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Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Inmate #A-93223: In the San Quentin of My Mind








Inmate #A-93223: In the San Quentin of My Mind

           

My father abused women.

This was my first thought when a Native woman contacted me to ask about a prominent Native male writer’s history as a sexual harasser.

My second thought was for the writer’s immediate family, his wife, his children.

If there’s one thing I know, it’s how a father’s sins follow his children like a storm cloud, waiting to burst when they least expect it.

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My father was married three times, and during each marriage, he went on alcoholic rampages, yelled and threatened and carried out those threats. He beat his wives and children, belittled them, betrayed their love for him. As a young first-time husband, an older husband in the marriage that produced me, a middle-aged husband on a second try with my mother, and an elderly husband with his last spouse: his age did not matter, or how far he had come in terms of financial stability.  In his last marriage, he was so sick that he couldn’t even drink anymore, but his frustration and rage over his physical disa­bilities – and whatever demons he carried – still haunted him, his wife, his children and step-children.

I’ve written about my experience with my father when he returned from San Quentin after serving an eight-year sentence (Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir).  But I have not written about what it’s like to be the “out” child of an abuser.  What it’s like when everybody knows.

A few years ago, a colleague asked me, “Why was your father sent to prison?”

Everything stopped. There was a hard, dead beat of silence. My mind raced.  I could lie.  I could sugar-coat it. I could make a joke out of it.  But could I just . . . say it?

I’d written it down, published it even, but I had not said it aloud, in casual conversation, to someone I barely knew.  I had only ever said it in private, in confidence, in the safety of friendship or love.

“Rape.”

The word came out of my mouth in an ugly gush of shame and reluctance and rebellion.  No, I would not keep this secret for him.  No, I would not make it my secret.  No, I would not bear the sins of my father for him. But yes: it was an awful thing to admit.

“Wow,” my colleague said: “That must have been hard to say.”

I shrugged.  It is what it is, I mumbled, or something like that.  

I’ve spent most of my life unpacking what it means to be the daughter of a man who has committed crimes against women.  My father’s sentence was harsh, in part, because he did not just rape a woman; he beat her, badly (he was also a very dark Indigenous man with a Spanish surname; that didn’t help his cause).  I saw his fury first-hand; I knew the terror of being caught out by it, trapped by it, made helpless and dehumanized by it.  I cannot imagine having it cut loose on me in a dark parking lot.



As a child, I knew that my daddy was in prison.  It was as much a part of my growing-up as knowing where my dark hair, dark eyes and brown skin came from – my Dad.  He was incarcerated when I was three years old.  I didn’t see him again until I was thirteen.  In the interim, he’d spent eight years in a maximum-security prison (then lived in Los Angeles for a few years before I saw him again).  Every once in a while, an envelope with intriguing, back-slanting handwriting showed up in our mailbox, even though we moved almost every year.  The return address corner of the envelope read Box No. A-93223, Tamal, California 94964. “A-93223” was my father’s inmate number.

I still have a few pieces of that correspondence. Some of the envelopes are addressed to me, “Miss Deborah Ann Miranda” and others to my mother, “Mrs Midgie E. Williamson.” Usually my father sent a cheap card, but sometimes he wrote long rambling letters – front and back of a single piece of unlined paper – in his odd, even hand.  In a 1968 letter he talked about sending out job applications, hoping for parole, looking for a place to live: “Santa Monica or W.L.A. for me, Midgie,” (it would be another two years before he actually made parole). My name comes up a lot, though reading the letter now, I suspect not because my father actually regretted missing out on eight years of my life; it was one way my dad could be sure he and his “Midgie” were still connected – “How’s Debby Ann making out? I sure have missed her very much, guess she has forgotten me by now, que no?” – then right back into how bad he felt for angry things he’d said in a previous letter “that hurt your feelings and your husband’s too.” 

My dad asked for money, sent along a “Christmas package authorization” form in bright red and green, checking off which of the approved gifts he would prefer.  The form lays out rules: packages sent to San Quentin would be accepted no earlier than November 29, no later than December 20; no more than 15 pounds; must be composed only of the approved items (‘NO HOMEMADE FRUITCAKE’).  Later, my dad wrote again to complain that he hadn’t even gotten a Christmas card from us – “It sure hurt me not to receive any,” he wrote reproachfully.



