Know My Name

by Chanel Miller

  The news linked to a police report, I clicked, scrolling, looking for victim, victim, victim. I found the deputy’s carefully written notes. I found the female subject, later identified as VICTIM. I found her on the ground behind the dumpster. I found her wearing a black, skin tight dress. I found her dress had been pulled up about her hips, and was gathered near her waist. Her entire buttocks were uncovered, and she was not wearing any underwear. I found her lower abdomen and pubic area was visible. I found her vagina and butt. I found her long hair was disheveled, knotted, and completely covered in pine needles all throughout. I found her lying in a position with her feet and legs bent in a 45–90 degree angle (fetal position) and her arms were in front of her chest with her hands on the ground near her face. I found her dress stretched down over both shoulders, bra pulled out. I found it was only covering her right breast. I found the necklace wrapped all the way around her neck so that the pendant portion was now centered on her back. I found a pair of white with black polka-dot panties lying bunched up on the ground about 6 inches in front of VICTIM’s stomach. I found her silver iPhone on the ground behind her buttocks. There was a blue cell phone case that was approximately 4 inches away, separated from the iPhone. I found she was wearing brown boots that were still laced, with the laces tied in a bow.

  I found the first comment at the end of the article: What was a college grad doing at a frat? I didn’t understand. Did we just read the same article? I closed the report. I decided right then it was not true, none of it was real, because I, Chanel, was sitting at the office, and the body being publicly taken apart did not belong to me. I suppose this was when Emily Doe was born, me but not me at all, and suddenly I hated her, I did not want this, her nakedness, her pain. It was Emily, all of this was Emily.

  There is a layer that exists beneath Palo Alto’s groomed lawns, gentle breeze, Teslas freshly painted. Scrape a layer below the sun and smiles, and there was pressure, not in a kettle-screaming sort of way, more like a simmering.

  At Gunn High, the only sport we dominated in was badminton. No one could tell you the score from the football game, but winners of national math competitions were posted on windows. Our school was known for incubating gentle, humble geniuses. But the messiness was always missing. No one aspired to become a painter or sailor or literary recluse. You had to make sense, to stay aligned with the mass that progressed so smoothly upward. Struggling only slowed you down, and there was so much to do, so much to be, mental health came last on our list. To be unstable meant to fall behind.

  In the spring of 2009, my junior year at Gunn, all teachers were summoned into the gym at lunch. Soon they trickled back out, walking so slowly. I noticed the way their shoulders curved, their faces paled, none of them speaking. The lunch bell rang, and we went to class, where the teacher read us a letter to inform us of the news: a classmate had stepped in front of the Caltrain and killed himself.

  The shock was palpable, students calling out to each other in frantic tones. One month later, the exact same letter was read again, Sorry to inform you, the loss of, if you need help please don’t hesitate to, except this time, the name was a girl’s. She had been in my French class, a red rose placed on her empty desk. We sat in one hour of silence, sniffling, heads down. My friend began crying loudly and my teacher asked me to walk her to the counselor’s office. After I dropped her off, I stood alone on the pavement, unsure what to do with myself. I wanted to run away.

  She was buried in the cemetery across the street from school. I arrived late, everyone gone, wandering through the green grass and half-circle stones. I watched the curved arm of a bulldozer pat down the dirt on her grave, a dull, constant thudding. The pounding metal made my teeth ache. I wanted to tell them, Be gentle, she’s in there.

  Not long after, we were read the same exact letter, a new name. Again another name. Four suicides by train in six months. At night we’d turn on the news to see a rickety gurney carting a covered cylindrical shape away. Other schools had snow days, we had days for students who died, tests got canceled, kids sliding down the walls in grief. If you had trouble, you’d simply whisper to your teacher and you’d get sent home or to the counselor’s office.

  After the first death, everyone showed up to school wearing black, but by the fourth, we were warned not to glorify, to trigger. The roses and letters were taken down, chalk messages hosed off, candles blown out, stuffed animals placed in bags. There was a sudden disjunction between what was felt and what was seen; all appeared normal. I learned celebrating a life could ignite a death.

