Consent

by Donna Freitas

  I don’t know. Maybe?

  I no longer cared.

  I spouted my story about him when people wondered, even though I knew it was a lie.

  I was tired, I was afraid. I was alone. I’ve never been so alone in my life.

  I’d been carrying this secret around for months, keeping this secret so tightly wound that it was a knot in the center of my chest, a hard ball of angst and fear. I could barely breathe around it. Each day it expanded, taking up more space, suffocating me.

  One day in early December, I was in Rhode Island, studying for finals.

  I was sitting at the kitchen table. My mother was lying on the couch. The living room and the kitchen were one big open space in my house. She was watching television, resting, and I was keeping her company as I worked. During a commercial, my mother called out to me.

  “Isn’t it nice that Father L. is going to visit us in January?”

  My heart skidded.

  I turned to her. “What?”

  “He didn’t tell you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mom.”

  “Father L.? He’s coming to visit Narragansett over the holiday break. He’s coming to the house first, and then we planned to have lunch at the Coast Guard House. You, me, him, and Grandma—the four of us. As long as I’m feeling up for it.”

  I wanted to lie down on the floor and curl into a ball. “Oh, yeah, I forgot. He did tell me, Mom.”

  “He thought it would be fun for all of us to get together. To spend the day here in Narragansett.”

  I couldn’t breathe. “Sure. It’ll be great. We’ll have a wonderful time.”

  The commercials ended. The show came back on.

  I knew in that moment that this was it. I was done.

  17

  There were three pages left, then two, then, finally, only one.

  It was mid-December. I printed out the last paper of my semester, and I got in the car to drive it over to school and hand it in to my professor. This final, my last of the calendar year, was highly significant. It meant that I had made it one step further in my graduate-school efforts, that Christmas break had arrived and that I could stop working for a few weeks. But it also meant something far more important. I’d made a deal with myself that day in my Rhode Island kitchen.

  Get through this exam period. Get through this semester. Get through this period of complete hell because of my mother’s cancer and chemo and the fear and the thought that her death was waiting, always, just around the corner. Get through it and then…

  I was going to tell.

  That was the deal: get all my work done, down to the last word of the last paper I owed someone, and my reward would be to speak. I was going to tell someone the truth. I was going to try to put what was happening to me into words and say them out loud. The real truth. Not the false story I’d been peddling for months. Not the cover-up.

  I drove across the city, swathed in darkness, pressing hard on the gas pedal. I sped through yellow lights verging on red.

  I’d made the trip to my graduate campus so many times I’d memorized the precise timing of the stoplight on each block, knew exactly how many seconds I had to zip across the intersection. I couldn’t get there fast enough. I wanted this paper out of my hands. If I didn’t tell someone soon I would die. I needed to cross the finish line I’d set for myself, because on the other side of it I might find hope. I also might find shame and humiliation. But maybe there would be hope. Maybe there would be relief. Maybe, just maybe, there would be me, not being alone anymore with my secret.

  When I got to school I didn’t even bother to park in a spot. I left my car alongside the curb, ran inside, ran upstairs, found my professor in his office, held out my paper to him.

  This professor, one of my favorites, also a priest, was elderly, but stately in his age. He had this amazing head of white wavy hair and often wore a wry smile. He moved slowly, unhurriedly, not in a passive-aggressive way, but more as though he were a turtle, steady and consistent. It felt like forever before that last paper moved from my hands to his.

  “Have a great Christmas,” I told him, to make clear I wasn’t staying long, as I huffed and puffed, lungs heaving from taking the stairs so quickly, from the anxiety roiling inside me, from the knowledge of what I was about to do, from the need to get it over with ballooning past the confines of my body.

  He asked after my mother, after my family, if I was going home to see her, wanted to know how she was doing. I answered perfunctorily and then, when it seemed acceptable for me to leave without being rude, I ran back to my car and dug for my cell phone in my purse.

  Cell phones were new at the time. Well, cell phones that the average person could afford were new. I’d gotten one earlier that same week and now I took it in my hands, ready to dial the number of the person I’d decided to tell. All those months of silence and secrets, and now, suddenly, I couldn’t get to the part where I would speak fast enough. It became urgent to speak the real story to someone immediately.

  I’d put a lot of thought into who it would be. I needed someone I could trust, obviously, someone with whom I had a close friendship, someone I hung out with, with whom I had intimacy. But I also wanted someone I thought would be a good judge of the situation, someone I respected. Someone who wouldn’t automatically side with me because they were my friend, but who would feel sympathy toward this man, a kind of kinship for who he was. I wanted the truth, I didn’t want someone to humor me. I wanted a fair and impartial jury. I wanted to know if I was being crazy, if I was inventing things, if what was happening was my fault, if I was making a big deal over what was really and truly nothing.

  The person I chose was a friend unlike any other. He was a fellow graduate student in my program, which was important because he knew this man. He knew of his stature and reputation as a professor, of his brilliance and importance as a scholar in my field, of the love and admiration our fellow students had for him. He knew this person as kindly and sweet, as above reproach. He liked this man, just as everyone else around me liked him. I’d chosen this friend because he was exactly the kind of person I always feared wouldn’t believe me, someone who would be likely to give this man the benefit of the doubt, someone who would find it very difficult to believe that this man had done anything wrong.

