More Than Survival

Today marks the fifth anniversary of a traumatic event in my life. I have never written about it before. When I was a senior in high school, my mother and I were brutally attacked outside of a motel in Albany, N.Y.

We had just come from a tennis tournament in which I had played. It was 11 p.m. As we pulled into the parking lot behind the motel, I noticed a man standing behind the open trunk of his car. I started walking towards the rear entrance of the motel, and the man began to walk behind me as my mother locked the car door. He made me feel uneasy, but I thought to myself, "Jennifer, don't be ridiculous." I was inches from the door when he jumped on top of me and started beating me with a club. I screamed for help. He was straddled on top of me as he whacked at my head.

My mother ran to me from the car and immediately attacked him. She pulled him off of me and screamed at me to run for help. The stranger started to beat my mother. "I don't want to leave you," I cried. "You run Jennifer!" she screamed. "Run for help!" I tried to run but I kept on falling, dizzy from the blows to my head. As I stumbled away, I heard her yell, "If you hurt my daughter, I'II kill you. I'II kill you."

I finally made it to an upright position. I ran as fast as I could around to the front of the motel. I saw a car with people in it and screamed at them to help me, but they sped away. I ran into the motel office and got the night guard. As we ran back to my mother, I screamed at the guard to run faster and yelled "Mom! I got help! We're coming!"

When I turned the corner, I didn't see anyone. I looked into the woods, terrified that the man had dragged my mother there. I have no recollection of what happened next. I am told that our attacker pointed a rifle at the guard, got into his car and drove away.

My memory resumes with seeing my mother covered with blood. I couldn't see even a patch of her skin. She kept saying "We're all right, Jennifer. He left. I need a hospital."

The paramedics arrived and put us each on a spine board. In the ambulance we told the police our story. At the hospital my mom and I were separated. She received 80 stitches on her head and I received 10 on mine. As I was being stitched up, detectives asked me if the attacker could have been anyone I knew. I was shocked that they could even think this.

But the detectives had a reason. Within an hour after the attack, the police had closed in on the man in a parking lot across the street from our motel. Surrounded by the police, he shot himself dead. In addition to the man's identification, numerous photographs of me were found in his car which led the police to believe that the attacker knew me. That night the detectives told my parents what had happened. My father identified our attacker as my former tennis coach, disguised as a stranger. I had stopped training with him four months earlier when my parents and I suspected that he was mentally ill.

Upon searching his car, the detectives discovered a rental lease for a cabin in the Adirondacks, a sleeping bag with a contraption to seal the top of the bag, sealed back doors, knives, rifles and a semi-automatic. The cabin was found stocked with guns, knives, whips, shackles and night vision glasses. It was equipped with closed circuit TV and the Windows were painted black. The detectives believe that my coach's plan was to knock me unconscious, scare off my mother and take me there.

For two months after the incident, I spent a lot of time in my parents' bed at night. We stayed up late talking about the trauma--until I started having nightmares--at which point my parents and I convened earlier in the evening and established a time after which we were not allowed to talk about it because it was too close to bed time. We discussed my relationship with my coach, our thoughts and feelings during the attack, our fears when we were separated from each other in the hospital and the terror and frustration of not being able to get anyone to help me at first.

My father and older brother described their feelings when they received the phone call from the police, their two hour drive to the hospital in the middle of the night, and their feelings of guilt and helplessness for not having been there to protect us. We speculated what would have happened had my coach not killed himself or had his plan succeeded. At the same time that we were flooded with intense sadness and the joy of surviving, we were fending off New York television and news reporters who were harassing us.

We talked about the attack over and over again, sometimes remembering new fears and images that my mother and I had blocked out. A few days after the incident, I began to fear that my coach was hiding underneath my bed, in my closet or behind the shower curtain. One night I walked into my parents' room crying, too afraid to go to sleep. They comforted me, reassuring me that my fears were normal. Beginning that night, the three of us made rounds every day to check in all the scary places before I got into bed. Sometimes, I still like to check.

As the last few weeks of my senior year of college approach, the anniversary makes me think about how my experiences have changed me. It is the only experience that I have had that was a violent intrusion in my life. The healing process, more than any other experience, makes me realize the power of intimacy as a tool for recovery.

At a time when we were most vulnerable, I, my mom, my dad and my brother expressed our neediness by opening up to one another. We were already comfortable talking about painful things, but it was the first time that our closeness as a family was tested. The ability to accept each others' sense of helplessness protected me from with-drawing, becoming overwhelmed by anger or fear, or from closing people out.

When I first came to college, just four months after the attack, my parents and I were worried that the experience might have undermined my confidence in managing on my own. We were uncertain whether adjusting to a new environment so early in the healing process would overwhelm me and compromise my goals. Although I have occasional nightmares and some physical reactions to being startled, I have not let the attack control my life and I am proud of what I have accomplished.

While I was incredibly lucky to have such supportive parents, luck was not the whole story. It was the healing power of intimacy, staying connected to other people, that allowed me to see myself as a survivor rather than a victim. This is what I want to share with others.

This experience adds a dimension to my personality that is not readily apparent. As I prepare to leave college, I want to leave behind an image of the whole me. I used to think that people had to know my story to really know me. I still struggle with whether or not this is true.

Jennifer M. Rhodes '97-'98 is an anthropology concentrator in Leverett House.