State of Grace

by Sandra Moran

  “Rebecca?” The voice was real. And outside my head. I spun around and brandished the phone receiver like a weapon.

  “Whoa, sorry.” He held his hands out in front of him. “Didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted to check and see—” He caught sight of my face. “Geez, you’re white as a ghost. What happened? Are you okay? What’s going on?”

  “It’s Adelle,” I said tonelessly and hung up the receiver. “She was walking through campus on her way here and was attacked. I don’t know any more except that they took her to the emergency room and she asked them to call. We need to go down there.”

  Roger looked shocked. He reached into his pocket for his keys. “Of course. I’ll drive.”

  As we drove to the hospital, we talked about what could have happened to Adelle. Eventually, though, we fell silent, neither of us knowing what to say. Once at the hospital, we identified ourselves at the check-in desk, and were then directed to a small, cramped waiting room. We were told that we would be allowed to see her as soon as the doctors had finished their initial examination. More than an hour passed before we were summoned.

  “Rebecca Holloway?”

  I looked up to see a roundish woman in her mid-forties standing in the doorway. She wore faded pink scrubs and held a blue file folder in one hand and a pen in the other.

  “Rebecca Holloway,” she said again, this time louder.

  I raised my hand and stood. “I’m Rebecca.” Roger stood as well and then, as if on cue, we both began to walk toward the woman. Her eyes skipped from me to Roger and then back to me.

  “I’m Sara, the admitting nurse, and I have been asked to take you back to Adelle Jackson.” She looked from me to Roger and smiled kindly. “Given the circumstances, I think maybe you’ll need to wait here.”

  Roger raised his eyebrows.

  “She has asked only for Rebecca.” Sara said. “I think it’s best to let them talk and then determine if she wants you to come back.” She turned back to me. “If you’ll follow me.”

  I looked at Roger, who smiled and gently squeezed my arm. “Come back and let me know what’s going on as soon as you can. And give her a hug for me.”

  I nodded and followed Sara down the hallway toward the treatment rooms. I was unprepared for the sight that greeted me. Adelle sat on the bed farthest from the door. Her usual bravado had been replaced with a silent, withdrawn stoicism. Her face was swollen and misshapen; one eye was swollen shut, her lower lip was split.

  “Oh my god, Adelle,” I said as I rushed into the room. “Are you okay? What happened?”

  She shook her head without answering. I tried to hug her, but she pushed me away.

  “Not now,” she said shortly. “I don’t want to be touched.”

  I stepped back, unused to being the one offering physical contact and being rejected. We sat in silence for several seconds before she began to speak, her words thick and bruised. “He came out of nowhere. He came up from behind and dragged me into the bushes. He had a knife.”

  I felt my throat drop into my stomach. My heart fluttered in my chest and I felt my body flush. A man. A knife. A rape?

  “Adelle, what did he do to you?” My voice was tight and pitched much lower than usual.

  “He hit me. Twice. And he told me that if I made a sound, he would kill me.”

  I stood, dumbfounded, not sure what to do or say. I felt sick.

  “Did he . . .?” I hesitated to ask the question, both because I didn’t want to hurt her more by making her answer and also because I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. She nodded, her eyes closed.

  I again reached out to touch her. She recoiled and I drew my hand back to my side.

  “Were you able to describe him to the police?” I asked. “I mean, did you see his face?”

  “He was white, muscular, dark hair,” she said. “That’s all I saw. It was dark and after he hit me the first couple of times, I just . . . kept my eyes closed.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “I’m so sorry, Adelle,” I whispered. “We’ll catch him. I promise you we’ll find the guy who did this.”

  Adelle winced as she shifted on the hospital gurney.

  “They want to do a rape kit,” she said numbly. “I don’t know if I can stand having them down there right now. I just want to take a hot shower and make this all go away.”

  I stood helplessly as she began to sob.

  “Adelle,” I said softly, “Tell me what you need. Tell me what to do.”

  “Don’t leave me.” Her voice became panicked. “I can’t be alone.”

  I felt her fear, her vulnerability.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise. And when we’re done here, we’ll go home. I’ll make sure no one bothers you.”

  She sniffed and used the wadded mass of tissues clutched in her hand to daub the tears. She winced as she touched the tender flesh of her swollen eye. Bruises were already beginning to appear.

  “Adelle, Roger’s here, too. He’s out in the waiting room. Do you want to see him or should I tell him to go home?”

  She stared into space, not answering.

  “Adelle,” I said gently. “I need to tell him if he should stay or go.”

  “I can’t be around him now,” she said dully. “I don’t want anyone to see me like this.”

  “Okay.” I turned toward the door. Let me just go tell him not to wait, all right? I’ll be right back.”

  She nodded and then reached out to grab my arm. “Don’t tell him what happened. Just tell him I got beat up. Don’t tell him about the other part.”

  I gently touched the hand that still gripped my arm. She flinched at the contact and pulled it away.

  “I promise,” I said softly. “I won’t tell anyone. I’ll be right back, okay?”

  She didn’t respond, so I turned and walked back down to the waiting room. Roger stood up as I stepped into the room. “How is she?” he asked. “What happened?”

