PJ Harvey's Rid of Me: A Story

Kate Schatz

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781441142313
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Rock Music

Rid of Me joins Music From Big Pink by John Niven and Meat is Murder by Joe Pernice as one of three fictional titles in the 33 1/3 Series, and tells the story of Kathleen and Mary, two women who find themselves alone in a house in the middle of the dark, forbidden forest that borders their depressed valley town. Amidst a dramatic natural setting, they negotiate their freedom, their pasts, their survival, and each other. Rid of Me is a story of escape and desire, violence and gender, landscape, family, and memory. It's a twisted fairy tale, a queer dystopia/utopia, and a lyrical exploration of kidnapping, dreams, murder, sex, revenge, and love. Kate Schatz's Rid of Me is at once a wholly original work of fiction and an innovative meditation on one writer's relationship to an album. The album in question is PJ Harvey's 1993 recording Rid of Me, a release noted again and again for its raw sound, dark lyrics, and unabashed presentation of female sexuality, desire, and rage. In her prologue, Schatz states that the book is "not about Rid of Me, but because of it" and the book's 14 chapters (one for each song on the album) use the lyrics, moods, images, and characters to create something entirely different, yet intimately connected to the music.

1.
Rid of Me

Mary

“Tie yourself to me,” she whispered, without turning around, as I snuck up from behind. My boots scraping in the dirt, sweat running into my eye, the salt stinging me, my heart thudding, my dry mouth hanging open, tasting the electricity between us. “No one else.”

She said it again: “Tie yourself to me.” It was no longer a whisper: the words were sure, though slightly slurred. It was the first time I’d heard her voice—I wanted it in my ear forever. My arms fell to my side, the rope limp in my clenched left hand, its short fibers pricking me. I stared down at her black silk head and wanted to howl with joy. She had come.

* * *

When I left it all I’d headed straight to the highway—it’s the only way out of that town—and made my way to the woods. Those dark forbidden woods. I’d been plotting my escape for so long, staring out that little window at the black sea the forest makes. The trees moving in the far-off wind like waves, birds swooping down and up like fish leaping toward the sun. For five long years I was so good and patient. Every few months I was allowed to walk unsupervised, for an hour or so, around a patch of grass surrounded by a weak fence—I could have done it, could’ve bent the flimsy metal, thrown my body over the top and ran. But I didn’t. I waited.

* * *

On the day of my release he came and picked me up in his long black car and took me to the house. I spent several days there, back in that room, yet another cell. When the coast was finally clear I made my escape—I took his truck and drove it to a body of water on the edge of the city, near the highway’s entrance. It rolled in without much splash and went down fast beneath the inky water. I crept backward from the water through some brush and scruffy trees. When I reached the road I paused at the green metal sign with the white arrow pointing toward the highway that juts out like a long and broken arm. I glared at the gun-colored city. The big fat moon lit the house on the hill that I had just left. I closed my eyes and pictured her sleeping: cheeks flushed, black braids tangled. I tried one last time to enter her dreams. You’re going to follow, I whispered. You’re going to leave too. Please. As the words left my lips I imagined them dropping to the ground, forming sweet ripe apples, a trail of golden breadcrumbs. I turned my back and headed out.

Between there and here is a wide swath of nothing: something like a desert, a dead midway, a blank buffer between a town and a forest, just a dried-earth no-man’s land. The trucks used to run steady on this road, like salmon on a rich current, but now it’s just a dry, cracked riverbed. No one comes in, and no one really goes out—and when they do, no one knows where to. I kept looking over my shoulder; nothing behind me but what I just passed. I walked and I walked and I ran at some points and I stumbled over rocks, cans, abandoned mufflers and the farther I got from the city the darker it became and the moon was my only light and I could just make out the white line running down the middle of the road and the silhouettes and shapes of trees and in the waving distance those woods.

I collapsed under a single ailing tree, among the asphalt and dust and the shit coming up through the cracks, the lonely things trying to live their own way. The mountains and trees were so black I couldn’t tell whether they were at the tips of my fingers or the ends of the earth. And I told myself: I’m headed to the place where I’ll find everything, the place where I’ll be believed. Where I can live again, eyes wide to a far black sky, feet inches off the earth below. The sleep came in waves. My eyes flipped open every so often, expecting to see the old peeling walls of my room, the leathery faces of men swimming above me. In one dream I sat high above him on a throne in a tree holding a golden crown to my head, legs tied to the trunk, swaying in the wind, laughing.

