One Night

I remember how the cold December night air caressed my cheek. I had
gone to bed early that night, achy and running a temperature. I lay in
bed waiting for the relief that sleep brings when you are sick. My room
was hot and close and all I wanted was a cool drink of water and some
fresh air. But my arms and legs felt as if they were filled with lead
and it looked about a mile to the door from my bed so I laid back and
finally fell into a hot, heavy sleep. Later, I did feel a cool, light
breeze brush across my face. Waking for an instant I listened. Silence.
It was quiet. Figuring that my mom had come in and cracked the window
in my bedroom to give me a little air, I slid back into the fevered
dreams of a sick child on a winter night. I was 10 years old. My mom
had always teased me, telling me that I could 'sleep like the dead'.
How many times have I thought back on that night and wondered if
that-that dense blanket of tangled dreams that I disappeared into-was a
blessing or a curse. We learned later that he had watched us. Stalked
us. That was a term that didn't even exist back in 1982. The police
used words like 'staked out' and 'serial rapist' to explain it to us.
This man had watched us for days. He sat outside our house and watched
our movements, our schedules, while we naively followed our routines.
Lived our lives. He was that close to us, sitting at our curb, and we
never noticed. It is terrifying to realize that someone is planning to
harm you, devising a strategy and methodically working out all of the
kinks until it is smooth and flawless. We were blissfully unaware. We
lived in a duplex, in the downstairs flat and my mom rented out the
upstairs. For several years the upstairs flat had been rented by Kathy
Langer, another single mom who had a young son named Eric. My mom and
Kathy had quickly become friends and Eric and I sometimes played
together even though he was younger than me. I only had one friend at
school so I often ended up playing with the younger kids in the
neighborhood. Kathy said later that she never noticed anything or
anyone suspicious either. We thought that we were security conscious.
We locked our doors, even in the daytime. I had my own key and I locked
the door after myself when I went to school in the morning and when I
came home after school. Later when the police came through and had
finished their exhaustive inspection of our home, they made a long list
of all the ways that we had failed security-wise; bare windows without
shades that exposed us to anyone on the street, no motion detector
lights, no alarm system, not enough deadbolts, no bars or heavy locks
on the windows, no exterior protection of telephone lines, no guard
dog. If we had taken these precautions this might never have happened,
they told us. My mom refused to hear that. We are not the criminals,
she told them. Seeing the flash in her bright blue eyes, they backed
down. Well, they conceded, you're right. There really was no predicting
this. This was a random act. A rare and random act. And, they went on,
you were right not to resist. That is exactly what we tell women to do
in that kind of situation. I know that! My mom snapped, her anger
blazing over, I didn't have a choice! That summer motion detector
flood-lights were installed in our backyard, long metal tubes snaked up
our phone lines, multiple deadbolts were put on all our doors and
special locks were inserted into our windows to prevent them from being
opened more than a couple inches. To me, our house became a prison. It
felt like we were going to be made to suffer forever because of what he
did. Summers may be brief in Wisconsin but they are unbearably humid
and hot and it is impossible to live in a house where you can't even
open the windows. 2 inches doesn't count. I tried pressing my face into
that tiny space in my window to suck in some fresh air but I just
inhaled dust from the inside of the window sill. We also got a dog that
summer to protect us. Our guard dog turned out to be a neurotic, poorly
trained mess who growled if you came too close to her food and was
prone to peeing everywhere and on anyone when she got excited. I named
her Princess. I remember my mom shaking me awake in the middle of the
night. I sat up startled, disoriented. Bright light poured in from the
hallway, blinding me. My room was freezing--the window must have been
open. My mom stood in front of me in her long flannel nightgown, her
red hair in disarray, trembling. 'What's wrong?' I asked. My mom was an
alcoholic and I was used to being awakened in the middle of the night
with some drunken drama, an angry retelling of an argument she'd had
with someone or a tearful plea for me to forgive her and tell her that
I knew that she loved me. But this was different; something about the
way that she looked at me scared me. And she was sober. 'Get up', she
said, 'We have to go upstairs. I've been raped.' 'What?' 'Come on. I
need you to get up.' she repeated. I unhesitantly got up. As I pulled
our door shut behind us I impulsively grabbed her hand and it was so
cold that I wondered for a moment if she had been outside. We walked up
our back stairs to Kathy's door and waited in silence as my mom
knocked. She had to knock for awhile because it was the middle of the
night and they were asleep. Eventually Kathy came to the door, wearing
old worn flannel shirt on her tiny frame. I had rarely seen her wear
