We Are the Ashes, We Are the Fire

by Joy McCullough

  “Para lo que sea, canchita.”

  For whatever I wanted.

  It was my constant companion for a year. I’m sure the poetry is terrible; I’m not looking back to see. But it gave me a place to dump all my anger and confusion and emotion before it bubbled over and I got called dramatic.

  I’d probably have filled it up and moved on to another except that during tech week of The Knights of the Round Table, Dustin Smalley snuck into the girls’ dressing room and stole it. I’d been made fight captain and the boys didn’t take kindly to me bossing them around.

  Bossy: used to describe girls who show leadership skills.

  So he stole the notebook. Took pictures of the most emotional, dramatic pages. Posted them all over.

  When Papi asked where my Moleskine was, I shrugged and told him I’d outgrown it. The hurt on his face killed me, but it was better than telling him the truth. Plus I wasn’t going to stop writing. I just wouldn’t write anything that could hurt me.

  I got it back, but I buried it in my closet. I let Dustin Smalley and Connor Olsen and all those small, insecure boys take poetry from me.

  I’m done letting boys take anything from me.

  CHAPTER THREE

  We return to the courtroom for the sentencing two months after hearing the verdict. Time has become an unreliable narrator, stretching and compressing at will, with no regard for a victim’s family living perpetually on the edge of what might come next.

  Layla, ever present, joins us on our familiar, uncomfortable seats from the trial. She reminds us of what’s to come: There will be statements from the lawyers, from Craig and his supporters.

  Nor could give a victim impact statement—stand there in front of not only her rapist, but the lawyers who tore her apart, the public who judged her every decision as though she had a choice in what mattered, and live it all again.

  Some survivors do. One hundred and fifty-six gymnasts gave statements directly to the team doctor who violated them. Little girls don’t stay little forever. They grow into strong women that destroy your world.

  Chanel Miller made a victim impact statement that went viral, was translated into other languages, read on the House floor. Every minute of every day, you are powerful and nobody can take that away from you. To girls everywhere, I am with you.

  But Nor’s elected not to let this courtroom have another moment of her pain; she’s had enough of her every word dissected on the witness stand, her every hesitation, inflection, tone. Layla assured her it was her choice. It wasn’t likely to change anything anyway. The judge will have already decided the sentence when he walks in the room.

  It’s so pointless, one last chance for everyone to play their parts.

  The defense bemoans the loss of potential for this bright young man on academic scholarship who only wanted to fit in with the football players and fraternity brothers.

  The prosecutor focuses on the brutality of the crime, Nor’s injuries, the reliable (translation: cis-male) witness to her inability to consent, the precedent a light sentence would set.

  Craig himself dares to glance at Nor as he tells the courtroom he’s really sorry if Nor regretted the time they spent together. Aw shucks, golly gee, he even manages a blush when he says he maybe came on a little strong because he was nervous, he’d never been with such a pretty girl.

  Been with.

  I take Nor’s hand. It’s cold and shaking. I want to throw my body in front of hers, shield her. Maybe I imagine it, but behind the cocksure grin there’s a flicker of fear. He’s a monster, absolutely, but he’s still uncertain how this is going to play out. The finest lawyers patriarchy can buy couldn’t keep him from a guilty verdict. Who’s to say how long he’ll rot in prison?

  When all attention turns to the judge, I feel a swell of something unfamiliar. Patriotism? After so many months of railing against our system, profiling survivors failed by police and juries and lawyers and judges, and even their parents and teachers and friends, I’m suddenly proud of our justice system. Riding a wave at its absolute peak. Not many victims like Nor see justice, but she will.

  “All right then,” he says gruffly, shuffling papers before him. “I’ve had a great deal to think about since our jury rendered its verdict. I’d like to thank those men and women for doing their job, and now, my role is to follow the guidelines our system of criminal justice sets out for the Court in sentencing decisions.

  “Before I get to the sentence, I want to recognize that Elinor’s life has been devastated by these events—not only the incidents that happened, but also the media attention given to this case, which compounds the difficulties that participants in the criminal process face. So I acknowledge that devastation.

  “As I consider Mr. Lawrence’s sentence, I have had to ask myself, consistent with the Rules of Court: Will state prison for the defendant alter this devastation? Is incarceration the right answer for his lapse in judgment?”

  My patriotism slips. The wave is breaking.

  He drones on, mentioning specific penal codes and legal intoxication levels, credibility of witnesses, mitigating factors, moral culpability and vulnerability of the victim, the lack of prior criminal record, youth of the offender, and character letters.

  Nobody cares what Craig Lawrence’s Sunday School teacher thinks he’s capable of. The judge might wish he could protect Lawrence, but a jury of his peers saw differently.

  “Now we come to the most compelling factor in my opinion: the adverse collateral consequences on the defendant’s life resulting from these specific charges. And those are severe. With respect to the media attention that’s been given to the case, it has not only impacted the accuser in this case, but also Mr. Lawrence.”

  Of course the wave breaks. They always do.