In the morning I woke up dusty, aching like hell, and bug-bitten. I’d made it far, though, and the trees clung tight together, green and brown and black, holding fast and strong, towering giants with thin spires so high up. They blanketed the mountain, they rose from every square foot of earth, they teemed with the life I knew was inside. I shivered. A hawk rose from deep within the forest and soared straight up, his wings thick sails, and he circled and circled and found what he needed—then shot back down, gone, into a heart I couldn’t see.

I went in. To the woods. No path or trail or plan—I just went. Blind and thrashing through, pulled by some force that kept me going, and I was scared and thrilled and scratched and then—I found it.

I found it.

I stumbled into a clearing and there it was. The surrounding trees seemed to be leaning back, giving it space, letting the light in, allowing a thick mist to rise up around it. I went to it, touched it, rubbed the walls. Got slivers in my fingers, my palms. Home. It was real. Waiting for me.

I worked all day and night cleaning it up, getting it ready. Then I found my way back to the highway so that I’d be out in the open in case she came looking. About a mile out of the woods I stumbled into a dim roadside bar that I swear wasn’t there before. I thought it was an apparition at first, but it was real. Had I missed it in the dark? I must’ve gone right by it, too focused on my trek to see it. I pulled my hat low and slid on in. It was empty: just dust-covered vinyl booths, ancient liquor bottles cobwebbed together. A man sat behind the bar, wearing a red satin jacket with the words BIG LONELY embroidered across the back. It seemed to me the perfect phrase.

I staked my claim in a corner booth where I ate popcorn and cheese fries, peanuts and ancient candy from the rusted dispenser. I drank glasses of gin but tasted nothing—just my nervous heart and bitter hunger. Sometimes I went outside and walked the highway up and down, pacing and pacing and searching. For some sign, some thing. The city sat far and sad in one distance, the mountains large and dark in the other. Here, it was just leafless trees, like sticks stuck in the ground, broken bottles and cardboard scraps and the dirty arm of a doll whose body was missing. I wanted to rip the trees from their earth, gnaw on the roots, suck in the dirt until I swallowed something molten. My feet hurt. I kept on. I had to believe that she’d show up.

* * *

On the third day I lifted my head from a nap on the table and saw a figure in my periphery, headed toward the bathroom. It was just a flash: long braids whipping around, thin neck, shoulder blades, big T-shirt, jeans, those blue shoes. Her hand quickly gripping the doorframe as she disappeared. It was enough, though—my body tightened and my heart froze and I was about to yell but I stayed still. Is it her? Could it be? It is her. Yes. I sat and trembled and waited for her to emerge but after a while my patience gave out.

I knocked. Silence. Some bird somewhere cried, a wind blew through the bar and the glasses clinked. I turned the handle—it wasn’t locked. Bathroom empty, window open. That wind blowing in dust and the smell of the ground outside. I looked out the window, scanning the packed dirt, the dry flora. There. She sat straight-backed on a large flat rock, inches from the highway, a small purse next to her, hands folded in her lap, knees and feet together. Waiting. Her head was turned the slightest bit and I saw it—those braids, that face. Her.

Do you know what it feels like to be in one of these moments? When the thing you’ve wanted so bad sits before you, within your reach? A wave of nausea and terror sweeps over you, your heart seizes and your skin tightens, the muscles in your jaw pulse and you become acutely aware of the back of your neck. It’s your moment. My gut burned, and I had to act. I grabbed my backpack and slipped out the back door. I crept around the building like a spy: back flush against the wall, head still, eyes darting, foot over foot, aware of the sound that each crushed leaf made. I reached the corner and peeked around.

She was still. The highway silent. Not a soul around, not another body, nothing moving but that circling hawk, and an ant that crawled on my boot. I watched it climb the curve of the toe and tried to slow my rapid breath—I closed my eyes, squared my shoulders, felt my body, my strength. The heat surrounding me, the sweat beads forming on my forehead. I reached into my pack to see what I had—among the candles and batteries and socks and matches I found some rope and a burlap strip. I pulled the knife from the sheath on my belt and tiptoed out, toward her. It seemed an interminable distance.

She was so still.

I was right behind her.

When she spoke first I froze—she’d seen me coming. My long black shadow cast out over her. I hadn’t thought of that. Did I ruin it? I put my hand on the back of her neck.

