I asked how this information would come up in a trial, would I be quizzed on it? If Lucas would have to testify, would our answers be cross-referenced? I asked if there would even be a trial. He said it was way beyond him, that it was still too early to even seriously talk about any of that. But he predicted that with all our new evidence, Brock would want to start backing out of the spotlight to begin rebuilding his life in private. That’s what I would do if I were him. I was comforted by this.
He walked me back to my car, said it was good to see I was doing better. I thought back to the morning he met me and nodded. The fog had burned off, it was bright, I was late for work. I liked Detective Kim, around him I felt safe, and he always seemed sincerely apologetic for collecting fragments of my life. I also enjoyed talking about Lucas, could go on as long as he needed.
But as I sat in my car, keys in my hand, I realized Lucas was a wonderful part of my life outside this mess, and now he was being recruited to a crucial role inside it. All my little stories, my private and intimate moments were being typed up and sent to Brock’s defense attorney, available for reporters to read through, where the sweetness would be diluted and reframed. I already wanted everything I’d said back, to take every word home with me. The line between what was mine and theirs was blurring.
I was thankful to have Lucas. But it bothered me that having a boyfriend and being assaulted should be related, as if I, alone, was not enough. At the hospital it had never occurred to me that it was important I was dating someone; I had only been thinking of me and my body. It should have been enough to say, I did not want a stranger touching my body. It felt strange to say, I have a boyfriend, which is why I did not want Brock touching my body. What if you’re assaulted and you didn’t already belong to a male? Was having a boyfriend the only way to have your autonomy respected? Later I’d read suggestions that I cried rape because I was ashamed I had cheated on my boyfriend. Somehow the victim never wins.
And what if I’d been assaulted the summer before, in the aftermath of a broken relationship? What kind of questions would the detective have asked? Oh, my dating life? Yes, well, I went to dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant with one guy on Tuesday, but slept with a different one on Sunday who’s never taken me on dates, but was wearing cool socks that evening. Yes, I did go home with a guy who has a tattoo of a beheaded pigeon who still texts me at two in the morning. Yes, I did order four Moscow Mules, yes, they were all for me. Would I have had any credibility? Would my private life have been exhibited to show that I was too loose, my lifestyle indecent? I would never have been able to explain they were my choices, but choices made during a period of sadness and low esteem. We all have different ways of coping, self-medicating, ways of surviving the rough patches. To deny my messiness would be to deny my humanity. I don’t believe there is such a thing as an immaculate past or a perfect victim. Yet now I felt I was being upheld to an impossible standard of purity, worried that failing to meet it would justify Brock raping me. His attorney would simplify, generalize, and mislabel my history.
In other blackouts, I was responsible for acting a fool. But waking up to an empty McDonald’s bag and crumbs on my chest was different than waking up with dried blood and clothes missing. In the obscurity of the blackout lived a pivotal difference. Rape required inflicting harm on somebody. The moment I was violently dragged into his story, my story stopped. When I was finally out of his hands, or rather when his hands slipped out of me, I was released back into my life. But it was during that brief passing over, that period where he took the reins, where I lost everything.
* * *
• • •
I began showing up to work later and later, sometimes coming in at noon with no explanation. How did other victims manage this back-and-forth between worlds, the rotation of selves? You can’t fawn over your coworker’s photos of Maui by morning, slip away to battle your rapist by noon. It required two entirely different modes of being; different worries, rules, bosses, emotions. If this continued, I wouldn’t be able to go and come back, but I was not ready to quit my job and give up my life yet. I prayed he would give up first.
Every time I received a call from an unfamiliar number, my head filled with heat. I was wary of investigators, tracking me, listening. Months passed. I had not told a single friend. Every email about the case brought on a surge of stress; it was not distracting, it was mindwiping, I’d forget what I was doing, my mood sinking the rest of the day.
My hospital bill arrived, just short of a thousand dollars. My dad called me into the living room, asked me if I knew anything about getting reimbursed. I told him about restitution, how Brock would be court-ordered to pay it off, but only at the end. It would be paid back, I promise. But I wondered how many costs would accumulate. I learned it was expensive to be assaulted.
