An American Story

by Debra J. Dickerson

  I focused on making it through the nights. Having to sleep filled me with dread. Shift work was a godsend because I could often sleep during the day. I could sleep if I knew the sun was shining. No one gets raped in the sunlight, do they? But that only took care of a few days a week. For the unavoidable dark hours, I tried everything—sleeping fully dressed, sleeping with the lights on, sleeping with a baseball bat, setting elaborate traps. It went without saying that the bedroom door—not just the front door of the building but the door of the room I was actually in—had to be locked. I wouldn’t even lie on a bed in a room without a locking door.

  What finally made it possible for me to sleep, if only fitfully, was furniture. I could sleep for long snatches if the door was barricaded, the windows blocked. If they could not be, in an inconveniently outfitted hotel room, for instance, I’d stock up on cigarettes and stare at the door and windows all night. Or, I’d sleep fitfully in a chair. But not in an unprotected bed—never. I knew this was unhealthy but what was I to do? I’m not a baby boomer and I’m not a yuppie’s kid—I don’t expect there to be a cure for my every bedevilment. Some pains just have to be borne, outlasted. So I carved out my own numbed and Dickersonian way. I limped, but I kept walking.

  A few shaky days later, during a long shift, I was near breaking. All I had to do was make it back to the barracks and collapse. It was still daylight, so I would be able to sleep. But no. The first sergeant was sitting in a car waiting for me outside the barracks. Lieutenant Colonel “Davis,” the 6903rd commander, wanted to see me.

  Davis was a cold fish. It was well known that he referred to us enlisted derisively as “the help” and looked at us with a cold mix of puritan disdain and superiority. We thought him a bastard. The Blues Brothers movie was a big hit in the military then; we put up a sign that said “We’re on a Mission from GOD.” Good old Davis, we’d snicker behind his back.

  Inside his office, I was taken aback by the look of pained disgust on his face. He didn’t ask me how I was feeling. He didn’t express his sympathy or offer his assistance in any way. He didn’t offer me a day off, or to let me go home on leave, or to use the direct stateside line to call home that he controlled. Instead, he left me standing at attention. That’s how I knew I was in trouble. When you report to your commander, you do so formally by marching in, standing at attention, saluting, and announcing, “Airman Dickerson reporting as ordered, sir.” Normally, a superior officer would immediately put you “at ease” in such a situation and offer you a seat. Davis meant for me to know that this was not to be a pleasant visit. The First Shirt looked like he was trying to pass a kidney stone.

  Davis told me that he had reviewed the facts “of the case [I’d] brought” and decided that I was an alcoholic. I was to report for a complete evaluation.

  Clichés are clichés for a reason: I literally could not believe my ears. I looked to the Shirt but he couldn’t look at me. Davis was still talking, so I looked back at him, my eyes and mouth so wide I thought my face was going to crack.

  True, I’d been drinking off and on all day and well into the night, but so had most of his entire squadron. He bloody well knew we’d only drunk slightly more than we normally did on any given day and that most of it was drunk right across the hall from his squadron headquarters in the bar we built with unit funds and kept stocked with the nearly free alcohol the government flew in to the base liquor store.

  I was simply unable to process what was happening except that I knew I was being assaulted. Again. I felt dizzy. I aimed myself at a chair as best I could. I almost made it. The Shirt sprang forward to help me but Davis just kept talking. He reminded me that national security was at stake given my access to classified information. He talked and talked and talked.

  It’s all over, I thought as Davis beat me up. I can’t hold it together. His words were actually painful. And the way he was looking at me, like I was a garden slug in his salad . . . I had to cover my face.

  In the end, I had to wait in his anteroom, tacky with snot and dry heaving (I was barely eating), while his secretary made the appointment for my alcoholism evaluation. The Shirt waited with me, clearing his throat and crushing his cap in his hands. He half carried me back to his car, drove behind a building in a deserted area, and waited.

