If my life had been stopped then i wouldn’t have found my voice yet. I wouldn’t have grown into the full blown badass I am. I wouldn’t have published anything. I wouldn’t have met my husband. I wouldn’t have sat beneath the stars at Red Rocks with my 7th grandchild watching a concert. And I wouldn’t have stood half naked beneath the northern lights in Alaska or made it to Paris with the warm wind blowing in my hair. I wouldn’t have summited Snowmass or climbed Mt. Huron. I wouldn’t be here writing my ass off featuring other people’s stories and reading yours.

Rene Nicole Good did not get the rest of her life.

She was 37.

Rene Nicole Good was a writer.

Like me.

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