my back, and then I reach back with my arm to hold her there. Emma,

walking close beside me (right through the water, not on the stones),

talks softly, stretches her arm across Grace’s back, holding her (and

by chance, holding me). What’s wrong with her? Maybe it’s that

flu that’s going around, I whisper. Emma shudders. Did you

read the article about it in this morning’s paper? I can’t

face the thought, she says. (Pa’s not home. Could I

go for the doctor?) Ma sees us and rushes out,

Oh, no, she cries. No! Not our Grace!

Nothing to Do with Nourishment / Muriel

Nothing to Do with Nourishment

Muriel

Aunt Vera is feeling strong enough to speak

to a group of women at the NWP headquarters.

They seat her in the most comfortable chair,

bring her tea and sweet biscuits. When she has

eaten what she can, everyone gathers around

to listen to her stories. I’m puzzled—I know she

refused the food the guards gave her—but was

there more to it than that? (Papa: It could get worse.)

I’ve thought hard, and I have not been able to invent

the details. First, they put me in the psychiatric ward,

Aunt Vera says. A psychologist interviewed me

and pronounced me sane—which was, remarkably,

the truth, even after I had spent a week in a

rat-infested prison cell, on a urine-soaked mattress,

in total isolation. Once they saw that I would not

give up my hunger strike, they started the force-feeding.

It has nothing to do with nourishment,

everything to do with power and control.

Four of us agreed we would not eat. No one

cared if we died of starvation; their only

concern was stopping all women from picketing.

To do that, they would have to break our will,

and in that, I am happy to report, they did not

succeed. (Am I the only one who doesn’t

know what “force-feeding” means? How is it possible

to force someone to open her mouth, and then to swallow,

if she refuses to do so?) Four people—two women and two

men—held my arms and legs, Aunt Vera continues,

so I could not move. A fifth tried to open my mouth;

when I clamped it shut, he pushed something

like a shoehorn between my teeth to pry it open.

He forced a tube down my throat into my stomach

and poured food through a funnel into the tube.

They called it “food” though it could have been

anything—raw eggs, I believe, probably mixed

with milk. I couldn’t taste it, and I couldn’t

keep it down. They did this to the four of us

three times a day. We could hear one another

vomiting, but were not allowed any conversation.

They released me, I’m convinced, not

out of compassion, or morality, but only

because they knew that if I died in prison,