In 1968, the year my Dad sent that letter, I was seven years old.  I lived with my mom and step-father in the Cedar View Trailer Park in Buckley, Washington.  We were broke most of the time, though not as broke as we would be in a few more years when we’d drive from one store to the next searching for the cheapest price for hamburger, and settle on a pack of hotdogs instead.  Things happened to me in that trailer park that I am still coming to terms with fifty years later, things that left scars internally and externally.  I needed my father; he was in prison.  I needed rescuing; he had abandoned me.  What would I have told him, if I could have?

An inmate’s children serve their time, too.  At times in my life, it seemed as if my father’s inmate number was my permanent address. Aside from missing my father in ways I did not even have language to articulate, there was always that question: “where is your dad?” and then, “what did he do?”

My mother never did tell me about my father’s crime.  (The fact that, after his sentencing, she experienced a kind of breakdown, quite literally disappeared for a year into alcohol and grief, speaks volumes about the depth of her wound.) Somehow, I learned my father was imprisoned for rape, but of course, rape meant nothing to me at that time – even though one of my mother’s boyfriends molested me that same year my father wrote asking for money and Christmas presents.  Later, after he had moved back in with us when I was thirteen, my Dad asked me, “Do you know what I went to prison for?” and, saying he didn’t want me to hear it from anyone else, “It was rape.”  He hastened to add that it wasn’t really rape, the girl had just lied to him about her age, it was statutory rape, and she just didn’t want her brothers to think she “was that kind of girl.”

The real reason my father wanted to be the one to tell me was so he could craft the story his way; slant the truth backwards, like his handwriting, so that it became his story – not the story of the woman he’d attacked.

The woman he had attacked.  How much did it cost me to write that, just now?  And to remember the scent of my father, the rich darkness of his skin, soft as tanned deer hide against my cheek.  The joy of leaping into his arms and knowing he was strong enough to carry me, lift me up, swing me around.  The sound of his voice, like flowing caramel.  And to think: that same strength meant he was too strong for the woman he attacked to fight off.  She heard that same voice as he raped her.  She felt that skin against her skin.

Having a father who hurts women changes a child; it colored the way I saw the world as a little girl, before he left, and again as a teenager, after his return.  It helped create a silent space inside my body where I learned to hide secrets – not my secrets, but the secrets of men who hurt me.  Like a foreign object, my body formed a hard, rancid sack around that space, protected it from discovery, while letting its poison seep out into my sense of self.  I was ashamed to tell friends about my father’s crime, thinking they would feel less loyalty to me; thinking they would be afraid of him.  In fact, of the small group of solid girlfriends I had in high school, only one of them ever came to visit our trailer. I always went to them.  My home didn’t feel safe to me, either.

It’s one thing to know the statistics: More than 4 in 5 American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence, and more than 1 in 2 have experienced sexual violence. We are told that most of those assaults are from non-Indigenous men, but what is it like knowing that your father, the Indian man you adore despite everything, preys on women, wants to dominate them, use whatever power he has to hurt them, demean them, diminish their dignity?

I’m fifty-six years old, and I’m still figuring out how my father’s crimes affected my own identity.  After years of therapy, I was still convinced that the mean, self-critical voice in my head was mine, my self-flagellation, until one day my therapist asked me, “Whose voice is that?” and without missing a beat I replied, “My father’s.”  I was stunned. 

“I fought all my life to keep him out of my head,” I whispered. 

“I think he got in,” my therapist said quietly.



Knowing that your father hurts women means you always wonder about that kernel of meanness in your own soul.  It means you question your ability to love, to support, the women in your life – girlfriends, wives, daughters. If you are an Indigenous woman, it can make you think that being Indian means nothing but pain.

If you are an Indigenous woman, it might mean believing that you must deserve pain.  It might mean wrestling endlessly with your own daughter about her womanhood.  It might mean letting men walk all over you because you have learned that is their right.

If you are a man, it means you have no clear path towards forming relationships with the women you love that is not fraught with second-guessing and fear.  It might mean excessive loneliness and longing for the very people you have been taught are weak and undeserving.

But most of all, knowing that your father hurts women means shame, and anger, and guilt, and a tear down the middle of your soul; it means knowing what you wish you didn’t know, and never being able to forget it.

In my case, I often think of the horrific patriarchal colonization that was my father’s tribal history in the missions of California: a form of historical trauma that traces directly from Catholic priests teaching Indigenous parents how, and when, to beat their own children as punishment; those same Indigenous parents had never seen or used corporal punishment but were, themselves, punished by the priests if they did not beat their children.  Follow that up with generation after generation of poverty, dehumanizing treatment from Spaniards, Mexicans and Americans, erasure of almost everything Indigenous, a culture of shame and pain in which all Indigenous people were devalued and debased, but especially Indigenous women. The only real power many Indigenous men could claim was over women.  For some men, misogyny becomes the norm. 

