My strongest memory of the trial—other than my actual testimony—is of almost unbearable suspense. Because I was a witness as well as a victim, I wasn’t allowed to sit in the courtroom and listen. The case lasted for weeks, and the wait for my call to testify was agonizing.
When I was finally called in to court, I waited again, gripped with nausea-inducing anxiety. Then I was told to go back home and come back the next day, because there wasn’t time for my testimony. I felt like I had some sense of what it must be like to receive a death-row reprieve, but more than relieved, I felt overwhelmed and desperate. I’d already eaten my last meal, and I wasn’t sure I could go through it again. I’d had to get myself to a very specific mental place where I felt capable of talking about the attack in front of a judge, jurors, and the attacker himself, that day. Now I had to step back from that awful place and convince myself that I could do the whole thing the next day. I didn’t know how I could physically endure it.
It’s surreal to remember that while I was barely controlling my fear of the trial, I was also doing my day job. Neither my staff nor any of my clients ever knew I’d been attacked, much less that I was about to testify in a trial. So while I was trying to hold down my own urge to throw up the contents of my stomach, I was also making calls to get one of my clients an emergency fitting at Kleinfeld because she’d lost another three pounds and was afraid her wedding dress wouldn’t fit. I had to smile and reassure a client who was afraid that only 300 guests would show up for her event, instead of the 325 she’d counted on. I was simultaneously booking Christmas parties, choosing hors d’oeuvres, and managing my clients’ freak-outs over their goodie bags.
Meanwhile, I was terrified that I wouldn’t recognize the attacker in the courtroom, and I was even more afraid that I would. The viciousness of his attack against me, which had grown dreamlike in the intervening few years, became, once again, very real. I remember sitting on a bench outside the courtroom, certain that I was going to vomit. Detective Lontini—a warm, serious-minded plainclothes officer—sat with me, speaking calm, reassuring words. Otherwise, I was alone.
Originally, my father was the only member of my family who planned to attend the trial when I testified. My mother had insisted that she couldn’t possibly attend, it was just too much for her to bear, and my father said he wouldn’t force her or my sisters to go. When I told my therapist, Ann, that just my dad was coming to the trial, she stared at me in disbelief and said, “How does that make you feel?” I told her that I was relieved my dad was coming—that having someone from my family there was better than no one.
Ann told me that it just wasn’t acceptable. Family shows up for the good stuff, and even more so for the really bad stuff. She said that it was time to ask for what I needed from my parents after those years of silence following my attack. She gave me the words, because I was so scared and uncomfortable that I didn’t even know how to say it. I had to write them down for our family meeting after my session. I said, “No one wants to avoid this more than me, but if I have to be there, then you all have to be there.” I said, “I need you all there, for ME.” My family listened, so on the day that I was to testify, both of my parents were in the courtroom. Jimmy was in the courtroom as well, along with Laura, Deanna, and my sisters. The members of my whole family, related or chosen, were all there in a row.
Sitting outside that courtroom, waiting to testify, this is what I said to myself: no matter what happened in there, no matter what I was asked, I would not cry. And if I did recognize him, I would not shed one single tear in front of him. I would go in there and put that bastard in prison for a long, long time.
I was twenty-five years old, but the enormous mental and physical pressure on me made me feel a hundred. Other women my age were making their youthful mistakes, getting drunk in bars, doing their walks of shame the next morning. Meanwhile I was starting a company and testifying in an attempted murder trial. My heart pounded, my mouth was dry, my pits were wet. The bailiff came out and told me it was time.
Peggy Finerty had told me during our only meeting before the trial started that when I walked in, I should just stay focused on her. But I couldn’t stop myself from looking at the attacker. He was right there, in the same room as me, with nothing but air between us. He was facing straight ahead and drawing or writing on a pad of paper. He didn’t turn to look at me, but I recall so vividly seeing the back of his head and his shoulders—the same view I’d had when he’d straddled me and tried to stab between my legs—and a feeling of sureness jolted my body like electricity. It was him. I knew with one hundred percent certainty that he was the man who had tried to kill me.
When I got up on the stand, he was sitting at the table to my left. So I turned my entire body toward the jury, and raised one hand to the left side of my face in an attempt to block him from even my peripheral vision.
Finerty said, “Is the man who attacked you in this room?” I said that he was. She said, “Can you point him out?” I turned and pointed to him, and that was the one and only time that I looked him in the face. He looked exactly the same, maybe a little bit bigger.
Finerty then began asking questions about exactly what had happened on that day. At one point I noticed the bailiff handing something to the jurors, and the jurors passing it around. I remember the men shaking their heads, and a few of the women crying. I wasn’t sure what was going on, and I felt confused, but I tried to stay focused on my answers to her questions. My mantra was, “Stay calm and breathe.”
Finerty placed a stack of photos in front of me. She said, “Miss Gilbert, this is going to be very hard for you, but I need you to look at these pictures.” I was the subject of all of the pictures. They were the Polaroids my mother had taken of me shortly after the attack. Then she said, “I hate to do this, but could you please identify these pictures?”
