We Are the Ashes, We Are the Fire

by Joy McCullough

  Mom can still see me from the car. And I can see the courthouse down the block. It was imposing at first. Now, after so many months, I yawn at the building. The way my sister’s tabby always yawned his ambivalence about human existence. Until he got hit by a car, at which point he was probably less ambivalent.

  Across the street, a guy immersed in his phone looks up, leers. Does he recognize me from the trial coverage? Or is he a dime-a-dozen dirtbag?

  I hold his gaze until he looks away.

  Dirtbag, then. The trial never looks away.

  Even after it’s over—so soon, it will be over—its gaze will linger.

  A car pulls into the garage and I catch a glimpse of Layla’s hijab, bright orange in the dull beige of her ancient station wagon. Nor pulls in right behind Layla, as though the victim advocate took her job so seriously she escorted my sister all the way from campus. Really, we’re all here at the same time by horrible circumstance.

  Papi climbs out of our car and heads around to open Mom’s door like he always does, but she bursts out on her own.

  “Good morning.” Layla’s voice echoes in the parking garage and I flinch at the slam of her car door. “How are we doing?”

  Papi gives her a tight smile and nod, but Mom can’t rip her eyes off my sister’s car. She’s fighting every instinct she has to race over, throw open Nor’s door, and yank her out into her arms. I know, because I’m doing the same thing.

  “We’re okay,” I say. “How are you?”

  Layla gives her familiar smile, the one we’ve seen for months. It manages to be warm and supportive, while never dismissing the reason she’s in our lives. “One of my neighbor’s new chickens has turned out to be a rooster,” she says. “But aside from that I can’t complain.”

  When this is all over, I’ll send Layla a thank-you for all the time she spent answering my questions about legal procedures, and what all the various charges meant. The difference between “indecent liberties” and “assault with sexual motivation.” If I could make sure my high school paper got it right, the Seattle Times reporters could have spent a bit more time critiquing how our system works and less time weeping over the lost potential of Craig Lawrence’s future.

  Nor still doesn’t get out of the car. My parents wanted to pick her up, arrive together. But they didn’t insist when she said she’d drive herself. She needs to feel like she’s in control, Mom said, like we haven’t all read the same books and websites about supporting survivors.

  Mom starts toward Nor’s car, but Layla places a gentle hand on her arm. “Give her a minute?”

  Layla’s as badass as they come but she doesn’t need to talk like an alpha male to get my mom to listen. I could throat-punch every armchair pundit who criticized Nor’s uptalk in the one interview she gave—and the defense attorney for defining her speech patterns as “hesitant.”

  When Nor finally emerges, though, Mom doesn’t hold herself back. Layla doesn’t stop her—she’s Nor’s advocate, not her bodyguard. She doesn’t like to be touched anymore, I want to scream as Mom fusses over Elinor’s everything. Perfect collar, perfect hair, perfect cheeks. If everything looks perfect, maybe we won’t shatter into a million irretrievable pieces.

  I pull my hair out of its ponytail, let the wind rip through it. My lungs seize in the unusually cold air and I breathe deep to spite it.

  In the midst of Mom’s hovering, Nor catches my eye. I tell myself she’s going to roll her eyes any second. Classic Mom, right? We’re going to share a moment like always, Em and Nor, Nor and Em, they basically share a brain.

  But before the moment can flicker into a flame, Layla clears her throat. “All right. Everybody ready?” A flame never stood a chance in this wind anyway.

  We move as a group, a funeral procession. Layla puts herself between us and the scrum of reporters as we approach the courthouse steps, but she’s small, no match for a dozen cameras. I glare defiantly, give them something to photograph while Elinor looks demurely down. They might think we’re allies because I wanted this story covered, I fed them tips, but being Twitter mutuals doesn’t give them a right to treat my sister like a Hollywood starlet with a wardrobe malfunction.

