May 2003, San Diego, California

By Jennifer K. Kerns

I don’t know how or where to begin, so I’ll begin at the end. The end of that night, a seemingly normal, exciting, party-filled evening. A night that ended my childhood, and at the same time reclaimed the vulnerability found only in infancy. The night that I was raped.

My freshman year had come and gone in the blur that new parents often use to describe the passing of their child’s first year. I, too, had taken baby steps necessary to emerge as a self-sufficient young adult, free from my parents’ grasp. By selecting a university more than 1,000 miles from home, I hoped to create a new identity without the looming protective shadow of my family. I was just another blonde-haired, blue-eyed, seemingly parentless girl at the University of San Diego, USD, or “University of Spoiled Daughters.”

That weekend my father made the 1,123-mile trek alone in our family’s tattered SUV while my mother leisurely flew down to meet us. My dad has often referred to my mother as his “queen” and I his “princess,” and this clear sacrifice (23 hours alone in the car) was further evidence. He had a business convention in La Jolla and I breathed a sigh of relief that they would be out of my hair for the time being. After all, finals were upon us, and my friends and I intended to have one last hoorah before going back to our respective small suburban towns across the country.

The night is scattered. I can only remember snapshots. Like the flash of a camera’s bulb, the memories are fleeting, temporary images of the evening. Some would argue that I had far too much to drink and this accounts for my lack of recollection. I chalk it up to repressive behavior associated with post-traumatic stress. Yes, I had been drinking. The photographs taken at that party leave little doubt of that. And yes, I had probably hit my limit.

We left the party. I went with him. My best friend. I trusted him. I had no reason not to. His goofy smile and those endearing dimples had always attracted me to him and probably led to us dating briefly earlier that year. But that was all over. We were just friends now. Never more than a kiss. Never a struggle. Never. Until the bruises. The blood. That wasn’t him. Not my best friend. Not my Josh.

I don’t remember much before hearing the sound of my mother’s voice through the static-filled phone pressed to my warm ear. “The Valley,” where our dorms were located, never received adequate cell reception and this night was no exception. I had often cursed my phone, but as my best friend extended it to me, I saw it as a life raft. I laid in the fetal position on the stained, coarse carpet of the dorm lounge floor. Bruised, bloody, broken.

Bits of my mother’s words passed into my consciousness and I held onto them long after they had left her mouth. “Be there soon…. In the car…. We love you…. It’ll be OK….” She said more than her words. More than I understood then. Maybe more than I understand now.

They came in. My mom running, my dad sulking behind her. The room was silent. Across the room I could hear my father’s short inhale followed by a quick and efficient exhale. In the days that would follow, my friends would recount the sheer wailing that took place that early morning. I do not recall this in the least. To me, I was without tears. I was contained. Folded up like the cardboard boxes I had packed my dorm room belongings in only earlier that afternoon.

My mother arrived with smudged makeup still applied from earlier that evening, and forgotten in the haste. Now small black lines crept down her cheeks like the spindly legs of spiders, and in an attempt to hide the fact that she had been crying, she forced a smile. I saw through it and reached out to her. Her hourglass stature appeared that time was running out; that life was being drained down into the depths of her feet. With nowhere left to go, she sank to the floor and cradled me in her arms. She said nothing.

Across the room my father stood awkwardly. Stone-faced, maybe even grimacing. Nonetheless, visibly emotionless. Inside I knew he was a volcano, waiting to erupt, someday, somehow. That day did not come until recently, more than a year later. He entered my bedroom on a mild July afternoon and crossed to my bed where I was sitting reading a mindless novel. He wrapped his strong arms around my base and placed his head in my lap with his body laying perpendicular to my own. He wept. Finally. I knew he would. Someday, somehow. He let the fiery molten rage and sadness spill out as tears.

But that early morning he could not. He was strong. For my sake, he would say if anyone would have asked him. It wasn’t. I wanted him to cry, I don’t know why; I wanted him to be broken with me. Maybe it was for my mother, his queen. Who knows? All that I remember is that he was the picture of stolidity. His arms were crossed and his eyes watched the ground where his feet traced a small stain on the rough carpet.