  “She was walking through campus and some guy grabbed her from behind, dragged her into the bushes behind the arts building, and beat her up.”

  His eyes grew wide. “Oh my god. Is she okay?”

  “Bruised,” I said. “And scared. She’s going to be here for a while, I think. They have to fix her up and then the police are going to have to take a report, so maybe you should go home.”

  Roger frowned and shook his head. “I couldn’t do that. Besides, how will you get home?”

  I considered telling him the truth. Perhaps if he understood what had really happened, he would understand why Adelle didn’t want a man—even a gay man—around her. “We can either call a cab or have the police take us back to the house. She’s really emotional right now.”

  He searched my face and seemed, finally, to understand the situation.

  “Oh,” he said softly. “I’ll be home the rest of the night if you guys need a ride or . . . anything. Okay?”

  “Yes,” I said, and then after a pause, “Thank you.”

  The wait for the doctors, the nurses, and the police to do what they needed seemed to take forever. The same questions were asked, the same information was written down, and after a while the faces began to blur. Adelle endured it all. She answered the questions in a dull monotone, all evidence of her usual spirit, gone. Finally, the doctors had bandaged her external wounds, the police had taken information for the initial report, and the evidence for the rape kit had been collected. Now, we sat with the female detective who would be handling the case.

  “I’m Judy Sanchez,” she said. “I’m a detective and I’ll be handling the investigation. How are you doing? Hanging in there?”

  Adelle nodded numbly. Detective Sanchez’s expression was compassionate and she waited several seconds before flipping open her notepad and uncapping her pen. In bold, blue ink, she jotted down the date and time.

  “I know you’ve been asked all sorts of questions and you’ve given a statement,” she said. “But I need you to go thr
ough it one more time. I know you’re tired and it probably feels like you’re having to relive it over and over, but the sooner we can get moving on this, the better chance we have of finding the guy who did this.” Detective Sanchez looked over at me and smiled kindly. “Would you mind giving us a few minutes?”

  “Sure,” I said and stood to leave.

  “Can she stay?” Adelle asked quickly. “I don’t want her to go.”

  I looked at the detective, who nodded. “Of course. So, if you could just tell me what happened. No detail is too small.”

  “It was about seven o’clock,” Adelle said after a long pause. She gestured at me sitting in the corner. “I was going home for dinner and I was running late. I had been at my boyfriend’s dorm and one thing had led to another. So, I was rushing. I took a shortcut through the sculpture garden and was coming up the back side of the library when someone grabbed me from behind. There are all those bushes and trees back there and he . . .” She shook her head.

  Detective Sanchez leaned forward, nodding encouragingly, and waited for her to continue.

  “I shouldn’t have taken the shortcut,” Adelle said finally. “I just figured it was so close to the library and there were people around the front of the building. I just thought that it would be okay. I figured it was no big deal.”

  Her words again trailed off.

  “He came out of nowhere,” she said softly, almost to herself. “He came up from behind and he grabbed me in a sort of chokehold. He had a knife. His arms were like steel. They were so strong and I couldn’t get away. I wanted to scream, but he put his other hand over my mouth. And he whispered in my ear. He told me if I fought him, if I screamed, he would kill me. He said he would slash my throat and then rape me while I bled out. He used those words, ‘bled out.’” She looked at Detective Sanchez plaintively. “I didn’t have a choice. It wasn’t my fault.”

  Detective Sanchez met her gaze and smiled kindly. “No, Adelle, it wasn’t your fault. This was not, I repeat, not, your fault.” She paused. “I know this is hard. Can you tell me what happened next?”

  Adelle closed her eyes and nodded her head slowly. The muscles in her jaw jumped. “He threw me down on the ground.”

  “Face up or face down?”

  “Down at first, and then he flipped me over.”

  “And then he got on top of me and he pushed the knife against my throat and told me to be quiet. And then he hit me. He punched me in the mouth. And then he brought his fist back and hit me in the side of the head.” She swallowed. “He kept telling me not to make a sound, or he’d kill me. Then he cut my tights with his knife and unzipped his pants.”

  Detective Sanchez pointed to the evidence bags on the counter. “Are those your clothes? Were those what you were wearing?” She consulted a sheet of paper with writing on it. “It says here you were wearing a long, denim skirt, tights, a T-shirt, and a heavy, multicolored sweater. Is that right?”

  Adelle looked at the clear plastic bags that contained the clothes she had been wearing. She looked like she wanted to throw up. “Yes.”

  Images of Grace’s body—either of what I imagined happened to her or that she had shared with me—popped into my head. I groaned softly and shifted uncomfortably in my seat.

  “I know this is hard, Adelle,” Detective Sanchez said. “Did you see his face?” She looked again at the paper in her hand. “It says here that he was a white male, early twenties, tall, muscular with dark hair and a scratchy voice. Is that right?”

  Adelle closed her good eye and jerked her head in a quick nod. “He was wearing dark clothes. I couldn’t see much of his face. It was so dark. I could hear people talking nearby, you know? They were so close. I wanted to yell out, but he would have killed me. I know he would have.”

  “You did what you had to do to survive.” The detective’s voice hardened. “You’re alive. That’s what’s important.”

  Adelle nodded tightly, but didn’t look up from her lap.

  Detective Sanchez reviewed her notes and then returned her attention to Adelle, who was now staring at the wall opposite her. “What happened after the rape?” Detective Sanchez waited for several seconds before clearing her throat. “Adelle?”

  “He lay on top of me for a little while,” she said numbly. “I kept thinking any minute someone would walk by. . . or hear him panting. But they didn’t. Then he wiped himself off with the bottom of my skirt, zipped up his pants, and told me that because I was such a good girl, he would let me live. After he left, I managed to crawl over to the front of the library and some girls who were smoking took me inside and they called the police.”

  Detective Sanchez scribbled in her notebook.

  “What do I do?” Adelle asked suddenly, her voice cracking with fear. It was the first emotion she had expressed since the interview had begun. “What if he knows who I am? What if he figures out where I live?”

  Sanchez put down her pen, stood, and moved to where Adelle sat. “We’re going to do everything we can to catch him. And until then, there are things you can do to protect yourself.” She looked over at me. “First, you two can talk to your landlord about changing the locks and putting additional locks on your windows.” She returned her attention to Adelle.

  “You might want to start carrying mace with you. Do you have a dog?”

  Adelle shook her head.

  “That might be something to think about. Rapists are often opportunists. Dogs are deterrents. We also offer self-defense courses. Maybe you and your friend could take one of those. You were attacked, Adelle, but you don’t have to be a victim. You can be a survivor.” She paused and reached out as if to touch Adelle, but then didn’t. “There is no right or wrong reaction to something like this, but it’s important to get help. I have a rape counselor outside who is going to talk to you, give you some information, and a list of numbers to call if you need to. You’re not in this alone. There are people here to help you through this.” She glanced at me. “You have friends who will help you and I promise you, we will do everything we can to catch this guy.”

  “He needs to be punished.”

  The voice was low with barely contained anger. I jerked my head toward Adelle. She was again staring blankly at the wall as the detective continued to talk. She hadn’t spoken a word.

  “He needs to be punished,” the voice repeated.

  I swallowed convulsively, my heart racing. I knew the voice. I knew it better than my own. It was Grace.

  “We’ll catch this guy.” Detective Sanchez promised again. She looked from Adelle to me and it was as if she, too, had heard Grace. “We’ll find him and he will be punished.”

  Chapter 15

  It was late by the time Adelle and I arrived home. The next day, we called the landlord about installing additional locks on the doors and windows. A middle-aged man with two girls of his own, he was sympathetic to what Adelle had experienced, and did it immediately. Still, neither of us felt safe and we struggled with what had happened in different ways.

  I hadn’t shared the details of my childhood experience with Adelle. Roger was still the only person outside of Edenbridge that I’d told and I continued to regret my drunken confession. I considered telling her, but something held me back. And, to be honest, I was dealing with issues of my own. What had happened to Adelle that night on campus brought back all the anxiety, fear, and paranoia I had experienced after Grace’s murder. It also brought back Grace. I felt her more often now in the back of my head, watching and listening. Whenever the conversation turned to progress on Adelle’s case, I could sense a sharpening of her interest.

  Her presence made me feel fragile and vulnerable. The insomnia returned. And on those nights in which I was actually able to sleep, my dreams were troubled and violent. The days were no better. When I forced myself to leave the apartment to go to classes, every shadow, every bush harbored murderers and rapists. Locked inside the safety of my home was the only place where I was able to relax, and even that was a broad inter
pretation of the word because I had also begun to fear the dangers inside my home.

  Ever since Grace’s murder, all I could think about was germs. I washed my hands several times each day and was careful about touching anything that could be contaminated. But the night of Adelle’s rape, what had been a concern with germs erupted into a full-time job. We had come straight home from the hospital and Adelle had showered while I fixed drinks. As I stood in the kitchen listening to the shower running, I began to imagine what was being washed from her body. I imagined the cloudy white residue of her rapist’s semen running down her legs, onto her feet, and swirling down the drain. The thought made me feel physically ill and a part of me wanted to run into the bathroom and ask her to stop—or, at least, to disinfect the tub when she was finished. But, even as I thought that, my face flushed with shame for thinking such a thing when my friend had just had her life turned upside down. I forced myself to push the images aside. But as the night progressed, I found myself obsessing about what was in my shower—to the point that I had trouble concentrating on our stilted conversation. I was barely able to wait until Adelle was in bed before I pulled on kitchen gloves and began to scrub the tub with Comet.

  I hoped that over time, these fears would go away. But if anything, they became more extreme. I began to worry about what diseases or germs were being brought into the apartment by Adelle, by visitors, and by me. The thought of eating food that had been prepared by someone else made me feel so ill that I only ate food I fixed myself. No more lunches from the cafeteria or sandwiches at The Coffee House. I was sure that hair or germs were in everything I ate.

  Roger was the first to notice—or, at least, the first to say anything. He came over after I had missed several classes. I responded to his knock by securing the chain on the door and then opening it just enough to see who was outside.