Something's Coming
Summary: At the end of West Side Story, Anita is all but destroyed. What happens next?
Warnings: Rape (flashbacks to stage canon, i.e. the scene that seems to be described as the "taunting" scene in the movie).
Notes: This fic is based on the 2009 Broadway revival of West Side Story. I tried posting it to the WSS section of the Plays/Musicals category here, but judging by the hit count that I got (over a week, it was, like... 5? Including me?) nobody ever reads that section. With the one obvious difference detail warned about above, stage canon is very similar to movie canon. You can see a bit of Karen Olivo's interpretation of Anita here: .com/watch?v=aJdMqZKG7ic She's fierce.
CHAPTER ONE
Anita's rosary beads are blue and plastic, knotted together with ordinary string. She hadn't said the rosary since she was a child, but now she holds the beads in clenched fingers every night, sitting up straight against the wall in the twin bed that has been pushed into the corner of Consuela's room. She has begun to say a decade a night without really knowing the reason. It's something like counting sheep, maybe, although she knows it ought to mean more than that. She should find peace in the small ritual of it, or the grace of the Sacred Virgin.
But inevitably her mind strays over the events of the last two months, and what was meant as a litany of comfort has become a litany of loss. With each bead, the memory of one more piece of her life that has been torn from her; with each bead, one more stab to the heart.
Dios te salve, María, llena eres de gracia...
Maria was the last thing lost, and the first Anita's mind strays to - probing the loss lightly, testing the pain. Anita still doesn't know what would have happened if she had been able to tell Maria the whole story of that night before Maria heard it from that - that - she's moving too close to the source of a greater pain, and she knows from experience what nightmares will follow. But oh, God, surely Maria couldn't have turned her back this way if she'd known. Could she? If she had seen what those men had done, if she could only understand -
But she couldn't understand, and she never will now. That son of a whore Action had made sure of that. The imprint of his hand had still been red on Anita's thigh when he had done it, telling Maria "Tony thought you were dead," telling Maria "Anita said". And because Anita had said it Tony had run out into the streets screaming for Chino to shoot him, and Chino had obliged. Anita didn't even know it had happened, she'd been so lost in her own nightmare. She had been curled in the corner of a roaring shower that had long since run ice-cold, letting the numbness etch its way into her brain. When she'd finally gotten out of the shower she put on every piece of underwear that she owned, dressed in pajamas, wrapped herself in four blankets, and died into sleep. Someone could have come and shouted the news of Tony's death directly into her ear and she couldn't have heard them through her grief that night.
The first that she knew of it was when Maria had come into her bedroom the next morning, twin coals of hatred burning in her eyes. The bang of the bedroom door against the wall had wakened Anita; she'd curled into a fetal position immediately, pressing herself into the wall, every instinct screaming that she was about to be attacked again. It had taken her precious seconds to understand that it was Maria at the door, and those seconds had cost her the chance to explain. The moment ballooned out oddly, Anita watching. Maria's lips move without hearing the words. By the time she'd shaken off the panic and forced herself back into reality, Maria had taken in Anita's silence and interpreted it as she chose. "So it's true, then," she'd said, voice shaking, and Anita had no response - what was true? Before she could ask Maria's voice had risen to a scream: "You killed him!" Bernardo, Anita had thought dizzily, how can she say I - and then Maria had run for the door. At the threshold she'd stopped, turned back to Anita. "You are dead to me," she said, in a voice Anita had never heard before. And then she was gone.
Two days later she was in the convent, cloistered. Anita tells herself she will never see her again. Hope would do nothing but keep the wound fresh.
The plastic bead has become slippery in her fingers, and Anita realizes she has forgotten to pray. She begins telling the beads again, trying to keep her mind on the Blessed Virgin, trying not to think.
...ruega por nosotros pecadores...
But how do you pray for a world of sinners when your life has been shattered by their sins? How do you forgive? Anita says the words with gritted teeth, feeling her knuckles go white on the rosary beads, but she has never been able to pretend anything to herself, and when she tries to pray for nosotros pecadores, nosotros transforms itself into esos, and then there is no piety in her, only rage. Rage and something deeper, something alien and frightening. She envisions it as a cold riptide; she can't allow herself to be sucked under, she can't - no, Santa Virgén protégeme, sálvame -
Too late.
Because they are here. They return at night, taunting, dragging her back to the store. She's in her bed, she is sitting on her bed, and she needs to know that, this is not real, it's not -
But she sees them.
They're there if her eyes are open; they're there if her eyes are shut. Each and every one: she will never forget a moment of it. She can smell beer and wood polish on the air. She can feel the knots and warps in the rough floorboards under her back, hear the thuds of knees hitting wood around her. The hand groping under her blouse, pinching and bruising. Incoherent epithets shouted in her face, cheering from the bystanders. Four hands forcing her legs apart, the sudden understanding: I am helpless. They are going to - And then the world broke open on a single scream of pain, and of loss. No other man than Bernardo had ever been inside Anita. He was dead, but there had still been something almost sacred about her body because of that. The body she had dedicated to him, that he had kissed and caressed and loved. Bare hours after his death, and it was already defiled. It would never be his again, nor even wholly hers. The mark of what these men had done would never totally fade; she'd carry this poison inside her for the rest of her life.
Chino's gun has been confiscated by the police, and Anita doesn't know where to get another one. She has decided, very carefully, not to try to find out.
Bernardo would have killed them all, she knows. He would have tracked down every mother's son of them, cut them open and watched their lives spill out on the floor. And then, fleeing arrest, he would have taken her away - away from this horrible city with its gangs and rapes and hatred and death, taken her somewhere where they could breathe and heal and find a way to live like human beings...
Bernardo.
She mustn't cry. Consuela is across the room, snoring lightly, and she can't wake her again. Consuela has been as supportive as she knows how to be - the only real friend Anita has at this point - but Anita can't stand for Consuela to see her like this, stripped of all her defenses, raw and broken. If only Maria were here, maybe - oh God, Maria, oh God, Bernardo -
Anita runs to the fire escape, just in time. She's pressing the edge of her robe into her mouth to muffle a rising scream, she's gagging on the dry fabric. How long can she possibly go on like this? How long?
Down in the street, in an alley off to the right, someone is watching Anita. Streetlights gleam faintly off a pair of green eyes, eyes that are studying the shaking woman above. This is not the first time Anita has been watched this way, although she's never known it.
The owner of the green eyes wonders if it is time to break the silence. There's a storm gathering, a bad one, and Anita is in the center of it. Bad as things have been for her, they could get a lot worse. A decent person would pass on a warning.
Soon. Maybe.
On the fire escape, Anita has gotten control of herself. She's slumped in the corner now, head on her knees. She'll be okay for the night now. Probably.
The green eyes trace the curves of Anita's body, taking in the lines of limb and torso and breast underneath a nightgown made translucent by limning streetlights. Those eyes have seen this body stripped from the waist down and wrenched open, seen it abused and left limp in defeat. They should have seen enough, those eyes. But they are still watching.
Anita is in trouble.
Santa María, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros pecadores, ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte...