Know My Name

by Chanel Miller

  A teacher once explained we possess an invisible blueprint in the womb to build ourselves. From the mesoderm, one’s bones and connective tissues and heart emerged. We know how to form our being, she said. We still have that information, it still informs us. Even if elements of my physical self had diminished, I believed they could be restored. I trusted that when I gave my body love, soft touch, stretching, sunlight, strength, and sex, what was lost would be regrown in new form.

  I think of our backyard pond growing up. Of the goldfish we’d bring home, bobbing in plastic bags on the surface of the water. My dad explained they needed time to adjust to the temperature of the pond before being released. If such a small creature required such care, imagine the complex process a victim must work through in order to integrate back into daily life. There is no right way, there is only listening to what is good and comfortable for your body. Maybe now you are terrified, bobbing inside the clear plastic container around you, thinking, I am trapped, this is not how it’s supposed to be. Just remember: the temperature is slowly changing, you are adjusting. You will make it into that pond. With a little more time, you’ll be free.

  Lucas accepted a job in the city. I was sleeping peacefully. Still, I wanted a companion at home with me. Wanted a pit bull or a German shepherd, an athletic dog with shoulder blades, sharp eyes, and a wide snout. We drove to the shelter, peeking through chain-link fences. Walking back to the car, we passed a yellow wooden sign propped on the sidewalk: Muttville Senior Dog Rescue. We followed yellow arrows up the stairs. Jazz was playing in a large roomful of sunlight and small cushioned beds. Forty tiny dogs were moseying around. A whiteboard on the wall was filled with names; Walnut, Ethel, Eggroll, Tootsie, Cashew, Professor Plum, Bumblebee, Javier. We learned about the foster program; we could take a dog home until he found a permanent owner. A blind Lhasa Apso with a jutting underbite bumped into my ankles, his feet plodding as if his paws were on puppet strings. Long bangs sprouted over his milky eyes. His name was Puffin.

  Lucas bought him special green socks that kept him from sliding on our wooden floors. I made him porridge. He spent most of his time sitting with his head cocked, in his green socks, staring at the refrigerator. Since he was deaf and blind, I knew that if I was murdered he’d sit next to my dead body waiting for breakfast. One night, when Lucas was away seeing family, I heard a strange sound, a puttering, like a mini gas-powered boat. I saw his belly rising and falling, and realized I’d provided a place where he felt safe enough to sleep. Healing became the sound of an old dog snoring.

  Over the year we fostered six dogs, one at a time. I spent hours wiping urine off the nest of electrical wires, navigating archipelagos of dried poop. If you knew how many paper towels I used I would be arrested. My shag rug carpet was soiled, rolled up, thrown out, bought again, thrown out. There was Butch, who went into our bathroom to pee on the toilet. Remy, who we liked to imagine carrying a metal detector as he waddled incessantly from room to room. Squid the wiener dog, who could sing. Salvador, who loved Korean barbecue. They acted like toddlers, rolling off the bed or slipping in a grate, tumbling down a step if you took your eyes off them. Most had multiple medications, and I sprinkled what looked like pouches of cocaine into their food. I was reminded that having extra needs does not make you too difficult, too time consuming, but worthy of compassion and love.

  They took me out walking, often carrying, when back legs were rickety. I ate when they ate, a simple lesson in self-care. My small house became a place of restoration and transition, getting them cleaned up, nails clipped, hair combed, ready for their permanent home. I liked seeing their confidence and personalities emerge, as they grew more comfortable and became themselves.

  Tiffany was the one who spotted the dog who stayed. A ten-year-old brown-and-white Pomeranian, an eight-pound loofah with a sprinkling of tiny teeth. She had been found abandoned near Sacramento. A little embodiment of joy, always smiling like someone just told her she was going to Disneyland. Adoption requests were rolling in, but I didn’t respond to any of them. I stared at her for a long time.

