Know My Name

by Chanel Miller

  The People of the State of California, Plaintiff, versus Brock Allen Turner, Defendant, Information No. B1577162 . . . she reads out each number. I am going to pass out . . . verdict of the jury: Verdict. Count 1, Penal Code section 220 (a) (1), felony . . . I am only looking for the hard sound of the “g” . . . We, the jury, find the defendant, Brock Allen Turner, guilty of a felony, a violation of California Penal Code section 220 (a) (1), assault with intent to commit a rape of an intoxicated or unconscious person. Dated March 30th, 2016, by foreperson, Juror No. 5.

  The air is broken by the wail of someone being stabbed. My head snaps to the right and I watch Brock’s mother’s pointed feet extend straight up into the air and come slamming back into the ground. She stomps, yelling into this room stricken by silence. His father has thrown his body over her as if shielding her from a showering of arrows. Suddenly, I feel vulnerable, my face open and unprotected. What do I look like, should I be reacting? Her wailing tries to insert itself into me, but I need to drown out the sound, to focus. I turn back to the front of the room, muting the cries. There are two more counts.

  The woman’s words remain soft as she continues, there are too many numbers. But I hear the smack of Athena kissing me on the cheek. That must mean we have won two counts, we’re at two. I feel the emotional tides of the room swelling on each side. There is grief and suffocated celebration, muffled cries, the air brimming with indistinguishable sound. I stare at this woman at the front of the room, her blond hair and glassed-in eyes and realize she is an angel. I hear guilty one final time and that’s when I know. We have done it.

  The clerk asks each juror to state their individual vote. She reads the first count. Is this your personal verdict? Juror number one replies, Yes. She goes on to juror number two. Yes. Three. Yes. Four. Yes. Five. Yes. I watch a man subtly smile as he states his vote, like this is his victory too. I see nods as they deliver this syllable. This jury, a cluster of people in my mind, begins separating into individuals. For the first time I allow myself to see them. I take in each face, want to commit them to memory, tracing the outlines of their profiles, the specks of hair on their cheeks, the width of their glasses, hairlines, eyelashes, dimples, sideburns. She moves on to count number two, and again they go around, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. She reads count number three, is this your personal verdict,

  yes,

  yes,

  yes,

  yes,

  yes,

  yes,

  yes,

  yes,

  yes,

  yes,

  yes,

  yes.

  It is a pure and constant rhythm, beating into me. A recitation of truth. The yesses go on unbroken, like steps taking us somewhere. As my eyes follow them one by one, I feel anger draining out of me, making space for something else.

  I thought I would look at the defense attorney’s pitiful face, see Brock’s head hung low, and call for confetti, feeling triumphant. But I do not think to do or feel any of that. As I watch the jury members, all other sounds fall away.

  It was like looking back at a sandy shore from the water and realizing how far I had drifted. How far I had let myself go. Who was this person sitting here, so hungry to be told the answer was yes? I thought of Emily that morning, standing in the shower, struggling to stand up straight, surrounded by steam. Somewhere along the way I’d become the voices that told her she was a humiliation, should learn to think realistically. I told her she deserved the damage, questioning her instincts. How badly I’d wanted to abandon her. How little I’d thought of her life.

  I sit in sadness, inhaling wet air, my eyes closed, my chest shaking. I tune out of the courtroom, the agony too big, my head lowered in apology. I’m so sorry. You were not crazy. For so long I believed I needed permission to return to my life, waiting for validation. I promised myself I would never question whether I deserved better. The answer would always be yes and yes and yes.

  The conversation has turned, the judge is scheduling the sentencing, when he’d decide how much time Brock would serve. He points to a calendar on the wall; sentencing occurs on the nonhighlighted Thursdays in our calendar rotations. I glance at the small empty rows of boxes, some squares bright yellow. I pay little attention, the sentencing an afterthought.

