Know My Name

by Chanel Miller

  When we got home, Tiffany went inside while I sat in the car. I realized my boyfriend, Lucas, would be wondering why I’d been mute all day. He lived in Philadelphia and we’d been dating for a few months. He picked up after the first ring. I was worried about you last night, he said. Did you make it home okay?

  I was unaware I’d even called him. I scrolled through my phone log, found his name buried in my missed calls. I had phoned him around midnight, woken him up at 3:00 A.M. his time. Did you find Tiffany? He asked. I was worried you’d wake up in a bush or something. My stomach hardened. He knew? How could he know? What do you mean? I said. He said by the end of our conversation I wasn’t speaking English, that I kept rambling gibberish. Every time there was a pause in my speech, he would yell into the phone to go find Tiffany, but I never responded. He knew I’d been alone, incapacitated. I felt myself sinking. You left me a voice mail, he said. You sound obliterated. I said, Don’t delete it. Promise me you won’t delete it?

  Is everything okay? You sound sad, he said. I nodded, as if he could hear this. Just sleepy, I said. I went inside, stripped my iPhone of its dirty case, but didn’t wash it. I folded my sweat suit, tucked it into the back of my drawers. I slid my orange folder onto my shelf, my hospital bracelet clipped off and tucked inside it. I had a strange desire to preserve everything, artifacts that proved the existence of this alternate reality.

  The next day was Martin Luther King Day, the last day of the long weekend. Before Tiffany drove back to school, I wanted to show her this was not a time to disengage or distance ourselves, we had to stay close to Mom and Dad. I proposed we go out for dinner. We stood waiting to be seated, next to red paper decorations, a bowl of melon candies, a tank full of frowning fish. We ordered an entire Peking duck. As always, my mom prepped us with a demonstration; lay out the circular bun, spread a dollop of plum sauce, add a crispy morsel of crimson duck meat, a few sprigs of green onion and cucumber stalks, wrapping it all up. Mom is rolling duck blunts. Mom, Mom look, Quack Kush. After dinner, my sister drove the two hundred miles back to school, through stretches of flatland, Gilroy, Salinas, King City, back to San Luis Obispo. She said she was scared to leave me alone. Why? I said. That’s ridiculous, I’ll be fine.

  At the time it was very simple; I put the memory of that morning inside a large jar. I took this jar and carried it down, down, down, flights and flights of stairs, placing it inside a cabinet, locking it away, and walking briskly back up the stairs to continue with the life I had built, the one that had nothing to do with him, or what he could ever do to me. The jar was gone.

  I did not know that at 11:00 P.M. the previous night, he had been released on $150,000 bail. Less than twenty-four hours after being arrested, he was already free.

  2.

  PALO ALTO IS lined with magnolia trees full of creamy blossoms, blue mailboxes, oranges like round dots on trees. Temperatures average in the seventies, you can smell the sun baking fallen shards of eucalyptus bark. There’s mottled shade in spotless parks, pink-tongued dogs. Cul-de-sacs with Eichler houses, wooden garage doors, Japanese maples. Sidewalks are smoothly paved, kids bicycle to school and adults bicycle to work; everybody has degrees and everybody recycles.

  I was working at a start-up creating educational apps for kids, in a one-room office with eleven other people, our desks clustered close, a few glass-walled meeting rooms to the side. I had been there about six months, my first job out of school. I’d created a semblance of an adult life, waking earlier, going out less. I entered meetings and office birthdays into my Google calendar, stacked with lavender- and tangerine-highlighted tabs. I ordered print cartridges, purchased a sleek white road bike with my first paycheck, named it Tofu. Tried to minimize the number of exclamation points I used in formal emails.

  I had no room for words such as rape, victim, trauma, abrasions, attorneys in the world I was trying to build. I had my own word bank; Prius, spreadsheets, Fage yogurt, building credit, trips to Napa, improving posture. My semblance of an adult life may have been a toothpick-and-marshmallow replica, but it was significant to me, no matter how fragile the framework.

  How was your weekend? my coworker said. Did your sister have a good visit? Saturday, I’d gone to the party. Sunday, the hospital and police station. Monday, Peking duck. Yes, so fun.

  I stood under the fluorescent light of the office kitchen. My strudel spun in the microwave. I crossed my arms, noticed strange shadows on my hand, upon examination, bruises. They had blossomed beneath my skin, the color of morning glories. I pulled up my sleeves and found more purple stains on the insides of my elbows. I pressed the spots, bleached white beneath my thumb. I was mesmerized, as if watching myself transform into another creature. In first grade, I’d discovered the sides of my hands had turned a shimmering silver. I am a mermaid, I whispered to a friend. She explained it was lead, pencil smears from my paper. A simple, boring explanation; I’m sure these bruises had one too. I took pictures of each spot, to verify they weren’t imagined. I pulled my sleeves back down. Why look, when everything was taken care of. My strudel was burning, microwave exhaling, I was dish towel flapping, before smoke could drift into the office.

  When I came home that evening, the jar I had carried down into the depths of my mental cellar was sitting in the center of the room, waiting for me. That’s funny, how did you get here? Again I picked it up, opened the door, and walked down, down, down the stairs to lock it away.

  I woke up into pure quiet at four in the morning. It was still dark out. I clicked on my helmet, a shell of dried Styrofoam, and rolled Tofu into the street. I biked down long gravel paths, beneath sprawling oak trees, small wooden bridges. When I returned through the courtyard, I could see my dad through the kitchen window, hair tufty, making coffee, barefoot in his worn blue bathrobe. He was stunned. You’re awake? he said. I was trying out my new bike, I said. I love it.

  Applying lotion after showering, my skin prickled and stung. I imagined bees with little teeth, chewing my raw flesh. I ignored the aches and reminded myself nothing was broken. Whenever my mind began drifting off into disturbing scenarios, I said, Stop. It’s over. I’m home, Tiffy’s home. Still I wondered why my arms were littered with lavender blotches. I told myself, Hope. I told myself, Hinky. Meanwhile unease churned deep in my gut.

  Bike, sunrise, work, sunset. Days passed. My phone remained void of messages. I felt restless, began biking at night, long roads, along highways. This worried my dad, who added an extra headlight. My handlebars strobed, light shooting out in every direction, preventing me from dissolving into the darkness.

  We used to have a white cat named Dream. We loved him for twelve years. Two weeks before Christmas, Dream went missing. Tiffany and I ventured out, calling his name, flashlight beams swinging across fields. When Christmas passed, my parents informed us that Dream had been hit by a car, found by the side of the road a few weeks prior. They handed us his ashes in a box, with a certificate from the crematorium that said Dream Miller, beneath a rainbow. They had waited to tell us because they did not want to ruin Christmas. I found it strange they had let us wander out into the fields while the cat was dead in a box in the closet. What I had now was another dead cat. I could hide it in my closet and maintain the illusion that I was fine. Or I could say, I might have been raped, right near our home, and show them a box full of ashes. I decided there was no rush, I did not want to ruin Christmas.

  It was never in my nature to lean on others. Growing up, when my mom tried to carry me I’d thrash my legs and say, Wo ziji zou! (I walk alone!). My sister would stand glued to the ground with her arms lifted until she was picked up. I was older, had seen my mom weep when one of our dog’s new puppies had suffocated, had seen my father wearing a turquoise dress in the hospital when he had a pulmonary embolism. It had dawned on me that they were not invincible, that if anything happened I would need to be able to take care of us both.

  Thursday my sister was summoned to her loc
al police station in San Luis Obispo. The officers wanted to walk her through a lineup of photos that had been sent to them by the Stanford police department. Her job was to identify the aggressive male subject she’d told them about. The police had clicked through pictures of white guys with unkempt hair and acne, and when his face came onscreen, she locked up. The police report stated, Without hesitation, Tiffany identified photo #4. When asked how positive she was percentagewise, she said, One hundred percent. She called me, I saw him.

