"Men were funny, aye, so they were, and the most amusing thing about them was how little they knew it. Men, with their swaggering, belt-hitching names for themselves. Men, so proud of their muscles, their drinking capacities, their eating capacities; so everlastingly proud of their pricks. Yes, even in these times, when a good many of them could shoot nothing but strange, bent seed that produced children fit only to be drowned in the nearest well. Ah, but it was never their fault, was it, dear? No, always it was the woman—her womb, her fault. Men were such cowards. Such grinning cowards(…)."
(Stephen King, Wizard and Glass "The Dark Tower, Volume IV)
Content advisory: This chapter has a depiction of sexual abuse and violence. Consider this before reading. I am against romanticizing such a relationship, reported here in the only way it should be portrayed: as something that traumatizes and hurts and is difficult to recover from.
Neither of them realized how close they were until they were only a body's distance apart. An irresistible gravity had drawn the couple towards each other. The next thing Vegeta and Bulma knew, they were staring at each other, his black eyes caught by the attraction of the blue ones and vice versa, as if nothing else could be seen by them in the world.
Suddenly Bulma narrowed her eyes and hissed:
"You! The thief and swindler who almost fooled me!"
The tone, angry and accusatory, did not even frighten Vegeta. He also believed he had a score to settle with her:
"In front of the vulgar and rude woman who handed over my identity to the damn Hitto. Even after my insistent requests...
"
"How dare you! You are the criminal here! You were the cheap, vulgar rat who wanted me to..."
She stopped, unable to utter any other words. She knew it was right to say "seduce," but it wasn't easy to admit to a con man that she had almost been tricked by him.
"I may be a criminal. But I was being honest with you that day. I expected at least a little solidarity from someone who had such a pleasant day in my company. But the next day, my face was on every wall in New Sadala because you delivered my identity and life to Hitto!"
"Because you, sir, are not only a thief but a liar... I knew I was not the first, probably not the last, to be fooled by your fine manners and false gentlemanly pose... when you are nothing but a crook! And I can't believe you are here, in my town, and you were fighting a fair fight with the sheriff! He doesn't know who you are, by any chance?"
Vegeta laughed. The girl retained her brio and boldness in front of a man with guns at his waist. She was not intimidated by him, who switched his supporting leg to a more relaxed pose and brought his hands to his waist, saying:
"It turns out that your precious sheriff knows exactly who I am. And he has given me a safe passage to come and go because I have an important message for him... I am not here to make any crime, lady!"
"But he really is a moron if he trusts you. If he were still on my payroll
, I would fire him!"
"He told me to leave because my safe-conduct will be over in the sunset. It's good. I would hate to stay in the city where a mean and cruel squealer lives!"
"I would never have turned you in if I didn't know that you made a living out of seducing lonely women. The officer showed me your "Brillant career," you scoundrel. And I recognized your absurd and vulgar silver watch, stolen from another young widow."
"You mean this watch?" he pulled his fancy silver watch from his pocket and flashed it at her, smiling.
"That's the one, you filthy rat."
"It's true. I did steal. In fact, I did steal women, yes. But I wasn't going to steal you, believe it or not after I got to know you better. It is not like I fell in love with you, but I liked you. But if I had known that you would cowardly turn me in, I'd left you naked! And you would like it!"
"Come on, I don't believe you."
She turned her back, and he reached over and pulled her, so they were very close. Vegeta looked at her, serious. It didn't even seem like it had been five years ago that their paths had crossed. Suddenly he began to speak.
"Believe it or not, I thought you were a special, young lady. But you broke the spell when you didn't grant my request and gave me away..."
"Believe it or not, sir... your charm was broken when I saw that you were not a prince, but a frog-like any other... God knows I had enough delusions in my life and..."
"Bulma, is everything okay? "the two turned at the same time to the outer edge of the stable, where Yamcha was standing, looking puzzled at their proximity. "Do you know this guy?"
Bulma let go of Vegeta's arms and lied:
"This gentleman has me confused with another blue-haired girl," she headed resolutely away from Vegeta, "probably with that little bitch you betrayed me with, Yamcha." she walked past Yamcha and stomped off in the direction of her own house.
Vegeta came walking up behind her and stared at Yamcha. He hadn't liked that jerk since he had seen him giving his opinion about everything he and Kakarotto were doing while dueling over shots in the back of the stable.
"Do you know her?" asked Yamcha, suspicious.
"No," Vegeta lied, "I really mistook her for another girl. I couldn't even ask for forgiveness," he added cautiously. He didn't want to get into trouble over there and be denounced.
"She is my wife," said Yamcha.
