Host: Kate Tellers
Kate: [00:00:03] Welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm your host for this week, Kate Tellers.
[00:00:07] This week, we're celebrating International Women's Day with a story of resilience. Beth de Araújo told this story at a Mainstage in Los Angeles, where the theme of the night was Occasional Magic. Before we listen to Beth's story, we want to issue a strong content warning. Beth's story deals with sexual violence and the trauma that ensues from it. So, please take care of yourself while listening. Here's Beth, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Beth: [00:00:40] So, my father is a really sports-oriented person. So, he believes in fighting through pain without complaints. He has a mind-over-matter mentality. Very early on a Saturday morning when I'm eight years old, we decide to go play baseball while my mom sleeps in. My dad drives us to a little tucked away area of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, because he says this spot has the nicest grass since it's hard to find and unfrequented.
When he turns off the car engine, we immediately hear a piercing scream. It's a woman's voice, and she's shouting help! over and over again. It's the kind of sound that crawls up your skin and bounces off of every surface around you. My father got very still, and then he turned to me and he said, "Don't move." He raced out of the car and into the clearing and the shouting stopped. My heart started pumping out of my chest. I remember feeling exceptionally alert. All of my senses seemed to be functioning at a much higher level of intensity. So, a gust of wind sounded like a bomb to me.
My dad never left me alone. And I was very scared. So, I decided to get out of the van and go look for him. I walked into the clearing and instead of finding my father, I found a woman and she was naked from the waist down, sobbing silently into her hands. My eight-year-old eyes didn't understand what I was seeing in front of me, but I remember fixating on the fact that she was standing in the damp grass in her socks, and that her running shorts were on the floor and not on her body in public.
The police show up and they find just me and this woman there alone. So, they put the both of us in the back of a police car together, and it starts driving. One of the cops was bald and he started asking her questions like, "Did you get a good look at him, at his face? Would you be able to identify him if you saw him?" She said, "Yes." "Is there anyone you want us to contact for you?" She said, "My husband."
We didn’t interact at all, but I remember that she saw out of the corner of her eye that I was staring at her hands, because they were trembling, and so she sat on them. She put them under her hamstrings. And then, the car came to a stop and they said, "Is that him?" She and I turn around and look out the rear window, and she says, "Yeah, that’s him" and she ducks away quickly as to not be seen. I decide to stare at the man in handcuffs. He has on tight blue jeans, a teal shirt and a blond mullet. I decide to cement how he looks into my memory. For some reason, this feels important. And then, the car door opens and it is my dad and I feel immediately relieved. I scoot out, he closes the door and we walk away from the woman.
On the way back to the clearing, I press him on what's happening. I say, "Why did you leave me alone? What's going on? That woman’s crying." And he said, "I know. Let’s just go play baseball." So, I could tell this was something that we weren’t going to discuss. We go and we play baseball for an hour, like nothing happened, and we never talk about it again. But the next week, my dad puts me in something called self-defense classes. He comes to every class and he makes sure that I take it really seriously.
That same week, I overhear my mom on the phone, and she uses the word, rape, to describe what happened in the park that morning. It was a word I had never heard before and I know that that’s what my dad didn’t want to talk about, and I’m going to figure out what this means on my own. This is pre-internet, so my parents kept a thick dictionary in the study. Whenever I didn’t understand a word, they would tell me how to spell it, and I would go look it up and report back. But I felt like if I asked them how to spell this, they would prevent me from trying to figure it out.
So, I remember going on my own and being really frustrated, because I thought it was spelled R-A-I-P, and it took me a really long time to find. But eventually, I did and it completely shattered my sense of safety. I started to act with increasing hypervigilance. It started with little things. I would panic unless I checked that my parents had chained the doors when I went to sleep. I would ask people to stand on guard in front of public restrooms when I would use them. And then, in high school, I realized I wasn’t able to sleep unless I knew that my father was home.
This got a lot worse when I left for college, because I was no longer sleeping under my parents' roof. So, my sleeping patterns became very erratic. And then, when I moved to L.A. for work, I realized I couldn’t stay in confined spaces with men who were strangers at all anymore. So, if I was in an elevator and a man walked in, I would leave and take the stairs and just tell myself that this was normal, precautious behavior. I think some part of me knew that this was irrational, but it was the only way that I could soothe my panic. So, I kept behaving like this.
Then one night, I decided to go see a film at the Egyptian Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. When the lights went down, a man cut across the aisle, and he sat between myself and the wall. I immediately knew something was wrong, because it wasn’t assigned seating and there were a lot of other seats more easily accessible to him. He had on a long coat, and he took it off and he draped it over the front of him as he sat down. It was also summertime in Los Angeles and an unbearably hot evening.
About 10 minutes into the film, I feel the back of his fingers go up my shorts, and my body flinches. I feel it again, and my body flinches again. I had imagined something like this was going to happen to me at all times and finally, something was and I told myself that I was going to stand my ground, I was going to say something. The next time he does it, the only thing I can muster up from my gut is a whisper. I turn to him and I just say, "Please stop."
And then, I feel something else on my leg and I race into the lobby and tell the manager. He asked me to point him out and it couldn't have been a minute and the guy was gone. An audience member said he ran out the side door exit. I'm still really mad at myself that I didn't use my voice to shout, even though it would have caused a scene. At that point in my life, I wasn't sure I could tell the difference anymore between actual danger and perceived danger. I was so used to running worst-case scenarios in my mind, and this situation completely validated all my fear. So, I convinced myself that this man was waiting outside for me. He was going to follow me home and when I least expected it, he was going to assault me.
