Kill the Silence

by Monika Korra

  One lap.

  You have nothing to prove. Just run. That unsettling feeling of uncertainty was subsiding.

  Two laps.

  Remember why you do this. Remember that you love it. It’s time to shake that devil off. Without the pack of competitors around me, I began to settle into a rhythm, not worrying about who was around me but focusing on my breathing and my stride, settling into that good rhythm.

  Three laps.

  Let the pain give you energy. You’re a fighter. Fight for this race. It’s yours. I felt as if the parachute of tension that I’d been carrying around my shoulders had fallen off and was no longer dragging me down and restricting my movement. Free and easy. Free and easy.

  I didn’t even look at the board as I passed each lap. I tried to forget it was even there, and I started feeling good. Free. It was as if I were leaving the shadows behind me on the track. For once, as I had done before I had ever started competing, I ran for me.

  On the last lap, I finally looked up at the board: I had to run the rest in forty seconds if I wanted to beat my personal record. And all at once, I knew I could do it. This was going to be my comeback. In my mind, I heard my coach telling me to “Dig deep, dig deep.”

  I sprinted faster than I ever had before, passing multiple people in the last two hundred meters. I noticed, but that wasn’t why I was running that day. It wasn’t about beating other people. It was about running that devil off my back, digging deeper even when it got painful. In a normal race, I would lose some speed toward the end, but this time, I just got stronger and faster all the way through the finish line. I let out a yelp of joy.

  I beat my record by eight seconds. I don’t remember what place I came in and it doesn’t matter. My coach ran over to congratulate me, and I fell on the ground, sobbing. It felt like such a long road to get there. I took a long cool-down by myself, just letting the emotions bubble up in bursts. I was still me. I hadn’t lost my edge after all.

  Those three men had not stolen it from me.

  Using the same let-go-of-the-pressure-and-enjoy-the-experience approach, two weeks later, on February 11, at the Iowa State Classic, I got into that proverbial zone that all athletes hope to enter. I set another PR, improving my time by nineteen seconds in the five thousand meters. I was on a roll, and though I knew that the chances of running PR after PR weren’t good, I’d learned something really useful and enjoyed the deep feeling of satisfaction those races gave me. Little did I know that they were to be among the last races I would run for SMU.

  Shortly after competing in the Iowa State Classic, I started to feel a lingering tiredness that wouldn’t go away. When that was joined by a high fever, I went to the doctor and learned that I had developed mononucleosis. Heading into the spring 2012 outdoor season, knowing that these were going to be among my last meets running with my friends Silje and Kristine, I remembered how I’d felt looking at the watch we’d all received. I couldn’t actually slow down time, but I could take the time to really savor these last few months of college life and college athletics. We were there to learn and to run, and I was finally able to learn something about how running could best fit into the rest of my life. I wasn’t going to focus so much on a PR time as I was on a different kind of personal record—like a CD or an MP3 file—a way to preserve in my mind and my heart the memories I could make with people I had come to care about deeply and who felt the same way about me.

  I was incredibly sad about not being able to compete, but as time went on, I came to terms with my disappointment. I’d said all those things about not focusing on PRs and just running for the joy of it, but the truth was, I still fixated on my performance—just to a lesser degree than I had before. Being knocked out of competing by mono was my body’s way of telling me that I needed to slow down. I got sick because I was pushing myself too hard. With no track to focus my attention on, I turned to academics. I earned a 4.0 GPA (numbers still mattered) and at the end of the year received an award from the Athletics Department for most improved academic performance. I looked back on that span and felt really good about what I’d done—two PRs on the track and one in the classroom. Not bad for a young woman who was learning to let go of her competitive streak and focus on her happiness.

  When I stood next to Kristine at the conclusion of our graduation and tossed my cap into the air, I wasn’t thinking that I needed to toss mine higher than everyone else’s. I was so proud of what I’d accomplished. My parents had flown in, and it was wonderful for them to be there for something other than a legal trial. Mostly, I was pleased because it seemed to me that my efforts in the classroom had equaled the rewards.

  Kristine and I decided to extend our student visas and remain in Dallas the following year. We wanted to see what life in the U.S. could be like without what we referred to as the “bubble” of college life to protect us—ironic, I know, given what had happened to me. We also wanted to stay near to the men in our lives. Nick and I had grown closer during my imposed break from competing, and I needed to know if my future was here with him or back home in Norway. I was eager to find out, and I had plans already in place to make a difference in the world and in the lives of others.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Mediation

  I had known for a long time that in order to really heal from the rape, I had to do something to help other people. Before I could do that, I also sensed that there was more I needed to do to help myself so that I could be in a better position to help others. Fortunately for me, I didn’t have to come up with the whole plan on my own. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice instituted a program called the Victim Offender Mediation/Dialogue (VOM/D) that allowed a victim/survivor to request a face-to-face meeting with the person who had harmed them.