Another letter appeared at home stamped with The County of Santa Clara court seal. It asked if I wanted Brock tested for HIV and provided a form for me to fill out. I didn’t know, was I supposed to? Would he be mad at me? Would he know I was the one who requested it? Can’t you do these things without asking me? I never responded. When a friend came over, I quickly slipped the letter off my desk. My way of dealing with it was to not deal with it, to throw away the incoming letters, to refuse to research what this process might look like.
My rape kit still hadn’t been tested in the crime lab. They told me it would be expedited due to media pressure, but months later I was still waiting. I figured it had something to do with results showing up slowly, some DNA sciencey who knows what. But I was told it was because of the backlog of kits. There were hundreds in line before me, some kits kept so long they grew mold, some thrown out, the lucky ones refrigerated. Immediately I felt ill. How could that be; this was not fruit rotting, it was little pieces of us in each one, an indispensable story. It also meant there was a population of victims in my vicinity, disguised in their everyday lives, going to work, refilling their coffee, eyes wide at night, waiting.
Most nights I avoided going home after work, wary of questions as simple as, How was your day. Instead I parked my car downtown, walking along the lane of lit-up trees on University Avenue, taking comfort from others while being alone. One night, I passed a metal newspaper box, saw Brock’s name in the upper-right corner. I slipped out a newspaper and trotted to my car. I clicked on the weak light, flipped the pages open, found an opinion piece a Stanford student had written. She asked why, in the Turner case, there was so much focus and condemnation of the victim’s alcohol consumption. I could hear the soft plops of water on paper as tears fell off my cheeks. She was asking questions, pushing back, a hand reaching out in an attempt to lighten the heavy thing I’d been carrying. I folded the newspaper into fourths, tucked it into my purse for safekeeping.
Every time I stayed out late, I received texts from my mom, Mama can’t sleep until you’re home. This was new. Growing up I’d never had a curfew. Now my parents asked where I was, how I was, who I was with, when I was coming home, the boundaries of my adulthood shrinking.
One day I received a call at work: no semen found. A tiny knot unbound in my chest; I was penis-free. Thank you! I said, my coworkers in close proximity. You have a nice day too. Since there was no penile penetration, five felony counts would be reduced to three; rape charges were dropped while sexual assault charges remained. My celebration died down as I realized how this would appear in the news. People would say, See! They were wrong. Soon they’ll throw out the rest of the charges too. How come the victim doesn’t pay for the crime of false accusation? The DA is after him, sad his reputation was already ruined. Sickens me to see an innocent person used as a scapegoat. When will she apologize?
The hearing was set for June 8, 2015. The preliminary hearing would be like a minitrial without a jury, to determine whether there was enough evidence to merit a full trial. Tiffany would be missing finals week, would need to take her exams early. She had planned on telling her professors it
was a “family matter,” but in three of the six tellings, she had broken down while the professor held her, stared at her, or patted her. It was embarrassing, she told me. I’m tired. I needed to tell my boss in order to request time off. I admired her deeply; still I was nervous. I’d now be perceived differently, aware of everything commenters had called me: sloppy, irresponsible, reckless.
Sitting across from her in a glass-walled room, I struggled with where to begin. Have you read about the Stanford swimming assault . . . It was me. Her mouth parted slightly. I could never get out more than eight to twelve words before the walls of my throat began to ache. I looked down at the table, my eyes burning. She asked a few questions in a gentle tone, but I kept shaking my head, holding my breath, until her voice faded away. I waited for something to happen, perhaps talk about scheduling. But when I looked up I saw a tear rolling down her cheek. I felt a small shock, something inside me awakening and softening. I was not in trouble. I was not stupid. It was sad, she was sad. I was stunned.
