When I emerged 1 was pale. I did not want to look at myself in the mirror. I looked at Tess instead. I watched her readjust two decorative combs on either side of her head.
"There," she said, happy with the way they set. "Ready?"
I looked at her and she winked back at me.
Tricia was standing with the detective when we returned. Tricia and Tess were a study in opposites. Tricia, who represented the Rape Crisis Center and signed her notes to me "In sisterhood," was the one I didn't quite trust. Tess was my first experience of a woman who had inhabited her weirdness, moved into the areas of herself that made her distinct from those around her, and learned how to display them proudly. Tricia was too interested in drawing me out. She wanted me to feel. I didn't see how feeling was going to do me any good. Onondaga County Courthouse was not a place to open up. It was a place to hold fast to what I knew to be the truth. I had to work at keeping every fact alive and available. What Tess had was mettle. I needed this more than an anonymous sisterhood; I told Tricia she could go.
Tess and I sat on a wooden bench outside the courtroom. It reminded me of the benches in the closed-in pews at St. Peter's. We waited for what seemed like hours. Tess told me stories about growing up in Washington State, about the logging industry, about fishing, and about her partner, Raymond Carver. My hands were sweating. I had a short bout of uncontrollable shaking. I heard less than half of the words Tess said. I think she knew this. She wasn't actually speaking to me, she was singing a kind of lullaby of talk. But, eventually, the lullaby stopped.
She was irritated. Looked at her watch. She knew she couldn't do anything. A diva on campus and in the poetry world, she was just a small woman with no power now. She had to wait it out with me. Our lunch treat seemed very far away.
Since that day, if I am made to wait long enough for something I dread, my nervousness dissipates into a steely boredom. It is a mind-set and it goes like this: If hell is inevitable, I enter what I call trauma Zen.
So by the time ADA Ryan, assigned to the case that day because ADA Uebelhoer was in court with another matter, walked up to introduce himself, Tess was silent and I was staring at the elevator six feet away.
Ryan was a young man in his late twenties or early thirties. He had reddish-brown hair in need of a comb. He wore a sort of nubby sport coat with suede elbow patches, which seemed more in place on the campus I'd just left than inside a courtroom.
He called Tess "Mrs. Sebold," and, after being corrected and informed that she was one of my professors, he grew flustered. He was embarrassed and impressed. He stole little looks at her, trying both to include her and figure her out at the same time.
"What do you teach?" he asked her.
"Poetry," she said.
"Are you a poet?"
"Yes, actually," Tess said. "What do you have for our girl here?" she asked. I wouldn't understand it until later, but the ADA was flirting with Tess and she, swiftly and with a skill developed from experience, deflected him.
"First up, Alice," he said to me, "you'll be happy to know that the defendant has waived his right to appear."
"What does that mean?"
"It means that his attorney has agreed not to contest identification."
"Is that good?"
"Yes. But you still have to answer any questions his attorney has."
"I understand," I said.
"We're here to prove it was a rape. That the act with the suspect was not consensual but forcible. Understand?"
"Yes. Can Tess come with me?"
"Quietly. Don't speak once you walk through that door. The professor will slip into one of the seats in the back near the bailiff. You'll approach the stand and I'll take it from there."
He went into the courtroom doors to our right. Across from us, a group of people got off the elevator and started walking toward us. One man, in particular, took a good, long look at both of us. This was the defense attorney, Mr. Meggesto.
A while later, a bailiff opened the door of the courtroom.
"We are ready for you, Miss Sebold."
Tess and I did as Mr. Ryan had instructed. I walked to the front of the courtroom. I could hear papers shuffling and someone clearing his throat. I stepped into the witness stand and turned around.
There were only a few people in the room and only two rows near the back, which composed a gallery. I saw Tess to my right. I looked at her once. She gave me a "go get 'em" smile. I didn't look her way again.
Mr. Ryan approached me and established my name, age, address, and other vitals. This gave me time to adjust to the sound of the court reporter's machine and to the idea that all of this was being written down. What happened to me in that tunnel was now something I would not only have to say aloud, but that others would sit and read and reread.
After asking a few questions about how the light was that night and where the rape took place, he asked me the question he had warned me I would have to answer.
"Can you tell us in your own words what happened at that time?"
I tried to take my time. Ryan frequently interrupted my account. He asked about the lighting again, whether there was a moon out, whether I struggled. He wanted details of whether blows struck were open-handed or close-fisted, asked whether I feared for my life, and questioned me about how much money the rapist had taken from me, and whether I had given it willingly or not.
After I described the fight outside the tunnel, his questions turned to the events inside the amphitheater.
"Describe to me, from the time he took you into the theater, what force he used and what you did prior to the act of sexual intercourse that occurred."
"First he brought me up to his face with his hands around my neck and kissed me a couple of times and then said to take my clothes off. He tried to take my clothes off first. He couldn't get my belt undone. He told me to do it and I did."
"When he told you to take your clothes off, was that before or after he told you he would kill you if you didn't do what he told you?"
"After-and I was bleeding at the time-my face wasn't in the best of shape."
"You were bleeding?"
"Yes."
"From falling down?"
"From falling down and him hitting me and smashing my face."
"Prior to the act of sexual intercourse you described, he struck you?"
"Umm-hmm."
"Where did he strike you?"
"In the face. I couldn't breathe for a while. He kept his hands around my neck, he scratched my face. Also, he just generally punched me around when I was on the ground and he was sitting on me to keep me from going anywhere."
"All right," Ryan said, "and after this you mentioned he was having some difficulty having an erection for some period of time, is that right?"
"Umm-hmm." I had forgotten the instructions from the judge. I was supposed to clearly enunciate a yes or a no.
"What happened after that?"
"He wasn't able to have an erection. I didn't really know if he had or not-I'm not familiar with that. But, then, before he came into me and had intercourse, he stopped once and made me get on my knees and he was standing up and he told me to give him a blow job."
"Did there come a time after this you eventually did get away from him?"
"Yes."
"How did that come about?"
"After he did come in me, he got me up off the ground and started dressing and found some of my clothes and gave them to me and Ï put those on, and he said, 'You're going to have a baby, bitch-what are you going to do about it?' "