but those soft, checked flannel shirts. 'I need to come in', my mom
said. 'I've been raped.' 'What??' Kathy looked stunned. She looked from
me to my mom, shocked. I just stared at her. My mom's voice was louder
now, 'I've been raped!' she said, almost hysterical. Her shaking
worsened. She couldn't hold my hand anymore. Kathy immediately let us
in. They told me to go into the bedroom with Eric. He was asleep,
snoring softly, but I couldn't. Rape. The word felt foreign on my
tongue. Trying to place it, I failed. Think! I commanded. You have to
know! It is something really, really bad. But I had no idea what it
meant. I could hear Gary, Kathy's boyfriend, getting dressed to go to
the police station or to a pay phone to call the police. He returned a
short time later. I couldn't hear so I stood against the door and
listened to the muffled voices. I wanted to rush into the next room and
comfort my mom and protect her from whatever it was that had hurt her
but I was scared. She looked ok on the outside but I knew that some man
had somehow gotten into our house and done something really awful to
her. I heard her say something about a gun and I heard Kathy ask her
why she didn't scream or fight back and my mom told her, 'I didn't want
him to hurt Lisa. That's how he got in. He came in through Lisa's
bedroom window.' Horrified, Kathy asked, 'He didn't hurt her did he?!'
'No.', my mom answered. 'I just did what he said.' Soon I heard the
thumping footsteps of the police officers and the muffled vibrations of
unfamiliar voices. I let myself drift off to sleep, reassured that my
mom would be taken care of. I know that that December night is when I
left the remnants of my childhood behind. When you are a child you want
things to make sense. You look for reason in the good and in the bad.
There was no reason and no sense in this crime and I struggled to
reconcile that with what I had been taught about people and society.
After my mothers' rape I never looked at anything the same again.
Everyone else went on as if nothing had happened-as if the world was
ok-- but my world had stopped. I never felt completely secure or
totally safe again. I lived with the knowledge that some people just
want to hurt other people they don't even know for absolutely no
reason. Try to fall asleep at night with that on your mind. After that
night I memorized the story of my mothers' rape. There are some details
and points that I have forgotten or may have never known. What I know
is this: In the midnight hours of December 1982, a young black man
broke into our home. Before he entered our home, he cleanly cut our
outside phone lines to ensure that he could quietly escape. Sliding
open the window in my first floor bedroom, he pulled himself up and
over the sill. Walking through my room he crossed the hall into my
mothers' bedroom. My mother woke to find him standing over her with a
gun at her head. 'Scream and I will kill you', he calmly told her. 'Do
what I say and I won't kill you.' This is every woman's nightmare. He
held a pillow over her face and a gun to her head as he raped her. My
mom didn't realize that he knew about me and had already been in my
room. Frightened, she just hoped that he would do what he wanted and
leave. She didn't know what she would do if he tried to hurt me. She
just prayed through the whole ordeal that I wouldn't wake up and come
into her room to find out what the noise was. I didn't. I slept through
the entire incident. All I remember is the cool breeze I felt. After he
was done he got up and went into the kitchen. He wet a paper towel and
used it to wipe the sweat from his face, then threw it on our kitchen
table. The sodden lump sat there. I remember looking at it and feeling
sick. It looked nasty and I was afraid that if I got too close to it I
would be able to smell him. He rifled through her purse, finding only
five dollars which made him really angry. My mom told him that that was
all she had. Eventually he left after telling her not to bother trying
to call the police because he had already cut the phone lines. As soon
as she was certain that he was gone, my mom rushed into my room and saw
the wide open window, felt the chill night air. He had been in here. I
lay sound asleep. Reassured that he hadn't harmed me she went to try
the phone. Shortly after that we went upstairs. Afterward you think
about all of the what ifs. The whys and the what ifs. I had no way to
fill in the whys so I focused on the what ifs. I knew that I was alone
most of the time. Sure, there were our neighbors upstairs but they went
about their own separate lives. I got myself up in the morning, ate
some cereal, grabbed my stuff and walked the 8 or 9 blocks to school
alone. If my mom wasn't working overtime she was asleep, exhausted when
I left. I walked home from school alone and let myself in to an empty
house. I fixed my own Lean Cuisines for dinner, watched TV, did my
homework and packed my lunch for the next day. Then I went to bed. My
mom usually was home sometime between 11 and 12 at night. The routine
had been boring and lonely but not scary. But now the what ifs consumed
me. What if he had come when my mom wasn't here? What if I had been by
myself? After obsessing like this for awhile it dawned on me that he
had known that I was alone every night. He had watched me in the house
by myself night after night. The thought made my heart pound, made my
mouth dry. And he had deliberately chosen my mom's day off to break in.
