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Friday, Nov 21, 2008
Feb 16, 2001 | Hate mail confirms a vague, nagging feeling that you've done something wrong. It's a firm tap on the shoulder that says, "The jig is up." So when the first letter came, it was expected. The second, however, was a shock. By the third I was a wreck. How did he know it would take exactly and only three?
I started writing a few years ago, after I had a baby. I haven't completely figured out what led me to writing, but it was probably tied up with my son's birth and the attendant emotions that needed sorting.
I like the solitary work life. I write at a table in the bedroom. I send my ideas out into the void. The bedroom seems a safe enough place. I have been told that I am an introvert. What on earth makes me want to communicate with strangers in this perilous way -- standing naked in a field?
"You have to expect these things when you are a writer," my father says about the hate mail. "When you're in the public eye, anyone can read what you write."
The letters are effective and unsettling, to say the least. I have an unusual name, so he thinks I'm foreign. He calls me "Eurotrash." It's a relief because it means he doesn't really know me -- although he makes some pretty accurate guesses. He doesn't know that my parents simply like unusual names.
He spells my name correctly. I can only hope he's mispronouncing it. He uses it in ways I've never seen it used before -- paired with obscenities and crooked thoughts.
It bothers me that he has written my name and my address three different times on three different envelopes. My name is next to the buzzer outside my building so that people will have easier access to me. I am two doors and one buzzer away from danger. But the mail slips through, into the letter box, into my psyche.
I call the postal inspector but she never calls me back. One day I leave a message on her machine and I am in tears. Finally she calls. She tells me that letters like these don't usually lead to violence. She says there's nothing we can do; we have to wait until he makes a mistake.
My fingers shake when I open the mailbox. I pick through the stack. When a letter arrives I open it quickly. You read your mail. You do.
I spend most of a morning sitting in an old school chair at the police station, the kind with a desk attached. The police are standing around. They joke with one another. They drink coffee and ask me what I need in a skeptical way, as though there is nothing I can offer that will surprise them.
"I am getting anonymous hate mail," I say.
"Is it threatening?" they ask.
"Not specifically," I answer. "But the first one had feces in it." Sending feces is threatening, in my mind. At the very least it's a health hazard. The policewoman writes down what I say and photocopies the letters. She makes a file.
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