Two cops arrived initially, and then there were more. Many more. If they had been writing a manual for police officers and medical personnel on how to handle a rape case with care and compassion, I would have been the perfect test case on procedure. They were wonderful. And I know this now because I have spent time lobbying Congress and state legislatures about the treatment of rape victims. I’ve seen the worst-case scenarios, and they are devastating. Now, I can appreciate the care with which I was handled. Now, I know it rarely happens that way. And it really rarely happens that way for black women. I am grateful I had the experience I did, wrapped up in the worst experience of my life. Now.
Then, I was hysterical. I’m not a hysterical person. I’m not even a weepy person. And I was hysterical. I looked up, and suddenly my dad and my older sister, Kelly, were just there at the store. Later, I would find out they were running errands and saw the police cars lined up outside the Payless where I worked. But in that moment, it just seemed surreal to suddenly have them there.
“Calm down,” my dad kept saying, over and over again, as he touched my shoulder. I couldn’t speak to tell him what happened and I couldn’t imagine telling him anyway.
The cops were radioing dispatch and other officers using police codes, a jumble of numbers wrapping around my head. None of them meant anything.
But Kelly was majoring in criminal justice. And I saw her face when she recognized the police code for rape: 261.
She whispered in Dad’s ear. And the way he looked at me after, oh my God, is still a nightmare. I sued Payless for negligence, but I wanted to sue them for my dad looking at me like that. I HATED THAT. To this day, I HATE IT.
The look was: Damaged. Victim. Guilt. Fear. Like, I was my dad’s prize. He didn’t acknowledge it in words, but I was his favorite because I was the most like him. As far as he was concerned, I followed the rules. I was the kid you bragged about. I got great grades. Was the perfect athlete. Blah blah blah. And in that moment I was damaged. It was as if someone had broken his favorite toy.
I was taken to the hospital. After having my dad see me in that moment, my boyfriend Alex came to the hospital. And he too was destroyed. We’d been together about a year. His family was Greek and Mexican, and they were completely opposed to us being together. They called him a nigger lover.
“But you’re an interracial couple!” he would answer.
“Why do you have to go to the extreme?” was the response.
Yet in the moment of Alex finding out I’d been raped and his parents having to deal with their child being crushed, they finally realized that our thing was real. I was, to put it mildly, very resentful that it took my being raped for them to not have a problem with interracial dating. But anyway.
My mom arrived, quiet and scared. I flashed to the advice my mom had given my older sister and me for how to handle anyone who wanted to mug us or worse.
“You know what you do, right?”
We would say in unison with matching eye rolls: “What do we do, Mom?”
“You say ‘Shit, shit bastard!’ That’s what you do.”
Shit, shit bastard. She thought a woman spewing out a string of nonsense swears would shock an assailant into confused submission. To this day my sisters and I will just text those words to each other, or leave “Shit, shit bastard” on each other’s voice mails.
She didn’t know what to say to me. I’m sure she was shocked because it happened to the one daughter she didn’t think she had to worry about. I had always been the strongest one, taking care of myself. They had never seen me show fear. You move your kids to this all-white community and force them to go to these all-white schools. You think you’ve priced yourself out of this shit. You’ve done all these things and then this happens.
A FEW DAYS LATER, THE GUY STRUCK AGAIN IN A NEIGHBORING CITY. You could see him on the security camera at Payless this time. He walked in, saw the camera, and walked right back out. But then I guess he was just amped up to keep this crime spree going and he walked into a Clothestime store. I knew the girl there. He’d become more brazen, bolder, and he hurt her even more then he hurt me. By then the manhunt was reaching fever pitch. Within the week, he turned himself in. Because they knew who he was, the cops had started watching his mother’s house, and she got him to surrender.
My dad was the one who went to every arraignment. Every single court hearing. I remember Dad saying, “I want him to see me.” He is one of those parents who can rule with a look. Discipline with a glare. And he really thought that the same glare that got us to stop jumping on the bed, or to eat our vegetables, was going to work on someone who’d raped women. But he was there. Glaring.
“Now I feel bad,” my rapist would say. “Not when I was smashing her crying face or leaving her in a heap. Nope. But her father’s glare. That did it. That’s what made me see the evil I had done.” Dad took it personally, so this wasn’t about justice for me. It was a personal affront to him. It happened to me, but it was an affront to him.
To this day, my dad has the article from the newspaper about my rape in his wallet. Twenty-four years. He has never explained to me why he carries it around, but I know it’s a reminder that someone dared to fuck with him. “How dare you even think you could do this to me?”
Because of that article, everybody knew. They didn’t print my name, but there were very few black people my age in Pleasanton. And just in case, for the people who didn’t know, Lisa Goodwin went to a party and to get sympathy for herself, told my story but made it about how it affected her.
I had to testify in front of a grand jury, but I didn’t have to see him. The most traumatizing part was going into the courthouse and seeing other criminals. I could see them coming off the transport van in shackles. Coming face-to-face with criminals, being in the courthouse with rapists and murderers and child molesters, was, for somebody in the throes of post-traumatic stress, all too much. I got into the elevator and in two seconds, I literally sprinted back out. Wrong combination of people. I heard my mom apologize because I guess she probably thought it looked rude.
He took a plea deal of thirty-three years. So we never had to go to a trial. I hope he’s still in jail. I haven’t looked to see if he’s out. I do know he is aware of who I’ve become. My father said they mentioned it in one of the parole proceedings. My dad goes to those, too.
I have seen enough episodes of Oz that I really believe in prison justice. I believe there are certain things that prisoners do very well. And their handling of rapists is one of them. So . . . I feel pretty solid about that. Whatever he’s endured brings me joy. I hope it happens every day of his life. A few times a day. I’m perfectly okay with that.
People always ask, “Do you wish you’d had better aim?” I mean, obviously you pull the trigger of a gun to stop, maim, or kill. That was my goal in that split second. But I don’t think I’m a killer. I don’t think I could live with killing anyone, even in self-defense. I think I would be even more tortured by that.
The other question I get asked is “What were you wearing?” I got raped at work and people still want to know what role I played in what happened to me.
I HAD ALREADY TRANSFERRED FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA AND was supposed to start UCLA in August. But I couldn’t do the grand jury and be in Los Angeles, so I deferred and did a semester of my sophomore year at a junior college in Fremont. During that time, I opted to sue Payless for not providing a safe environment.