by Monika Korra
As Robin sat there going over various possibilities—getting a lawyer involved, moving me to another location nearby, going back home earlier than planned—I remembered something. Before I was finally allowed to go home, the police had told me not to watch the news or read anything in the paper or online. I was still so shocked that I didn’t think about what that might mean. Now I got it.
My identity wasn’t going to be kept a secret. Back home, the media had greater respect for an individual’s privacy. They would have never shown up at my door. I didn’t understand how the police or the courts in the United States worked, but still this seemed incredibly wrong. Just because something horrible happened to you, did that mean that it could be on the news? Worse, how could people believe it was okay to show up on your doorstep, show images of where you lived?
Kristine and Viktoria joined Robin and me in the bedroom.
“I heard someone on campus talking about another rape today. She didn’t use your name, but she did say something about the victim being an athlete.”
Robin told them about the reporters outside the apartment. In an instant we were all talking over one another. I was having a hard time concentrating. There were no laws preventing Dallas media from naming sex-assault victims unless we were given a pseudonym, but I already had one: Jessica December Watkins. When I asked why that full name, I was told that when pseudonym laws came into effect, law enforcement decided to have the victim choose his or her own first name, the middle name would be the month of the offense, and the last name would be the lead detective’s last name. That way, people within the department would be able to identify the case—they’d know who “Jessica December Watkins” was because they’d be able to figure out who was assigned to Detective Watkins in December.
Despite the pseudonym, though, the media had found me. Was it just a matter of time before my identity was revealed to the world? When would my attackers find out?
Finally, Kristine got all of our attention. “It doesn’t matter how it happened or if it’s wrong or right. What are we going to do to fix this?”
We all agreed. I had to get out of there.
Viktoria had suggested that we contact Coach Wollman. While she went to do that, the rest of us began packing our things.
“It’s going to be okay,” Robin said. “It’s better to be safe.”
“I know. I’m upset because it seems like things just won’t settle down. I want things to be more normal, and they just won’t.”
“I’m not going to let things get bad. I promise you. This is going to end soon.”
Robin held me and I felt better. I didn’t like the idea of leaving the apartment and someplace familiar, but it wasn’t as if I really felt safe where I was.
On top of this new worry about the media, I could see that the stress of everything was getting to Robin. He seemed pale and drawn, and his eyes had that glossy shocked look of someone who’s just witnessed something terrible. I’d been checking in with him constantly, asking over and over if he was okay. As I moved around the apartment storing things in boxes, loading up my luggage and backpack, he sat on the couch staring blindly ahead.
“When was the last time you ate?” I asked him.
He shrugged and moved his limp hands slightly in his lap.
“You have to take care of yourself. If you’re not strong, you won’t be able to help me.”
It took some time, but I convinced him to meet with our friend David to get something to eat.
I was just as worried about Kristine and Viktoria. They’d both been taking turns with Robin sitting with me, sleeping alongside me when I tried to nap. I was afraid that my nightmares had become their nightmares. I had no idea how long they were going to have to babysit me the way they were; I desperately wanted to stop feeling like a burden to my friends, but the thought of being alone still terrified me.
Just after we finished packing, the phone rang. It was a police detective, calling to tell me that we should pack up our things and leave. Somehow someone in the media had gotten word of where we lived.
Thanks for the warning, I thought ruefully.
“How did this get to the media?” I asked him. “It had to have come from the police.”
“I’m sorry. We have a very large department here, and it’s just not possible to know who might have said something. Reporters are around all the time.”
At least the man apologized to me. I couldn’t say what else I wanted or expected, but I was left with the sense that I wasn’t being treated fairly or properly.
Robin had returned by the time we’d finished packing. He made several scouting trips out to the parking lot to make sure that no reporters were around. When we were sure that the coast was clear, we hustled our things into Robin’s car. The women’s cross-country coach, Coach Casey, had also arrived with her car. We loaded both cars up, all of us barely talking, just moving as quickly as we could.
In just a few hours, Coach Wollman had arranged the new housing for us. We headed to a dormitory building on campus that was intended for married students with children. What an odd sight we must have been, three young women arriving with our bags in the middle of December. It was an unexpected spot and not easy to find, for the media or for rapists.
The police advised us to keep a low profile and keep to ourselves for a while in this dorm. That wasn’t hard for me to do, considering I was terrified of strangers and had no desire to have the world know about what had happened to me.
We weren’t able to bring all of our things in one car trip, so we went back the next day to retrieve the rest of our belongings. My first priority had been to get all of my textbooks and notes. I was still studying every day, finishing up a couple of papers, still fretting over my grades.
As we neared our block, I could feel my anxiety rising. My mind and my pulse raced. By the time we pulled into the parking lot, I was having a hard time just steadying my breathing.
Kristine opened the car door, and I let out a low cry. She immediately shut the door and turned to me.
“What is it?”
“I can’t.”
We’d purposely come late at night, figuring that the journalists wouldn’t be there.
Kristine peered through the car window.
“I don’t think anybody’s here.”