Misogyny becomes the norm. 

That’s the worst thing about knowing your father hurts women.  Knowing that just because your father was hurt by people and events beyond his control doesn’t give him the right to hurt others.

Knowing he should have been better than that, and he wasn’t.
Knowing that it was his decision.
Knowing that this is not ever going to go away, or not matter.  

Knowing that what he did is also a part of who you are, who you will be, who you will love.  It will be part of your children.  It will change the direction of your life.  It will require you to be stronger than you think is fair.  It will present you with challenges you did not ask for.  It will throw obstacles down in front of you.  It will make you want to tear your skin off because you inherited that skin from him.

It will make you want to tear your heart out because you can’t stop loving him.  Even if you convince yourself that you can stop, you can’t.

It might mean you act like you don’t love yourself.



As I write this tonight, a storm is brewing – on Twitter, on Facebook, on blogs, and in mainstream news outlets. That major Native American male writer being named one of the most relentless sexual harassers of Native women writers, as well as women in the film industry, has been lauded and celebrated for his (often uneven) work representing our under-represented culture; he’s won all the big writing awards, movies have been made of his works, and he is in demand as a speaker like no other Native writer, despite his high speaking fee. Early on in his career, he was chosen as the darling of reviewers and, with his charismatic, problematic, but always media-savvy verbosity, to represent . . . well, us.  And though it’s true that publishers seem incapable of acknowledging more than one Indigenous writer at a time, a lot of this writer’s success, both financially and as a writer, comes because the man knows how to work a crowd. He is a performer.

I lived in the Seattle area while this man was a rising star. We met a few times at writing events, conferences.  But I knew he was volatile, unpredictable, irreverent to the point of cruelty.  Back in the old days when we were all on the only Native Lit listserv, he joined under a pseudonym so he could see what we were saying about him.  Eventually, during a heated discussion about mixed-blood writers, this man outed himself and told us all what he thought of us – I don’t recall the details, except that he made it clear we were lesser beings.  I do recall thinking, or rather feeling, that this was a man to keep clear of.  So when we saw one another in person, I asked after his wife, his son, then (when another baby came along) his sons; I steered our conversations toward traffic on I-5, grandparents, sleep deprivation.  That was it.  He was never inappropriate with me.  He also never reached out to me, something most Indigenous writers do frequently with one another – do you have a piece for this anthology I’m editing, nice job on that poem in such-and-such journal, hey I heard somebody has a new reading series you’d be good for – but then he was mind-blowingly famous; he was busy.

Sure, he talked about anal sex during readings, blow jobs, cursed up a storm. He went on long rants that were funny, at first, but devolved into hatchet jobs for some poor target.  Significantly, he often said the things about white people, colonization, and anti-Indian sentiments rampant in U.S. culture that needed to be said, that many Indians longed to say but did not dare.  We loved him for those moments.  His humor almost always pulled his fat out of the fire.  But there are other stories, too, that circulated on the down-low: he backed Indigenous women into corners, stalked them by email, demanded sexual contact in exchange for not trashing their writing in public. He rewarded women who adored him with invitations to readings, dinner, book blurbs.  And just to complicate things, he did all these things for other women and never made a pass, creating a kind of cognitive dissonance when women compared stories.

I believe the women who are now naming Sherman Alexie as a man who has bullied, threatened, and sexually harassed them.  I know these women.  I’ve known most of them as long as I’ve known Alexie, and they are strong, honest, loving human beings who have supported me throughout my career as a writer, as a professor, through my life as a mother and grandmother. These are the women who didn’t bat an eyelash when I came out, who sympathized over rough reviews of my writing, shared their own stories of struggle with me; women who create spaces in the literary world for Indigenous women’s voices to live when Indigenous women’s voices are routinely ignored, silenced and maligned.

I believe the women, because they are my community, and have been, before and after whatever small successes I have had.  They have little to gain, and everything to lose, by telling their stories.

I know how hard, how painful, it is for an Indigenous woman to “tell” on a powerful Indigenous man who has accepted the privileges of power.  On a man who has elevated the literature of our people into mainstream news, classrooms, bookstores.

And I know that, bad as this situation is for those women, and for the field of Native American literature, these men create other victims, too; ripples of violence and grief.