  This wasn’t the plan. Fostering was temporary until we got a big, blusterous dog. After an assault, the world tells you to put your guard up, fight back, be careful. The world does not remind you to unclench your fists, to go on a stroll. That you do not have to spend all your time figuring out how to survive. Nobody says, Adopt the Pomeranian. I had planned to surround myself with higher gates and sharper teeth, but maybe that was not what I needed. Maybe it was possible to build that security within myself.

  We named our dog Mogu (Chinese for mushroom). Every day she reminds me of the Muttville slogan: It’s never too late for a new beginning. It was a promise to her and a promise to myself. Whatever past you came from, you don’t have to go back.

  Over the course of that year with a rotation of little dogs sleeping on my lap, leaking gases into my room, I wrote. I sat down to look at transcripts for the first time; hundreds of pages of everything that was said during the days I was absent in the courtroom. My commute, it turned out, was long, required traveling back to my past every day. I was stunned that even with the validation of millions, the enraged feelings returned as if untouched. I annotated the transcripts in red pen; dummy ass nut piece of shit. For all the clarity and catharsis of that statement, I still struggled. We understand a victim’s antagonists to be the perpetrators and lawyers but overlook the enemy who is the victim herself. Old ideas about who I was resurfaced, told me I was damaged, unworthy. Some of the shame had calcified, impervious to praise.

  Some days I did nothing, closed the door to my office, as if sealing off the time machine I dared not enter. On the worst days I abandoned it all and jogged to get a banh mi sandwich in my black down jacket, cilantro leaves pasted to my lips, eyes dry and red, and then I’d sit on the carpet in the children’s section of the library. I longed for lighter, sweeter worlds. Lucas would see me come in late, windblown with arms full of kids’ books about dragons and pancakes, and ask with measured hesitation, What did you write about today? It was his way of figuring out what voices were living in my head.

  A long time has passed since the last time I was in that courtroom, but I worry I will forever be stuck on the stand. My mind is one step behind where it used to be. I call it the lag. Before I was living in real time. Now I evaluate the moment before I can move into it. I am always asking permission, anticipating having to present myself to an invisible jury, answering questions before a defense. When I reach for a piece of clothing, the first thing I think is, What will they think if I wear this? When I go anywhere I think, Will I be able to explain why I am going? If I post a photo I think, If this were submitted as evidence, would I look too silly, my shoulders too bare? The time I spend questioning what I’m doing, turning things over and talking myself back to normalcy, has become the toll.

  One evening I was supposed to pick up gin for a party. But I stood with my cart staring at the blue glass bottle, thinking, What experience is inside this? Who will drink it, will someone be hurt, will they ask me what brand? At parties, I measure everything. If there are no shot glasses, I use capfuls, hunched to conceal my obsessive techniques. I see people pouring and I stare. That’s a free pour, I think, You can’t do that, they’ll say how much, how many ounces, one third or half of the cup, what kind of cup? If someone wanders to the bathroom or leaves with a guy, I grow tense, What do you mean she’s gone, where’d she go, who’d she go with? I need to know everyone will make it home. I’ll text my friend and in the morning I’ll get a response, Ya! Sorry I fell asleep. They do not know that I spent the night agonizing, my mind spiraling into worst-case scenarios.

  When I talked to my therapist about drinking or past sexual experiences, she’d say, Well, how do you feel about it. I’d say, Oh, it doesn’t matter how I feel, it’s what they think about it. I stated this like fact. She said, It is impossible to live under that level of scrutiny.

  Reading Brock
’s testimony, I noticed how differently our evenings were framed. When questioning Brock, the defense opened with the following questions: Is [grinding] common at these parties that you noticed? Did people dance on tables? Was that a common thing, too? How about drinking? Was drinking seemingly a major part of these parties? For most everybody that was there? Most everybody that was there was drinking alcohol, is that correct?

  In each line, I found common, common, a part of, everybody, everybody. This pattern was not an accident. He was leading Brock back into the herd, where he could blend into the comfort of community. Compare this to when he had questioned me: You did a lot of partying. You’ve had blackouts before. It was you and you, the lens fixed so close I was stripped of surrounding. For Brock, his goal was to integrate, for me it was to isolate.