  My DA requests that Brock be remanded. But the handcuffs never touch him, his attorney arguing he should remain out on bail. He will fly home with his family, free for two months until the sentencing sometime in June. We are released.

  I sidestep out of the row, eager to get out of the room. I am feet away from the mass entanglement of the arms of his family. There’s a heated energy coming off them threatening to consume everything in their grief. Some red-eyed family members glare at me like I am the enemy. I stare back through my own red eyes, unyieldingly. You are looking at the wrong person.

  My grandma and Athena are supporting my elbows and I realize I’m being carted along. We exit the courtroom like a parade, the media amassed behind us with their bags and small recorders. I am hunched, tucking my head down into my shoulders, feet hurriedly shuffling, worried if we slow down we’ll be engulfed by the mass behind us. I need to get through the door to the DA’s office, to be sealed off from the public.

  As I push through the door, everyone milling around the office begins backing along the walls, ducking into cubicles. I remember the first day I’d come here, my mom massaging my hand as I timidly answered questions. Now I turn to see Alaleh rushing toward me, arms open. Finally, I rest my face on her shoulder, the two of us standing in the middle of the room, holding each other, crying.

  My little group stepped into a small conference room. There is no celebration, we are shaken, finally releasing the pent-up fear we carried knowing how close we’d come to an alternate outcome. I thought my body wasn’t worth anything. I thought I didn’t matter, but I do. Strangely I am nodding my head, as if hearing this for the first time. My DA’s eyes are large and glistening and she is nodding too. If you had asked me about Brock in that moment, I would’ve said, Who? Thoughts of him had evaporated.

  My DA’s boss Mr. Rosen says he is proud of everyone, all our hard work. Things will be better because of us. He and my DA step out to address the cameras and reporters that await them like gnats on the front steps of the building. Before she leaves she hands me two envelopes, the tops frayed, already opened to make sure they’re safe for me to read. I wonder who they are from, how anyone had even known how to find me.

  I tell everyone to go to my house, I will meet them there. A deputy escorts me through the back doors of the building. Outside, I turn around one last time and see the security guards standing along the window, their faces twisted in asking. I give them the thumbs-up and they break into smiles, waving, clapping and pumping their fists behind the glass. Then I am ducking behind the cars, weaving through the parking lot. I need to call Tiffany.

  I reach her as she is walking to teach a freshman seminar. We did it, I said, all three. Her words come back at me sputtered, neither of us finding words. It is the first time I feel joy, because I can finally give her something good, and relief blooms deep inside me. Later she said when she stood at the head of her classroom, she began sobbing. Her sobbing turned into laughter, and the class, unsure of what to make of this, began laughing too. I’m sorry, she said, I’m just having a really good day.

  I call Lucas and I can hear him hollering, tears in his voice. I drive home down the same streets, but I feel entirely new. Something has been peeled off, I am glowing. I see the parking lot that used to be the pumpkin patch. The creek where I caught water bugs. The Taco Bell where we used to go after school dances. I am back, my past selves parading behind me. I have given us a happier ending. Finally, I am home.

  I can see my grandma, mom, and Athena through the kitchen window in the courtyard. I walk into their hugs and forehead kisses. My grandma pours a
glass of cold grape juice and breaks the slabs of dark chocolate into pieces on the counter. I stuff the chocolate into my cheeks, let it melt on my teeth, chugging the sweet juice. I can feel myself reviving, my mom’s soft hands smoothing over my hair, gently massaging my neck.

  My grandma says she’d rehearsed a speech just in case it hadn’t gone the way we wanted, and I learned that everyone had been preparing to take care of me had it not gone as planned. Athena says she feels grateful to have been there, that something had lifted in her, like she had finally received justice for her own assault. My dad calls from work, Sweetie, how are you feeling, you did it, is Mom there, are you doing okay, how did Tiffy react?