I know that when a father hurts women, his children and his wife take a blow like nothing they’ve ever felt before. Though not guilty of any crime, they’ll face a kind of sentencing anyway. Tonight, as the storm gets ready to break, I am thinking of them, wincing at what is to come.  I wish I could say something wise that would make a difference. I wish I didn’t know how much hard work is in front of them. I wish I could say:

Look, nobody gets to choose their parents. We do get to choose how we parent.

Even if the only child we ever parent is ourselves.



My father abused women. I carry that knowledge with me. For a long time, carrying such heavy knowledge made me sick, depressed; it made me abuse myself. Sometimes, it still does – I won’t lie to you, this is a lifelong process. But at least now I use what I’ve learned from that experience: watch out for women and children. Raise a son who values the women in his life, and the tender side of his own soul. If your daughter struggles, stand as a model of strength but do not presume to be her strength. Never underestimate the destructive power of silence.

I don’t know the whole story behind Alexie’s actions. I might never know. Yet it is part of the pattern of an abuser to prevent those he abuses from sharing stories with one another, through threats, pleading hard-luck, asking for another chance.  Poverty, a shattering childhood of abuse, the shame of being Indian in a white world, brain damage due to seizures, brain surgery—in many ways, it really does suck to be Sherman Alexie.  And yet, life has sucked for many of us in very similar ways, and we've managed to pull ourselves through life, write, and engage with other Indigenous writers without sexually or otherwise harassing those weaker than us.

Native women are finally speaking about the fear that Sherman Alexie, a Native man, instilled in them through sexual harassment. That prison of fear often seems impossible to escape. I know those walls, those guards, those cells. My heart is with the women staging this break-out.

I know that nothing can contain this story now. The women are speaking. I’m listening. Are you?





36 comments:

  1. ❤️ you mom, this is really good. You know I always like this kind of your writing the best. We miss you!!

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  2. Thank you for this. Love to you, Deborah.

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  3. Thank you for bravely sharing this. ❤

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  4. Wado for sharing this, Deborah. Powerful and so on point.

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  5. You are such a beautiful writer. What you wrote here made me cry. Your honesty, compassion, and wisdom in your writing reminds me that what matters most is stories--how beautiful writing shapes and changes us. I hope that you turn this into an essay and publish it widely! And a memoir! And a young adult novel! The world needs to hear your wise words.

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  6. Thank you for this. I'm white. When I'd been married 25 years, I learned my husband had raped my sister several times and tried to molest three 12 year old girls. I had a breakdown, ended up in a mental hospital. My daughter was about 13 when her cousin sat her down and said, "Hey, your DAD tried to f**k me." My daughter is 23 now and she has problems well beyond anything I can kiss away. Whenever I hear of a situation like this, I think of the victims, but I count the family among the victims. I know what it's like when someone says, "Your husband - he raped me." The foundation of your life crumbles. I'm still working on trying to heal and I wish you healing too.

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  7. Thank you, Deborah, for sharing your story. Your words are beautiful and powerful. I miss seeing you. -- Parice

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  8. Beautiful. Thank you.

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  9. Difficult, painful... and necessary. And a gift of beautiful writing. I wish I could have read this when I was standing in the storm. Thank you for being another strong voice standing with the women who are speaking out now, and helping those who haven't been there understand what this is like. Honour and Gratitude to you.

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  10. Reading this I picture a powerful and protecting bear-You.Tremendously moved by your honesty and strength. Thank you, miigwech.

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  11. Dear, dear Deborah. Your words have power, and passion, and compassion, and commitment. You are one of the bravest and strongest and gentlest women I know and your voice is needed. Love and gratitude--and don't stop.

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  12. That was stunning and beautifully written. Thank you for having the courage to share your story, so that we may learn from it.

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  13. "I believe the women, because they are my community, and have been, before and after whatever small successes I have had. They have little to gain, and everything to lose, by telling their stories."
    This is what I think too!

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  14. I have had friends who were harassed by Alexi. They could never do a thing about it.

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  15. My father too abused women. Especially my mother. His abuse still haunts me till this day. Making her do things she didn't want to do. It's time as indigenous women to stand up for each other, and raise your sons better.

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  16. Deborah, Thank you. You've provided the bridge and the context for understanding this tempest and why Native women writers were reluctant to name the problem. Once a man has been outed as an asshole and a jerk (and serial abuser), that information doesn't go away and it serves to protect the next set of victims from similar treatment. You've made a powerful statement with your parallels with the other man in your life who abused women. Thank you for writing Bad Indians. You've fleshed it out in this writing. May your healing and understanding forever grow. Thank you.