  Friends who vocalized their depression were immediately medicated, pills doled out, backpacks rattling like maracas. Some were hospitalized, put on suicide watch, gone for a few weeks, the rest of us courteous enough not to ask questions when they returned from “vacation.” You were either treated as an extreme case on the verge of death, or you were expected to carry on; nothing in between. So we settled for perpetual numbness.

  The bushes around the tracks were cleared out, the large hedges disappeared. A man was hired to watch the intersection, wearing a beanie, puffy black jacket, neon-orange vest, seated in a foldout chair. When it rained, a tiny clear tent was placed over him. He sat there, guarding the tracks, for over twelve hours a day, day after day, for years. In economics we learned how jobs were created to accommodate demand. What job was that? What did it mean that someone was hired to keep us from killing ourselves?

  So many nights were lost to panic. If your friend wasn’t doing well, you weren’t sure if they’d be dead in the morning. Search parties broke out, racing to the tracks to catch one another. A dark, twisted game. One evening I walked to the tracks to lay down some daisies. I arrived to see squad cars parked at odd angles. I stood paralyzed. A student had just attempted but was thwarted. He was sitting alone in the back of a cop car, head down, blinking back tears, hands latched behind his back, mucus dangling from the tip of his nose. I never told anyone I saw him, and when he returned to school I pretended nothing had happened. I wondered if this was what I was supposed to be doing, if these were the new rules of the world we were living in.

  I put a little pink slip in the guidance counselor’s office, requesting a session, but they were backlogged. I attended a mental health session; we were instructed to lean back in our chairs, place a tangerine on our navels, monitoring our breathing by watching the rise and fall of the citrus sphere. I felt vacant, staring at the tangerine on my belly button.

  Three more Gunn student suicides occurred while I was away in college. After graduation, when I moved back to Palo Alto, three more would happen within three months, two by train. When I’d learned of the most recent suicide in November 2014, I’d pulled my boss aside, wept, was released home.

  Ten suicides, the name replaced ten times. These were not pill-swallowing, bridge-jumping, arm-slicing suicides, for those at least carried a sliver of a chance you’d survive. These were certain deaths. No one survived being hit by a wall of steel going eighty miles per hour. What struck me was how quickly the blood and remains on the metal were cleaned, the train restored to its hourly schedule, rushing to deliver commuters to work on time. How unsettling it was to watch cars glide so casually and continually over the intersection where they’d died, the tires bumping over the tracks.

  * * *

  • • •

  So on that January morning in 2015, reading the story of the Stanford assault on the news was like being read a letter, Sorry to inform you, impersonal and flat, but it was not about a death on the tracks, it was about a sad and strange rape on a local campus, a body found stripped and disheveled. This time, it was my name.

  I looked outside and saw the sun shining, ducks paddling through the pond, everyone working. I sat still at my desk, the same way I’d sat still in the classroom all those years before. I knew I would show up again at work the next morning, the same way tires bumped over the tracks, the same way that after learning about a death, yo
u’d take out your textbook and carry on with the lesson. Whatever alarms arose in my body were silenced, the horror made distant. My eyes became wet, I would cry in private, but I knew I would do what I had always done: detach, keep going.

  When I arrived home that night, I parked outside my small pink house. I admired the little pebbles out front, the twinkling lights, the waxy leaves of jade. I thought of the two people inside, my mom and dad, unaware the victim lived under their roof. I imagined them mulling about their evening routines; my dad emptying his coins out of his pockets, my mom chopping green onion into ringlets, and wanted to preserve their peace.

  My parents are protectors. If anything was wrong growing up, they did a good job of shielding us from it. My sister and I picked up early on that they had serious discussions while walking our dogs. They’d head out in the evening, walking with arms linked, crinkly bags stuffed in their pockets. Tiffany and I would stalk them, ducking behind parked cars to listen. Dad’s worried your reading efficiency is behind! As I stared at my house, I realized it was too small, I could not hide a secret that big, could not drag it down the hallway and muffle it inside my room. The thought of breaking the news made my stomach ache. Every time it rained, my dad said, The plants must be so happy! How would it feel when he’d learn his daughter had been raped? How to tell them? I would’ve wanted someone to have looked me in the eye, lowered their voice, gently laid their hand on mine. Perhaps I could do this for them.