“It’s not—”
“It’s okay. Viktoria and I will go. Lauren and Kylie can help, too.”
We’d gotten a couple of our teammates to help us out. They were standing near the stairwell, silhouetted by a small fixture.
Somehow, the presence of the other two women helped me compose myself. I didn’t want to let on that I was frightened.
“No. I’ll go. Slowly. Would you mind going ahead of me?”
Kristine and Viktoria linked arms and walked ahead of me. I pulled the hood of my sweatshirt tightly around my face and walked with my head bowed. Then, as if a sudden thunderstorm had started dumping rain down on us, we all made a mad dash for the stairs. I stood at the door, running in place, trying to get the key into the lock. A few seconds later, we were in. Someone watching us would have thought that we were the criminals and not five friends trying to avoid being found by the media. We ran from room to room, putting things in boxes and bags. We ran as fast as we could, each of us with her arms loaded, or sometimes two of us carrying a box together, shuffling along as quickly as we could.
I sat in the packed interior of the car, unable to see anyone else due to all the things we’d loaded. At one point, we went over a bump and we heard something break.
“I hope it was a plate,” Kristine said. “I’m so tired of washing dishes.”
Silence lingered for a few seconds. “Whoever has that box, could you please just throw it out the window?”
Kristine’s fake desperation sounded so real that we all began to laugh. Once inside our new location, we all collapsed onto the floor.
“I’m not doing another thing today,” Viktoria said. “This is all just too cra
zy.”
I understood completely. I was exhausted but too anxious to really sleep. While Kristine and Viktoria retreated to the lone bedroom, I spent a few hours organizing the kitchen. None of the plates had broken, and I considered for a moment wrapping one in a towel and smacking it against the sink as a present for Kristine. Robin was in the main room, moving boxes and bags around, trying to make space for a mattress we could sleep on. I appreciated his efforts but knew that comfort wasn’t going to make much of a difference.
Between my nightmares and the unfamiliarity of the new surroundings, I barely got any sleep at all. Still, I knew that we had other business to attend to. As soon as the management office opened, I called to let them know that we had to move out of our old place. I spoke to an assistant there, and she seemed very confused. When she put our building’s manager on, I said that an emergency had come up and that we’d already moved out. I could hear the suspicion in his voice. I didn’t blame him—after all, we were college-aged, not from this country, and he’d likely seen and heard a lot of excuses from tenants like us over the years. He said that he needed to look at our lease to see about early termination.
Coach Wollman came to our rescue again. We let him know what had gone on, and he said that he would contact the manager on our behalf. Eventually, we got a call back. He’d arranged for us to get out of our lease with no financial penalty. “We left the place a mess, though,” Viktoria pointed out. “We’ll never get our security deposit back if we don’t clean it up.”
I sighed and shut my eyes. Robin traced small circles on my back with his fingertips, just like my mother did to soothe me. “It’ll be okay. We’ll work together and get it done.”
Dreading my return and knowing that we wouldn’t be able to do a quick in and out of there like we had the night before, all I could manage was a weak nod of my head and a strained smile. On top of everything else we were dealing with, the thought of having to pay rent on two different places weighed on our minds. None of us could afford that. With our trips home for the holiday break looming, we felt under even more pressure to get out of the old place and into the new one.
Back we went to the old apartment, skulking inside one more time. As we cleaned, it seemed so strange to me how as simple an act as cleaning a sink or mopping a floor could become surreal. I found myself staring at a bucket of water, the pine scent of the cleaner nearly bringing tears to my eyes, and wondering, Why in the world are we doing this? Shouldn’t we be taking a break from exam preparations by watching a movie? Why did getting out that bit of a pasta sauce stain seem like such an urgent and essential task? Why were none of us laughing? Why weren’t we listening to music and shouting questions over it about the parents or friends who were arriving soon and had prompted this spasm of cleanliness? Why was it that the echoing sounds of our efforts reminded me of some horror movie that I’d only half-watched while clinging to Robin’s biceps?
When we were just about finished, another question came to me. What had I done to deserve such loyal friends?
One more difficult task remained. We had to go from the apartment to the on-site leasing office to sign the papers releasing us from our obligation. I didn’t want to go to the office; I was afraid of who might be waiting back at the building that had obviously been identified as my home. I was terrified of the attackers showing up, terrified of being spotted by the media, terrified of feeling even more vulnerable. But as great as my fear was, I was even more determined not to let anyone dictate to me anymore where I went.
“I’ll be fine. I’ll get through this,” I told Robin, consciously echoing the words he’d been using with me. He looked unsure, but reluctantly agreed to go back to the new apartment while I went to sign the papers at the leasing office with my roommates.
The three of us walked toward the building that housed the office, talking about how we’d miss the place, except for the upstairs neighbors with the sound system on steroids.
“At least we got to experience what it would be like to live through a mild earthquake,” Kristine said.
