Know My Name

by Chanel Miller

  You’re doing great, Bree said. I looked at her. She was smiling, not with pity, but something bordering on admiration. Holding the wad of paper towels, she seemed hopeful, excited by this morning. It meant something to her that we had made it here. I felt only fatigue, charcoal smears of makeup on my cheeks. Maybe in this context, this is what great looked like.

  I was surprised to be carried by my own feet, following Bree back through the courtroom doors. As she settled into the chair on my right, I felt the two of us had returned from a secret clubhouse. I was great. This fact became as solid as her presence.

  When we resumed, Alaleh went back to my final memory of standing outside on the patio, then touched the soft center again. Can you describe how you were feeling when you first woke up? Her gaze locked into me. I could not describe that feeling. I don’t know that many survivors can. I would argue that I was still in the process of waking up. But I understood we were not going anywhere until I could start giving answers, that we would recess and return for as long as it took. So I tried.

  I wept through the blood, the underwear, gone, my face contorted, chest heaving. My words were breathy, I felt ugly, making a mess of myself, but beneath all of this I heard that rapid clicking, the hands of the court reporter carrying me, little footsteps of the keys, running forward, we were moving. You need a moment? Take a deep breath. Okay. Can you describe was it just one pine needle, how many pine needles were in your hair? Pushing and pushing, every detail, every feeling. Did a nurse perform an exam on your genitals? It was a fairly invasive exam?

  At this I paused, sat for a moment, wiping my face. If I shared too much, I’d make everyone uncomfortable. But she was asking me. Why should I carry the shame for the things that were done to my body. I had a plastic beak stuck in me, I said, I had Q-tips in my anus. They painted my vagina blue I think to look for abrasions. They spread my legs. Photographed me. They photographed me naked. So yes.

  I felt a little lighter. I’d stated my truth unapologetically, and for a moment I’d held the power, made the men fidget, cast their eyes down. I wanted to say into the microphone again, anus. I’d let go of my posture, my hair was out of its clips, I was exhausted. We must be almost done.

  Chanel, I’m going to ask you to take a look at this exhibit, and tell me if you recognize the items that are photographed in the exhibit. Photographs? The assault in my mind was always a scene constructed by dialogue narrated to me. She shuffled through a few large photos on her desk and I caught a glimpse of my naked wrists and ankles folded over. She approached my stand with one large photo, a square of reality sliding onto my podium, and I pulled back from it instinctively.

  The entire rectangle was a bright auburn color filled by a crosshatched texture. I studied it for a moment, realizing it was thousands of pine needles. Among them was a small, white scribble of fabric and a blue phone cover. My two tiny possessions left behind. So this is where I was found.

  Up until then I’d tried to stay present but detached, the blond guy to my left a stranger. That mystified morning in the hospital, the snag of pulling needles from my hair, was the only reality I had. But here now the scenes were beginning to connect, the black fragment of my mind filling with this bright, auburn color. A stranger looking at the photos would see white fabric; I saw my underwear, knew that if you looked closely you could see the faded black polka dots, thread loose on the waistband. The victim is you. Which meant there was a point in time I had been there, and the man in the suit sitting feet from me, had been running his hands over the bones of my bare hips, as I was pinned beneath the weight of him, my hair mopping the ground, his palm pressed against my exposed nipple, his mouth opening onto my neck. He is spreading my legs, worming his fingers into me. The reality of it all was too large, expanded too quickly, panic rising. I stared at the photo, fully aware now of the presence of him.

  Alaleh pulled the photo away, replaced it with another, this one an enlarged screenshot of my phone, displaying nine missed calls from my sister. Next, a screenshot of Lucas’s texts: Tell Tiffany to take care of you, please, I’m worried about you boo. Evidence of their panic. I pressed my arms against my sides, my face dry, chin shaking. Chanel, I heard my name. Did you have any interest in hooking up with anyone in court today? I lifted my head and looked directly at him, at the top of his head, as he looked down into his lap. He is real, it is really him. I wanted to make sure he was listening. Pick up your head.

  No.