Vegeta looked at him in amazement and said:
"Wife?"
"Well... " said Yamcha, "she asked for a divorce... but our history is complicated. I was presumed dead for a while... but I believe we will come back, you know?" he elbowed Vegeta lightly, who almost growled back at him "we always come back to each other, it is a matter of time, you know?"
Vegeta looked at him with a very unfriendly face. He wondered how such an amazing woman could have married such an imbecile. He walked grumpily towards his horse. He had already wasted too much time in West Sayan. But first, he needed a bath and a meal.
"Listen," he said, asking Yamcha, "where can I take a shower and get something to eat?"
"Ah, over there in the saloon." he pointed.
Vegeta didn't say thank you, he just turned his back and headed toward the saloon. He had to leave soon and wanted to leave soon. He couldn't wait to get out of that town and never come back.
And, of course, he would come back soon. He just didn't know it yet.
"What's on your mind, Goku?"
Chichi had her hands on her waist. Goku was staring at her with wide eyes. They were both in the kitchen of their home, and a ham she had put in the oven before going to church perfumed the house as the wood fire crackled. A large plate of carrots and buttery potatoes waited to garnish the lunch she was finishing preparing while Goku tried to placate her anger without angering her further.
"Videl was crying in the churchyard. Her father disappeared and didn't even show up at church, like most men in town! They went there to see their sheriff spend the ammunition paid for with the people's money to dispute who was the best shot. They don't look like grown men but like boys playing or fighting in the street!"
"In my defense, I can only say that I used my own ammunition, Chi!" said Goku, bringing his hand to his chest, "and he proposed the dispute, not me!"
"You shouldn't have accepted it! Imagine if it reached Mayor Kaioh's ears that the sheriff was shooting at a
foreigner!"
"The mayor was there! And he cheered for me the whole time," said Goku, laughing, "but he left just before you arrived."
"What if this reaches the ears of the regional sheriff? "She narrowed her eyes, and Goku swallowed dryly. Hitto was a different kind of man, with an excessive attachment to the rules of conduct expected of a lawman.
He said the one thing that would end any and all arguments between the two of them, and which he always said being sure was true:
"You are right, Chichi!"
Chichi raised her arms, triumphant. She made the most rational decisions because Goku had a good essence but an innocent heart. But the best head, and he knew it, was hers. Even his choice as town sheriff had his wife's strong hands. Long before the railroad approached West Sayan, she had realized that his days as a stagecoach guard were numbered. As the train approached West Sayan, even more rapidly after the reactivation of the copper mine, she realized that soon no one else would face the road to New Sadala.
After the beginning of their marriage and the wonderful honeymoon in New Sadala, Chichi had set her feet very firmly on the ground. She was afraid of her husband's dangerous job, but over their marriage, she had acquired immense confidence in him and his ability over the first year of their matrimony. Soon after the end of Freeza's gang, a huge wave of stagecoach robberies began. Goku alone had arrested over twenty criminals and taken them to West Sayan or New Sadala without ever killing or seriously injuring any of them.
It was about the time she discovered herself pregnant that the robberies stopped. The stagecoach driver's fame ended with the attempted robberies of the West Sayan stagecoach. When her son was born, Goku's job was just to stand beside the stagecoach, and his mere presence prevented the robberies. Chichi was very proud of her husband, even though he was always distracted and late. He slept in the church almost every Sunday in the middle of his father's homily, but she could forgive him for that.
A year before the railroad was due to arrive, tragedy struck in West Sayan. Sheriff Satan's wife died giving birth to the couple's second child, who was also stillborn. Chichi became attached to his daughter Videl, barely younger than their son, and sometimes took her to spend the day with him. The sheriff had become a sad and apathetic man, and one day when he was picking up the little girl from her house, he said:
"You know, Mrs. Son... I don't feel like being a sheriff anymore. I heard that the railroad wants to hire someone as a station master, and I think it would be a better occupation, and I could get more time out of my little life.
Knowing this, Chichi simultaneously encouraged the sheriff to run for the railroad job and Goku to run for the sheriff's job, which he contested with Krillin. But, most of the town's vote was for the young stagecoach guard. And so, Chichi also started to have her husband at home every day. Goku called Krillin to be his assistant, and the boy, even though he had disputed the election for sheriff, accepted because Buu had also gone to work on the railroad with Satan.
Which was leading them to that moment. Goku needed to tell Chichi that the next day he would go to New Sadala and spend a few days there, at least until his brother's execution. There was a way to say that without touching his name, of course:
"Tomorrow, I'm going to New Sadala to charge for the repair of the telegraph wire. The train station is about to be inaugurated. It's not good for us to be without a telegraph, don't you think?"
