Eggshell Skull

by Bri Lee

  ‘We did it,’ I whispered, holding Vincent so tight, my tears all over us.

  ‘You did it,’ he replied.

  We moved straight to sentencing submissions. Raymond handed up my victim impact statement to the judge, who took several minutes to read it. Four or five jurors filed into the back of the courtroom and I felt them looking at me but tried to avoid eye contact.

  ‘I would like to refer your Honour to the final paragraph, and keep my submissions on the complainant’s suffering brief,’ Raymond said.

  I thought of that final paragraph.

  I do not want to read this letter aloud in court because I do not want Mr Levins to understand the particulars of the pain he has caused me, as his actions over the past two years have sufficiently convinced me that he is the kind of man who might appreciate hearing details of my suffering. I only wish to convey that I understand how severe many matters are that pass through the District Court, and that although the facts of Mr Levins’ offending were not nearly as severe as many, they have had a severe impact on my life. It is not for Mr Levins to decide how serious his offending was. In our legal system defendants must ‘take their victims as they find them’.

  The only time I thought I saw a hint of something cross the associate’s face was when Carter stood up and made his sentencing submissions. Samuel’s lawyers were asking for probation instead of a wholly suspended sentence, so that Samuel wouldn’t have a conviction recorded and could therefore still apply for a Blue Card to work with children or the elderly. My jaw dropped and the associate looked at me, and I thought I saw her eye twitch, just a little.

  The judge ripped into Carter about that submission being ‘inappropriate’. I thought that was a nice use of the word, given how defence had used it over the preceding forty-eight hours.

  ‘I will adjourn for a short time to consider my sentence,’ the judge announced. ‘In the meantime, the defendant shall be remanded in custody.’

  Two security officers, who’d been standing at the edge of the dock, ushered Samuel from the courtroom into a side door that led to the cells under the building.

  ‘Way down in the basement, with all the other criminals,’ I whispered to Vincent as my family and I took the opportunity to stand up and hug each other. Sean came over and we all shook his hand. Mum handed me some fresh tissues. I sent Judge a text: Guilty on both counts. Conviction recorded. We got him. And he replied within minutes, wishing me a happy birthday for the next day and adding, Your courage has been vindicated.

  When court resumed, Samuel was accompanied back in by the officers. He was asked to remain on his feet as the judge delivered his sentencing remarks.

  ‘I am sufficiently convinced that you have showed absolutely no remorse, and that even after making admissions against your own interest in a pretext phone call, you refused to accept responsibility for your actions, and caused the complainant significant distress in bringing this matter to trial. I must also add,’ and he paused, looking at Samuel, ‘that you came to trial with a defence that was doomed from the start, and which was clearly fabricated to fit with what you had already admitted to in the pretext call.’

  Samuel received a total of nine months’ imprisonment, but the term was wholly suspended and the conviction was to be recorded. So while he didn’t have to do any time, it would be on his record forever. It was all I’d ever wanted.

  Outside court I thanked Raymond, Adeline and Sean, saying goodbye to them, then took the remaining four of us for a drink in a nearby restaurant.

  ‘This is where I came with Judge when we ate black ants!’ I said to Mum.

  She asked me to explain what Samuel’s sentence meant, and so I let her know about the irony of his situation.

  ‘It’s because he fought me so hard, and for so long, that he’s got a criminal conviction now. When he came up against me, the harder he pushed and the more I refused to back down, the worse he was making things for himself in the end.’

  And that’s eggshell skull.

  The next morning I woke up to Vincent kissing my forehead.

  ‘Happy birthday,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, a double-guilty, you shouldn’t have!’ I said, stretching out in the sunlight. ‘Plus a conviction recorded! What more could a girl want!?’

  And we laughed together.

  As I was washing my hair on the day after my birthday, the thought popped into my mind, as it had sporadically over the past two years, When is the next mention? And then I remembered the trial, and the feeling I’d had when the jurors walked back into the courtroom to deliver their verdict, and even though it was the right one I was flooded with panic and had to sit down to catch my breath in the bottom of the shower.

  That Friday I had a small party for my close friends in the backyard and named it ‘Bri’s Birthday and Justice Brews’, and when everyone had arrived I popped some champagne and told them what had been happening over the past two years.