  Silence rippled out around this word. My mind became clear, all the questions faded to nothing. Do you recognize anyone in court that you may have hooked up with? The way he refused to look at me told me we both knew the answer to this question.

  No.

  This single syllable on my tongue felt like nourishment, tasted like something new. I wanted the two little letters to slip inside his ears like seeds, to settle inside his gut, to expand, pushing on his lungs, his heart, suffocating him from the inside out, until he was overcome, bursting out of his buttoned shirt.

  My DA smiled, gave me a nod, tapping her papers on the podium. I have nothing further, she said. I had completed part one. Fatigue seemed to have beaten out the fear in me. I had been taught to be intimidated by the defense, told he was reputable, distinguished, one of the best, but as I waited for him to get all his papers in order, I softened to the fact that he was quite old, maybe someone’s grandpa, and I imagined him tossing a baseball underhand. Only when I watched him rise did I feel a slight prickling. His face naturally sagged in a frown, and I was reminded he was here to dismember me.

  Good morning, Chanel. He smiled, but I believe a smile has to appear for more than a beat to be considered a real smile, and his dropped too quickly. Still I smiled warmly back, teaching him how to hold one. I wanted to ask you some questions mostly based on the questions that you’ve already been asked. Just clarifications, he said. He had a light air about him, as if this were just friendly talk, we were going on a stroll together. This bothered me, this feigned politeness, a baseless cordiality.

  His questions began again at the taqueria. In retrospect, I would never have gone to the taqueria that day if I knew there were going to be so many questions about it. You stopped before you got home at a taqueria to have some dinner? That’s where you ate one taco? You had nothing to drink, not water, or coke or anything? He looked up from his notes to kind of squint at me, then nodded and returned to his notes as if confirming something. His approach was unexpected; taking long pauses, flipping back and forth slowly through his legal pad, writing while we waited. I had anticipated a rapid-fire cross-examination, instead he seemed to be taking his time deliberating, evaluating my every word. I grew uneasy during these long silences. I continued to stare at him.

  His questions mirrored my attorney’s, repeating everything we’d already been through, it sounded like: Stir-fry, you testified, whiskey, help yourself, broccoli? Who prepared that, drinking with, that’s where you, four shots, half hour? Correct? Alcohol? The whole period? With your sister, believe you, number of shots, champagne, I believe, so how much, was she also, consumed, roughly? The party? Before? You say? She wasn’t? Did you both? How much? During? Excuse me? Stanford? Same time? Approximately? Or with her? With whom? When you? That you saw? Not hard hitting, but hole poking. I made sure that every time he looked up my eyes were still holding his, showing him I’d be with him every step of the way, while he made it increasingly difficult. Unlike Alaleh’s, his questions became increasingly nonlinear, making it harder to keep a visual narrative in my head. When you consumed the amount of alcohol you poured into the red cup between the first and the second lines, was that before or after you went outside to pee? You mentioned that day when you went to Stanford and went to the KA house you were wearing a beige cardigan, correct? That’s a sweater? Was he asking me if a cardigan was a sweater? I grew unsettled by his frivolous questions posed in a serious light, the idea that they somehow bore weight. He asked me
if I had been singing at the party. Quizzed me on how many liquid ounces are in a handle. At one point in your testimony I believe you described your actions as standing on a chair on a table and dancing by yourself? At this question, I smiled, imagining the furniture stacked, my head grazing the ceiling. On a chair on a table? I said. Yeah, he said. Did I get that wrong? He looked at me, deadpan. On a chair, I said, on the floor. I waited a moment to let him write it down. Everyone else was on tables.

  Okay, he said. So you were just on a chair? When you were at the hospital you didn’t notice that you were injured in any way on your body, did you? I almost said yes, quick to agree, until I realized I’d never said that. Why was he asking me like I’d said it. He had seamlessly transitioned from furniture stacking to bodily injuries, consistent in his tone and pacing, and I suddenly wondered if the joke was on me, for getting too relaxed by his easy questions. In response I began talking about the dried blood, but he quickly dismissed this, attributing it to the needle from the IV drip. So other than that you didn’t notice any injuries on your body? His questions were disguising statements; you didn’t notice, you didn’t notice. He was forcing me into something. Except for a scratch on my neck, I said. He snapped back, That was the only injury you noticed, right? Yes, I said. He’d gotten what he wanted. I felt him feeding me the answer, framing it in a way that made me want to agree, to keep things running smoothly.

