Kill the Silence

by Monika Korra

  I started thinking about how to work with my thoughts in a constructive way. I remembered reading somewhere that it’s good to write out your thoughts and feelings when you need to gain perspective, so that’s what I decided to do: As soon as I felt ready, I would write about everything that had happened to me. Dr. Soutter supported the idea, but cautioned me that I should do it just a little at a time and to sit in places where I felt safe while doing it. That way I wouldn’t be as likely to get overwhelmed by reliving the trauma so soon.

  I didn’t really know where to begin with my writing. I sat there with my headphones on, listening to Pink’s song “Glitter in the Air” on repeat. I had loved that song for a long time, but the words “Have you ever looked fear in the face and said I just don’t care?” took on new meaning. I’d admired Pink for daring to be different, for her bravery and toughness, for being strong and vulnerable at the same time. So on those nights when sleep wouldn’t come, or when I walked to classes and wondered if people were staring at me and knew my not-so-secret secret, I listened to Pink. Maybe because I didn’t let my friends and family in as much as I could have or should have, or maybe because no one can ever truly experience or fully empathize with what anyone else has gone through, listening to Pink’s music made me feel less alone, like there was someone out there who knew what to say to me when others’ words and my own fell short.

  The psychologist was right: Keeping a journal and recounting those awful moments was hard at the beginning. It took a different type of mental courage to think through again every terrible thing that the men had done to me and to expose myself to feeling all those emotions once more. It terrified me, but because it did, I knew I had to do it. This wasn’t something that I could do with someone else, like running. The memories and images that invaded my sleep and waking consciousness had overpowered me, pressed themselves into my mind against my wishes. Now, in writing my memories down, I was going to be the one in charge. I was going to take Pink’s words as advice to me, to just not care, to set aside any fears about reliving those moments.

  Since the attack I had scarcely been alone. I knew that writing was going to have to be something I did on my own. Kristine and Robin in particular were reluctant to leave my side. I knew that if they saw that what I was writing was making me cry, they would stop me. I didn’t want to be stopped. That would be like being pulled off the track before a race was over.

  I told them I needed some time alone, and they agreed, reluctantly. I wasn’t going to check the lock multiple times. I wasn’t going to check the cabinets or closets.

  I sat down in front of my computer and I started to type.

  Friday, December 4th.

  That’s as far as I got. I moved around the room. I needed a glass of water and then another one, and then I needed to put on another jacket because the room was cold. I was just distracting myself; I didn’t want to go back to those memories. But I had to. As I put on the jacket, I remembered the book a friend of mine had dropped off a few days earlier. A woman she worked with at Lululemon had told her to give it to me when she heard about what I’d been through. On the cover of the journal was a picture of a butterfly with the word “Begin” written in gold letters on top of it. I started digging through the unpacked bags on the floor from our hasty move. There it was. Begin. I put my favorite song by Josh Groban—“You Are Loved (Don’t Give Up)”—on repeat on my computer. I let the song play through several times while I sat down on the bed with the blanket wrapped around me. Then, as the music swelled at the beginning of the chorus, I started writing. Those first few words were like the start of a training run, loosening up, getting into the rhythm of it. I started off with the party, and then began to pick up the intensity, moving to that moment of terror that for the last few days had marked the before and after of my life, when Kristine and I had to let go of each other.

  Then I wrote, “I felt something next to my head, on the right side of my skull. It was a gun—”

  A sudden rush of random imagery and sensations flooded my mind, one after another like rapid-fire photographs—the door I first approached and its horseshoe knocker. A nut and bolt and crumpled fast-food wrapper under the seat of the SUV. My bare feet crunching across the glass- and gravel-strewn shoulder of the road, how it sparkled like fallen stars. The sour, hot breath of the Worst One as he forced himself inside me. The feel of the carpet against my face as I lay there and the muffled voices outside the vehicle argued about my fate. I felt so dirty again that I needed to take a shower.

  Tears ran down my face and mixed with the water until I just collapsed there and sat in the tub and cried for a long time. The images that came to my mind were disturbing, but I didn’t try to chase them away. I just let myself remember and feel whatever it was that came up. After a while, I didn’t know why I was crying. Was it sadness, fear, relief? I couldn’t pinpoint my emotion. Finally, I just felt empty. Empty of tears, empty of feelings. It felt strange, but it also felt good. The numbness wearing off was painful, but at least I was feeling something. I was still alive. Still breathing. I could feel the circulation returning to the parts that had shut down. I knew enough about being cold to understand that what my body had done was divert blood from the extremities to preserve the essential organs, keep my blood flowing to where it was needed in order to simply survive.

  I understood while in that hot shower and flood of tears that my brain had been doing the same thing. This wasn’t about survival anymore, this was about healing, about regaining strength, about letting the blood and the sensations flow through every part of my being, carrying nutrients away to do the needed work and shuttling off the debris that would only make the pain and stiffness linger.

