With love, Alice x

Letter Thirty Three

Dear Elsie,

In the morning, after not sleeping at all. Annie came in. Stanley was drunkenly passed out on the floor. Annie came home with a smile, she stepped into my room. "Ally, were you okay," she began to ask.

"No, Annie, I'm not ok." Her surprised look on her face showed me she never expected anything. "Stanley, he forced himself on me, and he raped me, and he continued to rape me." I shook my head and wiped away my tears.

"What?" Annie said "you have got to be crazy. Alice, you are not in your right mind. Please come to your senses."

"Annie, he raped me. He hurts you too. Stop trying to deny it." I cried although I somehow knew she wasn't hearing my words. Her love for Stanley was blinding her, she couldn't see what a bad person he was, that he wasn't the exotic beautiful man she had fallen in love with any more. He was a drunken lazy selfish person.

Annie left and Stanley awoke and followed her. I heard them talking loudly and I began to pack. I was going to go back to New York. I would have went home, but that's the first place Annie would have gone, New York was the only place I had that Annie didn't have.

As I was packing I come across the blanket I had made for Finley and then for Alfie. My tears were falling faster now and my vision was blurred.

I calmed myself down and breathed heavily. The shouting stopped and it was quiet for a long period of time.

I finished packing and began to make my way out of the door I saw Annie and Stanley chase after me followed by an automobile that I had never seen before before I know it two taller strong men hold on to me and chain me up and force me into the automobile.

That is how I am here. It was a Radley Institution for the Insane hospital automobile. Nobody even bothered to ask me for my side of the story, because after all it was the 1930's and nobody ever really listened to women.

I don't know what else to say. Annie and Stanley put me here, they told the hospital I was hallucinating after losing my family and hallucinating that Stanley would do things to me. They said I went crazy and started hitting and scratching walls and them.

Elsie, nobody else would believe this sorry, I really hope that I found another friend in you and that you believe me. After all in the 1940's now, surely some people listen to women.

With love, Alice X