Know My Name

by Chanel Miller

  Lucas and I walked heavy footed up hills in San Francisco, looking at apartments, losing out on the first few we applied to. Next to my credit score, place of employment, and reference from prior landlord, it was blank and blank and blank. I wanted to write good emotional intelligence, proficient at self-examination, been through a lot of shit that I cannot explain. Finally we found a tiny, square home we called the tissue box. We planted jade succulents out back, scattered birdseed on the railing, put basil on the kitchen windowsill that yellowed in a day. I bought what domesticated adults buy: checkered hand towels, a salad spinner. I was careful not to put my new address on anything, my home a hideout. Here I planned to rebuild my life, begin writing.

  You commute to the South Bay? a friend asked. What? I said. I forgot the old office where I’d worked was thirty minutes south, forgot they still believed I worked there. Oh, it’s fine. Bad sometimes, but it’s fine. Podcasts. I wanted to say my commute was twelve seconds, from my bed to my desk, occasionally breaking from this trajectory to boil coffee in my pajamas.

  Freshly graduated, Lucas was negotiating his next job; before business school he’d been a consultant, flying away four days a week, and was given a glowing offer to return. But the idea of him being gone made me panic. I did not want my inhibitions to become his. I wanted to say, Be free, I am an independent woman! But it felt impossible.

  If you asked me, Could you sleep alone? the short answer was yes. The long answer was I put a metal coatrack against our front gate around four in the afternoon. As the sun dipped down, I flipped on every light. I made sure my furnace was lit downstairs, which would save me from going down once it was dark out. Tiffany used to build traps for Santa, surrounding the chimney with chairs laced with bells and plastic bags. I stacked chairs in front of the door. I marked a dot of Sharpie on the nozzle of my pepper spray to ensure I’d spray in the right direction. I slept with large scissors, because knives can slip, whereas scissors have grip and can still poke a hole in his jugular. Then I’d lie down on the couch, never the bedroom, watching darkness engulf my house, the world shutting down, leaving me to fend for myself.

  What exactly were you afraid of, one might wonder. You weren’t raped in a house, there was no invasion or break-in. But it’s the sleeping itself that got me, the unconscious, vulnerable state in which anything can happen. The night of my assault, I’d missed the chance to fight back. I tried to outsmart the system, sleeping with one eye open, one eye closed, drifting in and out. Times I have accidentally dozed off, I’ve woken up with alarms blaring in my chest, what did I miss. At five o’clock in the morning, when light became a promise, I’d drift off to the sound of newspapers being thrown, the first bus rattling, birds.

  I was always groggy the next day, behind the regular rotation of the world. When the postman rang the doorbell I’d perform the droopy-lidded ritual of removing my contraptions, yelling for him to hold on as I unstacked the chairs. In the daytime, these protections felt silly, the blockades and pepper spray, evidence of the strange and imagined realities in my head, private battles I’m fighting. In the past few years, I have not slept alone for longer than three days.

  My ability to doze off used to be a point of pride. When I’d studied abroad in China in college, everyone complained about how the maintenance men had woken them up to fix the air-conditioning units above the beds. I said, They didn’t fix mine. But my roommate said there’d been men in mint-green jumpsuits, boots balanced on my bedside table, while I snored below. It was funny at the time, but now this terrifies me.

  When I find out female friends live in studio apartments I’m in shock. But who’s your witness? Who’s going to protect you from all the anythings that can happen? Don’t you understand that alone they’ll never believe you? I try to imagine that sort of life, coming home alone, cooking pasta with a glass of Riesling, watching TV, yawning, brushing my teeth, and calling it a day. I envy those who live unguarded.

  I remember skinny-dipping in college. My greatest fear at the time was that the water was going to be too cold. Five or six of us, boys and girls, would escape the cliffside apartment parties to trot down the wooden stairs to the lumpy sand, bath towels slung over our shoulders. We’d pluck our heads out of our shirts, weaving arms out of sleeves, returning to the way we were when we were born. We threw our clothes on mossy boulders as we sprinted toward the glassy water. Mel and I threw our heads back shrieking and laughing. Seaweed lassoed and slimed around our ankles and we picked it up and draped it across each other’s shoulders like glossy scarves. We paddled out to where the water was calm and deep, our heads bobbing on the surface, which shimmered in moonlight as if littered with tinfoil.