  Evening arrives, coloring the kitchen a soft lavender as they set off for home. I book the first flight to Philly in the morning, eager to be Chanel again. I throw all of my sweaty court clothes in the hamper and pack my suitcase. My parents peek their heads in. Are you sure you want to go in the morning, I cut up some strawberries, you can stay here as long as you need, pack a warm coat for the plane.

  I write a list of everyone I’d encountered on this journey. People who came into my life and helped me, asking nothing in return. I do not know how to thank them, except to live out the life they gave back to me. I grab my notebook and draw twelve small faces, summoning them from memory. Those who were willing to bear witness. I remember the cards in my purse and pull them out.

  The first card has a monkey that says hang in there, from Washington, D.C. The second envelope is light blue, from Ohio, a state I had come to irrationally fear. It is sent to me from a woman named Nadia. The card inside has a black-and-white photograph on the front; a small girl, wearing a flowered coat, frilly socks peeking above her sneakers, holding up a mossy stone three times her size. I open the card and take in the scribbly blue letters,

  So many of us have read about you.

  When I saw this card in the store, I knew I had to get it for you because this little girl reminds me of your strength.

  I’m sending this card to let you know you are not alone.

  I can’t imagine the hell you’ve been through.

  We are in awe of your courage and resilience and badassery.

  Know that you have a huge army of soldiers behind you.

  This you sounds heroic, mythical. For the past year I had been raking through comments looking for signs of support. I dug through opinion pieces in local newspapers searching for someone to stand up for me. I locked myself in my car in parking lots crying into hotlines, convinced I was losing my mind. All year the loneliness had followed me, in the stairwell at work, in Philly, in the wooden witness stand, where I looked out at a near-empty audience.

  Yet all along there had been eyes watching me, rooting for me, from their own bedrooms, cars, stairwells, and apartments, all of us shielded inside our pain, our fear, our anonymity. I was surrounded by survivors, I was part of a we. They had never been tricked into seeing me as a minor character, a mute body; I was the leader on the front line fighting, with an entire infantry behind me. They had been waiting for me to find justice. This victory would be celebrated quietly in rooms in towns in states I had never even been to.

  For so long, I’d imagined myself wandering across a dry, empty plain. This card was the puddle. The realization that just below the surface, more water led to streams to rivers to oceans. That this was only the beginning. I was not alone. They had found me.

  9.

  I WAS HALF walking, half running to therapy down the crowded sidewalk, past the iHop, through revolving doors, to announce to my therapist it was a clean sweep. I wanted an emotional medal. Only seven months earlier I had sat on the couch, immobilized by the thought of going to court. Now there was nothing left to prepare for, we would be nothing more than two people having a chat, like the last day of class before summer break.

  Have you heard the good news? I sat down, clasped my hands together, All three. She congratulated me. I paused, could feel my face changing. In the time I’d been gone so much had happened. Something inside me uncapped and I began spilling sentences, using up all the air in the room, and then and then and then, and the hour was up. The intensity lingered, the air in the room polluted with everything I’d unloaded. Instead of pleased, I was pissed. She had hardly spoken.

  I walked back with my hands in my pockets, frustrated. The verdict was supposed to wipe clean the mess that had preceded it. What more could I want? I was angry to still be angry. But I shouldn’t have been surprised. I had seen an article in The Washington Post announcing the verdict: critics argued that the jury was harsh on Turner and treated an ambiguous and alcohol-fueled moment with black-and-white certainty. It said, With sentencing June 2 and an appeal possible, Turner’s once-promising future remains uncertain. But his extraordinary yet brief swim career is now tarnished, like a rusting trophy. His was still the notable loss.

  The sentencing would take place on June 2 and it was recommended, but not required, that I come. Brock’s three felonies added up to a maximum of fourteen years in prison. My DA recommended six years. She asked me to write a victim impact statement, two to three pages about how this experience affected me. If I wanted to read it aloud they’d buy me a ticket home. If I didn’t want to read it, my advocate could read it for me. I had to submit it by the end of May so the judge had ample time to look it over beforehand. Tiffany and Lucas could also write statements. It was all optional, we had time to think about it. I said I would, put down the phone, and pushed it out of my mind. I had eight weeks, for seven of which I planned to do nothing but live a normal life.