  I’d chosen Dan, Christopher’s roommate.

  There was something else that made Dan uniquely suited to the task. As long as I’d known him, Dan had debated becoming a priest himself. He had the utmost respect for the office of the Catholic priesthood, for priests in general, for the vows they took and the complicated roles they navigated throughout their lives, as men both human and divine. He understood what they gave up for this office—namely, love, human love, romantic love. Part of Dan’s own struggle revolved around a woman he’d been dating off and on for several years. They were currently on a break, but she was always on his mind and in his heart. I chose Dan because I trusted him, because he was honest and fair and kind, but most of all because of his connection to the priesthood and because I was stacking the odds against myself.

  I’d doubted myself for so long, felt like I must be the person at fault, and I needed someone who was going to have to climb all the walls that I had climbed to get to the place where I’d arrived. I wanted to make it hard for me to be believed. If the person I told agreed that something was wrong, this meant there really must be something wrong. Since Dan was predisposed to think well of this man, if he, too, saw what I saw, I’d be able to finally trust that my gut was right. That my gut had been right all along.

  I punched in Dan’s number as I sat there in my unreliable Mazda, in the same seat where, just weeks before, I’d received that wet kiss on the cheek from my professor. Dan picked up right away. I told him I had to talk to him, like now, like that same night, like within the next hour, that there was no waiting until tomorrow, that it was urgent, that this was an emergency. I told him not to tell anyone else about this call and my reque
st.

  He told me he’d see me in thirty minutes.

  I drove straight there.

  We met at a coffee shop in Georgetown.

  “I’m probably being crazy,” I started. “I know I’m probably making a big deal over nothing, that it’s probably my imagination, but I think there might be something wrong with Father L.”

  Caveat, caveat, caveat, and more caveats followed. I gave Dan so many.

  But then, after a year of silence, the entire story came spilling out. Every last detail, from start to finish. I was careful, very careful, to hold myself accountable for every bit of my own responsibility. I was determined not to let myself off the hook, even a little, for the situation in which I found myself. I gave all the benefit of the doubt to my priest-professor and left none of it for myself. I was hard on myself for everything I felt I’d done to create this situation, to worsen it, to perpetuate it. It was imperative that I confess to all of it, that I admit to every last thing. This was a confession, that is the only word for it. I was laying every bit of shame and doubt on the table in front of my friend. I exposed it from every angle. I shined the harshest light on it that I could find. I lit it up so we could both see it for what it was.

  But as the hours passed, our coffees growing cold, this version of the story was the honest one. It was a relief to say it out loud, even though I was afraid of the consequences. I was peeling it off myself and handing it over to someone else to hold for a while, to look at and study, to help me carry it, to determine what it meant, if anything, or to judge if it meant nothing at all.

  Dan listened, without interruption, to my monologue.

  When I finished, when I finally got to the part about the kiss in the car and this man’s planned trip to Rhode Island to meet my mother, to see my house, to go to lunch with her and me and my grandmother, I bookended my monologue with the same insecurity and doubt I’d started with.

  “Am I crazy? I’m probably being crazy, right? Nothing is wrong. I’m just imagining things, right? Right?”

  I was panting, nervous, depleted from getting so much out at once. I was suddenly aware of the glare of the café’s lights overhead, the round white table where we were sitting, the cars and the people going by on M Street on the other side of the windows. I’d stopped seeing them while I talked, as though they’d vanished and only just now reappeared.

  Dan asked me only a single question. His voice was quiet and steady. “What do you want to happen with Father L.?” He told me to be honest.

  My heart was pounding. The truth bubbled up and I blurted it with a low, seething rage. “I don’t ever want to see him again. I never ever want to lay eyes on him or hear his judgmental little voice. I don’t care if he dies. I’ve never hated anyone so much in my life. I hate him, and I want him gone. I want him gone.”

  Dan nodded. “Then let’s figure out how to make that happen.”

  I stared at him. “So you think something is wrong?” I asked this in a whisper.

  “Donna,” he began. “You work in Residence Life. If one of your RAs or a student in your hall told you the story you just told me, would you think something was wrong?”

  “Yes,” I said without hesitation.

  “That’s because something is wrong,” he said. “It’s beyond wrong. I’m so angry, I’m angry at him, but angry for you. I’m sorry this has been happening to you. I’m so sorry you’ve felt you couldn’t tell anyone until now. Thank you for telling me.”

  Dan never stopped looking at me while he spoke. I think he wanted me to see how certain he was about what he was saying, that while I might have doubts and fears about my story, he had no doubts or fears about his conclusions regarding it. The strength of his certainty was like a balm I didn’t know I needed until right then.

  “Donna,” he went on, “this isn’t just inappropriate, it’s obsession. It’s stalking. Father is stalking you.”

  I couldn’t breathe.

  “We’ll figure this out together,” Dan said. “Okay?”

