The city trees were at their peak of color when I moved back to Boston after a year in Maine, where I had taken an extended consulting contract. I felt I was beginning again in Boston, although I'd lived there before for nearly a decade. The day I was raped I was settling into a new apartment in a familiar neighborhood, and enjoying the feeling of putting my world in order, leafing through books before placing them on the shelves, polishing candlesticks and washing dishes.

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The bird that sang from the cherry tree felt welcoming. I wanted to identify it, but my field guide was hopelessly inaccessible, still packed up in the jumble of boxes stacked in the living room. So I closed my eyes and listened. I remember still that the notes were tumbling down one after the other. They seemed to carry a singular joy, as if the light of the Indian summer day were becoming sound.

As suddenly as it had appeared, the bird -- a migrant, perhaps, on its way south -- flew away and the mutterings of the city returned -- traffic on the busy avenue a block away, a distant siren, the shouts of children playing baseball. I returned with renewed concentration to my tasks. I unpacked my kitchen utensils and put them in a drawer. I sharpened my kitchen knives and laid them on the counter. Then I filled a plastic bag with packing paper and dragged it out of the back door to the metal garbage cans at the side of the house. The air was a summery dream, sweeter still because a New England winter paced impatiently in the wings. As I stuffed the trash bag into a can, my back to the kitchen door, I listened for the bird, but it was gone. When I returned to the kitchen, I locked the back door behind me.

There is nothing more reassuring than a locked door -- unless you've locked the devil in with you.

I am standing at the sink, washing a pan. I see my kitchen knives on the counter. I am always seeing my kitchen knives. I am still standing at the sink, washing a pan.

A storm from behind, and impact. It sucks away the air around me in a great rush. I cannot breathe. Rage is turning the air to pumice. I cannot hear. Something in my eyes. The pain is in my eyes. I am closing my eyelids but they do not meet. Something is in my eyes, something is coiling around my neck, something alive. Something furious and terrible. Words, but I cannot bear them. I am thrashing in the air. There is a foul odor. My body is on fire from inside. My blood is rushing as if trying to escape. I hear only it. There is no air. It is all going out of me. Who is screaming? I do not know who is screaming. I cannot breathe.

Now I hear the words. These are the words I hear: Shut up shut the fuck up you bitch you dirty bitch you fucking cunt shut up do you hear me you fucking dirty bitch I'm going to kill you if you don't shut up you bitch I'm going to kill you.

Now I am sucking air into my lungs. I am prey, grasping for air.

Now I have a thought: So this is Death.

Now I have a feeling: Anything to live.

Now I feel something hard pressing against my back. I know what it is. It is a penis.

Later I wondered, Did the man who raped me hear the bird's song? And if so, what did the notes sound like in his ear? How could he have heard what I heard and still be what he was? Was the bird a warning that I should have heeded? How could I have felt so alive and not have sensed his shambling darkness drawing near? Had I not been awake at all, but asleep? I could not trust even my most fundamental perceptions. The feelings of wholeness evoked by my connection with nature, feelings that had been a glimpse of heaven since my childhood, were transformed in an instant into feelings of foreboding.

In a single moment, I was robbed of what had always soothed me. A bird's song became a harbinger of evil, the prelude to a season in the underworld.

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