On May 5, Alaleh informed us we’d have to reschedule the hearing due to the defense attorney’s unavailability. The options for resetting the court dates stretched into September. I didn’t know this was possible. My company was small, how would I explain my strange absences? Everyone thought I was taking time off in June, but now I’d have to tell them I’d be gone in July or August or September. Tiffany would also have to inform a new set of professors during fall quarter. I’ll be in touch about the next court date, Alaleh said. If anything comes up, please feel free to call me. We’d later discover the hearing would fall even later. This was part of the madness of the system; the illusion of structure, plans never followed.
How long would I have to live my double life, pretending things were going smoothly? I was behind on work, a pile accumulating on my desk. I couldn’t catch up and I couldn’t keep looking at that pile. Some days I would sit and stare at the screen and do nothing. Every morning, I had to work harder to talk my limbs into moving. Imagine a skeleton, tossing its organs inside its bony shell, sealing on its skin. Strutting into the world with a Hello! Doing fine, thank you. How are you? I’ll have it to you by the end of the day. Yes! That’s too funny, ha ha, good-bye. Holding myself together long enough to go home and fall back apart, rolling into the corners.
Home was no longer home. Home was hell, steering clear of the courthouse, the sprawling Stanford campus. I felt ridiculous fearing places I knew to be objectively safe. I could not stop reading comments online. By now I’d grown deaf to the warmhearted ones, while the harsh ones grew louder. I always told myself I wouldn’t read any more. Then maybe one or two. But they trailed in like ants, a single one appeared, suddenly I noticed a line, and then they were inside all my bowls and boxes and left-out spoons. They were faceless dots, swarming, subtle, incessant, always reminding me I could never eliminate them. Me and all of these ants.
Lucas was about to move to Los Angeles for his MBA program’s summer internship. He offered for me to join him. I thought of the jogs in the sand along Venice Beach, the late-night ramen. But I needed to prove I could find my own way forward.
In our living room there’s a portrait my mom framed of the poet Pablo Neruda, who I always thought was my great grandpa. Why else did we have an old man on our wall? For my whole life, art and writing were my steady ground. Grandma Ann always said I was born with a pencil in my hand. I draw when I’m upset, when I’m bored, when I’m sad. My parents let me draw directly on my walls, inking sumo wrestlers crawling out of chimneys, eggplants with long arms. On physics tests when I blanked on an answer, I’d draw a man shrugging, saying I simply do not know, using test time to shade the bags beneath his eyes. In college, I stacked my bookshelves with Rumi, Woolf, Didion, Wendell Berry, Mary Oliver, Banana Yoshimoto, Miranda July, Chang-rae Lee, Carlos Bulosan. I slept in the library. I learned printmaking, spent nights in the print room carving linoleum blocks, inking the barrels, staining my apron, watching the sun rise. When I wrote, when I drew, the world slowed, and I forgot everything that existed outside it.
Growing up, there were times my mom left us for weeks for writers’ residencies. I remember this vividly because my dad would serve the same canned peas and chicken and rice day after day, while we waited for her to come home. Finally, we would drive through unfamiliar hills to a gallery opening in a forest, the adults in flowy clothing and lipstick, crackers with those teeny-tiny neon-orange fish balls that made me gag. My mom told us how she’d write all morning, hike in the afternoon, ticks latching on to her socks, and I thought how could you leave us for blood-eating bugs and seafood caviar? One time I asked her why she’d left, and she said, I want to be who I am. It was sort of impossible to argue with that.
In Palo Alto, I was beginning to feel acutely that I was not fitting into old patterns of myself, who I was or who I thought I would be. I wanted a place where I could create, a corner of the world where I could disappear. I chose the smallest state, as far away as possible from California, to live with people I had never met. The Children’s Book Writing class was full, but no matter. I would leave my job to enroll in a printmaking workshop, From Light to Ink, three thousand miles away, at the Rhode Island School of Design for the summer. The woman in the admissions office was named Joy, just like the nurse. I took this to be a good sign. My parents asked the usual questions, what about safety, are you sure, what will you do when you come back, but they understood. By now I had enough saved to pay my own tuition, rent, flight. I assumed the trial would conclude by the end of year, and my savings would last me until then. When I wrote my name on the RISD application form, signed the check, sealed the dark yellow envelope, I lay on my carpet, overcome. My dad peeked in to see how I was doing and I said, I’m so happy.