  ‘Some of you knew and some of you didn’t, but I couldn’t have done it without you all.’ I only cried a tiny bit. ‘And Vincent hates public displays of emotion, but he loves French champagne!’ Everyone laughed and I called him over and thanked him and told him I loved him. ‘This kind of stuff happens because people don’t talk about it, so I mainly want to tell you all that I’m okay to talk about it—and if any of you or anyone you know ever wants to talk about it, the feelings or the process or anything, then I’m right here. Call me any time.’

  I had hung fairy lights over the entire Hills hoist. As the sun set they shone brighter, twinkling, and we all stood around laughing and drinking until the wee hours. The night smelled like mosquito coils and was warm but not too hot, and lots of people hugged me.

  A friend who used to work as a clerk for the DPP was asking me about the trial, and if I was okay, and we started comparing notes on how the system treats women. She had left the industry because she’d seen one too many complainants shattered. ‘I had the most heinous pre-trial hearing once,’ she said.

  ‘No you didn’t, I did,’ I interrupted, thinking of the very first judgment I’d had to proofread for Judge, ‘but you go first.’

  ‘Well, mine involved a girl being tied to a Hills hoist, and—’

  ‘No way! That was mine!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That was my judge! Who allowed the similar fact to be admissible at trial. What happened? How did the trial go?’

  ‘We got him!’

  ‘We got him!’ I shouted, and someone nearby heard me, and they shouted too, ‘We got him!’ And everyone cheered.

  I went up into the house to get more ice and looked down at the party from the second-storey window. It was so beautiful. I stood still and put my hands to my face like I was holding a camera. I blinked, taking a picture in my mind. I felt incredibly, wholly safe. Entirely surrounded by friends and family. Happy and triumphant.

  SO WHAT DO YOU DO in the days and weeks that follow? When you’re hanging out the washing on those rusty steel lines and your arms lock up, and you’re dizzy under the hot summer sun. When your knees buckle and you rest your forehead on scalding concrete while you catch your breath. When every man who yells at you on the street is pushing you onto your back again, and every grabby hand at a party makes you feel belly-up and frozen again.

  What do you do in the months and years that follow? When winning the battle has only opened your eyes to the breadth of the war.

  You cry and you cry, and when you’re done crying, you wipe your eyes, and slap your cheeks, and you get angry, and you get to work.

  WITH A MEMOIR LIKE THIS there are a lot of people you need to thank. The book spans over three years of my young adult life, and I’m incredibly grateful to so many people whose generosity towards me and my work saw me through several particularly dark times. This acknowledgment is very important to me.

  Firstly, to my mother: you won’t know until you read this book just how much your love kept me alive. I go through this life having complete faith in
your love for me. Dad, I’m sorry I talk so negatively about your stoicism and yet we all lean so heavily upon it. Thank you for teaching me about justice. And thank you to my big brother—you were, and continue to be, a wonderful brother.

  Judge! Thank you for letting me write this book! Thank you for being a bastion of hope for me during that tumultuous year. If more people in the legal industry were like you, books like this wouldn’t need to be written. I will always respect and admire you.

  To the many friends I cannot name—I have told you in person how much you mean to me. I’ll try to say it more often.

  To my agent, Grace, who championed me back when none of us knew how Eggy would turn out: your unwavering support has been so reassuring. You make this work so fun, and I look forward to our long, champagne-filled future together. Jane, Best Publisher in the World, when I met you I said to Grace, ‘I want her to be my publisher because that’s the kind of woman I want to be.’ Having the two of you at my back is like a badass attack formation from which I can do anything.

  Genevieve, Kate, and Julia—please don’t tell anyone what this book looked like before you saw it and edited it so wonderfully. Thank you to my excellent publicist, Louise, and everyone else at Allen & Unwin for being so consistently delightful to work with. Five stars. Would recommend.

  As part of the Kat Muscat Fellowship I was able to meet and spend time with the Muscat family, and I want to thank them for the professional opportunities the fellowship gave me, but also for how much they encouraged me. I truly hope this work embodies the defiance Kat stood for. I thought of her often.

  As part of that fellowship I also got to spend time with mentors: Liam Pieper and Krissy Kneen. You were integral to so many steps of this manuscript coming together. Thank you for continuing to mentor me even now, so many years later.

  I must also thank Griffith Review for naming me as a 2017 Fellow and publishing an early excerpt of Eggshell Skull.

  And finally, to ‘Vincent’. I love you so much it’s like sometimes I’m going to explode! You are my favourite person in the world. If I had done all this without you I’d be a husk of a human. We both rode out of that court on giant eagles and my 26th birthday with you was the best day of my life. I hope we are together forever.