Grabbed from behind, in a parking structure, after an evening with friends, she was dragged into the adjoining field. Held at knifepoint, hair clutched tightly in his hands, he breathed threats into her ear, pushing her forward, throwing her onto her back, beating and viciously raping her.
She spoke without weeping: almost stoic. It was for a small local talk show I hosted. That evening was filled with scenes and stories of horror that marked my soul. Victims of rape sat and openly bared their deepest secret. The heinous act of violence perpetrated against them.
Her story captured us all. Without crying, with a surgical precision, she went through each detail as I, inwardly in shock, outwardly trying to convey compassion – said little things like: “Oh. Did you fight back? What were you thinking?”
My heart was being crushed and I was wishing I was anywhere else but on that little stage, in front of those lights, across from her unimaginable terror. I’d been prepped, but I was far from prepared and so I asked a question that delivered an answer I’ve never been able to escape.
“Now, healing, putting this in your past, what was the worst of it?”
Who asks that? In public?
She began to cry. Until then she hadn’t shed a tear. Her strong nature seemingly broken again, eyes averting me, head dropped, tears flowing freely. I had no clue what to do – so I sat in silence and waited – then, different eyes, the kind that rage… but the kind that also become vulnerable and let you into the soul… she lifted her head and as if to invite me into her nightmare said the two words I’ve never been able to forget. It’s been 25 years and sometimes they hit as sharp as if it had been last night.
“The stars.” Pardon me, I asked, certain I must’ve misheard something. “The stars. While he was on top of me, raping me, pulling my head back, I didn’t know if I was going to live or die. It was a dark field on a beautiful night. The skies were so clear. So many stars… I haven’t been able to look at them since. He stole the stars.”
“The stars, I use to love looking at them, not anymore. He stole the stars.”
She was the outdoorsy type. Had been a hiker, runner, loved the night… loved the stars. Now they only held the memory of him.
I could never relate to what she went through but raising my daughter, loving my wife, amazed by my granddaughters – listening to men demean women, I think of the stars… I remember her story… how she sat on a stage and shared her deepest pain as we, glued to our seats, forgetting to breathe, sat spellbound, as if at a show, and she let go of an entire universe one more time.
Sometimes I wonder where she is today. Then I remember she’s in the women I meet everywhere. The women who carry their secret pain; the abuse, the rejection, the rape… the stars… and I try to be just a little bit better of a person.
The stories we carry are not always filled with hope, sometimes they’re about little more than how we survived, amazingly survived and what we left behind. Sometimes we leave the stars.