My father knelt next to me cautiously, as if he thought that a sudden movement would shatter my already cracked exterior. He attempted to make eye contact with me, his full, Irish lips pursed in a state of contemplation. I saw his usually cheerful blue eyes secretively glance at the bruises around my wrists, and it was then that I noticed the anger. It seemed to be nestled around his neck like a serpent surrounding its prey. I’ve always been a “daddy’s girl” and knew his compact frame well. His jovial character has often led children to mistake him for a salt-and-pepper-haired Santa Claus, but that morning he lost the easiness of spirit that would liken him to this whimsical fairy-tale character.

He slowly and deliberately wiped a tear from my eye and uttered a sentence that to this day resounds in my memory. “Who did this to you, baby?” His eyes showed the emotion that his frigid tone lacked; he was devastated. Later, he would tell me that he never knew that he could possess the will to end someone’s life, but as he saw me crumpled on the floor, he was resolved to do whatever it took to seek justice. I knew that the phone call he received that night was one that every father pushes out of their realm of possibility to be stored in the dark recesses of their minds. I also knew what he would do to my assailant if given the information he sought. I extended a defeated hand and placed it within his sweaty palm and said nothing. He begged. I said nothing. Recently he thanked me for this omission. We both dared not utter the potential course that the evening could have taken.

My mother refused to leave me. I assured her that she should get some sleep before we went to the clinic in the morning, but she never flinched. She was determined. My mother has never let me down. Not once. If asked if this is true, she would deny that she is worthy of the pedestal upon which I have placed her. She would mutter something about being a workaholic during the “years that counted” and missing the “integral stages of her children’s development.” This is far from the childhood that I recall. I remember cookies, gingerbread houses and Rainbow Bright. So maybe this guilt, this lead weight regret she carries, is the reason why she has been so selfless as far back as I can remember. But it never seems to be motivated by guilt.

My mother and I often joke that we are soul mates. I truly believe this in the richest sense of the word. Sometimes we are too close, too connected. My boyfriend of three years would joke that I would rather spend time with my mom than with him. And he was probably right most of the time. She has always known what I am thinking without words. That is why she did not budge that morning. Instead, she physically removed my torn clothes, carefully preserving them for evidence collection, and slipped my frail body into pajamas that lay atop a heap of clothing in a corner of my room.

Looking back I see the sad irony in that moment. For all of the moments of infancy that my mother supposedly missed, she was available that day to change her baby girl’s dressings. She halfheartedly chuckled, “Jen, Jen, Jen, I see nothing’s changed,” glancing at the unkempt half of my room. I faked a smile and she began to cry. She told me that she never realized how much that smile meant until she feared she would never see it again. Although she knew that I was deceiving her with that particular grin, she hoped that it would soon be real.

I don’t recall much about the Rape Clinic. Sad wallpaper. Cold hands. Itchy chairs. As I sat speaking with a police officer, I lost all interest in the ensuing conversation. Something had caught my eye. It was a tender purposeful act of love. My father stood in a corner and my mother in another, anxiously gnawing on her lower lip. He crossed to her without words. My mother rested her head on his angry shoulders, which for the moment returned to their original tranquil state. They remained there, calm, silent, under the guise of ambiguity. They didn’t know I was watching, learning.

There is no “happily ever after,” no fairytale ending. After all, this is real life. I won’t pretend that everything was OK, or that everything is OK today. The truth is that I’ve struggled since then to get back to where I was. That was a day in my life, not my life. Just one day with the potential to reign over all of the rest.

It would be easy to lose faith in men. It would be easy to lose faith in love and life. But I refuse to let any one moment in my existence define the resulting course. We assign importance to catastrophic events and the feelings that they are “supposed” to elicit, but sometimes the overwhelming feelings that remain surprise us. Sometimes a look, a touch, a gesture of love can be enough to give us hope in a chaotic moment of hopelessness.

Jennifer K. Kerns is originally from West Linn, Oregon, and currently lives in San Diego, California. A recent graduate of the University of San Diego, she holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and Philosophy.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Friday, November 10th, 2006 | Email This Post

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