  “I hate him! I hate him! I hate him!” I screamed for so long I could barely speak the next day. I meant Davis, not the Spineless Worm who raped me. Spittle flying, I spewed the vilest things I could think up. God bless the Shirt, he just kept nodding and dabbing his eyes and saying, I know, I know, I know. He must have given me some advice or encouragement, but all I remember now is his quiet decency. If someone hadn’t been nice to me just then, I don’t think I would have made it.

  In all the hours that I wasn’t sleeping, I had lots of time to consider my situation. A peasant at heart, I never spent much time pondering Davis’s attitude; I didn’t question the power of my feudal overlords. Instead, I spent my time figuring out what it meant for me. Finally, it came to me in a flash that made me jump up and spend the rest of the night chain-smoking. He meant to ruin my career and force me out.

  Simply to be suspected of being an alcoholic, God forbid be adjudged one, was to seal your doom in intelligence. The reality, of course, is that in the 1980s, before “deglamorization,” irresponsible drinking and alcoholism (like fornication and adultery) were rife throughout the military, especially in third world countries, especially in high-stress fields. You had to be nonfunctional for your drinking to matter; there were plenty of functional alcoholics and problem drinkers at the very pinnacle of military achievement. If you could confine your drinking to off-duty hours and stay out of official trouble, your drinking was your business. But commanders are gods. If he made an issue of it, you were toast. The bastard intended to cost me my clearance, and with it my career. At a minimum, he meant to have my clearance pulled and put me in limbo while my case wound its laborious way through the system.

  As soon as the OSI agents knocked on his door, that Spineless Worm confessed. Given that, I didn’t know why Davis was after me, but he knew what an accusation of this type meant to a career, a life. The Air Force is a people-oriented place. The custom was an off-the-record tête-à-tête and tough-love-type oversight. I’d only been in the unit six weeks. I’d only been drinking for six weeks. I had an exemplary record. I doubt he’d ever even heard of me before. So why did he try to ruin me?

  I didn’t know, but I certainly knew what I had to do next: fight. So I turned my hatred of Davis into fuel. He was my focal point for pulling myself together, a seething socket deep within me that I plugged into for energy and drive. I was going to beat that bastard. If I fell apart, he won, so I decided not to fall apart.

  Humiliated but too ornery to show it, I presented in crisp uniform ten minutes early for my drunkard’s evaluation. The organization which provided what passed for mental health services in the Air Force was inexplicably called Social Actions. Going there was the kiss of death for anyone with a clearance—you were automatically considered to be a security risk and assigned “casual” duty, like handing out clean linen or answering phones. So people just fell quietly, or noisily, apart while the rest of us measured our behavior against theirs and took stock.

  I sat there, focused on my hatred of Davis, and briskly refused the refreshments the two nice, white, scrubbed officers pressed on me. They smiled, they offered to put on music, they tried to chat. They looked uncertainly back and forth. I responded appropriately, formally. Finally, one couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “Why are you here?” he asked me.

  My composure was momentarily rocked. That lousy bastard. They had no idea why I was there, knew nothing about either the rape or the drunkard’s evaluation. Son of a vermin-infested bitch.

  I was cornered. Nothing to do but be a Dickerson. I sat up straight and tall.

  “I’m here because I was raped by a coworker in my own bed on Christmas Day, which proves to my commander that I’m an al
coholic. I’m here so you can take away my security clearance and short-circuit my career.”

  The look of horror on those men’s faces was gratifying but I was still furious. I hadn’t even told my family but here I was forced to tell two male strangers. I pictured Davis crushed under the burning wheels of a locomotive.

  Finally, one stammered, “Have you talked to someone about the . . . incident? Why on earth were you sent here?”

  The morbidity of it was irresistible. “Rape is a social action, I guess, so . . .”

  To their credit, they made a few halfhearted attempts to counsel me. I responded with more sulfurous one-liners. They let me go. They assured me they’d take no action on the drunkard evaluation, and I left, standing tall and striding purposefully.

  Up yours, Davis.