It was her that he had been after. I knew that I had felt scared or
vulnerable before- facing bullies or racist kids or sadistic nuns at
school--but now I knew what fear really tasted like. Days later my mom
and I stood in our kitchen while she tried to explain it to me. She
struggled with her emotions as she tried to sort it out for me. When
she asked me if I knew what rape was I shook my head. 'It's when a man
forces a woman to have sex with him.' I nodded, completely lost. 'Do
you understand?' I shook my head again. Frustrated, my mom sighed. 'Do
you know what sex is?' Again, I answered no. 'Well, that's when a man
puts his penis in a woman's vagina.' Repulsed, I recoiled like I had
been slapped. 'What?!' I exclaimed, 'That's what sex is?' My mom
smiled. 'Yes. And it's usually enjoyable, if both people want to do it.
But when it's against your will, its rape. Do you understand now?' I
nodded, overwhelmed and confused. God, what a let down. I had imagined
that sex was something amazing and it turned out to be this. All of the
mysterious innuendos that I had seen on TV and in books and jokes were
actually about penises in vaginas? This made absolutely no sense to me.
My mom put an end to the conversation by telling me that I would
understand it better when I was older and turning to wipe down the
kitchen counter. This is how I learned what sex was. In my mind I
flashed back to that conversation and that context whenever I thought
about it. And I still couldn't figure out the mechanics of it for a
long time. My mom had left out a few crucial details and I could never
figure out how they coaxed that soft little penis into the vagina until
I saw an erect one several years later. Had everyone else known about
this startling transformation besides me? I felt betrayed. Mentally
kicking myself, I cursed my gullibility. Because I was uninterested in
boys, I had just taken the information that my mom gave me and stored
it. I wasn't curious enough to find out more because I was way more
interested in girls. Penises disgusted me. When I had my first awkward
experience with a guy I was horrified by the angry, red, one-eyed
monster that bobbed up and down and stared back at me. I got dressed
and ran. Although I did have to concede that it looked capable of
getting the job done, something that its flaccid alter-ego had always
seemed unqualified for. A couple years ago, while cleaning out my mom's
garage, I discovered an old, yellowed newspaper clipping in a box. The
tiny article was from an old issue of the Milwaukee Journal and
reported on the conviction of a serial rapist that had preyed on women
that lived alone or had young children, staking out their homes,
breaking in, raping the women and sometimes robbing them. It went on to
describe his capture in the basement of an elderly woman who had called
the police after hearing a suspicious noise. The suspect was charged
for a series of rapes, breaking and entering and thefts. He was
sentenced to 17 years in prison for all of his crimes. He was 19 years
old at the time. Stunned, I reread the scrap of paper. 19 years old.
Barely a man himself. I had never known that, never even thought about
it. To me he had always been an ageless, faceless menace. Certainly not
a young man, a decade younger than I am today. What would drive someone
at 19-- not even old enough to vote or buy a drink-- to systematically
terrorize woman after woman? There was something about learning this
that made me despair, made my chest ache. Despair for the waste of a
young life and for the wreckage he had made of our lives and many
others. Despair for whatever unspeakable conditions had created this
kind of monster. For the child that I believe must have suffered
terribly to become a man that could inflict that kind of terrible
suffering. In my mind I have always likened the rape to a tornado. To
me the worst part of it was the aftermath, the devastation that it left
in its wake. It would be many years before we would recover from it.