  I discovered the defense had emailed Dr. Fromme: I could subpoena records from the ambulance people that transported her to Valley Medical. Query whether they could hurt our case rather than help? Fromme responded, It’s unclear whether the medical records would be helpful or potentially hurtful . . . it could work against us.

  Throughout testimony, Dr. Fromme used phrases like: Don’t hold my feet to the fire on this. Oh gosh, I’m not totally legally savvy. I’m no Excel wizard. I can tell you that. I could not stand the whoopsy daisy downplaying as my body was debased.

  Dr. Fromme testified incoherent speech didn’t infer that I was impaired beyond engaging in voluntary actions. She compared it to being given Novocain at the dentist; you can’t speak very well but you can still think fine. Having slurred speech has never stopped somebody from making a stupid eBay purchase, for example. This should go without saying: Being raped is not online shopping, and alcohol is not novocaine. If my actions had been voluntary, isn’t it possible I could’ve voluntarily pushed him away? Who’s to assume my actions were compliant?

  I was always reminded they were just doing their jobs. Now I realize, yeah, maybe this was your job, but it still takes a certain kind of person to do this job. Trial unveiled terrifying and disorienting realities, increased levels of acrimony. I became cynical. The torment makes you crazy, makes you rabid; when people start hacking at my Achilles’, I wanted to swing back. I didn’t want to be the bigger person, I wanted to make them feel small, to sting.

  But I told myself, don’t become them. Focus on who you want to be. I fought hard rewriting drafts of this book to dial down the sarcasm, personal attacks. I vowed not to minimize or dehumanize. The goal should never be to insult, it should only be to teach, to expose larger issues so that we may learn something. I want to remain me. So I use my strength not to shove back, but to exercise my voice with control. Two cyclists. For every person that wants to hurt me, there are more who want to help. I wish there had been a predatory expert, victim expert, consent expert to better educate the jury. We scrutinized the victim’s actions, instead of examining the behavioral patterns of sexual predators. How alcohol works to the predator’s advantage, to lower resistance, weaken the limbs.

  Brock: She slipped.

  Defense: And do you recall how she was dressed that night? What was she wearing?

  Brock: She had a dress on.

  Defense: Okay. And when she slipped, what happened to her body?

  Why was there a pause to detail my clothes? Did my dress explain his behavior? I entered the court system expecting it to be ordered, civil, constructive. Now I was learning whose voices were amplified inside the courtroom, whose were muted. At the sentencing the judge had quoted a letter written by Brock’s friend. I will omit her name, trusting she has learned from her mistakes. In her letter, she wrote: I don’t think it’s fair to base the fate of the next ten + years of his life on the decision of a girl who doesn’t remember anything but the amount she drank to press charges against him. I am not blaming her directly for this because that isn’t right. But where do we draw the line and stop worrying about being politically correct every second of the day and see that rape on campuses isn’t always because people are rapists. . . . This is completely different from a woman getting kidnapped and raped as she is walking to her car in a parking lot. That is a rapist. These are not rapists. These are idiot boys and girls having too much to drink and not being aware of their surroundings and having clouded judgment.

  When my statement emerged, her letter was uncovered. That summer she was scheduled to tour with her three-woman band, but venues canceled one after the other, announcing they did not tolerate rape culture. The band was dropped from its label, the tour dissolved, and she issued a public apology. Even more disturbing was that out of thirty-nine letters written, this was the single one the judge had quoted at the sentencing. Her misguidance was expected, the judge’s was not.

  By citing her as a source, he’d endorsed her outdated, distorted definition of rape. We know that acquaintance rape is far more common than stranger rape. When we undercut the severity of acquaintance rape, or drunk rape that happens at parties, healing becomes largely delayed, the recovery process butchered, the predator undeterred.

