Note: If you’re reading Finding Sanctuary for the first time, it’s a good idea to start with the Introduction.
By now it had been seven weeks since the home invasion. My period was late. As the days went by, I came to feel a life in me; I knew instinctively that I was pregnant. Strangely, that feeling comforted me.
But what would I do if I were pregnant? So many women have to ask themselves that question, and because of this experience, I know first-hand how difficult it is to answer it. Multiple factors play a role in the decision, and emotions are involved, as well.
I had always supported a woman’s right to choose and assumed that if I ever had an unwanted pregnancy, I would end it. Simple, right? But now that it was happening to me, the answer seemed less clearcut and certainly a lot less easy.
My head knew that the only logical solution—and by far the most compassionate solution for both the fetus, assuming there was one, and me—was to end the pregnancy. First, assuming I gave it up for adoption, given that a bi-racial child would not be adopted in Louisiana where I currently lived (my rapist was black), and possibly not in New York, the child would have no expectation of a happy or decent life if it grew up in an orphanage, or even if it were adopted, since neither race would accept them, especially in Louisiana. (Remember, this was 1986.)
Second, if I chose to give birth to the resulting child and keep it, I would be looking at someone who probably looked like and reminded me of the rapist every single day, and that could not help but influence my attitude toward the child. I would not want to inflict that on a child, since I knew personally how negatively that would affect its self-perception and self-worth.
Third, what about my future? What kind of future could I possibly have with an infant and no job? I certainly couldn’t be a singer (an expensive and time-consuming undertaking). I would have no future at all, never fulfilling my potential.
And since I would be unable to work at the end of, and after, pregnancy (how could I work if I had to care for an infant?), and so would have no money whatsoever to support myself and a child prior to and after delivery, it simply would not be intelligent or compassionate or even feasible to have a child at that time.
My heart felt differently. I felt love for the life I felt in me. But as the days went by, while I waited for a doctor’s appointment (home pregnancy tests were not available back then), and it seemed more than likely that I was pregnant, I made my decision, really the only viable decision: to abort if I were pregnant. This made me sad, but I knew it was absolutely the right thing to do, so I felt no ethical conflict. I was fortunate that the laws were in my favor, and abortion was available to me if I needed it.
Only a few days later, my period came. It was unusually heavy and incredibly painful and I’m certain that I miscarried. I’ll never know for sure, of course, but I do know that I have a different perspective on making the decision about a problematic pregnancy, and I have very definite ideas about the rights of rape survivors to make that decision as a result. It truly is, and must be, no one’s business but theirs. No one should be forced to bear a rapist’s child, a child that she does not want or is not economically able to support. She should never have to look at a small being who looks like the person who raped her and reminds her of that traumatic event daily for the rest of her life, which also makes it certain that she cannot look at that child with love or without aversion because she sees the rapist in them, so that the child grows up damaged and adds one more damaged, angry person to our society. That would be extremely cruel to the mother and to the child. Only an ogre would inflict this on another human.
So I was grateful that that problem had resolved. Meanwhile, I had to deal with my belongings. I couldn’t take much to New York, given that I didn’t have a home yet, so I needed to pack up everything but essentials and store it. The problem now was that I couldn’t be in my house alone; the post-traumatic symptoms and flashbacks began the minute I entered the house so I was not physically able to stay inside. I was fortunate that a kind man from the LGAT network I had participated in who barely knew me offered to help. I boxed up all of my possessions except the most crucial, then we stuffed them into my car and drove them to the storage rental, where we unloaded them and locked them up.
I had kept out the things I would need in order to function for the first month or so after the move, when I wouldn’t yet have an apartment. I boxed up a microwave (for frozen dinners since eating out every day was far too expensive), my cats’ litter box and food bowls, and a few more essentials. I filled my two suitcases with clothing and other necessities. I got two airline-approved kennels for my cats. All I had to do was throw my sleeping bag in a box and put the cats in their carriers and I was ready to go.
I still had to answer the question of where I would stay after I moved. I asked an old friend from high school who lived with her husband in Queens if I could pay them a visit when I arrived. It turned out that they were about to leave for Europe but would still be in town for just a few days after I moved and they offered to let me stay with them for that short time. After that, who knew? At least I—and my two cats, Athena and Jasmine—would finally be in New York.
A couple of days later, I left Baton Rouge forever.
I flew to New York and took a cab to my friend’s home in Queens with my microwave, two suitcases, and two howling cats. My tiny blue-point Siamese Jasmine and my huge black street cat Athena had not enjoyed traveling in baggage, but I was given no other option, as only one pet carrier was allowed on board, and I was not allowed to put them in the same carrier. Athena, with icicles hanging from her whiskers, came out of the plane looking frozen and livid. Once we got in the cab, Athena and Jasmine let loose, loudly vocalizing their displeasure, screaming their lungs out in the cab. The cab driver kept looking back at us in the rearview mirror with a wide-eyed look that might have been concern. We made it to my friend’s home in Queens, where the cats and I stayed in their living room for a couple of days. At last, we were on solid ground in New York City, with everything that had happened behind us and a new future in front of us.
