Waiting for Daybreak

It’s one of those nights again, and I am scared.

I tell myself not to think about it, to close my eyes and keep them closed, to ignore the sounds that filter through the thin, cheap windowpanes, but my mind won’t cooperate and I’m stuck, rigid, so terrified I keep forgetting to breathe. Is it because I am alone? Female? Without a dog to keep me company?

I lie in my bed, my knees pulled to my chest enclosing me. Covering me is the bright green and blue bedspread that my mother’s sister gave me two years ago when I was happy, innocent, laughing. A white pillow is crammed against my head.

I keep eyeing parts of my bedroom, ignoring the patter of rain falling on my back deck, pretending not to hear the creaking of the weathered wood as the wind sweeps across the planked walkway outside my thin windows.

Dawn is coming.

I wish for sleep.

Nothing’s changed since the lights went out. Dirty clothes are still humped in piles on the matted gray carpet throughout my room; the blue ceramic ashtray still sits, full, on the circular nightstand beside my bed; the double closet doors are still open, my wardrobe hung on white and green plastic hangers. I know that both the front and back doors are locked, that my windows are shut, that I am safe, that fear is just fear.

Framed pictures hang on my walls.

Pictures of my old life.

There’s one of me and my friends—Jocelyn, Michelle, Ransone—on Ransone’s front porch shortly after we’d returned home from watching fireworks in the Town Commons. We’d been drinking and our faces are flushed with alcohol and summer sun. None of my three friends are lying in their beds on this rain-soaked April night, stiff, tired, scared.

I hate them.

I want to be them.

There’s no one to call.

I wouldn’t call anyway.

The last time I checked the burning red digits of my alarm clock it taunted me—it’s sometime after four. I’ve been lying here for hours, willing my body to forget the fear and relent to sleep.

He can’t find me.

I am safe.

I am safe.

I am safe.

I pull the bedspread closer.

The wind is pushing against the windowpanes, rain is dropping in sheets outside. Inside, everything’s still.

Still where I left it.

Still the same.

But it’s not mine.

It’s not me.

My heart thump-thumps.

I want to talk to someone.

Anyone.

But who can I call?

There is no one.

No one who understands.

Right after it happened, I was unable to shut my eyes to the world. I spent long nights, smoking one cigarette after another, television blaring in my living room, its volume way above normal to ward off intruders.

To keep him away.

My electric bills were astronomical that month, just one short year ago, because I kept every light—even the closet lights—glowing until the sun had risen and brought its own bright, safe stream into my apartment. It was one of those desperate nights I discovered there was no one.

I had lain awake the same as tonight, quaking, alert to everything. After struggling, scared, alone for hours, I needed someone there. I called the number the caseworker gave me, the number of the rape hotline. The REAL Crisis Line.

“Please help me. I can’t sleep.”

The woman who answered advised me to wash dishes. “That’s what I do when I can’t sleep,” she said. Dishes?

I hung up and tried my best friend.

She answered with sleep resonating in her voice. Scraping the slumber from her throat, she asked me what was wrong.

“I’m scared, and I can’t sleep.”

Oh, to call, to reach, to admit I was afraid. I was embarrassed, unwilling to say I needed help. Me, the strong, independent one. Me, who never asked for a helping hand. Me, the rape victim.

Tears streamed down my face. My pride.

Jocelyn hesitated before answering. “I’m sorry,” she said.

A pause.

I felt a need to explain. “I’m having trouble staying in my skin at the moment.” I feigned calmness but the crying gave me away. I picked invisible lint from my bright green and blue comforter. A throwback to happier days.

Her reply was soft and uncertain.

“Oh.”

She breathed deeply and exhaled into the phone, “What do you want me to do about it?” She was concerned, and unsure of how to respond.

I didn’t know what to say.

She had offered me help that same day. “Call me if you need me,” she’d said.

I did.

I called.

I didn’t know how to ask.

It wasn’t enough that I called?

Fear overcame my pride and forced the words from my throat. “Do you think that you could come and stay with me? I’m too scared to sleep by myself.”

Well,” she coughed, and I envisioned her stretching her body, fighting to stay awake. “You can come over here and sleep on the couch. Kenneth is here with me.”

I was silent.

I tried to absorb what she was offering me. Desperate for sleep, closeness, security, I was unwilling to make my bed that night on someone’s couch. That meant leaving in the middle of the night. Of going out there. I would be damned if I made my bed on someone’s couch.

Rage formed in the viscous mucus of my tears and choked me. She sensed it. She knew my pride.

“I don’t know what to do for you.” She apologized. “I don’t know how to help.”

I wanted to hang up on her, to throw the phone at her, to scream.

“I’ll figure something out,” I said.

We had been best friends for four years. She was the first person I met when I came to college so long ago, so young and naïve. We’d laughed often together, giggling, crying, wincing because our sides hurt and our faces stiff from smiling. We’d gotten kicked out of a study session during exams for “disturbing others.” She’d taken me to the hospital to report the rape.

Why didn’t she understand?

I need her to help me,

I need her to find my laughter.

Breathe . . .

. . . In and out . . .

. . . In and out . . .

The sound is somehow comforting.

He doesn’t know where I live.

I am safe.

I am safe.

But he knew where to find me that black night. I was sleeping, dreaming, and he found me, attacked me, stole my laughter. He didn’t know my name, or who I am, but he knows the most intimate parts of me. I don’t know his name or his face. I know the force of the bruises he left on my skin, the weight of his body as I struggled to rise, the innocence he took from me.

The memories he left me.

The rage I feel.

The hatred.

The helplessness.

Sometimes I worry that I might meet him. That I already know him. That I’ve laughed at one of his jokes. Have I come across him at some point? Stood behind him at line in the grocery store? Maybe I’ve allowed him to cross my path on campus, across the green, or in the student store, without screaming and pointing a finger at him, “That’s him! That’s him . . .”

The detectives couldn’t help me. Alcohol was involved, I’m sorry.

Not enough information.

Just try to forget about it.

Have you talked to anyone?

No, I haven’t talked to anyone,

I’ve talked to everyone.

There is no one.

Not my “case worker,” counselor, best friend, parents, cousin, brother . . . No one.

No one knows what to say.

No one knows how to help.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry.

Do I lie awake because I was raped? Because I have no dog or I’m female?

It’s not because I’m alone.

I’m never alone.

He’s always with me.

Nameless, faceless, my attacker is always there.

When I shower, as I wash dishes, driving to work, and now, especially, at times like these, when I try to sleep.

When I try to forget.

When I try to be alone.

But dawn—

Dawn will be here soon.