  Though the reporters are kept outside, the probing eyes, the pointing never ends. Through security, up the stairs, more glares, more scrutiny, better suited to someone headed for the defense table, accused of a terrible crime, but instead, once inside the courtroom Layla leads us to the seats behind the prosecutor’s table.

  Once upon a time, Nor and I sat together through every family movie, school assembly, wedding, funeral, holiday dinner. But now my parents flank my sister, leaving me to the side. It’s not about me. I get it. But also I want to crash through their miserable attempt at a fortress, take Nor’s hand, and remind her that I’m the one who’s never wavered, never given up belief that she would have justice.

  The assistant district attorney appears in front of us, gives me an encouraging nod, then turns to Elinor and my parents, murmuring softly. She’s young, newly appointed, passionate. She’s made an excellent case. When she almost took an absurd plea deal—only six months for violent rape with a witness?—she listened when I sent her the Oracle piece I wrote about the Jacob Anderson case. She considered the Twitter attention around the article and held out for actual justice.

  Our case couldn’t have gone better, really. In a brutal, horrific, gut-splattering way.

  The only thing that remains is for the jury to deliver their verdict, the judge to render his sentence. For Craig Lawrence to go to prison for the rest of time.

  The jury files in. I study their faces. The single mom who works double shifts as a nurse to stay afloat. She’s tough, hardened by the horrors she’s seen in the ER. The high school dropout who made it big with a tech start-up. He drives a Tesla and brews his own IPAs. The kindergarten teacher who’s so burned out that she’s seen these weeks on the jury as a vacation. The notes she’s constantly jotting down are occasionally about the trial, but mostly they’re for the sci-fi trilogy she’s writing.

  These aren’t their real identities, their actual stories. These are fantasies I dreamed up when the trial devolved into hours of analyzing and comparing fiber samples, or when I couldn’t bear to hear Craig Lawrence’s smug, lying voice anymore. Then I’d stare at these people who held Nor’s fate—all our fates—in their hands and try to figure out who they were and how their experiences—imagined though they were—might lead them to judge the monster on trial.

  The final moments when we’re waiting for everyone to get settled, the jury forewoman to stand, to finally spit out what’s on the folded piece of paper in her bony fingers, are agonizing.

  Was I wrong? Was it all for nothing? I can’t bear to lean over and look at Nor’s face. We’ve come all this way and I’m abandoning her now, but her hope will crush me as much as her defeat.

  Because I realize in a flash that this could go either way. The clear evidence, witnesses, Nor’s squeaky-clean image . . . it’s not always enough. I’ve been hopeful, but not stupid.

  “Has the jury reached a unanimous verdict?” the judge asks.

  “We have.” The forewoman’s voice shakes, like it’s her life on the line.

  The clerk retrieves the paper from the woman and delivers it to the judge. He reads. His brow furrows. There’s no way to guess what it means. The clerk’s walk back to the forewoman stretches out for a millennium.

  The forewoman takes the paper and draws in her breath. The courtroom holds the breath with her.

  “On the count of unlawful imprisonment,” she reads.

  At the defense table, Craig Lawrence gives the tiniest shake of his head, like it’s so absurd. It’s not imprisonment to take a drunk girl into an alley.

  “We find the defendant guilty.”

  Relief all around me. But that’s the least of the charges. My breath is still shallow.
<
br />   “On the count of indecent liberties,” she reads.

  Flashback to Tyler Jacobsen in the cafeteria, laughing and shouting that he was going to take some indecent liberties right before grinding on Patrice Kuan.

  “We find the defendant guilty.”

  Voices murmur throughout the gallery.

  “On the count of assault in the second degree with sexual motivation,” she reads, her voice stumbling over the word sexual.

  Craig’s lawyer has a comforting arm around his shoulder. The men in suits behind him are already on their phones, mobilizing their brotherhood for whatever comes next. The papers will write with pity about the defendant’s lack of weeping family, but who needs family when you’ve got the patriarchy in your corner?

  “We find the defendant guilty.”

  My mother starts to sob. It’s good. But there’s still one more charge to go.

  “On the count of second-degree rape,” she reads.