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  17. Thank you, Deborah. You've provided a bridge to understanding why this tempest. Other Native writers alluded to something having happened. You give the context and enough detail that there was something more going on with SA than erratic performance. The link with the other man in your life who abused women and then tried to cover his tracks made perfect sense. Thank you for writing BAD INDIANS. This piece also provides more background and context for your family's experiences. May your wisdom and healing continue. I love your work.

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  18. Wow!!! Gracias

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  19. Thank you for being so open and honest and bringing us into this experience. It really means something to read.

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  20. Thank you. Your words touched me and taught me.

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  21. This is so powerful, and so beautifully written, Deborah. Thank you for sharing your story.

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  22. Deborah, thank you for this story. I've shared a link to this piece at River, Blood, And Corn.
    May beauty surround you. Your words will carry many readers. ~Terra

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  23. warrior's power, grandma wisdom, poetic beauty...all from your heart. Thank you for sharing it.

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  24. Powerful and exquisitely written. Thank you for your words and your willingness to share. Sending you hugs and support from Native women writers... and daughters...

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  25. Thank you for telling your story. As another person whose father hurts women, it meant a lot to me.

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  26. I am curious if there are Native American Indian or Alaska Native men, who are writers or artists who are not screwed up by their past, )their childhood, by living on a Rez, living in poverty, being victims) . How many, if any, have not carried the demons around in them ? The older men I knew 40, 50, years ago who managed to survive and create, all were very flawed, as I was. Are they, those who went before the writers and artists of today, the writers and artists of past, to be forgiven ? Or, will their books be burned and their art work crushed beneath our feet ? I am not asking that they not be accountable, for the most part they are dead now or dying, but wondering how or if they can make amends and be brought back into the community ? Circle Justice among some tribes allows for this process. If a Native man commits harm against one, he commits it against the family/clan, the tribe and community. We value our sisters, our brothers, our fathers, mothers and our children. We surround them, we tell them of their harm and they are expected to go away from the village and think upon what they have done. We welcome back into the Circle for them to make amends to all those harmed and to rejoin our Circle when they have
    Learned and made their amends to all. Will this happen ?

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  27. Bless you. Your words are powerful.

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  28. I was raised by an abusive father who owned strip clubs, lap dancing places and porn theaters. As a middle eastern man he was raised to feel ownership over women and his female children. I resonated with every word you said, thank you from my heart.

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  29. Love and gratitude to you...

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  30. miigwech for this and for all that you do on behalf of native lit, native writers, native women.

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  31. Incredible powerful writing. Thank you for sharing your story with us. As Indigenous women many of us have grown up thinking violence and misogyny is normal. It is well past time to begin the healing and change what we consider normal for our future generations.

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  32. Thank you for this powerful and compassionate piece. I am a white woman who comes from a family of a number of male sexual abusers...men who assaulted their own daughters (and perhaps sons, too), and grandchildren. Almost every woman who helped raise me, and both of my sisters, are abuse victims. My family also served up parental abandonment, and alcoholism has driven it, too. The terror and self-loathing I learned from my family has never truly left me...nor the rage, nor looking at life as something to be endured. I often feel ashamed that, even after years of therapy, I am afraid and shut down most of the time. What enormous energy it takes to try to hide this, out in the world, and even in my own home.

    I can't possibly imagine bearing these conditions as a Native woman, alongside so much else to triumph over. Your strength and love are amazing, and to be emulated.

    I have been a huge fan of Mr. Alexie for years and years. I am now reading his memoir, unable to grasp everything he and his family have been through. Just last night, I learned of the harassment allegations for the first time. My heart breaks for all those he hurt and harmed, for his family, and for the Native communities deeply scarred by his actions. My heart also breaks for him...while I am NOT excusing his behavior, one has to wonder how emotionally healthy any Native man could be after being formed in his environment; I believe that, in many ways, men are less strong than women, and end up even more broken and lost when they are brutalized and not nurtured. It is a great tribute to women, how many of us manage to retain kindness and tenderness under horrific circumstances.

    The loss of role models is terrible, isn't it? Within our families, and among extravagantly gifted artists we admire, and who we learn are so deeply flawed...shattering hope we thought we'd found for something to look up to, to strive for? Your goodness shines forth here, and it helps me. Miigwech, my Native sister. May the Great Spirit help and have mercy on us all.

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