' •• m
rhythm.
She smiled.
Music and dance have been a part
of Jones’ life since she was three years
old. It is something that has had a
dramatic impact on who she is, some
thing she has dedicated her life to,
something she desperately wants to
commit her future to.
Now it has become her only salva
tion.
The scars of her experience heal when
she dances. The stage has become a
place where Jones can forget about the
things that have happened to her.
On stage, she said, is the only place
where she doesn’t have to cope with
the realities of life.
“There, I’m the dancer,” she said.
“I’m not the victim. I’m not the bad
child. I’m not the one who didn’t do
what she was supposed to.”
The top of the TV in Jones’ apart
ment is decorated with trophies and
ribbons; evidence of a life spent in
pursuit of an activity she absolutely
loves.
It is a shrine erected by her mother,
a collection of plastic and metal that
proves Jones’ life has been well-spent.
And for helping her achieve those
things, Jones loves both her parents
dearly.
Jones said her mother and father
had always been supportive of her
dream. No matter how much time and
energy was involved, she said, her
parents were there for her.
If there were only two people in the
world she could count on, she said, it
would be her mother and father.
Now, she’s not so sure.
Jones said her mother’s initial reac
tion to the incident was less than what
she had hoped for.
“She knew something was wrong,”
Jones said. “She asked for a while and
I’d say, ‘Oh, nothing,’ but she knew I
was lying.”
Jones finally told her mother a day
later, saying simply that she had been
attacked. She described her mother
looking pale and saying nothing, fi
nally asking her after a few moments
if she had been raped.
l torn ner yes, Jones said, and
she totally lost it, saying it was my
fault, asking me why I was in his
apartment, blaming me for not using
my head.
“I guess that’s why I didn’t tell her
right away; I knew she wouldn’t be
able to handle it.”
Jones’ father wasn’t any more ac
cepting.
She didn’t tell him at first, but like
her mother, he eventually learned the
truth. His reaction was almost a bigger
blow to Jones than the actual rape
itself.
“He said he was sorry for raising me
the wrong way,” she said. “He apolo
gized for not teaching me how to take
care of myself.”
She paused and breathed deeply.
“He said if I didn’t want to be his
daughter anymore, that was OK with
him.”
ones did not report the rape to
the police.
For her, the reasons were
simple — why would they
mgmm :
care? And how would she prove it?
“What would they say?” she asked.
“I was in his apartment willingly; I
didn’t scream or fight or try to run
out.”
Jones bit her lip; she pretended to
take the hand of a victim and hold it
tenderly.
“They’d say, ‘Honey, I believe that
something really bad happened to
you, but there’s nothing we can do.
We don’t have any evidence, he’s a
friend of yours, there were no
witnesses...he’ll walk no matter what.
Then where will you be?”’
She curled her lip in a slight sneer
and pretended to drop the imaginary
hand.
“Or they’d say, ‘Honey, I think you
had a bad experience. You made a
mistake and you want to get revenge
for it. We’re not going to do anything,
because it wasn’t his fault — it was
yours.’”
Such public images and myths
about rape worry Jones. She was afraid
if people knew her secret, that is all
they would associate with her. That
she was a victim, a weak person or
worse, a liar.
It is not an idea she savors.
“I don’t want to hear the whispers
and the talking behind my back,” she
said. “But I know it’ll happen. There’s
nothing I can do about it — it’s
people’s ignorance, not mine.”
Jones decided soon after the attack
occurred that she must dedicate her
life to educating people, to dispel the
ignorance and fear that will hurt her
once her secret is known.
She has made it her mission to let
people know what happened to her,
simply so no one else will be as hurt
and confused as she has been.
“My case isn’t clear-cut,” she said.
“Even I don’t know if it really hap
pened. Even I have my doubts.
“That doesn’t mean someone else
has to go through the same thing.”
Jones thought about her own
schooling, constantly hearing about
the right thing to do in a situation like
hers. She smirked grimly at the
thought.
“You know, we have all these pro
grams in schools that talk about good
touch/bad-touch, but nothing that
teaches us what to do when someone
says, ‘Someone touched me in a bad
way.’
“I hope I can change that.”
he tears finally came.
Not a deluge, but a trickle. It
was a start.
Sitting quietly and listening
to music two months after the attack,
she heard his name. It was a simple
four-letter word, a very common name.
But for Jones it was a curse, a mono
syllabic fist that punched a hole into
her world and left a scar that will last
a lifetime.
She immediately withdrew into the
confines of her body, rubbing the sides
of her head with the heels of her hands.
She rocked back and forth, as if trying
to shake the memories from her head.
Then the huge, sobbing gasps
erupted from within her frame. Giant
pulls of air mixed with tears to form a
staccato explosion of hurt and fear
and anger.
“It hurt so bad,” she cried. “I wanted
to leave, to run, to go any where...but
I didn’t.”
She looked up, streams forming
where the tears had washed away her
mascara and dusting of powder.
“Does that make me a bad person?”
she asked aloud. “What did I do to
deserve this?”