  The plea deal would have dropped this count. He’d have served a few months for the assault charge. But this is the one that can put him away for life.

  “We find the defendant guilty.”

  Nor sits silent, stunned, as the courtroom explodes around her. I search her face for a reaction. It’s not like I expected her to dance around the end zone. This doesn’t change what happened to her, this monstrous cloud that will follow her forever—not only the brutal attack, but also the trial, the reporters, the dissection of every aspect of her life.

  Get photographed with a red Solo cup in your hand? Noted.

  Dress up as “sexy” Amelia Earhart for Halloween? Noted.

  Have an immigrant father? Noted.

  Both my parents are sobbing now. The urge to smack them startles me. This is a good thing. But I tried to tell them. They didn’t believe me.

  Idealistic Marianne, things don’t always turn out the way you hope, it doesn’t matter how cut and dried the case, how many survivors you profile in your high school paper—none of that is going to change our justice system . . .

  I’m relieved, of course. But now I need the sentence. Everyone in this courtroom knew that smug fucker was guilty. The question is, how is he going to pay?

  * * *

  —

  Nor comes home with us, instead of returning to her dorm. We’ve been begging her to come, but she’s insisted on staying on campus, even through the summer, insisted she wouldn’t let him take her college experience too.

  But the sentence won’t come for weeks. Maybe months. Now that she’s won, she wants to be home.

  That’s wrong—this was no victory.

  The first several times Nor’s phone buzzes, I think it must be her friends. But her brow pinches together a little each time she scans the screen until she turns her phone off and shoves it under the couch cushion. She rolls her neck, working out those ever-present aches and pains.

  “Do you want my heating pad?” I ask.

  “Too hot.”

  I never use mine. I only have it because it was in the period kit Mom gave me when I was twelve. Since that night, Nor uses heating pads, rice bags, hot water bottles—not that any of them help her much.

  Mom and Papi sing in the kitchen. This super-old Nat King Cole song in Spanish, which my dad sings with a terrible-on-purpose accent. It’s an inside joke. They’re deliriously happy.

  Irritation flashes across Nor’s face and I know the next second she’ll be on her feet and headed to her room.

  “Want to watch something? You can pick.”

  She shrugs. But she stays.

  While she scrolls through the options, I don’t say, You were so brave, Nor. I don’t say, I was terrified that I’d pushed you into the whole circus of a trial and then it would be for nothing. I don’t say, I know it doesn’t change anything of what happened to you but that asshole’s never going to hurt another girl and I’ve never been prouder you’re my sister.

  Instead I roll my eyes at the dusty old period drama she chooses for the zillionth time, like an heirloom quilt so worn the pattern’s barely visible, but as warm as ever. “Really?” I say. “Again?”

  And she says what I know she will, what she always says: “Mr. Darcy forever, little sister.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The first few days after the verdict, I make good use of Megan Hart’s standard advice for dealing with trolls: Mock, block, and roll. If anyone knows how to deal with wounded MRAs on the internet, it’s Megan, with her years of outspoken advocacy.

  The first time Megan retweeted one of my Oracle profiles, I screamed so loud Papi came running. I shoved my phone in his face and he screamed too. The only way the moment could have been more perfect is if he had been wearing his BRAZEN HUSSY T-shirt from Megan’s first book tour.

  Hussy: a once-neutral term that meant “female head of the household.”

  Ms. Lim didn’t believe me at first when I said it was a good thing the Oracle website crashed. But I was right. That one retweet brought in a ton more traffic, which equaled ad dollars for the paper. More important, it persuaded Ms. Lim to let me keep writing the profiles of survivors denied justice. Our little compromise when she told me I couldn’t write about my own sister’s case.

  When I got to introduce Megan at the Seattle Women for Choice rally, Ms. Lim was in the front row, wearing a BRAZEN HUSSY T-shirt of her own. My journalism advisor disagrees with Megan on one thing—she tells me to ignore haters in the comments. But Twitter is not journalism and trolls deserve to be mocked. And then forgotten.