  A memory surfaced then, of standing in the bathroom mirror at home, turning and pulling down my sweatpants to reveal the red patch on my bottom. I’d quickly pulled my pants back up, washed my hands as if something had rubbed off on them. I hadn’t thought of this incident in months, and it now showed itself to me, freed the memory from its anchor. But how do I explain this? That a repressed memory has bubbled to the surface? I had already said yes; testified to not having any injuries, permanently on record, as I was swept off into questions about shotgunning a beer, if the person used a key to puncture the can, was it actually a key, like a key on a key chain.

  The end was abrupt. He sat down. I was free. Was I free? I looked at Alaleh as if to say are you sure, if I walk out now, no one will stop me? And when she nodded, I was gone. When I got back to the victim closet, there were two things I noticed. First, my wiener dog was strangled in a tight knot. It alarmed me that I’d almost killed my small friend. I gingerly untangled him. Then I saw the skin on both hands between my thumb and forefinger marked with deep, red crescents that trailed down to my wrists. While the upper half of my body had remained still, my thumbnails had carved into my skin, digging into the meat of my palm and forearms, releasing the tension. This habit born in court has never died; now when I’m thinking hard or in a stressful situation, my hands involuntarily curl tightly and I begin pinching. At night, I ache in my hands and forearms, fantasize peeling them open, scooping out the hot, thick, pain buried there, until my arms and fingers are limp and empty.

  I was done, but my sister was not. Her friend Elizabeth had arrived to watch her. Tiffany planned to make eye contact with her the entire time, even during Alaleh’s questioning. She did not feel the need to stare down the defense in an act of self-redemption and reclamation, she simply wanted to get through it. I loved this about her, always knowing what she wanted, surrounding herself with good forces. It was sweet to imagine the two of them anchored in each other’s gaze, ignoring whoever was talking.

  When the two of them returned, the first thing I noticed was their eyes, glazed over, unresponsive. That told me everything. I was reminded of the night I went to pick up Julia; saw her standing with her notes, disoriented and despondent. It was time for Tiffany to drive back to school. I told her, I am going with you. I was afraid of what would happen if we separated, like we would not heal correctly. I had not planned to go to Southern California, did not have a way of getting back. All I understood was that I needed to be in the passenger’s seat. I told my mom that I’d see her and dad whenever I returned.

  There were very few situations Tiffany and I couldn’t convert to laughter. When I had arguments with my first boyfriend, Tiffany would blast soap opera sound tracks from her room, so any time we paused we were left staring at each other while dramatic piano riffs played in the background. But sitting in the car, neither of us could think of anything to lift the dampened mood.

  That night, lying on my sister’s frameless mattress on the floor, the churning laundry machine in the background, I could finally rest. I was content to have earned this moment of peace. I pulled out my small red notebook. I illuminated the pages with my phone, and wrote, I feel like I’ve already won. It was a small nod to myself; I had done the impossible, showed up. Those who watched me cry on the stand might have perceived me as fragile, but I believed it to be the quiet beginning of my strength. I did what I’d never thought I could do, had somehow been spit out on the other side, still far from the finish line, but alive. Side by side, we went to sleep.

  The next morning, I woke to the headline: WOMAN IN STANFORD SEXUAL-ASSAULT CASE TESTIFIES. I eagerly clicked on the link. Emily was described as giving emotional testimony. It was reported she and her sister drank beers that three men gave them before Emily woke up in the hospital. Alaleh pressed Emily, asking her again if she remembered anything that happened in between those two events. Emily responded, “No,” and started to cry. Cry had never looked like such a tiny word, a drop of water. Everthing felt flattened out and simplified.

  In one article, they mentioned my university, my boyfriend in Philly, and included Tiffany’s name eight times. For them to have sat in the room with her, with me, and then so casually expose us, I could not understand.