  “With regards to remorse, Mr. Lawrence, in his state of intoxication, saw the events in a certain way. If he were to, for the benefit of a lighter sentence or to pacify the Court, state otherwise, which I’m sure defendants do all the time, he really would be not honest. So I take him at his word that, subjectively, that’s his version of events, and I want to applaud his honesty.”

  The wave crashes onto the rocks below.

  “The jury, obviously, found it not to be the sequence of events. Our criminal justice system relies on juries to evaluate facts and to come to very difficult decisions about specific factual incidents. But given the various factors I’ve outlined here, I feel it is unclear that Ms. Morales was incapacitated to a degree that would support second-degree rape or indecent liberties, or the sexual motivation enhancement to the assault charge. Which leaves second-degree assault and unlawful imprisonment, which, for the reasons I have explained, I believe warrant a downward departure from the SRA guidelines. Therefore I am sentencing Mr. Lawrence to time served.”

  Someone hits pause on the courtroom drama that is our life. There’s a suspended breath around me as dots are connected:

  Downward departure.

  Lapse in judgment.

  Applaud his honesty.

  Adverse collateral consequences.

  Time served.

  The lawyers understand what the judge has said, they must. Next to me, Layla has gone rigid. The prosecutor lets out the slightest huff of frustration. But if everyone else understood, they’d be storming the bench. Wouldn’t they? I’m not sure even Nor realizes Craig will walk out of here without prison time. I can’t be the one to tell her.

  The judge’s gavel comes down and the pause is released.

  At the defense table, men in suits clap Craig on the shoulder. Behind us, the people in the gallery begin to buzz. This time my parents don’t weep. They sit, frozen, completely useless to Nor. Her hands shake, grasping vaguely in front of her, like she might find something to hold on to in the wreckage.

  It takes me half a second too long and my face flushes with shame, but then I’m crouching
in front of her, taking those grasping hands, being her lifeboat.

  “Nor,” I say, that one syllable pouring out like a waterfall. I was the one who pushed her into this I was the one who stopped the plea deal I was the one—

  “Don’t,” she says, and jerks her hands back.

  A tidal wave of movement carries us out of the courthouse, through the hall, down the stairs, and into an alcove near the front doors where Layla and the lawyers say words, presumably words, but mostly their mouths are moving and sound is coming out, but nothing means anything anymore.

  None of it mattered, none of what I did this last year, all those profile pieces, all the Twitter followers, Megan Hart’s retweets.

  The dragon came and I fought valiantly, and right when it seemed like the fair maiden would be saved and all the village with her, he let out one dying gasp of fire and it was enough to burn us all to ash.

  Nor’s hands still shake, but her eyes are as blank as they were that night.

  I’ve been so naive.

  Layla nudges my arm, guides us to the front doors, the courthouse steps, into the flashing cameras, shouted questions.

  It’s all a mess of ash and guilt and smoke and ruins. I pull away from Layla and shove through the reporters. My knees slam into the concrete as I drop to the ground, the weight of every camera turned on me. Fingers in the dirt of the courthouse landscaping, lives destroyed here but at least it’s pretty, I empty myself of everything I didn’t already give these vultures.

  Let them photograph that.

  “Miss Morales,” says a reporter, shoving a camera in my face as I wipe a string of bile from my cheek. “How do you feel about the sentence?”

  Staring straight into the camera, I speak loud and clear. “I feel”—I calmly get to my feet—“like learning how to use a fucking sword.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  They play the clip over and over. Analyze my mental health, delve into a possible family history of violence, Papi’s childhood in the most gang-ridden area of Guatemala City. Perhaps the defense’s case held water: The accuser consented and simply liked it rough. If the father comes from violence and the younger sister has a taste for it, why not Elinor Morales as well?

  Spoiler alert: Twitter bros are seriously into the idea of women liking it rough. Some of the feminist accounts turn on me too. We can’t play into the notion of feminists as violent man-haters.

  Megan Hart is silent.

  I feel like learning how to use a fucking sword.

  My mother sobs; Papi shuts himself in their room. Probably writing agonized poetry, like words are going to save us now. I already wrote the words. Specific words. They were never going to save us.

  I feel like learning how to use a fucking sword.

  And Elinor, Elinor packs to go back to school, to a campus still mourning the unjust conviction of their adopted darling or celebrating the dismissal of the charges that mattered most. The championed cause of generations of SAE brothers and football fans won’t see a day of jail. And still the university campus is pissed by the “distraction” to the Husky program. Never mind that football isn’t even in season.

  I want to insist the DA remand the case for resentencing.

  I want to mount a campaign against the judge’s reelection.

  But: “Please, Em,” Nor whispers in my ear before she leaves for her dorm, “don’t cause any more trouble.”

  * * *

  —

  Em is trouble.

  That’s what everyone’s said from the time I was old enough to use my voice, my enormous voice, so loud when Elinor’s was so not. Always talking, people marveled, until I got too old for that to be adorable, which wasn’t nearly long enough.

  Then I was brash, I was brazen, I was bossy.

  I wore bossy like armor, polished it in the rare moments I removed it. Let them call me bossy. I was still in charge of every game, every skit, every revolution. I hit the boys, and it wasn’t because I liked them.