I felt myself getting emotional. Seeing those forgotten photos stunned me for a few minutes, and I remember the judge asking me if I needed a break. I said no. I told myself that if I could just keep it together and get my testimony over with, then I could get out of there and collapse where no one could see me. I identified myself in the pictures—although to this day I’ve blocked out all memory of what I looked like in them—and Finerty ended her questioning.
Then the defense lawyer stood up, and I remember looking at him and just hating him. The first thing he asked was, “Is it true that you didn’t identify my client in the police lineup, and that you identified a different man?” I thought, Here we go. Of course he was going to ask me about this—it’s what I had dreaded all these years. He gave me no chance to explain; all I could answer was that yes, it was true. He asked me more questions: How did you get a good look at the attacker? How did you know it was him if you were running? How did you know it was him if you were so emotional? How do you know it’s my client after three long years?
I forced myself not to cry. I was not going to give his client the satisfaction of seeing that he’d broken me. I went to the calm place where I go when things get really awful. I couldn’t even look at Jimmy or my parents for comfort, because they were sitting on the same side of the courtroom as the attacker.
When Finerty got up for her redirect, she asked me just one question: “Why did you identify the wrong man in the lineup?” I looked at her and then at the jury, and I said that I knew I’d picked out the wrong man. I told them how terrified I’d been, separated from the lineup by just a one-way mirror. But now, I had not a doubt in my own heart that the man sitting at the defense table was the one who’d tried to kill me. And backing up my certainty was that the composite drawing created from my description of his features was as accurate as a photograph.
After I testified, I walked out of the doors and fell apart. My vision tunneled, and I nearly fainted. Jimmy had slipped out of the courtroom and was holding me up. Then the bailiff came out and told me that they had another question for me and they needed me back in th
e courtroom.
All the calm that I’d saved up to get me through testifying had been spent. I had absolutely nothing left. My entire body was shaking—I felt like I’d just been in a car accident. My knees wouldn’t hold me. I told him that there was no way that I could physically walk across that courtroom and get back on the witness stand. I couldn’t be in the same room with the attacker again; I begged him not to force me. He went back in to have a sidebar conference with the judge and attorneys.
The courtroom was still full, and the attacker still sat at the defense table. They agreed to let me stand at the very back of the court, directly opposite the judge, and speak across the entire room instead of having to walk up the aisle. I would be shielded by the audience of people from having to see the attacker again. So I compelled myself back in there, and the judge asked me a follow-up question. He said, ”Miss Gilbert, have you heard any testimonies or has anyone spoken to you about these proceedings? Remember, you are still under oath.” I looked straight at him and calmly, honestly answered, “No, Your Honor, I have not.” When I left the courtroom, Detective Lontini hugged me and Peggy Finerty shook my hand.
During the weeks of testimony and the wait for the jury to reach their verdict, I desperately wanted to know what was happening, and yet my body rebelled against hearing it. My father knew far more than I did from attending the trial for days after my testimony, so I would ask him questions. But then I couldn’t bear to listen—my ears would start to ring, and my heartbeat would rev.
My father’s ongoing presence at the trial marked a major turning point for our relationship. Growing up, I had always been close to my father—he was the more physically affectionate of my parents, quick with praise and a show of love. He’d also been my role model for how to live life to the fullest, and to never take no for an answer. He was the one I confided in, the one I thought of as my guide in work and life. My idol. But for years after the attack, I took a step back from him. On some irrational level, I think I blamed him for not being there to protect me. Even more so, I felt betrayed by his lack of emotion afterward. I think I expected my mother’s numb response—I knew that’s how she dealt with extreme emotional stress. But my father had never been withholding before. After the attack I saw in him no acknowledgment of sadness or fear—I saw only a desire to move on and to put the past behind us. This sent me the message that I wasn’t allowed to be vulnerable with him—my daddy. In the years before the trial, I couldn’t even hug him. He would put his arms around me, but I just couldn’t embrace him. I would stand there like a board, bursting with grief and wanting to hug him back, but I could not wrap myself around someone who was closing me out. As a result, I was all alone with my shame and sadness—I’d not only lost my sense of self, but I’d lost my father.
During the trial, though, we reconnected. He’d call me in tears after a particularly difficult testimony. Now that he was vicariously living through what I had undergone three years before, it struck him how much he didn’t know. When he finally showed me his own emotions, I broke down, heaving like my eight-year-old self used to do when he and my mom were leaving for a long trip. I had years of yearning built up in that cry, and I was finally able to tell him what his silence had done to me. He confessed that after the attack, when I was battered and bandaged, he’d only allowed himself to cry in the shower, because he was afraid that if he showed me how upset he was, it would be more painful for me. While I thought he was shutting down, he’d actually been trying to protect me. Just as nothing had ever prepared me for how to handle what had happened to me, he was fumbling his own way through an unfamiliar maze, not always making the right decisions about which way to turn, but doing his best. Now it all intellectually made sense—but I had felt emotionally abandoned for so long that it would take a long time for all the self-protective layers to melt away. Still, it was nice to be able to hug my father again.