  Erin had told me about the program at a brief meeting we had just prior to Luis Zuniga’s sentencing hearing back in April of 2011. She told me that this was something to think about but not act on immediately. Some people felt better after being able to speak directly with the person or persons who had done them great harm. She didn’t use the word “closure,” and I was glad about that. Even back then, I knew that the concept of closure wasn’t realistic. The attack and its aftermath would never come to a close, but it could be managed; I could adapt and heal, but the act of doing so just demonstrated that this thing, the attack, was still an active presence. How much that presence exerted its influence on my actions and my beliefs was up to me. I could close off how and to what extent those men controlled me.

  By August of 2011, I still wasn’t willing to commit fully to the idea of sitting down and having a face-to-face interaction with any of my attackers, but I didn’t want to eliminate that possibility entirely. Something told me from the start that this was something that I should do, as soon as I felt ready for it. I felt, in a way, obligated to follow up on Luis to make sure that he had kept his promise. So, that month, after having interned at DARCC (Dallas Area Rape Crisis Center) and discussing the idea with everyone from my parents to friends to some of my colleagues at DARCC, after a year of contemplating the decision, I decided to sign up to be considered for eligibility.

  We both had to qualify for the program by first answering lots of questions about our values and beliefs, what we hoped to gain by participating in this exchange. He couldn’t be forced to participate, and I could, essentially, ask him anything that I wanted, but whether he answered at all, or how he answered, was up to him. Most everyone I talked to about the program said that I should just let things stand as they were. What did I have to gain from speaking to him? Why should I allow him the opportunity to speak with me? Why put myself through even more of an ordeal?

  I understood their points, but disagreed with the premise that it was of no value for me to go through with it. If I was going to do the kind of work I hoped to do through a foundation I was considering starting, I had to gain a better understanding of just what had happened that night as well as in Zuniga’s life prior to the crime and since his conviction.
In a way, it was like wanting to see an entire movie instead of just a few scenes. I wasn’t interested in just what happened, but why it happened, and whether or not Luis Zuniga had followed up on his words that he was going to become a changed man.

  In October of 2012, I finally heard from someone involved in the administration of the program. Luis and I had been accepted. My first meeting would be with a mediator, a trained professional who worked for the program and would be in touch. I thought that maybe I’d have to wait a long time, but the call came shortly thereafter.

  The mediator explained how the program worked. In addition to the broad guidelines I already knew about—he could be forced neither to participate nor to answer my questions—I learned that the first step would be for me to submit a series of questions I wanted to ask Luis. This was because the program was designed to be a benefit to victims primarily, and they didn’t want the in-person interviews to be too free-form.

  No surprises. I kept hearing this refrain again and again. Modest expectations. This was kind of like getting back on the track and taking a different approach from thinking about wins and PRs. I spent some time thinking of questions and consulted with members of my inner circle—the usual suspects, like Anette, Kristine, my mother, Kelly, Sidsel, and Nick, among them.

  I was also told that one of the goals of the program was to help victims better understand what the lives of prisoners were like.

  Most of my initial questions were about what Luis could recall of that night. I submitted my questions and then forgot about the program for a bit. I was still in Dallas and still thought that was where I wanted to be. It was really nice to have Nick there with me. Still, I was feeling a bit adrift. By October, Kristine had decided that she’d spent enough time in the U.S. outside the bubble and returned to Norway. I missed having her with me. Nick was deeply engaged in developing his career, and that entailed the usual long hours and distractedness that come with being driven in any area of your life. I understood, but being on the other side of that kind of intensity and focus had me a bit off balance. I wondered if maybe I should have done what Kristine had done and just left.

  But still. My parents were struggling to come to grips with the idea that I remained in the States. In a sense, they had bought into only one way of reading my story. Small-town Norwegian girl comes to the United States to live out her dream, experiences a nightmare, and claws her way back. Hadn’t I done enough in the States? Hadn’t my dream of running here served a purpose? Couldn’t I do what I was doing here while back home among family and longtime friends? Anette and Jonas were married. They were planning a family. Didn’t I want to be a part of that? What hold did Dallas and the U.S. still have on me?

  I didn’t want to hear those questions. I kept telling myself that this was a place where I felt I belonged. Nick made it clear that he had no intention of going to Norway to live. Success for him meant a big job here in the States. The equation was made simple. If I wanted Nick, and I did, then I had to want to stay in the U.S. In a way, this was where the difference between being stubborn and persistent played a role. I didn’t want to give up on the relationship with Nick, even though I knew that this wasn’t how I wanted things to be between me and the man I loved.

  I was so used to working hard at things that I told myself it was normal that you had to work hard at a relationship to make it great. Even if some of your core values were different, that didn’t matter. You had to be persistent to succeed, but you shouldn’t have to change fundamentally who you were and what you believed in. I was frightened by the idea of leaving Dallas, the place where I’d been damaged and healed, and one of the key people who helped me put that experience into perspective and make it into something beneficial.

  Leaving would have been the safe and easy way out, and I was tempted. But I was used to taking risks, and I had to take a chance on me.