  But Elinor, she’s sugar and spice, that’s what they all say, and I don’t begrudge my sister the adoration, either. I polished my sword until it gleamed because Nor is a princess and a dragon would come soon enough, because that’s the way of things, and my brash, pushy self would be there to boss it back where it came from.

  The dragon came.

  My sword wasn’t enough.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The newspaper staff goes to Roxy’s Diner to celebrate the last day of school, but I make an excuse. They’ll constantly be checking if I’m okay like they have since the sentencing and of course I’m not okay but I’ll end up assuring them that I am. Anyway, they’ll spend the rest of the time talking about Summer Intensive in Denver.

  When Ms. Lim first told me I couldn’t go, and worse, that I couldn’t be editor of the paper next year, I was pissed. I’m over it now. There are too many other things to be furious about.

  It was worth posting my unauthorized editorial on the Oracle website. Especially since Summer Intensive will be a nonstop parade of instructors telling high school journalists they can change the world through the power of words.

  They can’t.

  I push out the double doors and into the June gloom. Too many people crowd under the overhang at the bus stop, so I stand in the drizzle and ignore my phone when it buzzes.

  It won’t be Nor.

  Without the scheduled six-week journalism program, the summer stretches out before me, vast and open in a way that feels more oppressive than free. It can’t be worse than last summer, though, when the investigation was underway and Husky fans were pissed about the preseason off-field distraction.

  Something bumps my shoulder and I stumble into the old woman next to me.

  “I’m sorry!” I reach out to steady the woman, who smiles graciously but also mutters, “Puro puerco,” as she moves away.

  The first time I heard that I thought my tío Gallo was calling me a pig, as in fat, and Papi had to explain that the expression means clumsy, because pigs always walk around with their noses to the ground.

  “God, Summer, rude!” says a voice behind me. And then, “I’m sorry for my friend’s uncouth behavior.”

  Jess from my English class stands with their shadow, a girl named Summer with a permanent scowl. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen her smile. Maybe when she goes to college, she’ll change her name to something that suits her more. Like Astrid. Or Zelda. Like college is this big chance for reinvention.

  “It’s not real.” Jess nods at the suit of armor in Summer’s arms, which is what shoved me into the old woman. As though I thought it was an actual medieval relic. “Just foam. You’re on the paper, right?”

  The bus pulls up. “No,” I say. “I’m not.”

  I get on the bus, slouch into a seat next to a middle-aged woman absorbed in her book. She’s the sort who probably followed the trial obsessively, knitting pink hats while watching the news. But there aren’t many seats open, and the woman doesn’t look at my face.

  Jess and Summer get on and I avoid their eyes as they pass.

  “If you want to joust, you’ll have to get real armor,” Jess says, their voice carrying two rows up and across the aisle.

  “I don’t want to joust with those assholes,” Summer says. “I want to run my longsword through their guts.”

  Jess laughs. “Look at you, all Lady Snowblood.”

  Summer gasps. “Do not associate me with that male-fantasy garbage!”

  “Fine then. You’re . . . Marguerite de Bressieux.”

  They say it with this exaggerated French accent, and Summer laughs at the reference. Could be a feminist icon or a regular on the Ren Faire circuit for all I know. I’ve been so absorbed in all things legal justice for the last year and a half that I’m waking from a coma, totally disoriented to the world of normal teenagers.

  They speak a complete
ly different language. A language of happy lives with happy friends and happy hobbies. I shove earbuds in and drown their unbearable happiness in white noise.

  CHAPTER SIX

  My father is a monster. He knows I want to hole myself up in my room, and so he devotes his afternoon to making jocón, the smells of which waft down the hall and under the crack in my door. All afternoon, chicken simmers in tomatillos and cilantro and toasted pumpkin seeds.

  I’m pissed. But also hungry.

  In the kitchen, he stands at the stove, slapping tortilla dough between his palms. He holds up a lopsided oval and grins. It takes him about ten times longer to make each tortilla than the women in Guatemala who stand at the comals all day, babies strapped to their backs, endlessly producing the staple food of their communities. Growing up, Papi could run to any corner at mealtimes and pay pennies for a stack of fresh, piping-hot tortillas.

  “Nice one.” I slide onto a barstool, flip through the junk mail. “Very tortilla-adjacent.”

  “Want to try?” He offers a ball of dough across the counter.

  I take it, remembering the first time I tried to shape the dough in my uncle’s kitchen. Tío Gallo laughed at my attempt but told me the shape didn’t matter; a wonky oval would scoop up the beans just as well as a perfect circle.

  The masa feels like Play-Doh between my fingers, but weightier. The Mayan gods fashioned people out of cornmeal after their first attempts failed; mud and wood did not a human race create. Even the gods make mistakes.

  “Whoa, whoa, you’ve got to be gentle with the masa.” Papi cringes at the pulverized mess between my fingers. “¿Te acuerdas? One hand twists, while the other lightly—”

  “I don’t want to tortillear.”

  He sighs, takes the mess of dough back. “Then make the salad, canchita. Have you given any more thought to what you’re going to do with your summer?”