  When skinny-dipping, there was only the expanse of sky, open sea, and a circle of pure, white moon. The lighting was soft, the landscape limitless. The penises nothing more than noodle shapes, breasts like mounds of silly putty. We all looked funny and natural and free.

  These were the greatest nights; taking turns standing beneath the hot shower, sand piling around the drain. Making quesadillas, wearing old T-shirts, wrapped in worn blankets, huddled three to a bed like bears in a den. We’d fall asleep at four in the morning, our clothes crusted with salt, sand caked in the curves of our ears, wet hair soaking into pillows. I remember all of it warmly, but don’t know how to do it again.

  One night, Lucas and I were driving home from Southern California, passing through Santa Barbara. I asked him to pull off the highway, an exit I hadn’t taken in three years. We parked and I led him down the wooden stairs to stand at the edge of the water. It was just as beautiful as I’d remembered, but it wasn’t mine anymore. I looked left and right at the long stretches of dark shore I couldn’t see into, and wondered how I could’ve been so loud and naked, drawing attention to myself. The vulnerability of bare skin. It would’ve been too easy to hurt me, there wouldn’t have been any time to resist. No clothes to pull. If something had happened, no one would’ve ever believed me. Well weren’t you naked to begin with? Drunk on the beach at night? What did you think would happen? It wouldn’t have been enough to say, I just wanted it to be me, some friends, and the sea.

  There is a certain carefree feeling that was stripped from me the night of the assault. How to distinguish spontaneity from recklessness? How to prove nudity is not synonymous with promiscuity? Where’s the line between caution and paranoia? This is what I’m mourning, this is what I do not know how to get back. Still I keep those memories close and remember it is possible to be naked, amongst men, and not be asking for it. The girl running arms wide into the ocean is gone. In her place is a woman wrapped in two coats, staring at the black water, mistaking lumps of seaweed for dormant bodies, the stones for crouching men. Lucas takes my hand and asks if I’d like to walk and I shake my head, trotting back up the wooden stairs.

  I found a list while sifting through the transcripts that I was not meant to see. Three pages, descriptions of photographs that had been submitted for evidence. Photograph of the left side of Ms. Doe’s head with vegetation in her hair. Photograph of abrasions below right clavicle. Photograph of abrasions at the base of neck and upper back. Photograph of close-up buttocks with multiple abrasions. Photograph of ruler to show measurements of abrasions of skin next to hospital gown. Photograph of female genitalia. Photograph of female genitalia with debris inside labia minora.

  My body divided into squares, put up on the large projector. My butt, my chest, my vagina, were shown on a screen, a four-foot-tall labia, for the judge and Brock and his brother and his father and every reporter and stranger in that room to see. And while this was happening, I must have been down the hall, smoothing out my blouse in the bathroom mirror, tamping down my hair with water, trying to look presentable. The humiliation I feel now, for walking in oblivious and smiling.

  Knowing this makes me want to swallow a match, lighting my insides on fire, my stomach a red, dripping cave, smoke pouring out my ears and nose and eyes,
until I become crusty and hollow. A black, empty shell.

  Sex goes to court to die. I watched the defense attorney’s mouth, the old tongue and old breath, lips the color of old hummus, Chanel’s vagina. Rubbing it back and forth. It was enough to make me sick, to want to snip his tongue out of his throat. I just don’t need it, sex, I thought, I could go my whole life without it.

  Sex was absent of caring. Sex meant inserting A into B, parts labeled separately, my left buttock cheek labeled exhibit 43. Sex meant digital or penile penetration, how deeply it went in or stayed out of me. His what touched her what where. Sex is hard gravel dug into your palms. Sex is being punctured, your air emptied. Even after the bruises healed, after the hours of couch sitting in therapy, I was still unsure how to inhabit my body. If sex was something that hurt me, how could it provide pleasure or safety? I wanted to spackle up my holes, lock the whole place down, the machines in me shutting off, gears growing rusty and quiet.

