Too terrified to object, I nodded.
“Good,” he said. “Now I will walk you back to your room. Fix your pants.”
I looked down at my pants. The zipper was completely ripped out. I held them together at the waist as I stumbled out the door behind him. I know he spoke to me as we walked back to my hut, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying because the winds were still strong and I was lost in a world of pain.
After he left me at the door, I waited for him to be gone before I looked inside the room. I prayed that no one would be there. I couldn’t stand the idea of being seen by anyone. I felt dirty, worthless.
The hut was empty. I hurried inside, yanked off my pants, balled them up, and hid them. Then, carefully, I put on a new pair and sat on the floor, unable to think of any way to make the pain to go away. And then I remembered the sea.
The hut was near the beach. I walked out to the shore until the waves came up over my bare ankles. The water was warm, somehow reassuring. I waded in up to my knees. It was very shallow near the shore. I had to go out quite a ways before the water reached my shoulders. I let myself be lifted and lowered by the gentle waves. In that numbed state it would have been so easy for me just to drift away.
I watched the shimmer of lights across the dark expanse of water to the north. They were lovely. And when I found myself admiring their beauty I became aware of myself again. In an instant, the numbness gave way to anger. What am I doing? I should destroy myself for what he did to me? I was up to my nose in brine, when I just exploded in rage. “No!” I screamed. And I began to swim back to shore.
The next morning when we boarded the bus, my attacker smiled at me, waiting for his big good-bye. I stared right through him.
Over the next few days my group leader noticed my withdrawal and took me aside.
“Just a mood,” I told her. “I’ll get over it.”
And I did. I willed myself to. I buried that memory good and deep. Ten years later it came hurtling up through layers of defenses in a blazing fever.
I knew how to minimize. Boy, did I ever. And as a result, I’d learned the power of memories denied. In December 1994, I saw my own memories reemerge. Nicole Simpson had awakened them. I found myself flashing on old arguments, screaming matches, shoving matches, and tearful reunions. Events that had seemed only bizarre at the time replayed themselves now in a more sinister light.
One episode in particular haunted me. During one of my many separations from Gaby, I was staying in a girlfriend’s apartment. A neighbor called the police to report a prowler. In fact, it had been Gaby lurking around my patio. I didn’t know about any of this until he called me from jail, frantic. They’d taken his shoes and belt and he was confined to a small cell.
“Get me out of here,” he demanded. “Now!”
I didn’t have any money, so I ran around that night collecting bail money from various “contacts.” Then I raced down to the police station.
I’d never been in a jail before. I was relieved to find the watch commander a cheerful, matter-of-fact guy who stared in disbelief when I told him I was there to bail out Gaby. It was a “What are you doing with an asshole like that?” sort of look. As I paid out the money, I could see Gaby pacing his cell like a cat. I thought he’d be furious, but he was just so relieved to be sprung he grabbed me and kissed me. I lived with him for two more years.
At the time, I accepted these events as normal. Only now did I finally get it. I was being stalked, for God’s sake. Not only had I been stalked, but I went to the jail to bail out my stalker! The parallels with Nicole Brown Simpson’s life were chilling.
Memories. Once you unleash them, you have to be prepared to reckon with them. In the interest of self-preservation, I made a decision to suppress certain ugly realities about my life with Gaby.
As I look back on it, I can see that others about me were doing the same thing. What I had seen in the Browns as disengagement was, I realize now, an attempt to protect themselves from the ravages of memory. Not that I wasn’t angered by their stonewalling, but as the New Year dawned, I felt infinitely more compassion for their plight. Denial is sometimes the only comfort you can offer yourself. Because once you let yourself feel, the misery is endless.
The Empty Chair
CAR TAPE. It’s now January sixth. Fifth. Something like that. It’s Thursday after New Year’s Eve. We worked all through New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day. Finally took Monday off.
We mapped out our whole trial strategy. Bill wasn’t there Saturday and we finished the whole thing. Me and Hank and Chris got through the whole map of the case, which was wonderful. Bill came in on Sunday… Having Chris in there-he’s tough, he’s a fighter, he’s smart and when he gets in to do something I know he’s gonna do it perfectly.
By New Year’s, just three weeks before opening statements were set to begin, Bill Hodgman was fading before my eyes. He grew thinner and more haggard with each passing day. He wouldn’t talk to me about what was bothering him. All he would say was that he wasn’t sleeping well.
That was clear. His eyes were always bloodshot. His face was etched with fatigue. He was trying to hang in there with all the strength he could muster; I could see him struggling to get through the inhuman workload we labored under every day. But after his scuffle with the seventy-one-year-old black juror back in October, he had been out sick with the flu, or some mysterious stomach ailment, almost constantly. Bill was clearly wrestling with his own demons. Believe me, I could sympathize. Yet neither of us felt comfortable confiding our personal problems to the other. So I could only guess at what was eating him.
Bill just didn’t seem prepared to do what was required in this case: get in there and kick the shit out of the defense. Shortly after that weird episode with the juror, he got sucked into another bullshit controversy.
O. J. Simpson had been receiving jailhouse visits from Roosevelt Grier, a former NFL defensive lineman who was purportedly now a minister. Grier and the defendant met regularly in a visiting room, where they sat on either side of a glass partition. They spoke to each other by telephone. On December 14, a sheriff’s deputy who had been manning the control booth supposedly heard Simpson slam down the receiver and blurt out something that could have been interpreted as a confession. (The National Enquirer would later report an unidentified source at the jail as saying that Simpson, who was holding a Bible at the time, had exclaimed, “I did it.”)
But when all this came down, no one in the D.A.‘s office had a clue as to what Simpson had actually said. Ito had ordered the sheriffs not to say anything, and they were so scared of bad press they wouldn’t even tell us on the QT. The deputies filed a report with the court, but it was kept under seal. And so we found ourselves in a ridiculous position: the Sheriff’s Department, the judge, and the defense team all knew what Simpson had said-but we didn’t. Roosevelt Grier, of course, knew, but he wasn’t telling. He claimed that Simpson’s outburst was protected by clergyman-penitent privilege.
We took the position that it was not. For all we knew, Grier had gotten his credentials through a diploma mill. So we filed a motion compelling him to testify. Bill and I huddled to decide who should take him. I’d handled most of the motions so far. “It should be you,” I told him. I expected that this would be the sort of civilized exchange to which Bill was well suited. Grier had a reputation as a decent, principled guy. I thought he might actually welcome the opportunity to offer his testimony in a neutral and forthright manner.
My hopes quickly faded once we got to the courtroom. As Grier hulked to the witness stand, I could see that he was going to be a real handful. He carried a Bible, which he clutched as tightly as a fumbled football recovered from the twenty-yard line. He made no bones about which side he favored. He glared at Bill angrily and gave evasive, curt answers. He described his visits to Simpson as “Bible-reading sessions.” Bill had to bob and weave through Johnnie Cochran’s objections, as the Dream Team continued to insist that nothing from the so-called Bible-reading sessions could be admissible-that even a discussion of the Rams’ chances against the 49ers was covered by privilege.