  What do you mean? I was confused, how did the police figure out which guy had tried to kiss her? Did they take mug shots of every guy at the party? Was this a process of elimination? Why were they spending time pursuing him instead of focusing on the assailant?

  No, she said. He must be the one.

  That can’t be, I said.

  The guy who tried to kiss me went after you. I’m fucked up, she said, that fucked me up.

  That night he had stared into her face. I can’t get his image out of my head. But still he had no name. Still nobody called me.

  Every time I thought of that morning, another jar was born. Now jars filled every inch of my mind. I had nowhere to put them. They cluttered the stairwells, could not be contained in cabinets. I was full of these sealed jars, no room to sit or walk or breathe.

  Ten days of emptiness passed. I woke up to a text. My sister had sent me a screenshot of the Stanford Daily Police Blotter. One bullet point read: A victim’s reportedly U-locked bike was stolen from in front of Roble Hall sometime between 3 p.m. on Friday and 10 a.m. on Sunday. Another read: Sunday, Jan. 18. An individual was arrested and transported to the San Jose Main Jail for attempted rape at 1 a.m. near Lomita Court. The first acknowledgment this was real. I didn’t even exist in this sentence. I absorbed the word attempted. The lurking man must not have succeeded. He must have seen me passed out, eyed me suspiciously, and some guys swatted him away. A part of me was grateful, but a part of me was sad. That’s it? A little phrase, easy to miss, hidden among reports of petty thefts. If this was how actual assaults were reported, how many had I missed? That morning, I believed this was all the press my case would receive, a single sentence that could fit on a fortune-cookie paper.

  Later I was at my desk sipping a mug of coffee, scrolling through a sandwich menu for lunch. I clicked back to the news on my homepage, saw Stanford athlete, saw raping, saw unconscious woman. I clicked again, my screen filled with two blue eyes and a neat row of teeth, freckles, red tie, black suit. I had never seen this man before. Brock Turner. I read he had been charged with five felony counts: rape of an intoxicated person, rape of an unconscious person, sexual penetration by a foreign object of an intoxicated woman, sexual penetration by a foreign object of an unconscious woman, assault with intent to commit rape. Too many words, jumbled together. Read it again, slower. I typed into Google, what is a foreign object. The panic was quiet and slow. It was defined as an object that intrudes where it should not be, as into a living body or machinery. Examples include: a speck of dust in the eye, splinter, wood chip, fishhook, glass. What intruded into me.

  The article mentioned the victim had been digitally penetrated. My mind went to digital cameras. I Googled that too. Digital, Latin root digitalis, from digitus “finger, toe.” He must have fingered her, me. Google finally sat me down and broke the news. I slouched in my rolling chair, listening to the clacking keyboards, someone refilling their water. I stared at this man while he smiled back at me. I had been told I was found passed out with a man around me. No one had ever said, The man was found inside you.

  My phone was ringing. I closed the tab and stepped off into the kid-testing room with the glass walls, yellow beanbag in the corner, humpback whale wallpaper, a jar of crayons on the table. A woman said hello, introduced herself as my Deputy District Attorney, Alaleh, she said. Pronounced Ah-lah-lei. I said it once and then again. Three syllables, like a petal falling, left right left. Ah-lah-lei. I picked up a green crayon, a scrap of paper.

  She said something like, Are you doing okay I wish we could’ve met under different circumstances we won’t be able to confirm it was rape until the DNA results come back they’ve been sent to the lab but rape kits take months to process yours may be expedited due to media pressure but for now we’ll assume penile penetration and move forward with five felonies it’s easier to charge now than add them later but if semen is not found the two rape charges will be dropped and we’ll go down to three felonies for assault and attempted rape just be aware his team may be trying to contact you and your family disguising themselves as supporters so tell family members not to talk to anyone who hasn’t been approved by Ah-lah-lei and if the press tries to contact you don’t respond they’re not allowed to contact you there’s going to be a press conference if they ask about the victim I’ll tell them to mind their own business you’ll be assigned an advocate who can answer any legal questions does that sound good nice to meet you I’m sure we’ll meet soon take care.