  For me no pain, no gain was going to be much more than a cliché.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Station

  On the fourth day following my rape, the police contacted Robin to get in touch with me.

  “We need you to come down to the police station,” the officer said. “Are you at the dorm?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “All of you?”

  “You want Kristine and Viktoria to come, too?”

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s important.”

  “Okay. What do you need us to do?”

  He didn’t want to elaborate, so I hung up and wondered what important thing they needed to talk to all of us about. I had been calling multiple times every day to remind them that I would do anything I could to help in the investigation; I was probably driving them crazy, but I just wanted to help them find these men so they couldn’t do it again.

  Coach Wollman, though, was furious when he found out that we were supposed to go to the station. He called up the lead detective who’d been assigned to my case, BJ Watkins, and said, “These girls aren’t going anywhere until I know they’re safe. There’s media camped outside of their old apartment, and I just got them set up in a place where no one can find them. I’m not about to mess that up by having someone spot them coming to the police station and following them home.”

  “I understand,” Detective Watkins told him. He knew exactly how low the media could go, having had run-ins before with one of the same reporters who were currently sitting outside my old apartment.

  “What if you bring them to a meeting point with us, and we’ll be there in unmarked cars? We can then take the girls to the station. We can use a restricted-access entrance and elevator. Anyone without credentials won’t be around. After we’re done, we’ll call you and tell you when to meet us back at the drop-off location.”

  It felt like a presidential Secret Service escort. Coach Wollman had Coach Casey pick us up from the dorms and bring us to an arranged spot in a shopping center. We pulled in from one side, the police pulled in from another side, in a car they’d picked up from an impound lot, and we piled into their car and drove off without a word, Robin in the front and the three of us in the back.

  As we drove around to the back of the police station, I could f
eel Kristine and Viktoria tense. We hadn’t talked much on the way there, but I sensed something was different. I was seated in the backseat with one of them on each side of me, the shortest of us placed in the most cramped spot, like the youngest child. I watched as each of them sat and stared out the window, their usually animated expressions gone slack. This was my first time at the station, but I knew that it held its own bit of horror for the two of them. I reached out and rested my hands on theirs. Kristine smiled briefly and nodded. Not for the first time, I wondered what it would have been like to be either of the two of them, the panic and frustration they must have experienced in wondering what was going on with me that night, if I was dead or alive. Each of us had her own trauma from that night, and I felt terrible that they had to return to that place of fear for them.

  Viktoria squeezed my hand, shut her eyes, and exhaled loudly, shaking her arms like she did in preparation for a jump. Not knowing how police investigations worked and the detective being unwilling to tell us why we had been called in added to my anxiety. As the car rolled to a stop and we stepped into the bright sunshine, my bladder suddenly burned.

  What if we were there to confront in person the men who had done those things to me?

  I stood rooted in place, squinting at the building and its heavily tinted windows, the grillwork that covered the bottom row of them. A door opened, and two men in suits led another man by the arms down a set of concrete steps. The held man squinted and bowed his head against the sun. The policemen, their eyes jacketed by dark glasses, nodded at the detective who’d been driving us. Robin took my hand and led me toward the entrance, his head pivoting from side to side to make sure that no one else could see us.

  One of the detectives must have noted how my anxiety level had risen and read my mind. “No one you know,” he said. “Besides, we’re taking you guys in through the VIP entrance. Very Important Person, not Very In Trouble Prisoner.”

  He smiled, and Robin and I let out a brief laugh.

  We stopped at a desk and were issued identification tags that hung from chains. None of us spoke. We were led to an elevator, and once we were inside, a uniformed officer who was escorting us asked, “You her boyfriend?”

  Robin said yes immediately and then looked at me to see how I reacted. In all those months, we hadn’t acknowledged that out loud. He’d stayed with my family and slept at my apartment, but never once had we called each other “boyfriend” and “girlfriend.” We had acted very casual about things. Here of all places came the next step of our relationship. I couldn’t help but laugh. Robin started laughing, too. The officer raised one eyebrow and shook his head briefly.

  We went up only a single floor. I thought it was strange that we needed an elevator for that. When the doors opened, Detective Watkins was standing to one side. As we stepped out, he held his arm out indicating the way we were to go. I felt my heart rate climbing, and despite what I’d been told, I was still wondering if around the corner I’d see those three men. In a way I was going to see them. Detective Watkins explained that we were there to view photos of various men. He was going to take us into the room one at a time to view the pictures. After we came out of the room, we weren’t to talk to one another at all about what we’d seen or thought. Instead of completely calming my fears, knowing what was ahead of me only heightened my anxiety. I felt like I was about to take the most important test of my life.

  Detective Watkins led me to a small, sterile room where another investigator waited at a small table with a large manila envelope in his hands. I understood that inside that envelope were the images I was to look through. I stood in that doorway unable to move. I tried counting to five and told myself that I would step forward then. I couldn’t. I started to shake and wondered if the detectives could see that I had. I didn’t want to disappoint them, but I didn’t want to do this, either. I had never in my life imagined that I would be in a room doing something like this.

