I Will Find You: In Search of the Man Who Raped Me. Joanna Connors

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СКАЧАТЬ the same way I’d sped through every yellow light on Euclid Avenue driving here.

      “OK,” I say.

      The door to the theater is closed.

      I open it and walk through, into the dark theater and the second part of my life.

      I make my way down the narrow right aisle and climb the two steps to the stage, the guy right behind me.

      I turn and look up at the stage lights. They’re off. Only the house lights are on. He says, “I should turn them on.” He doesn’t move.

      Animal alarm flashes through my body, followed by a flood of adrenaline. The surge makes me dizzy.

      This is not right, I think. In fact, this is bad. Really bad. Get out of here. Now.

      “I think I’ll wait outside,” I say. Still polite. Still the good girl.

      I know it’s too late in the second before he grabs me from behind, pinning my arms to my sides.

      I try to scream. I want to scream. It should be natural: Danger leads to fear leads to scream.

      But my body has other ideas. Panic overtakes me and closes my throat into a tight, burning knot, muting me. All I can manage is a strangled, small, “No,” just above a whisper.

      “Be quiet,” he says.

      I feel metal on my neck, moving slowly under my jawline. A sharp point presses into the skin.

      I stop moving, stop trying to scream. My attention focuses on that one small point of cool metal against my throbbing vein.

      He has a knife. He has a knife. The thought pulses with my blood, a hundred beats a second.

      “Please don’t do this,” I say. “Do you want money? Do you want my purse? Take anything you want, but please don’t hurt me.”

      “Now, just be quiet,” he says, his voice calm, soothing, as though I’m a child who just woke up from a nightmare.

      He pushes me behind the scrim, a translucent screen at the very back of the stage, then backs me hard against the concrete wall, his hand to my mouth. He shows me the knife. It isn’t a knife, though: It’s half a pair of long utility scissors, the kind with black handles and a sharp point. A makeshift dagger.

      “Now, I can kill you,” he says, still calm, like he’s saying he can get me a cup of coffee. “But I won’t kill you if you do what I say.”

      My breath stops. Wait. Kill me?

      The world shrinks into the small, still space behind the scrim. Nothing else exists.

      How did this happen? One minute I was running toward a college theater, thinking about how I would fake my way through the interview, get to the pool, and then figure out something for dinner. The ordinary middle of an ordinary day of my ordinary life.

      I catch a flash of steel when he moves his hand. An image appears, unbidden: my mother cutting fabric on our dining room table, pins held between her lips, her long, black-handled utility scissors crinkling the tissue-paper patterns of dresses.

      His hand still covers my mouth. I nod: Yes. I will do what he tells me.

      He takes his hand from my mouth. I do not say anything as he starts fumbling with the buttons on my blouse.

      I shake. I try to stop it, but I can’t.

      This is it. My rape. I knew it was coming. Every woman knows it, anticipates it, fears it, yet also doesn’t believe it will happen to her. And now here it is. My turn.

      My stomach drops, but I do not let myself cry. The effort burns my throat.

      I think of something that might stop him. “I’m having my period,” I say. I try to sound apologetic.

      “Be quiet.”

      He tears at the last button on my blouse, and as he pulls it off I see drops of blood dotting the front.

      My mind takes a few seconds to catch up to this new piece of information.

       My blood?

      I put my hand to my neck, where the dagger was. Sticky.

      I look at my hand. A bright red smear.

      Yes. My blood.

      I look down and see more blood on my skirt. My new linen skirt, bought to celebrate the new job. Bought to look professional.

      As though it recognizes itself, the blood in my veins springs to action. I feel it pounding upward, squeezing through my carotid artery, pushing into my head. My body is electrical wire, the current switched on.

      Then, just as suddenly, it turns off.

      I slip away from my body, like Peter Pan’s shadow, into the fly space above the stage. My fear has vanished. I look down at the stage. I see myself. I look small, standing there in my bra. I look scared.

      From the moment we humans are shocked with the terrible knowledge of our own mortality, we wonder and fear: How will I die? When will I die?

      A guy smoking a Kool just delivered my answer.

      Now.

      Now is when it happens to me.

      I don’t find it strange that there are two of me. On the stage, I feel his hands on my body. I feel the blade next to my neck, then next to my chest. I feel the rough concrete wall scrape at the skin on my back.

      From up above, I watch all of this with a soothing detachment. I know it’s me down there, but I feel like I’m watching someone else. A girl in a play. For her, I feel … I guess the word is “concern.” And pity.

      Down on the stage, my blouse is on the ground. My skirt lies in a puddle at my feet. He fumbles with his zipper, still trying to hold the scissors at my neck. He tells me to take off my shoes and everything else.

      It occurs to me—probably not then, probably later—that rape is a clumsy business. It’s nothing like the movie versions. The clothes come right off in the movies, usually ripped dramatically. Nothing gets stuck. The rapist knows what he’s doing and works with efficiency. He never has trouble maintaining an erection. As for the victim, she either fights back and escapes—after kneeing the rapist in the groin, of course—or she dies in horrifying violence that will be avenged by the hero.

      I, on the other hand, almost topple over while I unbuckle my shoes. My underwear binds my ankles. The rapist still can’t get his zipper down.

      Up above, I decide he really is not the right person for the role of rapist. Not at all. He’s too young, too skinny, barely taller than me. His mesh tank top is the kind favored by men who spend a lot of time in the gym, but he has no muscles to show off, no pecs rippling under the shiny mesh. No, he isn’t right for the role. Not scary enough. He will be something of a disappointment to the audience.

      The rapist finally gets his СКАЧАТЬ