  Brock’s mother wrote, My first thought upon wakening every morning is “this isn’t real, this can’t be real. Why him? Why HIM? WHY? WHY?” I have never wondered why me. The only thing running through my head when my sister picked me up that morning was, Thank God me. Thank God me and not her, not Julia, not an eighteen-year-old who would’ve had to forgo her schooling. I was privileged enough to have completed my education and to be in stable circumstances. I had a home, not too far from the courthouse, where I could recuperate after proceedings. I had two parents who clicked off my light and covered me in a blanket when I fell asleep. I had money saved. In a strange way I was prepared to go on this journey.

  Although millions know my story, I only told two people outside of my family the year of the assault. The next year I told a few more. The year after that I told three. The strange thing is, coming out to someone I don’t know is easy. Coming out to someone I know is much harder. Perhaps because they contain pockets of your past; who you were, what they believed you to be. It’s hard to watch those ideas dissolve to reconfigure around this new identity. When I tell a loved one, I watch their eyes. They are searching, as if waiting for me to tell them it’s not true. When my dad told Grandma Ann that I was the victim, she kept saying, What? What? She had been following it in the newspapers for months. She could only say, It’s not true. It can’t be Chanel. No matter how much I heal, the assault itself will always be a sad thing. I have to be okay with this. I have to stop rushing them to the part where the letters flood in. I have to hold a space for grief.

  I spend more days curled up than I do exalting, constantly reminded of how much is stacked against victims. But no matter the despair or exhaustion, I believe the wanting of a better world and being here to see it will never go away. The wanting is enough.

  My mom’s favorite joke is about a spider and a centipede having tea. The centipede gets up and offers to go buy snacks. He goes out the door and hours pass. The spider is so hungry, wondering what happened, and opens the door, only to find the centipede sitting on the doormat, still putting on his shoes. I imagine myself the centipede, struggling to tie each of my hundred tiny shoes, it takes me longer to get going than most. But I will put on shoe after shoe after shoe until I can get up and go again.

  12.

  ONLY FIVE MONTHS after I read my statement in court, Trump was elected. I was hit by the same feeling I’d had when the judge said six months. Blindsided. Disappointed. Wrecked.

  When Trump’s Access Hollywood tape surfaced, the average person acknowledged what he said was vulgar, lewd, foul. Anderson Cooper asked Trump point-blank if he understood he was talking about sexual assault and the nation watched him shrug and say, locker-room talk. In the public we grew tired. We heard the tape replayed one thousand times, debated two thousand times, pussy pussy pussy, in print, on air, Democrats and Republicans arguing, you’re inappropriate, no you’re inapp
ropriate, until it dulled on the ears. We grew used to the same patterns of deflect, defend, dilute. The tape was from 2005, guys talking like guys, they wanted us to knit our shit and move on.

  The language bothered me, but what disturbed me more was the context. All I can see is the legs. Oh, it looks good. Trump and Billy Bush were evaluating a woman, not in passing or from memory, but on a bus that was slowly pulling up to her. She was present, visible but excluded. I imagine her standing outside, smiling and waiting patiently. She is the deer while we are made aware of the mountain lions lurking in the bushes, and I am whispering at her to perk up her ears. Run. When the two men descended the bus steps, their crude talk switched off as they turned into their public selves. How about a little hug for the Donald. As I watched her greet them warmly, walking in between them with linked arms, I was filled with dread, reminded of all the ways we are unaware.

  This was locker-room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Instead of apologizing, he dragged it from the bus to the locker room, another place inaccessible to women. He never said it was supposed to be different, only said it was supposed to be private. He intended to keep us out, we were never meant to hear. He was not sorry for what he said, just sorry he was caught. Trump sounded like someone I knew.

  I just start kissing them. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. “I kissed her,” Brock said. “And you didn’t ask her permission before you kissed her, did you,” my DA said. “No,” Brock said. I moved on her like a bitch. “I kissed her cheek and ear,” Brock said. “I touched her breasts. I moved her dress down.” Grab ’em by the pussy. “I took off her underwear . . . and then I fingered her.” I did try and fuck her. We live in a time where it has become difficult to distinguish between the President’s words and that of a nineteen-year-old assailant.