  Within five days of returning, I had written a new comedy set, auditioned, and made the cut for the spring show. In comedy I could be unruly and outrageous in ways that weren’t questioned. At one meeting, our president, Vince, was writing our introductions. For me he said, Please give her a warm round of applause as this is the only thing she has going on in her life. It played to the stereotype of partners. Is it too mean? he asked. I was the one who laughed the loudest. If only you knew.

  Two weeks after the trial, I stepped onto the Helium Comedy Club stage again, my presence met with whooping and hollering. I was engulfed in praise and love. Our group made so much money from ticket sales we treated ourselves to the Barclay Prime steakhouse in Philly. I’d never been to a restaurant so upscale, the waiter walking around with a velvet box of knives asking us each to choose one. As I cut into my soft filet mignon, I wished I could exchange the slab of meat for cash that I could pocket. The meal cost more than I had in my bank account.

  I was too ashamed to tell Lucas or my family that my bank account was nearly empty. In one month Lucas would graduate, move to San Francisco, job opportunities lined up before him. I would be unemployed, unable to go out to dinner, pay rent. I had no prospects ahead save for a final court date. I planned to live with my parents again, save again. I was grateful to have my old bedroom as an option, but it was distressing to be back at square one.

  Something else was happening that I kept to myself: in between dinners and graduation parties, I shut myself in the bathroom, my shoulders quivered, and tears ran down my face. During trial I had shut down to make it through. Now came the release, my body helpless against the anguish passing through in waves. Each time it would rise in me like the need to vomit, and I’d lock myself in and hyperventilate, my eyes stinging. I was scared of the way my body kept dictating these episodes. I’d grip the sink, turning on the faucet to drown out the sounds. Why are you sad, I kept thinking, you won. I did not want Lucas to hear me, to realize that I was still broken, not ready to let all of this go.

  In my in-box, a message surfaced from Michele Dauber, a Stanford professor and activist who demanded Stanford do more to stop campus sexual assault. She was also an old family friend whom I hadn’t seen since my teens. In middle school, her daughter and I had been a part of the same group of friends, biking to Blockbuster to rent Carrie, eating Chee
tos, tucked inside sleeping bags in the little guesthouse.

  When my story first broke, I watched from my bed as news cameras interviewed Michele in the doorway of her home, the same door I’d walked through in middle school with muddy Skechers. I wanted her wisdom, but I knew if I spoke to her, I’d be accused of having an agenda. Even The Washington Post article had quoted a critic who said, The prosecutor was playing to the demands of Stanford female activists. I watched as Michele gave statements about the case, unaware I was Emily, fascinated by how closely we coexisted. So many times I’d wanted to say, It’s me.

  She had put it together after following the string of articles that repeated my sister’s name, my high school, my university. She said she asked her daughter and then my closest childhood friend, Nicole, if it was true. I would have told Nicole, but she’d been studying Urdu in India all year. Both Michele and Nicole sent me outpourings of apology, If I’d known I would have helped. Nicole bought a flight home for the sentencing. Michele asked Stanford student leaders if they’d be interested in gathering signatures of support from students. The leaders wrote letters asking for a two-year minimum, citing the need to set a precedent and deter sexual violence on campus. She said a group of them could come to the sentencing wearing ribbons in solidarity, but I was too nervous, quietly nixed this idea, keeping my world small, protected, carefully selected. I called my friend Mel, my best friend in college, who immediately bought a flight from LA for the sentencing. I called Miranda, who would take me to hot springs to relax. I told Cayla, who would skip work and drive in from San Francisco. It moved me how quickly they’d made plans to be there. I could now count the number of friends involved on two hands.

  April passed, the end of May approaching. I still had not begun my statement, kept telling myself, soon. My DA messaged me, could I send her something in the next two weeks?