Her eyes, usually bright and atten
tive, disappeared behind her slitted
lids. Her lips bunched and pouted as
she tried to hold the cries in.
She could not.
She wrapped her arms around her
self, a symbolic gesture showing that,
in the end, she is the only one who can
help herself. And she knows it.
Fifteen minutes later, though, she
was all smiles and laughter, the Jenni
fer Jones her friends and family know.
The Jennifer Jones they all think still
exists.
But she knows better.
The doubt lingers in Jones’ mind
constantly. The fear that she didn’t do
what was right, that she wasn’t even a
victim of rape stay firmly wedged into
a prominent comer of her brain.
It still exists, and was present even
as she tried to pull herself together
after her brief, but embarrassing, loss
of control.
“Someday I’ll meet God,” she said
matter-of-factly. “He’ll probably tell
me I did the right thing. He’ll tell me
it wasn’t my fault.”
Jones’ face visibly fell momen
tarily.
“But He might not; He might say,
‘Hey, Jennie. Remember what hap
pened to you? What you thought was
rape? It wasn’t. It was all your fault.’”
She shuddered and turned the vol
ume on the radio up.
ones sat in the front pew at St.
Mary’s Church, near the state
Capitol building. It was well
after 9 p.m., with no one in
sight.
silently she bowed her head and
began to pray.
Like dance, religion has always
been an integral part of Jones’ life. She
attended Catholic schools, and saw
her relationship with God as stable
and loving.
God would provide for her, she
thought. God would give her what she
needed, she thought.
Now she hopes more than ever that
she was right.
“I think that God never gives you
anything you can’t handle,” she said,
“so I know I can get through this.”
She didn’t always feel that way.
At first, she felt what she described as
rage, anger against God for doing such
a horrible thing to her.
For weeks afterward, she refused to
go to church, refused to pray, refused
to believe in all the things she was
raised to believe.
Now, months after the attack, she
felt differently.
“It was easy to blame God,” she
said. “I blamed God for doing this to
me, when I was really angry because I
thought He allowed it to happen to
me.”
The anger is not apparent in the
church, though. She sat quietly, slid
ing silently into the smoking interiors
of her own mind. The rage is still
present, but she no longer directs it at
her God.
“I know He didn’t do this to me,”
she said quietly. “Things happen for a
reason, and I’ll figure out why this
happened to me one day.”
Jones stood up, walked to the end
of the pew and genuflected in the
direction of the tabernacle. She then
walked to the door, dipped her fingers
in a font of holy water, crossed herself
and left.
Outside, a cool north wind blew
down 14th Street, ruffling her hair and
making her pause.
She began to talk about her confir
mation, how she chose a saint named
Maria Goretti, a 13-year-old honored
for her virtuous sacrifices.
Jones tells the tale of why she chose
Goretti, stressing the fact that she ad
mired her saint’s refusal to give in to
a man who wished to have sexual
relations with her.
Goretti refused, and was killed for
it.
“I wonder about that sometimes,”
Jones said. “She kept herself pure at
any cost; she gave up her life for what
she believed in.”
She peered across the street at the
Capitol, looking up at the building
bathed in floodlights.
“Would he have killed me?” she
asked. “I really don’t know.”
woman is standing in a dark
room.
She is no longer crying, no
longer tearing at her skin in
an effort to wash away the filth she
feels on it.
She is facing her fear.
The room is dark, save for a crack of
light seeping in under the door. There
is an eerie half-glow in the room, dis
tinguishing shapes but not detail.
There is the shape of the woman in
the room. There is the shape of a bed
in the room. There is also a shape only
the woman can see.
Him.
“I see him in front of me, right
now,” she says. “This dark outline in
the doorway.
“I can smell him.”
She tells a story—an evil little tale
— about jumping up from the bed
when he goes into the living room to
find a condom.
About pulling her clothes back onto
her body.
About hiding in the closet in the
dark room, watching him as he rum
maged through his things.
About thinking she does not want
this, never wanted this.
About escaping.
She stands in another dark room
now, saying these things. She realizes
that she is afraid of the dark now.
She opens the door.
Now she does not always blame
him for what he did to her. She does not
ignore him or stare him down when
she sees him.
She holds the door for him. Helps
him with his groceries. Waves hello.
“As far as I’m concerned, he hasn’t
done anything wrong,” she says. “It’s
something I have to deal with. There’s
got to be a reason why he did what he
had to do.”
ane is contused and scared. She
denies what has happened to her, but
it will pass. It has before, and it will
again.
Her feelings will turn into anger. Or
sadness. Or fear again, though much
worse than before.
Later, she is curled on the edge of
a couch, thinking about him. The
thought of him sickens her. She does
not want revenge, though; she wants
to go on with her life.
“He has a BMW, a Probe and a
motorcycle,” she says withadull gleam
in her eye. She has thought about this.
“If I wanted some kind of revenge,
I could break something on them any
time I wanted. I could get friends to
hurt him. But it wouldn’t change
things; it wouldn’t make everything
all right.
“I’ve got to be better than him,” she
says. “I can’t give him the satisfaction
of knowing he’s hurt me like this. He