  One day I came back from a late-afternoon run and was leafing through the mail when I saw that, among the assortment of bills and ad papers, was an envelope from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. I knew immediately that it contained Luis’s written responses to my questions.

  Instead of tearing it open, I decided to wait. I had dinner to make; Luis Zuniga wasn’t going anywhere, so he could wait. I scanned the news headlines on my smartphone while I ate. I thought of calling my mother, but our last few conversations hadn’t ended well. Not that we ever argued, but there was something about the underlying tension, like we both had something we should talk about but intentionally ignored.

  After doing the dishes and cleaning up in the kitchen, I took a shower. I knew that Nick was working late, so the evening was going to be mine. Settling into my pajamas and curling up on the couch, I slit open the envelope and started to read.

  It was an odd and unnerving experience to read Luis’s account of what happened that night. I’d always had my version in my mind, and though his didn’t differ in any significant recollection from my own, I was once again struck by how random it all was. That was true about not just how I became the one taken, but also how Luis had wound up in the SUV at all.

  I was pleased that his account of the events of that night coincided with mine. That assured me that my memory of that night was solid and that he was being honest with me.

  I wasn’t surprised to learn that drugs played a big role in the attack and in the lives of each of the men. Luis admitted that he had taken heroin that night and was a low-level drug dealer and consumer of narcotics. He believed that if it weren’t for being impaired, he would not have participated in the attack. The more he told me about that night and his life before and after, the clearer it became that Arturo Arevalo was a truly evil human being. In one of his responses to my written questions prior to the meeting, Luis revealed that he had moved from one prison to another because Arturo had threatened him. He didn’t feel safe being in the same prison with him.

  He told me a bit more about his prison life, some of which I already knew because I had taken a tour of the prison as part of the program. I was surprised by how difficult life was there. The prisoners woke at four in the morning, had twenty minutes in which to eat each of their three meals, and sometimes worked as many as twelve hours a day.

  During the prison tour, the officer guiding us produced a set of index cards. I was asked to choose at random from the pile of ten cards. The officer then read off a brief history of the man whose life and criminal record were briefly summarized there. Time after time, no matter which card I chose, those stories involved drugs. Worse, six of the ten revealed that the individuals had committed some kind of sexual misconduct against children.

  “And that,” the officer said, “is one part of the ugly truth of all this.”

  I’d always been vehemently opposed to so-called recreational drugs, and it saddened me to hear just how pervasive their use was. And the fact that so many of these men had committed sexual misconduct against children sickened me.

  I wondered what kinds of influences Luis was being exposed to while in prison. How do you make positive changes in your life when such horrible people surround you? That made me even more certain that I was doing the right thing by participating in the program. At least I could show him that the world wasn’t made up of just the worst kinds of people.

  Before I could do that and meet him face-to-face, I had to complete the rest of the VOM/D program. I met with my mediator a total of four times and completed homework assignments to help prepare me for the eventual meeting. At first they focused on me, helped me better understand who I was, my values, my feelings about the rape, as well as why I wanted to participate in the program and what I expected to get out of the meeting. The mediator evaluated my answers and discussed with me whether or not I was truly ready for the experience. I also worked on refining the other questions I would ask Luis Zuniga.

  Finally, the date arrived when I would meet with one of the three men who had kidnapped and raped me.

  I could feel my pulse throbbing in my
neck, and the familiar sensation of being submerged in water coated my ears and my mind. I swallowed and looked up at the man who sat across the table from me. Like me, he held in his hands a few sheets of paper. His were shaking; mine were still. Next to him sat an interpreter. Next to me sat one of the two mediators who were part of the program. A pair of female guards, one of whom had asked me to participate in a brief prayer outside the prison conference room, stood outside watching us through the spiderwebbed glass.

  At first I couldn’t figure out why Luis Zuniga’s appearance was different. I recognized him, even though eighteen months had passed since his sentencing hearing, but he had walked in with his shoulders hunched around his neck, his gaze not leaving the ground. Even when he sat across from me, he failed to make eye contact with me. That was it. He wore glasses now, and when he did look up briefly from the floor, the overhead light caught in the lenses, obscuring his eyes from my vision.

  After the mediator finished his introductions and made a few brief remarks thanking both of us, Luis began by reading a letter he had written to me. He spoke in Spanish, and his words were halting and uncertain at first even in his native language. I read along with him, reading a version in English that had been prepared for me.

  He began by thanking me for the opportunity to meet with him. I smiled when I got to the part when he read, “I can only imagine how difficult this will be for you, as you are the person who was hurt. You know what? I admire you a great deal because you are very courageous. You are very brave to go through with this program. I do not deny that I feel a little nervous, but I cannot pass up the opportunity you are giving me to apologize, to ask for your forgiveness personally.”

  He went on and answered a few of the questions I had asked him. I was sorry to hear that he had lost all contact with his son. Child Protective Services had denied him any kind of custody at all. That made him very sad. He hoped that God would fill my heart with light and love and also that someday he would be able to forgive himself for what he’d done.