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  And just like that, I wasn’t alone.

  Part Three

  18

  Dan helped me to make a plan.

  My world, my life, my everyday existence, was transformed. I wasn’t alone, and Dan was adamant that I become even less alone, that we tell someone at school, just one person, but someone with authority we felt we could trust. I was still adamant about things, too. Mostly that we not make too big a deal out of the situation. Even though telling Dan and having him believe me made the ground a bit steadier, I was still terrified of people finding out what was going on, of getting in trouble for causing what was happening, of not being believed, of being judged. I still didn’t want Christopher to know, so I made Dan promise not to tell him—which he did, though reluctantly. Also, I was worried about hurting this man. I was afraid of what would happen to him if I made an official complaint. I was scared of becoming responsible for doing something that would jeopardize his job, his life, his stature.

  You would think I would want something terrible to happen to him, for him to lose his job. You would think that I would be a bit more confident that he had done something wrong, now that I had someone standing with me, a friend I trusted and respected, my impartial judge and jury who did not doubt for a second that something was very wrong. Dan was as certain that this professor’s behavior was inappropriate, abusive, even, as I was uncertain. He had no problem naming it, but still I could not.

  Naming it made it real. Naming it made it undeniable, and I still wanted the right to deny it. I wanted to be able to deny it for myself, to myself.

  Denial is a powerful thing. It’s a powerful tool, a powerful survival mechanism. I still wanted everything to be okay. In a way, I still wanted to find out that I had been making things up because then I wouldn’t have to go through any of what I was about to go through. A part of me, a big part, was still hoping I would wake from this like it had been a bad dream, that with the snap of someone’s fingers it would disappear, and all would be well again.

  Since the beginning of graduate school, I’d been reading about the power of naming in the feminist theory in my courses. I was talking about, learning about, reading about, and writing papers about naming as a tool of empowerment and voice and transformation for women at the very same time that I was resisting this act in my own life.

  But to me, naming had consequences I was not ready to confront, that I never in my life wanted to have to confront. Naming abuse, naming sexual harassment, naming something like stalking committed by a professor, my mentor, a priest, was the kind of thing that happened to someone else, not to me. It was the stuff of gossip, hushed whispers, scandalized talk. It was something you knew happened to people, but those people are never you or the people you know. If I named this thing it would stick to me, sink into me, become me. Not only would it rot me from the inside but now the rot would be visible. It would cling to me, mark me, become my scarlet letter. I would have to walk around the world wearing it, and the world would see it on me and reject me for it. I would be ruined because of it.

  Naming meant loss. It meant the loss of a fantasy I’d held, that I still wanted to hold, about me and my intellectual promise, my academic talents, my appeal as a young woman and aspiring PhD. Because of his interest in me—well, let’s be honest, his devotion—at first I believed it meant I was special. Exceptional. But now naming this for what it really was seemed like agreeing to label myself sex object. I would be canceling out my brain and my intellect, trading them in exclusively for an empty female body. I would be allowing myself to become a shell. I would be announcing my sex-object status to the rest of the world. It meant agreeing to reduce myself to an essence, and this essence turned out to be sexual plaything. I was of no real value in the eyes of this professor, not an equal or a future colleague, just a little girl to be watched and admired but never to be heard or listened to. Only to be seen.

  Naming meant I would have to acknowledge tha
t I was younger than I’d believed. Less mature, less adult, less woman and more girl. Naming what happened, what was still happening, meant that I had no control, that I had lost control, and maybe it involved admitting that I’d never had it in the first place—I’d only thought so. Naming meant saying out loud to myself and to others that all this time I’d been preyed upon. That I’d been gullible. Naïve in the worst of ways.

  Naming this, this thing, made me uncomfortable. It felt like agreeing to wear the shame I felt about my role in all of it like a bright shade of lipstick on my face for the rest of my life. It felt like becoming shame, embodying it, agreeing to accept this as a permanent, ontological shift in my being. It meant being willing to tattoo this shame all over my body.

  I was in a man’s world. Academia always has been and still is a man’s world, and my place in it, philosophy and religious studies, is particularly male. If the men in power found out who I was, if they saw what I had done, if they saw what I had done to him, I would never find my place in that world I so longed to be a part of.

  They wouldn’t hold him accountable for what he’d done to me, they would hold me accountable for what I’d done to him. To name things would be to doom myself in the eyes of the men who would inevitably control my professional fate, because it was men who still control the professional fate of all of us in these fields.

  So, naming in my case, in that moment, didn’t feel empowering at all. It felt more like defeat. Once again, I was failing at feminism. Or worse, once again, feminism was failing me.

  We decided to tell a woman professor we both knew well.

  She was Dan’s dissertation director, and I had also taken her courses and loved them. She was one of the women who introduced me to feminist theory, who helped me to become a feminist myself. We decided we would tell her in confidence, ensure that she would tell no one else, but she would be another custodian of this situation I found myself in, possessing the knowledge but never speaking it out loud to others—unless it became absolutely necessary. She was our fail-safe, “just in case” things went sideways.