Before I left, there was one person I wanted to tell. Claire, a close friend of mine, with freckled skin and a tiny nose ring, was about to move to France to work as an au pair for a year. We had spent her last weeks sitting in her car, eating ice cream and listening to French cassette tapes. I was always waiting for the right time. But maybe there would never be a right time; all I knew was that I was running out of it and I would have to tell her now. She had gone through something similar when she was only eighteen, called the police, completed the rape kit, but even after she did everything victims are instructed to do, she was informed it was not enough to more forward. In my room I told her. She immediately leaned over and put her arms around me, and strangely I did not have to say much at all. She understood. She pulled back, looked me square in the face, and said, This is your opportunity.
For months I’d regarded this case as a burden that had been placed on me, one I wanted to rid myself of. I was frustrated, why do I have to do this, I don’t have time. But in her eyes this was a chance. This was what she’d tried to do four years ago, only to be met with impatience and apathy, only to be worn out and set aside by authorities, until her best choice had been to leave, to force herself to forget. There had been a time she had tried hard to get to the place that I was in now. I had somehow reopened the way forward. You’re the one who’s going to do it. And I thought of her at eighteen, and I thought of what the guy did, and I understood what I had to do, understood now what it meant.
4.
MY NEW HOME was a small yellow room in a dark green house that I shared with an illustrator and an oil painter; the dancer who had rented out her bed would be gone for the summer. It was located in the West End of Providence, four hundred dollars a month for a large backyard and a cat named Elvis. The dancer had left me a pillow, clean sheets, a soft yarn blanket, drawers with little silverfish. The morning after I arrived, I forgot for a moment where I was. I panicked until I noticed the butter-colored walls, the leaves pressed against my window. Nobody was home. I looked around. The kitchen had black-and-white tiled floors, large oil paintings of jungles. There were freshly picked tomatoes and carrots, their threaded roots clumped with dirt. A wooden shelf full of spices, a crusty
container of honey, a green kettle, an alligator figurine. I followed strings of lights across a denim-blue couch, a mustard corduroy chair. A newspaper was flipped open to a half-finished crossword, beside tiny paintings of mountains and peach-colored yarn. I liked my absent housemates already.
The walk to school was two miles long. The heat in Rhode Island was thick, unlike the West Coast sunshine that kissed you on the forehead. My route took me along iron fences, weeds lining the sidewalk like black flames. Old furniture lay on the street like sea lions beached on the sand. People in lawn chairs sat outside liquor stores and laundromats, white cigarettes littered the curb. A cart stood on a corner; I’d exchange one crumpled dollar for a Styrofoam cup of coconut sherbet.
Closer to campus, the streets began sloping upward, the pavement smoothed, the trees spread their arms wide, providing gray continents of shade. The grass was lush, not the scrappy, dry California kind with blades yellow tipped and bent. There were girls and guys with flamingo pink hair, quilted dresses, pumps, feathered earrings. I must look so boring, I thought, glancing down at my old exercise clothes, fingering the cheap pearl earrings I’d added for flare.
Class was held in a small brick building, up two flights of stairs. Large single-pane windows. Corkboard walls with constellations of small holes where art had been pinned up for critiques. I saw the drying racks where our prints would soon be laid out. A room built to do nothing but create.
My teacher had a thick mustache, round glasses, and a long apron nearly down to his ankles. He had us go around and introduce ourselves, what brought us there. The ten students reminded me of elves, specializing in elegant crafts; glassblowers and weavers and pedal-less bicycle-builders. Everyone except me was an undergraduate, many of them using the summer to fulfill missing credits. And you? he said. I just moved here, for this class, from California, I quit my job. I like printmaking, I took a class in college, mainly relief printing. The teacher said, Okay! That’s exciting. He had us write our names on pieces of masking tape, choose a drawer, and label it. I wrote my name in all caps, CHANEL MILLER!!, prepared to fill the drawer with new prints.
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