  “We’re ready,” Detective Watkins said, and it was as if his words connected some wiring in my brain that allowed me to move again.

  The other investigator set the envelope of images on the table, at which I was now seated. I sat staring at the table for a moment and then looked away at how stain rings on the table’s surface caught the light from the overhead. I suddenly became very aware of my body and the contact it was making with the floor, the chair, the table, the sharp flap of the envelope. I began to shake again, knowing how important it was that I get this right and angry that I had to be there at all.

  I looked at Detective Watkins and the other investigator. Both of them regarded me with a neutral expression, not unkind, not bored, not angry, just looking past me like you might someone you passed by on a busy street. I suddenly felt even more alone. I was without a trusted companion for one of the first times since that night, and I hated it. As Detective Watkins left and the door clicked closed, the panic rose up in my throat. There were no windows in the room, no way for me to see my friends or signal for help if I needed it. And what if this man…

  No. This detective is not a rapist. I forced myself to think.

  In those early days I had to keep reminding myself that most people were good and the world was not full of dangerous people who would attack me at the first chance.

  The detective who was assigned to the room with me finally spoke. “I don’t know which of these men are the real suspects and which are not. I won’t be able to bias you by anything I do or how I react. Do you understand that?”

  His voice was pleasantly deep, like someone I might have heard on the radio or the television. I nodded, and for the first time he smiled a bit. “Good.” He slid the envelope back toward himself and opened it. Just that little bit of encouragement seemed to ease some of my tension.

  “I’m going to show you each photo one at a time. Take your time to look it over and then either say ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ or ‘not sure’ to each photo. No comparing one photo to the next. You can look as long as you want, but once you answer, you can’t go back. You have to give an answer for each photo before looking at the next one. There will be three sets of six photos. Are you ready?”

  I nodded.

  As I looked at the first photo, it occurred to me what an awful responsibility this was. I might have to point at people and call them rapists. I had to figure out based on these photos who could be labeled a rapist for the rest of their lives and probably spend a lot of time in jail. It made me panic, and suddenly I became very unsure of myself.

  “No,” I said to the first photo.

  The officer flipped to the next photo. He repeated the instructions, but this time his voice had lost its pleasant tone. I felt like I was listening to a recording that repeated the same message over and over. I looked at my hands; in the artificial light my already fair skin had taken on a chalky gray color. I felt cold, yet my palms were sweaty.

  I looked hard at the person in the photograph, at the blank gaze in his eyes, and I involuntarily slapped the table. Then I jumped because of the slapping noise. I felt like someone was strangling me and I had to look away for a second.

  Was he one of them? It felt like he was, but I just wasn’t positive. It was a photograph—a two-dimensional thing without changing facial expressions, without voice, smell, or body language. He might have been the driver, but I couldn’t say for sure. I forced myself to look at the photo again and to concentrate on each feature separately. Were those thick eyebrows the ones that I remembered? Was that mouth the one that mocked me, that laughed at me and twisted into a grimace as he forced me to the floor?

  My eyes welled with tears as I said, “I think it’s him.”

  And then I had a pang of conscience—what if I was wrong and I had just labeled someone as a “maybe” rapist? It was too hard; I looked at each photo and the faces blended together. They all appeared Hispanic, and none of them stood out as obvious picks to me. I said “no” or “not sure” to all but that one photo, feeling very nervous and anxious as I had to
scan my mind for images I never wanted to see again. And always there was the gun. Had they shown me a photo of the gun, I would have recognized it immediately.

  This process wasn’t anywhere near as clear-cut as I would have expected it to be. I never thought I could be unsure about those three faces, and yet the panic made it difficult to be sure. There were some I was able to exclude with certainty, but none I could say a simple “yes” to.

  I walked out of the room and into the hallway feeling as if I had failed the exam, that I’d barely been able to even write my name on the blue book. The feeling reminded me of nightmares I’d had throughout my school days—that pit-of-the-stomach panic that rose from opening a test booklet and realizing that I’d studied the wrong subject entirely, that instead of being a test about history, the page was filled with complex equations and notations in a language that I had only some vague sense of having seen once before.

  Following the detective’s instructions to the letter, I didn’t even make eye contact with Viktoria as she stepped into the room next. I stood with my arms wrapped around my chest, gently rocking from side to side and toe to heel, my body barely able to keep pace with my racing thoughts. I’d seen a few courtroom scenes from movies in which lawyers reduced witnesses to crying and quaking masses of uncertainty. A part of me wanted to be like Lisbeth Salander, Stieg Larsson’s heroine, someone who could be cool and calculating in exacting revenge. Except I didn’t want revenge; I just wanted this to be over, to know with absolute certainty that I had identified the men who had done those horrible things to me and that they would no longer be able to do them to anyone else.