"Of course, my love, "she said, feeling a twinge of pride at her husband's decision to take care of that problem personally, "call Gohan and tell him to wash his hands, please?"
When they sat down to eat, with Goku believing everything was settled, she asked:
"Goku, who was that man you were shooting with? I have never seen him around here..."
Goku swallowed hard. At such times, he always complicated himself. His chronic inability to lie was good on the one hand but very bad on the other. There was no way he could lie to Chichi, and he told her everything about Vegeta, leaving her increasingly appalled.
"But... he is a burglar. Why didn't you arrest him, Goku?"
"He came in peace, Chi... and he didn't do anything wrong here, did he?"
"But..."
"I should arrest him for everything he's done, but I can't. It wouldn't be like that. That wouldn't be..." he couldn't find the word he wanted.
"That would be the right thing!"
"But it wouldn't be honorable, Chi. He came here to tell me that my brother was jailed and would face a death sentence. The only brother I have, Chi... doesn't that move you?"
Suddenly, Chichi could see her husband exactly as he was and could say nothing but the phrase she seldom said:
"You are right, Goku."
He breathed a sigh of relief but spent the rest of the day in silence. Not even his son, with whom he loved to play, could get a smile out of him. Chichi watched him, sensing in him the mute anguish of all he had to face from then on. At night, after he put Gohan to bed, he went into the bedroom and found his wife naked, which finally made him smile.
Later, after an act of intense and heartfelt love, he clasped her in his arms and said:
"Was this all to please me?" his lips whispered, pressed against her ear, and she smiled and answered:
"No, Sheriff. It was because I don't know how many days you will stay in New Sadala... and I wanted to say goodbye properly, after all, I will miss you..."
He gave her a deep kiss and said:
"Thanks for everything, Chi..."
"Rest, my Goku. The road to New Sadala is long."
The two fell asleep embraced and naked. An instant before falling asleep, Chichi still thought that they had better wake up before Gohan, or they would shock the poor thing.
Hours later, not far from there, Launch awoke. Her body was covered in the cold sweats she knew well, and she shivered with fear. The same nightmare again had assailed her since she was 13.
It had become true to everyone that Launch had inherited the saloon from her father. But the truth was that the man she had been forced to call father since her mother's death years before was not her father. He was a monster.
Launch had been born in a brothel, but her mother, unlike most women like her, had made enormous efforts to keep her daughter close. The girl had been born beautiful, much more so than her own mother, and the other women in the brothel said she would be a princess, and they would arrange a marriage for her to escape that life.
Early on, she had learned to be afraid of men. They smelled bad: tobacco, drink, rotten teeth, filthy clothes, and fetid sweat. When she smelled these smells, the girl hid in fear because she had seen many women like her mother being mistreated by these stinking monsters. She had understood that they had their wills, and women like her mother complied with these wills to survive.
And early on, she had decided that it would not happen to her. She would somehow escape that fate. And that might have happened had it not been for her mother's tuberculosis.
She was eleven years old when her coughs became seriously aggravated, and her mother made the owner of the saloon where she worked promise to treat the girl as his daughter. The man assured her that he would keep her promise, and she died, if not in peace, at least believing that her daughter would have a different fate.
And in the beginning, she did. The saloon owner made her clean floors, walls, and wait tables, even though her thin arms couldn't handle carrying so many mugs of beer, and her thin body ended her days exhausted from so much work. But when her body changed and she gained full breasts and a thin waist, everything else changed along with it.
It was on a cold night, while sleeping in her little corner on the second floor, that she knew the terror of having a man, stinking like those who had spent years lying in her mother's bed, touching her body abusively and hurting her in the body as well as spirit. She was 13 years old.
The next day she tried to run away but was caught by him on the road out of West Sayan. She had fled on foot, driven only by the fear of being touched like that again. And the man said it had been a weakness and would not happen again.
But it was repeated. And it was a secret Launch was forced to keep because, in time, he started to threaten her. One day, the man looked at her and saw something different about her body. He asked something about her rules, and with the answer, he brought a strange woman, who examined her and, with an air of disapproval, made her take a bitter drink that left her prostrate for days while painful and abundant menstruation consumed her body.
And that was repeated three more times. On the fourth, she was 16, and the woman told her:
"Lucky for you, young lady, your uterus will dry as a nut. No woman can sustain a pregnancy after four abortions with devil's weed... but it's better than having children with that monster!"
It was only then that she understood what had happened. And something inside her changed and hardened her inside. And the sweet little girl gave way to a determined woman, who asked the healer:
"Is there any herb I can use to kill him without anyone knowing?