My friends left for Europe a few days later. I had to find new quarters quickly.
Regretfully, I had to board the cats for the first time ever (devasting to both me and the cats) while I searched for a place to stay. A singer acquaintance in Baton Rouge who was living in New York had once told me that I could stay at her apartment in Queens if need be, so I gave her a ring. My friend was out of town, but another singer, unknown to me, who was staying there picked up and said I could stay at the apartment, and I headed over to her Astoria apartment that afternoon.
It turned out to be a rather wild first night, as the singer apparently had some not insignificant psychological issues. Suddenly at midnight she urged me, screaming incomprehensibly, to leave. Get out! she screamed, over and over. I blearily called a singer who was staying at the Greystone Hotel in Manhattan, someone my voice teacher knew but whom I had never met, explained briefly (while the woman continued screaming in the background), and the singer and her roommate agreed to let me sleep on their floor in their hotel room for the night (I am still in awe of their generosity and trustingness). I got dressed, packed my things, located a cab (not easy in Queens at that hour!), and arrived at the Greystone Hotel at one in the morning. I introduced myself to the two women who were allowing me to share their room and threw a blanket onto the floor as my bed of the evening. I slept fitfully and sporadically on the floor for several hours before preparing to go to my first day on the new job.
On my way to work the next morning, I stopped at the hotel’s front desk and asked for a room of my own in the Greystone, but the clerk insisted that they had no rooms available. I used my best persuasive powers and got myself a room anyway. (I didn’t really know that she was holding out, but my reality simply would not allow there not to be a room.) After work that day, I took the train out to Queens, retrieved the cats from the boarding facility, and sneaked them into my room. Jasmine and Athena seemed happy to have a new home all to themselves and so was I, even if it was a hotel room. I actually enjoyed staying at the quirky but comfortable Greystone and would have continued to stay there if the fee had been a little more reasonable. I hunkered down for the next six weeks while I searched for an apartment.
Finding an affordable apartment in Manhattan was, to say the least, a challenge. But renting a room in the hotel was expensive, and I couldn’t keep it up for long; I was running out of money. I spent all my free time when not at the office job (which was exhausting) searching ads for apartments and making calls (this was in pre-internet days), but continued to come up empty. Finally, in desperation, I contacted a roommate service and found a young woman in Sunnyside, Queens, who was looking for someone to share her apartment. The “room” that was to be mine was actually the living room, and I would be sleeping on the couch. She had to go through the living room to get to the kitchen, bathroom, and front door, so I had no privacy at all. It was all I could find that was remotely affordable, and I desperately wanted the search to be over. And she would allow my two cats to join me! I said yes. Now, for the first time since the attack on July 6, I technically had a home, even if it was a couch.
I continued to have flashbacks, all the while getting used to life in New York and learning a stressful new job at a midtown law firm. Of particular difficulty was riding the subway. Any time a man sat down next to me, instantly rage came, along with physical symptoms related to the attack (heart pounding, sweating, desire to flee) and occasionally a full-blown flashback. This reaction was initially to a man who happened to appear near me or to sit down next to me who looked at all similar to the one who had attacked me, but the reaction soon generalized to all men, something I later learned was not uncommon in those with post-traumatic stress.
Prior to the event, I had always found it easier to relate to men than to women, and my best friends had always been men. Now half the population felt dangerous and anger-provoking. I felt extremely sad about this loss.
Athena and Jasmine never fully settled into their new life in the Queens apartment with the roommate; they missed having their own space. So did I. But I was finding my way in my new life, taking the 7 train to the B train to my job in midtown Manhattan and back every day, grateful at least to have a regular roof over my head while I began to pursue my opera career.
After less than six months in the shared apartment in Queens, the roommate told me she was giving up the apartment and I had to move. (I suspect she was actually tired of the cats. Or me.) When I mentioned this to a musician at the law firm where I was working he asked me if I would like to sublet his studio apartment in Inwood, at the north tip of Manhattan, as he was moving temporarily to Boulder. I said yes! Absolutely yes. So Athena and Jasmine and I hit the road again and moved across the river to Manhattan, which is where I had always intended to end up.
After a time, the musician decided not to return to New York and gave me the lease to the studio. The apartment was mine! Finally, I had a place of my own. Not a home, exactly, not yet, but my own space. The cats and I settled in and began to build a new life in Manhattan.
I had lived through a major traumatic event. I had survived. I had moved to the city where I’d always wanted to live. I had a job and an apartment. I was finally ready to pursue my dream.
A difficult transition.
Jeanne