I didn't sleep for nearly a week. I thought I was losing my mind. I couldn't function on a very basic level. I couldn't work or turn my back to any window. I was fully paranoid.
My panic had set in. My senses were heightened. Every noise sounded like a stalker, and nothing I did this time alleviated the feeling. I went for a walk, because large groups of people could usually calm me down. I got to the Silver Lake Reservoir, which you all know you'll find people in very shabby chic outfits. But I was just very shabby and disheveled with greasy hair, because I hadn't showered in a week and I was dressed in my pajamas. I must have looked completely insane.
Instinctively, I called my father. I remember hearing the worry in his voice, "What's wrong? Are you okay? What's going on?" I didn't know where to start, so I just blurted out without thinking, "What happened to the woman in the park?" It had been 20 years. But without hesitation, my dad said, "Well, how did you get into the police car? I told you not to move from the van." [audience laughter] I realized that he was waiting to talk to me about this. This was also on the forefront of his mind. So, he tells me his side of the story, which is he ran into the clearing.
When the rapist saw him, he started sprinting away. But this was not the rapist's lucky day, because my father was an Olympic runner. [audience laughter] So, he caught up with him very quickly. When he did, he pulled a knife on my dad. So, my dad backed off, and he followed from a distance and he shouted at anyone that they passed to call the police.
About 45 minutes later, the police tracked them down, and shortly thereafter, we pull up in the car. My dad said when he saw me that a wash of guilt came over him and he never knew if he made the right decision leaving me. I told him that he made the right decision, even though this has deeply affected who I've become. And then, I said, "Well, why didn't you tell me what was going on? Why didn't you explain to me what rape was?" And he said, "I didn't think you should understand when you were only eight. I think it made me uncomfortable."
And then, I said, "Well, what did happen to the woman in the park? I want to talk to her. I want to make sure she's okay, because I think that will make me feel better." And he said, "Well, her husband wrote me a thank-you letter after the trial, and I could try to dig it up from the garage, but I don't think that's a good idea. You're not a welcome memory for her." And I knew he was right, and that's not my choice to make. I also knew that finally talking about it made it feel like I was actually getting to control the narrative a little bit more than it was controlling me. Like, I had pushed the memory a little bit farther into the distance.
I had been trying to circumvent my fear for over 20 years, and that clearly wasn't working. So, I decided to put myself in a situation where I felt like I could talk about it all the time. I decided to get certified to work the Los Angeles Rape and Battering Crisis Hotline and hospital accompaniments as an advocate. So, on nights and weekends, I would go to my training. And on my drive home, I would usually call my dad and we would talk about what I learned.
I eventually got certified. And on my first week, I get a call for my first hospital accompaniment to meet a female survivor in her 40s. I parked in the emergency room parking lot like I was instructed. I walked to the Sexual Assault Response Center, identified myself at the door and I was buzzed in. The nurse met me in the hallway and she said, she's waiting for you in my office. I walk to the office, and I immediately freeze in the doorway, because the woman sitting there waiting for me looks nearly identical to the woman from the park that morning. Everything from the length and color and texture of her hair, her height, her age, her ethnicity.
When I walk to take a seat beside her, her hands are trembling and she sits on them. I'm not a religious person. I'm not even a spiritual person. But life has a very interesting way of making certain moments feel very profound. I felt like this was the closest I was ever going to get to talking to the woman in the park. So, I did. I held her hand while her body was being inspected for evidence. I answered her questions about next steps and what was going to happen in court. I tried to support her emotionally as much as I could. She blamed herself a lot, and I reminded her over and over that this wasn't her fault.
After four hours, the exams and questions were done and the police were escorting her out. She turned to me and she said, "Thank you for being here. It really helped." The truth is, I'm probably never going to find out what happened to the woman in the park. But what I have to tell myself now, is that someone helped her. And that even though this really horrific thing happened to her, she found the ability to feel safe again. She didn't have to go through life panicking, flinching at every sound, because she was able to push this memory farther away using the same thing she used to call out to my father and I that morning. Her voice. Thanks.
[cheers and applause]
Kate: [00:17:14] That was Beth de Araújo. Beth is a writer and director. She was featured in Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Film. Beth also turned this story into a screenplay titled Josephine, which received the SFFILM Rainin Filmmaking Grant and was featured in the 2018 Sundance Directors and Screenwriters Labs. Beth's freshman feature Soft & Quiet is currently in production in Northern California. To check out some photos of Beth at work, head to our website, themoth.org/extras.
Today and all days, we celebrate and admire the resilience of everyone who identifies as a woman. But fellow women, we do not have to go it alone. If we're lucky, we'll find a Beth. We've linked to her org and a few others we've joined forces with in the past at themoth.org/extras.
That's all for this week. From all of us here at The Moth, have a story-worthy week.
Julia: [00:18:15] Kate Tellers is a storyteller, host and Director of MothWorks at The Moth. Her story, But Also Bring Cheese, is featured in The Moth's All These Wonders: True Stories About Facing the Unknown. And her writing has appeared on McSweeney's and The New Yorker.
This episode of The Moth Podcast was produced by me, Julia Purcell, with Sarah Austin Jenness and Sarah Jane Johnson. Beth's Mainstage story was directed by Jenifer Hixson.
The rest of The Moth's leadership team includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Klutse, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Inga Glodowski and Aldi Kaza.
Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by storytellers. For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org. The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.