The woman smiled and told her where and how to find an herb that, crumbled and spread in a soup, would kill you in hours, quietly and unsuspectingly.
There was no fear. There was no remorse. One night she served him his soup of all night, and he said before he went to bed:
"Wait for me at dawn, sweetie."
But he didn't show up. Launch got up in the morning as if nothing had happened and found him, his mouth open in a grimace of pain, drool running down the corners of his mouth. Dead.
No one was suspicious. Men like him died in West Sayan every day: in middle age, full of alcohol, tobacco, and bad habits. Many men approached her at the funeral, offering help and protection. And she refused them all. She found the protection she needed under the counter: a long double-barreled rifle called "Bob." And she was only 17 years old.
Launch warned all the women who worked in the saloon that she didn't want any more prostitution there, and she single-handedly turned that place into a home where she could live and work. Women could do shows, it attracted men and made them drink, but she didn't want to see them living from selling their bodies.
But the nightmares never left her. The disgust for men who smelled sweat, booze, and tobacco, too. And that was why she systematically rejected men who approached her because most of them smelled like that combination. Of all of them, Turles was perhaps the most unpleasant and pushy.
She had heard, over the years, that she should get a man. But she had lived very well until then without one. The hope of a happy marriage, the joy of being a mother, expectations of any woman in that city sounded unreal.
But as the years passed, she saw that some men were not like those men: Piccolo, the gentle dark-skinned foreigner who had tuned the piano and offered to play it only in exchange for housing; Goku, who had taught her that a man could come of age pure and without vices. And this had made her become his friend and want him as much as she would a brother. His wife, Chichi, was a strong, hardworking woman like her, and even though she was in church every Sunday, she had never called her bad words or judged her for working for a living. These were people she admired and loved.
And, after all, there was Tien. She could never tell why she couldn't take her eyes off his face, why she couldn't stop wanting to see him every day. And because he was the first person she thought of when she woke up from those nightmares. One night she had a nightmare and woke up crying, and when she fell asleep again, she dreamed of the Native's strong arms around her, his scent of the meadow scrub mixed with the raw leather of her clothes, a smell so different from what she associated with any man.
A smell that she longed for, that she wanted next to her, as hard as it was to admit. And with that in mind, when she awoke that early morning, she suddenly got up and opened the door that led to the balcony overlooking the meadow. The sun was beginning to rise in the east, and she saw the dark meadow, imagining that somewhere, hidden in the tall brushwood, was the hut where Tien slept. She imagined him, sleeping alone dropped on the fur-lined ground, and thought what it would be like to have that free, wandering life of his. She closed her eyes and imagined herself free, free like Tien.
The moment she closed her eyes, Tien opened his inside his tent. He sat, thoughtful. Tien saw what many did not see, knew things people hid, but spoke little of. He knew that woman more than she could ever imagine. Tien heard her heart calling for his. He felt her body longing for his. As much as this was a taboo between both tribes, he corresponded to her feelings. Tien felt her heart calling him in a silent and contained way.
The Native dragged herself out of the tent and stayed low, hidden, looking toward the balcony. The first rays of sunlight illuminated her golden hair. He stood admiring the golden aura that enveloped her beautiful face and couldn't help but imagine what it would be like to have that face between his hands, that pink mouth glued to his. He didn't realize that he had risen and was standing, looking at the woman he called Sunny Hair.
On the balcony, Launch opened her eyes and suddenly saw him. And she knew that he saw her in the same way. The two stared at each other for a long time before she got into bed and threw herself on her stomach, stifling her longing for him in the heartfelt tears that fell on the pillow. Tien, in turn, bent down and punched the floor angrily. The laws of his tribe and the laws of the white men separated the two of them.
But he knew that maybe, just maybe, fate could bring them together.
Notes:
1. this is, essentially, a story of men AND women. That is why an entire chapter takes place in the hearts of the three strongest women in West Sayan.
2. First, Bulma. She's not content to stay in a bad marriage, but if Vegeta wants to win her over, she will need to prove her worth. For now, they'll split up...but before you know it, they'll find each other again.
3. Second, Chichi: as in the anime, she is Goku's North, a friend, wife, mother, and advisor. The ideal companion for our sheriff.
4. Finally, we reveal Launch's terrible story. She suffered abuse and violence and was shut away for years, unwilling to approach men who only reminded her of her terrible abuser. Until a man completely unlike anything she had ever known crossed her path. Tien and Launch now dance a dance of attraction and wariness. Can the fine line between them be broken?
5. The quote from this chapter speaks precisely of the power women can exert over men and how men accuse women for acts they commit.