  I stepped out to get a pen, stopped short, stepped in again as my phone began ringing. A call from Stanford, a woman, she was head of the something, we just wanted to let you know he’s not allowed on campus anymore, okay? I thought this was good, but I was not on campus either. Where was he? This handful of minutes would be the first and last time I’d hear from Stanford for almost two years.

  Detective Kim called, explained that when the report was filed it became available to the public, which was how the media found it. He was surprised by how quickly it’d been swept up by the press. He said Brock had hired private investigators, so for now it was better not to tell any friends. In those words my whole world fell away. Investigators? What are they looking for? I asked. He said, There is no way of knowing, for now it is better to lay low, we’ll be in touch.

  Another unfamiliar number, my advocate, her name was Bree, from the YWCA, and I thanked her because her voice was kind and I didn’t know what else to say, I was still holding a crayon. My phone would not stop ringing.

  Everyone in the office was sitting quietly, as I closed and opened the door to the glass room, phone glued to my face. The calls were quick and they all ended with, Let me know if you have any questions. I had thousands of questions. But, Got it, got it, I said. Thank you, thank you, I said. I had wanted to say, Who are you? Where are you calling me from? What is an advocate? Was she my therapist? Where’s the YWCA? Apply to the Victim Assistance what? Do they pay for therapy? What kind of name is Brock? He lives in Ohio? When did he leave jail? Will I get to stay anonymous? He’ll be back for arraignment, arraignment is Monday, what is arraignment? Emails appeared in my in-box, contacts I’d need, follow-up information. I labeled the new numbers in my phone, placing a red dot emoji next to each name.

  Tiffany was calling me. She said her full name along with Julia’s had been leaked in some of the articles. Julia had been outed, talk was swelling on campus and her mother, Anne, had already received emails from concerned Stanford parents. Anne told us to stay calm, passed on legal advice: People will approach you and say they are an “investigator for the court”—which sounds very official, but they probably work for the defense or press. These folks could show up at your dorm or house. Be prepared to say “no comment.” Hang in there, girls.

  We were being hunted. I called my DA again. Alaleh said my sister’s name was not legally protected, only you, only the victim, there is nothing we can do. I refused this. I’d create an email under a pseudonym, email the media outlets myself. But how would they know it wasn’t a random person? How could I make them listen to me? I was on fire, told Tiffany I was figuring it out, I just needed a minute. I told her I talked to the DA, she’s really nice, her name is, I looked at my paper, scrawled in green waxy letters, AYLEELEE. I returned to the article.

  Alleged victim said she “blacked out” after drinking two whiskey shots, two vodka shots, and stepping outside the frat house with her sister. How’d they know exactly what I’d had
to drink? I’d never spoken to any reporters. Then I remembered myself at the hospital, sitting in that plastic chair, wet hair soaking my cotton neckline, chest caved to conceal that I wasn’t wearing a bra, my insides still tender from the exam. Everything I had recollected, details I’d fumbled to provide into that little black recorder, had been typed into transcripts. Reporters must have sifted through them, using my words to construct their own narrative for the public to pore over. I felt the walls of my life being torn down, the whole world crawling in. If words spoken softly at a rape clinic were projected over a megaphone, where was it safe for me to speak?

  I scrolled to the end of an article and saw, the woman is recovering at a hospital. Turner, a freshman, was a three-time All-American high school swimmer and state record-holder in two freestyle events . . . I saw hospital run seamlessly into record-holder. The final line: If convicted Turner, who raced in the London 2012 U.S. Olympic trials, could face up to 10 years in prison. If my name came out, what would they even say? Chanel, who works a nine-to-five entry-level job, has never been to London. This had never occurred to me as something to worry about. Jervis said Turner was an excellent student and an excellent athlete. It’s very tragic and he’s a wonderful, wonderful . . . I stopped reading. Why was he excellent, excellent, wonderful, wonderful? My coworker was asking me a question. Something about Twitter. Twitter, a teacher tweeted, what did the teacher tweet? I’ll get to it, I said to her. Get to what, I don’t know. She thanked me, for what I don’t know.