Keeping my eyes focused straight ahead, I said, “That’s true, but—”
“Monika? Monika! My God, what’s happening?” Kristine was shouting at me from across the street. I was standing on the sidewalk. A moment ago, we’d been in the parking lot, under the shade of a large oak tree near the fenced-in garbage Dumpsters. My heart was thumping wildly and my fingers were tingling. Across the road I saw someone swing open the gate and toss a garbage bag into the metal container. A moment later the sound of its lid crashing against the side reached me.
I had no recollection of how I’d gotten there. I could see Kristine’s mouth moving, but it was like I was underwater and the sounds were muffled and indistinct. The thought of what had made me act that way frightened me. A few cars passed between my friends and me.
Then I saw another vehicle—a big black SUV parked right next to where Kristine and Viktoria had just been standing. It looked exactly like the rapists’ car; it even had the same tinted windows. I must have run across the street on pure instinct when I saw the car, without any conscious understanding of why I was doing it.
Fear had taken control so completely that it had made me do something I wasn’t even aware of doing. What else might it make me do? What if I had gotten hit by a car when I sprinted across the street like that? Would the fear have been so strong that I wouldn’t have even noticed the car coming? I was already afraid of so much, and now I was afraid of the fear.
—
THE NEXT AFTERNOON, I was back in Dr. Soutter’s office. This time, I didn’t try so hard to hide what was bothering me. I told her about what had happened at the leasing office.
“It’s quite common for trauma survivors to respond as you did, especially so soon after the event. Your body’s fight-or-flight defense mechanism had kicked in.”
I remembered telling Robin how I could outrun any potential attacker. Now I wondered just exactly how many forms attackers could take.
“But over time, that will end,” she promised. “You’ll learn that dangerous things don’t always happen when you see a big black car, and eventually, the fear will let go.”
Logically that made sense. But in the moment, to have responded like that, without any kind of awareness of the consequences, troubled me. I wanted that “eventually” to be now. She had said that the fear would let go, but when? And could I let go of it? Which of us was in control? I couldn’t bear the idea that the fear dictated to me.
Dr. Soutter said that she wanted to meet with me every day before the Winter Break. In a way, Dr. Soutter was like a professor; she didn’t explicitly tell me that I had to continue to see her, but because of her position, I felt that I had to. I’d never seen a therapist before, and I had thought that it would be more like going to see an academic advisor. I’d be asked a lot of questions, be provided with specific guidance and suggestions, and then have the opportunity to ask any questions. That wasn’t how it went at all. I’d come in and sit down; Dr. Soutter would settle into her chair, and after a brief introductory how-are-you-doing formality, she would wait for me to do the talking. It seemed like everything I said, she told me was normal. Then I wondered, If that’s true, then why do I need to be talking about these things?
I had been raised to be self-reliant, to figure out things for myself and to trust myself. As a result, I started to resent the therapy; I didn’t want to be the kind of person who needed therapy, much less daily therapy. I was used to coaches working with me on training plans—do this, this, and this on these days. That produced the results that I wanted in my running; when I followed those steps, I gradually got faster. I could see immediate results. With Dr. Soutter, that wasn’t the case. I wasn’t really seeing any results that I could tie directly to having spoken with her. I wanted to move beyond the attack, and therapy seemed like it was anchoring me back at that point.
None of this was Dr. Soutter’s fault. She was kind and compassionate, but I always
had my guard up. I wasn’t used to opening up to a stranger, and though this was a professional relationship, I still applied some of those restrictions on our interactions. In a way, those sessions were like my running. I’m not a sprinter. It takes me a while to loosen up on a run, and in those sessions, just when I’d gotten past the warm-up period and felt like “Okay, I’m ready now. I can talk more freely. I can let my emotions show,” the clock told us that we were done for the day. As much as we’d both try to apply the notion of “Okay, we’ll pick up from here tomorrow,” it doesn’t work that way. Just as you don’t start a run, stop at some point, and then return to that stopping point and resume running feeling the same way, with your muscles as warm and loose as they were, the same is true with therapy. I can see now that the sessions took place too soon after the incident. It also didn’t help that I woke up every morning puking from the anti-HIV medication I was taking. That was on top of the flu, insomnia, and still being achy and sore from the attack. I wasn’t in the best frame of mind or body when I saw Dr. Soutter. I was still too raw, too wounded—though I couldn’t have said that then—to really assess or process what was going on. It was like asking someone running in the middle of a raging storm to think about what she was going to wear to a cousin’s wedding in six months. My head was in a very different place. Put another way, Dr. Soutter wanted me to press the “pause” button, to freeze-frame the image, and I had my finger firmly down on fast-forward, wanting to get past the parts that I didn’t like and get to the parts that I did.
Again, I was torn and nothing seemed easy and everything was contradictory. Even though there were many days when I didn’t want to talk about it anymore, I knew this was something I needed to deal with. I wanted to deal with it right the first time so it didn’t wind up cropping up in my mind years later as an unresolved trauma. Maybe if I kept going to therapy, the nightmares would stop. Maybe I wouldn’t need someone to come into the bathroom with me every time I needed to go. Maybe I wouldn’t worry that every single man on the way to the gym was dangerous. Those were my goals. What specifically could I do to work out those issues the way I worked out my body?