  Technically, it is illegal to bring up a victim’s sexual history in court. But even if never explicitly stated, it was alluded to. Do you have a boyfriend. Were you exclusive. Are you sexually active. I felt that if I continued to engage in my body, if I openly desired sex again, I’d be proving the defense right. He spoke of my sexual life as if it was something I was hiding, as if exposing this knowledge gave Brock the right to do what he wanted. I was the victim whose sexual choices were too indiscriminate to be respected.

  During sex, my body began asking my mind, What’s happening? Where are you? Who are you with? I’d reassure myself with familiar signs; the color of my sheets, texture of Lucas’s hair. Relax. But something inside me kept yanking out the connecting cords, rewiring, plugging them into the wrong fixtures. My body kept asking permission, is this okay, will we be blamed? I needed a face, needed light, needed no surprise, needed step-by-step, I’m in my own home and I’m allowed to enjoy this. It was inhibiting, did not allow for stallion-riding, flower-blooming, rooster-crowing, paper-shuffling, passionate lovemaking. Instead I had a small finicky secretary I was reporting to: What’s happening? Where are you? Who are you with?

  The phrase, sexual assault, is a little misleading, for it seemed to be less about sex, more about taking. Sexual assault is stealing. One-sided wants, the feeling of overriding the other. Real sex was meant to be exchange, the power shifting back and forth, responsive and fluid and playful. The pleasure of paying attention, actively engaging with your partner.

  DA: So the answer to my question is, you didn’t think about her?

  Brock: I think it was impossible for me to think about her.

  The pivotal question throughout the trial was whether or not consent was issued. Yes or no. We act as if there is a single traffic light, red or green. But sex is a road lined with intersections, which way to go, when to slow down, to yield, to stop, to speed up.

  Verbal consent is often mocked for killing the mood. But think of how much organic communication we do in life. A sampling table at the grocery store; you pick up a cracker, make eye contact with the vendor, May I? and they nod, Enjoy. Subtle and swift.

  What I never say out loud is that rape makes you want to turn into wood, hard and impenetrable. The opposite of a body that is meant to be tender, porous, soft. Sometimes I’m too angry, seething after reading a rape story, I need to slice a dick off. Sometimes my desire fluctuates, dips to depletion. I wouldn’t notice if I didn’t have a partner, but once you shrug off affection for the sixth time something’s amiss. Sometimes he’ll gesture for me to rest my head on his chest, he just needs touch, simple touch, to know we’re still connected.

  This distancing from my body did not begin with the assault. But in a world where self-confidence is already doled out sparingly to young women, my supply quickly diminished in court. I spent my adolescence soaking in oatmeal baths for my eczema. A boy called me a cheetah, so I used Sally Hansen spray tans to paint over my spotted, discolored skin. I wore peach-colored pantyhose in high school, a purchased epidermis. College was the first time I started wearing dresses. Still my relationship with my body remained halfhearted.

  I wonder if there is a time in every woman’s life when she feels like swallowing stones. Perhaps she wonders why her period is late or wakes up in an unfamiliar bed, or comes across a list of her body parts divided neatly into numbers. Does it make her want to swallow stones? Large, smooth ones, gulping them down. I imagine them settling into my stomach, a pile, then walking into a pond, not to die, but to sink the body, while only my spirit emerges from the water. Much cleaner, I could start over, unencumbered.

  In a tiny bookshop by a lake, I came across a passage by Deepak Chopra: The body needs reinventing. To have a meaningful life, you have to use your body—you can’t experience anything without one—and so your body should be meaningful, too. I saw pigeons at the park, puffing out their chests and mounting each other. Even pigeons were having sex, understood that it was natural, not a shameful act. You’re in your midtwenties. How do you not celebrate your smooth forehead, nice collarbones, and your ripe, red heart. I have a loving man, every day, beside me. I should be celebrating him too, when he emerges steaming from the shower, rejoice! Sex should not only be tolerated, but joyous.