  ——

  Even in the midst of my inch-deep militancy, I knew I needed help. Since the Air Force wasn’t going to be proactive with me (they scheduled my mandatory pap smears, flu shots, and dental checkups but left me to handle rape on my own), I did try once to reach out. I waited weeks for an appointment with Osan’s single nurse-practitioner.

  I prayed that someone would have told her who I was. But no. And when push came to shove, I couldn’t say it. D.J. the Badass just sat there while the major pursed her lips and looked pointedly at the clock. I willed myself to say the words “I was raped” again and again, promising myself that this time when I counted to ten I was going to blurt it out.

  The major was annoyed. She was in the midst of some religious observance and she had to get to a special Mass. I was making her late but she was making me want to scream. Why couldn’t she be a Christian in her own office? Snot bubbled in my nose but I fought back the tears, terrified that if I started crying I would lose it altogether. But this major, the only woman ever involved with my case, was a block of wood. I might have been unaware of my cultural aloneness, but I was acutely aware of how personally alone I was just then. I was in hell and no one, literally no one, gave a damn. There was no help. My problems mattered to no one but me. The major’s stone face made that very clear.

  Five minutes into the silence now, the major was very annoyed. I told her I’d made a mistake and left.

  She sent a formal reprimand to my orderly room and noted in my medical record, right under the rape exam, that I had been uncooperative and wasted valuable appointment time. She hinted that I was unstable.

  I gave myself a stern talking-to as I marched myself home from the clinic. You are on your own, Debra. No one is going to help you, Debra. Pull yourself together, Debra. You aint dead yet, Debra, so this shit can’t kill you.

  Those four sentences, my mantra, got me through my two years in Korea. Outside of Davis’s assault, I never shed even one tear about my rape.

  Davis never gave me a day off work, fine! I worked harder and was considered among the best of his “help.” I won awards, I set records. I came in early, I stayed late. I continued to sleep around and drink way too much, just like everyone else. I had leave approved months in advance only to have it snatched away the day before. Fine! I volunteered to stay an extra year and didn’t go home again until February 1983, a full fourteen months after I came to Korea. Die, Davis! Even I saw through the paper-thin psychology at work there, but so what? I didn’t need fancy.

  Nonetheless, the hard living, the high professional pressure, and the aftereffects of the rape all combined to wear me down. The unit disowned me (even though the Worm confessed). A group of females petitioned to testify as character witnesses for him. (He confessed!) They felt sure I must have provoked him. (He confessed!) Few in the unit would speak to me. (He confessed!)

  But what could I do? I couldn’t change jobs, I couldn’t move; all I could do was brazen it out. I just put one foot in front of the other. I was the eye of the storm. It was quiet there, but all around me, conversations would stop when I entered a room. People would leave tables I joined. At the same time, a well-liked guy in our unit was being prosecuted for killing his baby while drunk. He was the unit darling. Everyone visited him, sent him cards and gifts, and filled the benches at his trial. His name was on their lips every day. Even Davis supported him, visiting and mentioning him at commander’s call. I was a pariah.

  It is customary for commanders to attend any court proceedings involving their subordinates; their presence communicates support both for the accused and for the military process. The commander usually acts as the accused’s family’s source of information and as their advocate. As in the case of my coworker accused of killing his child, Davis did so, as did others from the chain of command. I, on the other hand, went to court alone (except for one kind major who wasn’t even in my chain of command). Women wept openly when my coworker was found guilty; those same bitches wouldn’t speak to me. I received no encouragement or support from my command structure. I even had to beg the prosecutor to make sure the trial didn’t conflict with my work schedule; the powers that be hemmed and hawed when I alerted them to the possible conflict, reminding me that if “we let one person off . . .” Buggerers. I would miss my own trial before I’d ask Davis for time off.

  Since the loser confessed, there wasn’t much of a trial. The defense had been planning to argue that I consented to sex and only claimed rape afterward to hide it from my boyfriend. That made me laugh for the first time since the rape. My boyfriend did exactly what I’d known he would when I told him; he flinched but said nothing.