  Most of the people in my mentions are celebrating anyway, heralding the sweep of guilty charges as a shift in our rape culture. Even the old boys clubs of Greeks and jocks rallying bail money and legal fees for poor, disadvantaged Craig Lawrence weren’t enough to keep him from facing justice.

  After the first week, though, my mentions go quiet. The feminist accounts move on to organizing a march for reproductive rights and raising funds for the medical bills of a rape victim at Ohio State. Journalism accounts are focused on a missing reporter in Syria. I search familiar Husky hashtags and find almost nothing related to our case.

  It’s almost like everyone has moved on, but then I get an email from Kylie, whose Oracle profile was the first one Megan Hart retweeted. The one that crashed our server.

  Dear Marianne,

  I heard about the verdict and I wanted to reach out. First, to explain why I ghosted you there for a few months. You did a really good job with the piece. But I never expected an article in a high school paper to get so much attention. So even though it was anonymous, I felt kind of exposed. Afraid my attacker would see it and know it was me. My girlfriend read the supportive comments to me, though, and it really helped so much to see all those people believing me. Thank you for that.

  Anyway, I was so glad to see the guilty verdict in your sister’s case. I wish we could all get that justice, but seeing it when it happens gives me hope. Your sister is lucky to have your support. I hope you’re doing well and I wish you all the best in your writing and your advocacy.

  Sincerely,

  Kylie Hancock

  “Good news?” Mom’s in my doorway, shivering in Papi’s robe.

  “Yeah, one of my profile subjects wrote. Really grateful.”

  She nods like she hasn’t even heard me. “Aren’t you freezing? I’m freezing.”

  “Have we not figured out the deal with the thermostat? I’m wearing layers.” I tug on my sweats to show her the leggings underneath. “She had her girlfriend read her the positive comments on my article and she was really encouraged.”

  “Hmm.” Mom pulls the robe tighter. “Papi and I are stumped. I called Uncle Joel. He’s going to try to swing by and look at it. I’m making chai. Do you want some?”

  “Yeah, thanks.” I bite back my irritation.

  But then Mom pauses as she
heads back to the kitchen. “You aren’t going to keep writing those profiles now, are you? Now that it’s over?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  It’s not over. Not for Nor, who flinches at any sudden noise, who pops ibuprofen like the worst candy ever to ease her endless pain. Not for Papi, who dies a little every time Nor doesn’t feel like cooking, whose face darkens at the sight of Husky gear. It’s not over for me.

  Before my irritation can grow into something bigger, I’ve got a new message in my inbox. From Megan Hart.

  Hey, Em,

  Greetings from Olympia, where I am banging down doors, trying to get a meeting about a statewide expansion of Seattle’s all-gender bathroom ordinance. Wish me luck.

  I saw the verdict. It’s a good step. I just want to warn you not to count your chickens, or whatever the saying is. Judges have a way of taking would-be chicks and making them into a tasty omelet. This metaphor has gotten away from me. Point is, he’s guilty: HELL YES HE IS. But be prepared for all outcomes with the sentencing, okay?

  Burn it all down,

  MH

  I’m so distracted that night, between my mom’s comments and Megan’s message, that I can barely enjoy Uncle Joel’s visit. He brings pizza, fixes the thermostat, teases Mom mercilessly while clearly adoring his little sister. But if he’d been there when Mom spilled tampons all over the street, would he have helped her? Or would he have laughed with the rest of the boys?

  “Keep smashing the patriarchy, Lois Lane,” he says by way of goodbye as he leaves.

  I’m pretty sure he would have laughed.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning I dig through my closet—Gryffindor robe, way-too-small tap shoes, the misshapen poncho Nor made when she first learned to knit—until I find it. The deep blue Moleskine Papi gave me when I graduated from sixth grade.

  “For poetry?” I’d asked. He’d carried a similar leather-bound notebook in his back pocket for as long as I could remember, jotting down scraps of verse as they came to him.