After three years of fear and terror—three years in which I didn’t know if the attack would ever be proved, and if I’d ever feel truly safe again—I received a call that the verdict had come back from the jurors.
My attacker was found guilty of attempted murder.
What I had never known, and was not allowed to hear during the first part of the trial, was that in the lineup, years before, Andrea and the men working on their motorcycles had all chosen number four.
I wasn’t in the courtroom for the verdict, but it was important to me to be present when they sentenced my attacker. I wanted to see his punishment handed down and to know exactly how long he’d be put away. Would it be for five years, or nine years like his last sentence, with eligibility for parole? During the sentencing, I sat on the same side as him, but several rows behind, so that all I could see of him was the back of his head. I was so afraid of him still, even surrounded by people and court officers, that I actually wedged myself behind Jimmy on the bench.
The judge asked the attacker if he had anything to say before he was sentenced, and he said yes. Then he stood, and said that he had been falsely convicted, and that it was a case of mistaken identity.
It was like a gut punch on two levels. First—his voice. I had never heard him speak before. Throughout the attack, he hadn’t said one word—not a curse or a grunt, a gasp or a sigh. He’d been as silent and singularly focused as a shark. It was sickening just remembering the utter soundlessness of his attack. Second—his words. All this time, I’d imagined him as psychotic and out of control, but there he stood calmly lying in front of the judge and everyone else.
I was dumbfounded. This man who I’d thought must be insane wasn’t crazy at all. For a moment I was illogically terrified that the judge would believe him and that he’d somehow vacate the verdict. The attacker sat down, and we waited for the sentence.
The judge sentenced him to twenty-seven years without parole for attempted murder.
I don’t recall a monumental sense of relief at the end of the trial, although that had to be one of the emotions that I was feeling. Instead it was as if the trial had roiled up so much inside of me—anger, anxiety, fear, abandonment—that I thought I’d explode from the pressure. After those initial waves of emotion subsided, I started to actually register the sense of closure elicited by the guilty verdict. The past was done, and I’d never have to go back there again. It was finally time to close this book, and write a new story.
After the sentencing, I flew back to the Bahamas—all by myself this time. I wanted to see with my own eyes that tiny island that my father had talked about. It turned out that there were several parcels of land for sale on the island, and so one day I hopped in a puddle jumper with a broker, and we flew over to see it. It was just as I’d imagined it—no houses, no running water, no infrastructure of any kind. It was peace and solitude, surrounded by turquoise water. At that point in my life I was a single girl sharing a rental with two other single girls. I didn’t even own a car. But I’d been saving every penny I’d made for years, and now I knew why. On that trip to the Bahamas I spent every dollar of my savings on two parcels of land on a tiny island that didn’t even have a dock. I never told anyone but my family, because I knew that most people couldn’t possibly understand the sense in it. But it made sense to me. In my darkest moments—of which I already knew there would be many—I’d always have a piece of sunshine and warmth that was all mine. Even when I couldn’t be there physically, I would keep its image firmly planted in my mind—pristine and beautiful.
PART III
Figure Eight
You must be the change you want to see in the world.
—GANDHI
Chapter Eight
Pins and Needles
Not long after my attack, my good friend Dianne gave me an article she’d pulled out of the New York Times Magazine. In it, a woman who’d been raped years before talked about the anniversary of her rape and how she marked it each year. I had always thought of anniversaries as happy occasions, but this was
a time of mourning for this author, just as May 30 would forever become a day of mourning for me. She gave herself that time to sit with her pain, and then she put the mourning period behind her for another year and went back to the wonderful new life that she had carved out for herself. I aspired to that, and for years after I carried that creased and dog-eared article around with me, tucked into my wallet.
After the trial, I realized I couldn’t keep spinning like a top, never risking a pause or a moment to look at myself and what had happened to me, afraid that if I stopped for one second I’d topple over. I knew in my heart it was unsustainable. This horrible mess inside me wasn’t going to miraculously fix itself, and no matter how deeply I buried it, I couldn’t pretend it away.
For the first time in three years, I was thinking about the future. I couldn’t imagine what it looked like, but I knew I wanted it to be closer to what I had always wanted. I didn’t want to just survive—I wanted to live again. Before I could reach that point, though, I had to work through—and relive—so much pain. I’d been digging a trench in the same circular pattern—running, running, running away from my past. I’d taken things as far as I could on my own, but this time I didn’t have to go it alone. I called Ann and went back into therapy, not for the trial this time, but for me. The decision to admit that I needed help and to ask for it changed my life. Asking for help was something I had never been familiar with, so getting it made me feel like I was worthy of a future. And with that, I stepped off the track I’d been running on, and instead of making yet another left turn down the same old lonely path, this time I made a right. That right turn took me on a new path, and gave me hope that if I could do it once, maybe I could do it again. Perhaps I could view my life as an infinite number of figure eights—an endless pattern of opportunities, and new turns to take.
I Never Promised You a Goodie Bag Page 8