  And what if they were disappointed, what if I’d lost their trust. You’ve kept this from us the whole time? You snuck home from the hospital? If you’re this good at putting on an act, what else are you hiding?

  Mostly I feared what would happen when I experienced the assault through their eyes; their sadness would scare me. If I broke the news calmly, it was a hint they needed to respond calmly, no mouths agape, no crying. If your friend gets a horrendous haircut, there’s a tacit agreement to say it looks fine. If you say, GOOD GOD, she will cry with her face in her hands saying, What do I do now? I can’t go out like this! And you’ll realize you should have given her hair a chance to grow back a little. Only then can you say, Yes, that haircut was heinous.

  I thought if I executed my delivery correctly we could avoid suffering entirely. I would not say, disheveled, bent, bloody, naked. I sat on the corner of my bed, practiced whispering fragments of it under my breath. I would highlight the most important fact, that I had been saved. On the news, I had learned two Swedish graduate students on bicycles had come to the rescue. I said it aloud, Two cyclists. Two cyclists intervened. Luckily, two cyclists chased him down, held him down! And then, two cyclists tackled him, they intercepted, pushed him to the ground! They ran after him, that’s the good thing, two cyclists intervened.

  When I was ready I walked down the hallway, peeked my head into my dad’s room, where he was sitting in his recliner wearing his Warriors sweatshirt watching the Warriors basketball game. Whenever you’re free I have something to tell you! I said. Not urgent! My mom was sitting in the corner of the living room at the other end of the house on her computer, cracking sunflower seeds in her teeth, their pointed remnants scattering onto the floor. Are you busy? When dad comes out I want to tell you guys something!

  They made their way to the dinner table while I stood at the head of it, as if conducting a small board meeting. I said, There’s news, don’t look at the news, have you seen the news? That Stanford assault guy? They shook their heads; my dad said, Vaguely, a word he often used. Remember the party we went to, Tiffany and I, that guy tried to, he was caught. I’m not sure, but I think it was just his fingers, so that’s good. I shrugged. I don’t remember, so. But it’s awful when you read it, so you don’t need to, please don’t, actually. I couldn’t say any more, stood smiling like an insane person. They stared at me, waiting for me to finish whatever it was I was trying to tell them, and I waited for them to say, All righty! Glad you’re okay! But they remained still, as if a single movement would cause something to detonate.

  My dad said something about, honey, something about, I’m so sorry, do you remember if, can you tell us what . . . But it was my mom’s motionless face I watched, her expression growing dark. Her eyes became two black holes, her voice emerged low and level. Who is he? I shook my head to show her I didn’t really know. Which night was this? Was this when you were drinking in the kitchen? The night I drove you? Where is he? I could not look at her anymore, just down at the table, shaking my head, half shrugging. The intensity silenced me, I could not bear what the room had become.

  I saw the pool. I was six, my sister four, we were swimming in our backyard. My mom sat beneath an umbrella in a sun hat and floor-length orange dress, reading a magazine. I had a towel draped around my shoulders, had a funny idea to swim while wearing it. But I hadn’t realized that my sister had seen me enter the water with the towel, had grabbed her own, and followed me in. She had sunk, letting it anchor her to the bottom. I heard my mom scream, watched her leap, orange smearing through the air. Beneath the water she became a wild flame with long black hair, scooping my sister up from the bottom. She emerged with her sunglasses askew, dress plastered to her skin, my sister wrapped around her body, sun hat floating like a lily pad nearby. My sister’s eyes were scrunched tightly, mouth open like a little fish, gasping and wailing. And there was my mom, smoothing my sister’s wet hair out of her eyes, carrying her to shallow waters.