  Emily described her level of intoxication as “so drunk that I didn’t think I was drunk.” Looking at the transcripts I can count all the Qs: two hundred and twenty questions asked by my DA. One hundred and two asked by the defense. I sat and answered three hundred and twenty-two questions that morning, and this was the notable quote they had chosen. I scrolled down to the comment section: I have young daughters and I hope they make good decisions in college and after.

  There would be no change in the tide. No reason for celebration. I felt punished for showing up. It was exhausting to be under constant review, the judgment I always feared confirmed. My pride dissolved quickly, made room for the voices that critiqued, scoffed. I knew now that I could do it. I also knew how much it would cost. If the goal was to heal, move on, this was not the way to proceed. Healing needed privacy, needed patience, needed nurturing. Healing required planting seeds in the soft, dark underground. Reporters arrived like shovels tearing into the earth, scooping seeds out, bare-skinned, back onto the surface. I was left on my knees in the dirt digging holes, placing the broken shells down deep, patting the soil with my hands. But there would always be more shovels, more disruptions, looming court dates. The more it happened, the less energy I had to keep digging; a deadening faith that something would grow.

  That week I stopped speaking, stopped writing in my little red notebook. I slept for hours. I folded piles of Tiffany’s clothes, hung her necklaces, tossed out old dried tubes of mascara, flattened crumpled paper. I would not allow the case to wipe us both out. I planned to go back to Philly, un-becoming Emily, so lonely in drab clothing, crying always crying, and returning to myself.

  Alone at night, when I felt the weight of twenty sandbags on my chest, I would open the police report and read:

  JONSSON caught up to TURNER and did a leg sweep and tripped TURNER. TURNER fell to the ground and tried to get up. JONSSON said it looked like he was trying to get up and run away again, so he tackled him to the ground. JONSSON straddled TURNER and held his arms down as ARNDT held his legs down. . . . He told TURNER he was not letting him up until he figured out what was going on and he wanted to make sure that VICTIM was ok.

  I reminded myself this was not simply a fight between perpetrator and victim; there was a third element, the Swedes. They represented the seers, the doers
, who chose to act and change the story.

  It should be noted that several times throughout giving his statement, JONSSON became very upset, to the point where he began crying while recounting the incident. He had to stop and take several deep breaths before being able to resume giving me his statement. He said it was a very disturbing event for him to witness and be involved in, but he just reacted to the situation at hand without really thinking.

  What we needed to raise in others was this instinct. The ability to recognize, in an instant, right from wrong. The clarity of mind to face it rather than ignore it. I learned that before they had chased Brock, they had checked on me. Masculinity is often defined by physicality, but that initial kneeling is as powerful as the leg sweep, the tackling. Masculinity is found in the vulnerability, the crying.

  At the hearing, both Swedes had shown up to testify. I discovered that the night of the assault, they’d bolted him to the ground, and said: What the fuck are you doing? She’s unconscious.

  Do you think this is OK?

  What are you smiling about?

  Say sorry to her.

  I do not attribute surviving to willpower or optimism because none of this I had. It would take weeks to recover, depression would take over. But that October, the Swedes had introduced this new voice inside me. I had to teach myself to talk like them. To one day face my attacker and say, What the fuck are you doing.

  6.

  LUCAS LIVED ON the sixteenth floor on Walnut Street in Center City, Philadelphia. I loved the stacked squares of gridded lights on every building. The warm steam that billowed up from grates in the street. The Italian delis encasing speckled sausage and pink meats, the butchers’ smocks covered in rosy fingerprints. Soup with matzo balls as large as fists. Milky marble museum floors. Small bookstores. College students with wiry limbs running in jaunty packs by the river. Amish families selling wildflowers. When we walked together, Lucas pointed out the main streets, Chestnut Street, Walnut Street, they should name a smaller street Cashew. He introduced me to Big B, who sat with a chess set every day in the park, showed me his favorite place to get roast beef sandwiches. He gave a list of all the clubs at his school I could join, paraded me around to meet his friends. He’s acclimating me, I thought, he’s telling me he wants me to stay. I liked fantasizing about this becoming my home for the year, but I did not retain the names of the parks or the bus lines, feeling it pointless to get familiar with a world I would soon be ripped away from.