The rape knocked over the house of cards that was our life and it took
a long, long time before my mom could gather the strength to rebuild
it. By that time I was gone. I left home when I was 15 to go to a
college in the Berkshires. I needed to put as much distance between
myself and that pain as I could. I needed to escape to survive. I
couldn't explain it to anyone, but I knew that if I didn't seize this
opportunity I might never get out. My mother had been locked in her own
battle with depression and alcoholism for many years. Drinking had
become her outlet, the one exit she found from a life that overwhelmed
her. Life isn't fair, she said again and again. I came to believe that
life was just awful and unhappy for everyone. Happiness and an easy,
carefree life were fiction. Real life was much, much more difficult and
you had to make sacrifices. After the rape my mom just didn't give a
shit about anything anymore. A part of her just gave up. For 2 years
afterward she spiraled deeper and deeper, her behavior growing more and
more bizarre. She was irrational at best, a lunatic at the worst.
Somehow she managed to hold onto her job, I'm not really sure how. She
was only minimally functional. She stayed holed up in her room with the
door shut, only emerging when she ran out of food or had to go to work.
Sometimes when she was at work I would sneak in to see what she was
doing in there. I was terrified to actually enter her room because I
read a lot of mystery novels and I was aware that people could lay
invisible traps like putting hairs across drawers and stuff and I knew
that she would find out I had been in there. But my curiosity won out
over my fear and I went into her all-peach bedroom with the matching
curtains, wallpaper and comforter to find a disaster. Clothes and old
tabloids laid in towering heaps. The room smelled. Worst of all I found
boxes and boxes of Nutty Wheat Thins and assorted cereals that she had
hidden behind her bed and jumbo bags of licorice and other sweets
stuffed into her dresser drawers. This really made me mad. I had no
idea why she felt compelled to hide this food since I didn't even like
Nutty Wheat Thins. Why was she hiding food from me? I was the only
other person in the house besides the dog so she must have been hiding
it from me. I hated her craziness. But that's the thing about crazy
people, you get mad at them because they act so damn crazy but you are
afraid to tell them because they are crazy. So I ignored the jugs and
wine and liters of vodka she swam in. The blackouts and the hangovers
and the rages. The time that she hit a parked car while driving and
told the cop she hadn't been drinking. I even ignored it when she drove
her car into our house. I just tried to ignore it all because it was
the only way I could cope. I couldn't stop her and all I could do as
try to prevent her from taking me down with her. Sometimes it takes a
disaster-an illness, a devastating loss, a broken heart, or a random
act of violence-- to force you to reevaluate your life. I think that's
eventually what happened for with my mom. By the time I was 12 she
stopped drinking. For real this time. And that was the year that she
took me and my best friend Laura to my first Take Back the Night rally.
The guest speaker was Theresa Saldano, a soap star or something that
had been stalked and viciously stabbed by a deranged fan. I have no
idea what she said or who else spoke. All I remember is the feeling of
marching with Laura and my mom and thousands of other women. It was
pure electricity. I had never felt anything like that-- being united
with an endless sea of people to stand and fight for something. I
realized that I felt truly alive for the first time in my life. My
whole life I had felt like a hunk of dead wood inside but now I felt
alive. I couldn't stop feeling. That sensation, that burning intensity
and purpose, felt like what I had been missing my entire life. This
must be what happiness is, I realized. This must be what joy and
elation and all those emotions feel like. I realized then that I had
lived my entire life acting like what I thought those emotions must
feel like but never really feeling them. And I couldn't wait to feel
that way again. That TBTN Rally was the beginning for me of a life that
has been shaped by my quest to hold on to and ignite in others the
passion that politics brought to me. First as a participant and then as
an organizer, I have taken part in thousands of political rallies and
marches and demonstrations and meetings in this country and others.
Being a political organizer gave me a voice and a confidence-an
identity-that I was lacking. I am sure that even if I hadn't gone to
that first rally I would have stumbled onto politics somewhere down the
line. And as horrific a toll it took on my mom and me I can't deny the
part that that December night played in shaping who I have become.