  The Worm had opted for a bench trial, so the court reporter, the two lawyers, and I waited for the judge’s decision together in a small antechamber. Worm’s lawyer bummed cigarettes from me and bemoaned his client’s having confessed, a course to which he’d strenuously objected. The three then placed desultory lunch bets on the number of months Worm would probably get. They compared rape cases: never more than six without “violence,” probably only four because she’d been drinking, maybe as few as two because he’d conf— . . . Finally, the prosecutor looked at me, turned red, and changed the subject. The stenographer, who never looked directly at me, said lazily, “I guess you think we’re heartless, huh?”

  No. Not at all.

  The Worm read a statement apologizing to the court and to the Air Force. I suppose I was covered by his “any other person or persons who may have been hurt, if any” clause. He lost his clearance and was sentenced to six months in military prison in Denver. I’ve since seen the place; sad-faced airmen play volleyball in the cold and shine shoes a lot. If he’d falsified an expense voucher and stolen a few hundred bucks from the government, if he’d boosted tools from the flight line, if he’d smoked a single joint in a stellar fifteen-year career, he’d have gotten years, not months, and in a real prison. But raping a fellow soldier’s not so bad. Still good enough for the uniform of the United States of America. It’s not like he hit me or anything.

  But even that, six months’ confinement, was not to be. He only served two. Good behavior and all that. He was at a new duty assignment before I was. As late as 1989, he was still on active duty in Alaska, bragging that his family never even knew what had happened. He’s married now and has children. Daughters?

  Yes, I’m bitter, but I never blamed the Air Force. I blame Davis. I shared an elevator with him at the National Security Agency the next year and he wouldn’t even acknowledge my presence.

  Every now and then, someone would mention the rape, like the guy I asked to a function. “No thanks,” he said politely. “I don’t want to end up in jail.” Another time, a new flight commander introduced himself to me this way: “Hello. I’m Lieutenant Big Fat Stupid Idiot. I hear you were raped.” I came to understand that Worm’s confession meant nothing to anyone but me.

  There was no unit education on acquaintance rape or irresponsible drinking or sexual harassment. At one point, we’d had a rash of people getting bad sunburns that kept them from working—next commander’s call, we got lectured on sunburns. The fair-skinned who got more than one work-preventing sunburn were punishe
d. A couple of women got pregnant, and so had to return stateside; boom, we got lectured on not getting pregnant. If promotion rates dropped a percentage point, if people were making too much noise in the barracks—major lecture. But rape? Not a word. I got the message loud and clear.

  You are on your own, Debra. No one is going to help you, Debra. Pull yourself together, Debra. You aint dead yet, Debra, so this shit can’t kill you.

  A NEW ATTITUDE

  Korea was a turning point. All the disparate parts of my makeup collided as I consciously tried to make some sense of my life. The rape stripped away the last of the backwoods principles I’d been raised on. I realized then, as I endured the pointless, even impersonal mistreatment routine in daily life outside the cloister of my parents’ home, that I had not been ready for the world.

  I reviewed it all—my father, my bleak childhood, the constant maltreatment from men that my low self-esteem drove me to expect and accept, the existing social order—and dove headfirst into a boiling, bottomless anger. The world was a shitty, unlovely place filled with people who’d stab you in the back for no reason at all. I was disgusted by my own good-girliness and shrugged it off like a pair of Dr. Denton’s.

  I lived on black coffee, cigarettes, and alcohol. Sans effort or intent, I lost twenty-five pounds.

  Then I became a serious jock. I pounded out hundreds of sit-ups each day, did hours of aerobics. I ran the six miles from Osan to Pyong Taek, the next town, twice, sometimes three times. I ran through rice paddies with local children dogging my heels. I ran through monsoons, snowdrifts, scorching heat. I ferreted out the best hills. I couldn’t make things difficult enough for myself. I kept studious track of my times and distances, always trying to outdo myself. Black men called out rude taunts as I ran around base, but I’d have been disappointed had they not.