  It was roller-skating, of all things, when I realized what I was missing. Lucas and I were scooting and shuffling around a vacant church spotted in disco lights. I retired on a pew that had been pushed against the wall. I watched girls with their arms loose, hips swinging, glimpses of belly button. The ease with which they moved, so in their element, so present, all this grace and muscle and fluidity, I craved it. What does that feel like? To present my body without fear of harm or scrutiny, fully unbound and graceful.

  I used to believe yoga was for people who have skin care routines and good posture. I started off clumsy and self-conscious, glancing around to check myself, until an instructor said, If you mess up, no one gives a shit, like what’s gonna happen. I liked the hour and a half on the mat, my apricot-colored rectangle sealed to the floor, a small border fending off external distractions. Slowly I learned to turn my attention inward, to elongate from my Achilles tendon to the tips of my fingers. I imagined the clenched cells inside me unfurling.

  At the front desk there is a box of white tokens. You can place one on your mat to say, Do not touch. I like the way it communicates a subtle need, wished I could tape it to my forehead in public. I used to pluck one from the box. Now I do not, and sometimes the instructor will lay a hand on my back, and that gravity, that firm pressure, makes me tear up. It’s not crying. It’s the tenderness of a palm, my pulse alive beneath a touch, connecting, something bubbles up through me, releases in the form of an eye droplet. Being fully inside my body makes me feel beautiful, powerful, makes me want to be consumed, to share all the small parts of me.

  There is no reason to deprive your body of love, beauty, creativity, and inspiration, Chopra said. I wrote out a collection of sensory memories from childhood, recalling how it felt to be nourished and soothed. Rice steaming, rain outside. Standing in a towel heated by the tall furnace, feet dripping on the hardwood floor. The smell of sun on asphalt. Cold water on my face in the morning. Eating a bowl of cereal at midnight. The sound of a page turning as I am being read to. The thud of a peach falling. The dusty smell of sand. The scorch of cocoa, the sticky film of melted marshmallow. Spongy insides of bread sopping up tomatoes and vodka sauce. I am reminded of what I am capable of feeling. The ways I consume, my senses opening to receive, at ease, indulgent.

  When I was afraid of the dark during our first year in the city, I tried to reframe the darkness. I told myself to admire the inky lumps of hills, the snoring neighbors with their lemongrass diffusers, the coyotes trotting through the park. With sex I started small, savored the little things; the simplicity of sleeping next to each other. This closeness, this quiet. Sex is this feeling unpeeled. I thought about the language of sex; I liked the term lovemaking, bodies churning an
d creating sweat and heat, until love is actually made, bing bing bing, appears like glistening pink lights that float and drift above the bed as you lie back, skin glimmering.

  Still I struggle outside the boundaries of home and familiar hands. I was overdue for a Pap smear, a procedure that sounds like a disease found in penguin shit. I planned to write a note on the sign-in form, Assaulted, proceed with caution, but there was no room. Mainly I didn’t want to invite an interrogation. I wanted to brave it myself, get in and out like a regular person. I decided I’d barrage the doctor with questions as a way of slowing down the process. But a young ponytailed nurse came in to observe, changing the dynamic. I could see the nurse staring into me, felt myself growing silently and violently angry, What are you looking at, I’m not a specimen, leave me alone, stop, my stomach tightened, a wave of nausea. A sailboat appeared on the ceiling. I heard, All done! I’ll give you time to get dressed.

  They left. I don’t know how much time has passed. My mind is full of nothing. I can’t get my feet in my shoes. I should have brought someone, to tell me to put my arms through sleeves. I train my eyes on the tiny blue stars of my hospital gown. The door opens, the ponytailed nurse pops her head in, Oh! She quickly excuses herself, realizing I haven’t changed. I cannot think fast enough to verbalize Don’t go. If I try to stand up I’ll pass out. Minutes go by and she comes in again to find me exactly as I was. I ask if she has a snack. She returns with a powdery chocolate drink, I chug it with a shaking hand. I’m not good at this, I say, my voice wavering. Something registers. It’s okay, she says. Take your time. She sits with me until I collect myself and leave. I rest my forehead on the steering wheel, exhausted. I wish for a white token.