  As I stood at the head of the table, unable to fill the silence, I broke. Bent over, my mouth opened in cries of pain, wet gasps. I heard the chair scrape the wood as my mom pushed away from the table, springing up, immediate, the same way she had when my sister was drowning. She held on to me tightly, one arm locked firmly around my side, the other hand stroking my hair, whispering Mommy’s not mad, mommy’s just scared. She would be there until I found my breathing, until I felt the reassurance of ground beneath me.

  That night my body could finally soften, exhale. I imagined as I slept they would discuss it out of earshot, the way they always did. I told my sister, Mom and Dad know, glad to give her this relief. I had survived the telling, the hardest parts were over. In Fearrington, North Carolina, my grandparents had lived by a pond, where geese plodded around with those curved black necks, squeaky honking. My Grandpa Miller explained that during migration, birds flew in V formation. The bird at the front, the tip of the V, had the hardest job facing the greatest amount of wind resistance. The air coming off the leader’s flapping wings lifted the birds flying behind it. Being the leader was grueling, so the birds took turns. When a bird exhausted itself, it trailed to the back, where it wouldn’t have to flap as hard, riding waves of wind that have been broken down by others. It saved its energy so that it could lead again. This was the only way to make the journey, to escape winter and make it to warmer places. I had spent two weeks pumping my wings, keeping a calm face, to protect my flock from brutal conditions. But resilience required rest. For the next eight months I was going to fall back. The most important thing to remember was that to be at the rear, to be slower, did not mean you were not a leader.

  The next day, a lemon pie sat on the counter next to a note. In the hushed hours of morning while I’d been sleeping, my dad had picked lemons from the backyard, boiled sugar and eggs over the stove, pressed fingertips into crust along the edge, sprinkled powdered sugar on top. I brought it into work to share. I sat at my desk with my yellow slice and opened my browser.

  Stanford swimmer denies alleged rape. I almost choked, felt I’d been slapped hard in the chest. This article had a trigger warning, this version more graphic, I brushed it aside, clicked the police report, eyes sliding back and forth. Throughout the night, TURNER hooked up with a few girls. In the report, all the people he’d kissed were named girls, but because he’d assaulted me, I was never called girl, only victim. He stated that he kissed VICTIM while on the ground. He took off the VICTIM’s underwear and fingered her vagina. He also touched the VICTIM’s br
easts. I could not eat the mushy pie, my forehead hot, thighs pressed tightly together, clenching my fork. When arrested, the police had noted a bulge in Brock’s crotch area.

  TURNER does not know the identity of VICTIM. He never got her name and was not able to really describe her. He stated that he probably would not be able to recognize victim if he saw her again. In his mind, I didn’t have a face or a name. But the article stated we had met at a party, as if the attraction had been mutual, involved cordial chatting.

  He was having a good time with VICTIM and stated that she also seemed to enjoy the activity. Enjoy. I stared at this word, a little thing I did not recognize. I wanted to lunge at him, one arm snaking down his throat, grabbing his esophagus like a rope, yanking it clean.

  TURNER started to not feel well and decided that it was getting late. He said that he stood up to leave and was suddenly tackled by a group of guys. When asked why he ran, he stated that he doesn’t think that he ran. It’s “getting late” is what you say when you take your napkin off your lap, place it on your crumb-covered plate, and say you should head home because you have work in the morning. “Getting late” isn’t sliding your slick hand out of a woman, standing up with a full erection, brushing yourself off, trotting away, leaving a body behind. This should have been enough. This single line should have clogged the gears, kept them from spinning.

  I called my DA, Hey! Did you see this? He said I liked it! How is that even possible? I can’t believe this, can you believe this? What is this? I was half laughing, incredulous. But she did not match my tone. I know, she said, I know. She sighed the way you do before you begin a sentence with unfortunately or regrettably. She explained that pleading not guilty was a predicted formality. This was to be expected. But I’m telling you now, I said, I didn’t enjoy it. I don’t know who he is. He doesn’t even know what I look like.