“There is no one else,” I said, and I meant it. I wrapped the strip of burlap around her eyes. Gently. My hands shaking.

“You’re going to wish you’d never met me,” she murmured.

“I doubt that’s true.” I apologized as I held her wrists together and tied them with the rope. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

Without a word she offered me her bound-up hands and I pulled her to her feet. The rough rock scraped her leg as she stood and she gasped. I leaned down and licked the thin drip of blood. It mixed with the dust—everything so hot from the sun—and my tongue burned on her. Her shiny black head came up to my shoulder and I felt myself tower over everything. The dying trees, the endless sky, the burning sun, and even the roadside bar—it all retreated into a minute distance, a soundless tiny nothing. My heart pounded and pounded and oh it pounded and then—I finally looked closely at her. She was beautiful, even with the blindfold.

“I’ve always wanted to be kidnapped. It’s like being rescued.”

I pushed her in front of me, and began our march toward the woods. I held the wrapped wrists of my captive and tasted her red blood on my tongue. I felt like the core of the earth. “Lick my legs,” I thought. “I’m on fire.”

2.
Missed

Kathleen

He should not be hid. He was just too big. I couldn’t live there, hidden with him. It was all my fault. I fed him. The doctors said he needed the pills, that the sickness must be monitored, every moment. Make another appointment. Next week, and the week after that? Forever?

When I was in third grade my teacher one day said, “Class, I have a question: if you could only be one thing for the rest of your life, would you choose to be rich, famous, or happy?” I immediately raised my hand for “famous,” thinking maybe I could be a movie star, maybe I can escape and be famous and everyone will love me. The rest of the children nodded calmly and raised their hands for “happy,” apparently already familiar with the value of not being miserable.

“Kathleen,” my teacher began, with the slow tone of great importance, “you can be famous for many things. Bad things. You could be famous for falling off a bridge. And drowning.” To a girl whose mother had so recently died, it was a very cruel thing to say. But true. It was most likely the most attention she’d ever paid me, and I felt a little famous right then, with all the other kids actually looking at me rather than around or through me. She stared for a few seconds more, her lips taut; then she nodded, satisfied, and began to talk about happiness by asking various students what it meant to them. While they chimed in and shared thoughts of birthdays everyday and no more wars or fighting, I glowered at my desk, shrinking back and down. I shut my eyes, my stomach lifting to my heart as I felt myself on the rim of the bridge, the wind pushing me off balance, the huge swirling fall and then the deep water breaking over and swallowing me. I was rushed on a cold current out to sea and that is where I remained, not famous, not happy, just floating, miserable, for years.

* * *

What can you say about the life I led, of no consequence to anyone, except my mute, sick father whom I kept alive each day? The man who became stricken with a mysterious illness the day his second wife died, but who didn’t bat an eye when his first wife—my mother—did. Even though he had no voice he was louder than anything, so loud, so loud that even when I covered my ears I could hear him.

Say that I lived in a fog of my own making.

I’d once been a normal, happy child, with a mother and toys and dirty scraped knees. But she was long gone, forgotten to everyone but me.

I did everything for him. I didn’t speak to anyone.

The neighbors were scared of us, and I of them. The lady next door with the little dog—I looked away every time she tried to say hello. I went outside once a week and headed straight to the market and back, avoiding the main roads and the neighborhoods. I am not pretty, I do not appear healthy. No one notices me.

I sometimes had sharp, clear thoughts that burst through like music in the middle of nowhere. And I did believe that there was someone waiting to find me, someone who would see me clearly. I’m not talking about love and princes—it’s more than that.

So say that I don’t know what happened that night, or during the day leading up to it. That’s a lie. I know what, but I don’t know why. Things happen—I do things—but I don’t know why or how. What I can remember is that it began like all my days: I woke at six to his grunting and pounding. I lay in bed and stared at my ceiling and considered killing myself. I looked at the birds that lived on the branch outside my window. I watched them fly away. I stared at my blue ceiling.

At some point I w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Prologue
• 1. Rid of Me
• 2. Missed
• 3. Legs
• 4. Rub ’Til It Bleeds
• 5. Hook
• 6. Man-Size Sextet
• 7. Highway 61 Revisited
• 8. 50Ft Queenie
• 9. Yuri-G
• 10. Man-Size
• 11. Dry
• 12. Me-Jane
• 13. Snake
• 14. Ecstasy
• eCopyright