Know My Name

by Chanel Miller

  I think that he will not be a danger to others. . . . The character letters suggest that up to this point he complied with social and legal norms sort of above and beyond what normal law-abiding people do. If there’s anything we had learned in all of this, it was that Brock was actually above and beyond the average person. Four percent acceptance rate. This was not a time for condemnation, but praise.

  And, finally, I find another factor reasonably related to the sentencing decision is the character evidence—provided both at trial and in connection with this sentencing hearing—the character evidence with respect to Mr. Turner’s past up until the point of the incident.

  The incident. The unfortunate result. Twenty minutes of action. In swimming, one one-hundredth of a second is the difference between victory and loss. Yet they wanted to write off twenty minutes as insignificant. Twenty minutes was just the beginning: Who counts the six-hour flights we took back and forth across the country? Who counts the doctor visits, the hours spent wringing my hands in therapy, the nights spent lying awake? Who counts the trips to Kohl’s, wondering is this blouse too tight? Who counts the days devoid of writing or reading or creating, instead wondering why I should wake up in the morning? Who counts it?

  The judge opened up the floor for objections. My DA stood up, rapid-fired everything that was wrong. I was surprised she could string so many points together at a moment’s notice. She pointed out that a six-month county jail sentence would only mean three months: every day of good behavior meant a day off his sentence. June, July, August. Brock would be home by the end of the summer, well before Thanksgiving. She said, At minimum, it should warrant a year in county jail—at minimum. How did we find ourselves in the position of begging for one year? When did the power shift?

  I looked at the people on my side, my DA struggling to gain momentum, everyone in ruins. I turned my head to look at their side, chins lifted, hands folded, collected. No collapsing into grief and wails—instead there was a light air, calm composure. Had they known all along? The defense attorney pushed back his chair as he stood, praised the judge’s accuracy, echoing that unusual circumstances called for a probationary sentence, and six months in county jail would do fine.

  My final hope was the Probation Department. A woman I had never seen before stood up. She said, After hearing what the victim had to say today and reviewing the papers that were submitted by the parties . . . the Probation Department did make a fair and complete recommendation. I felt my chest concaving, but remained perfectly still. It was all for this. You’re ordered to serve six months in the county jail. You have one actual day credit. He had one extra day off this sentence, since he’d spent a night in jail when he’d been arrested. It wasn’t even a full day, I thought. A touch of salt.

  If you wish to appeal, you must file a written Notice of Appeal with the clerk of this court within 60 days from today. The defense attorney spoke up; I believe there’s an attorney present in court who’s going to be representing Mr. Turner on appeal, and may he speak to the court briefly? I turned to my right as a white-bearded man stood up, broad chested, holding a briefcase, wearing a fitted suit. He looked like a slightly crisper version of Brock’s old attorney. Is this who I’d have to fight next? I turned back to face the front. I thought I had slayed a dragon, but here was the bigger dragon. I was too tired to fight it, wanted it to be over, to curl up in its mouth. He announced he’d already prepared the Notice of Appeal, asked where he could file it. Brock may have been genuinely remorseful, but he had hired an even higher-powered attorney to repaint me as a liar, drunk, willing.

  The judge said thank you and we were dismissed.

  I imagined this was a play, we were on set, that any minute the props would be rolled away, good work everyone. That was all we needed from you, thanks for coming. Is that it? my sister said. I burned inside, couldn’t speak. I was humiliated, wished no one had come. This is why you don’t let people in, why it’s better to do things alone. I felt a visceral anger toward myself for presenting this dramatic outpouring, this batshit touchy-feely monologue. I had failed to read the room. It was too much, it was too much and also not enough.

  In elementary school we had to write in our yellow journals daily. One day we were doing silent reading while the teacher graded our yellow journals in the back. I heard my name, turned to see her lifting my journal up into the air, pages loosely flapping, Chanel, there is no such thing as January 42! I had written beyond January 31, to January 32, January 33, all the way up to January 42. The whole class was laughing, and I grew hot with shame. There were obvious rules in the world I had missed. What other things didn’t I know? Now the judge was dangling my statement in the air, everyone laughing, my face burning. January has thirty-one days, rapists get three months; everyone in the world knew this, except me.

  I’ll be right back. I excused myself quickly out of the courtroom, my purse, I need to retrieve it from the victim closet. I walked down the hallway, tried the knob, but it was locked. As I turned around to see if someone could get me a key, I saw everyone’s eyes fixed on me. Everyone I love was looking at me in worry, in need of some hope, what now, and even worse the feeling that I had nothing to give them. That I was so sorry, because that was all I had, and I thought I could save us, but I’d failed. My words were worth nothing.

  I saw Julia pacing on the periphery. Her arms were pumping up and down, she was crying with her voice constricted, saying, I hate him, I hate him. She embodied what we felt, expressing it for us all, while we stood, disquieted and stricken, unable to feel it yet.

  My DA showed up with the key. I had only ever seen her strong, it was always we got this, but now she looked pale, speechless.

  We gathered in a conference room in the back. I could hear the anger in my dad’s voice, telling Mr. Rosen, His father didn’t even look at her, how could he not have looked at her. I was invisible again, someone who needed parents to fight for me, pathetic and powerless. Mr. Rosen said I did great, but I also knew which speech he held in his hand. His colleague said it was the most amazing statement he’d heard in twenty years. He told me I had said what so many victims feel but could not articulate. I nodded, knowing this must be what he said to every victim, this was a spiel. The detective reminded me they could never have come this far without me, my advocate assured me this was true. The compliments poured like water off me. I just looked at them, too familiar with that soft-shouldered posture, the gentle arm extensions, delicate tones. I didn’t want it, the sympathy, the consolation.

  I had failed to see this was a case in a long line of many, wedged into a schedule. The man who beat the woman was sentenced to seventy-two days, which I now realized meant thirty-six, halved by the same rule. In my eyes this had been a big deal, but the judge probably saw cases like these all the time, I was just one in passing. I suddenly found myself questioning what I’d been doing all year, what I’d even been grieving. I couldn’t remember why I’d left my job, why I’d been living on the East Coast. I bent my statement into smaller and smaller squares, hiding it inside my purse.

  Mr. Rosen and Alaleh were asking if they could release it. I said sure, if you think it’d be helpful. I imagined it on a community forum or on the local newspaper’s website. Michele said we would keep fighting, which was supposed to register as a comfort. I nodded, but I was done. Alaleh and Mr. Rosen went out to the front steps to address the hungry cameras. He said, The punishment does not fit the crime. The sentence does not factor in the true seriousness of this sexual assault, or the victim’s ongoing trauma. Campus rape is no different than off-campus rape. Rape is rape.

  My family and I made our way down the back stairwell. For once, I did not rush. I no longer felt the urgency to protect myself, all my armor already gone. The day was sunny and quiet. Cars rolled by on their way to California Avenue for lunch. For most people it was just a regular afternoon. I tried to comfort myself by saying, you get to be a normal person again. But this w
as not how freedom should feel. I could see his family and the defense attorney about a hundred feet away in the parking lot, standing in a circle. I had a vision of myself strolling over, now that the barriers had dissolved, confronting them. How do you still not see me? My family kept saying, Let’s go home, what are we still doing here. I just stood on the curb, silently convinced that if we just waited a minute longer, they’d call us back in, say they’d made a mistake. People left one by one and still I stayed.

  My friends took me out to get frozen yogurt. We sat around the table Googling the difference between jail and prison, trying to understand. County jail is usually for misdemeanors; you can get six months for digging a bonfire pit at the beach, flying a drone, tampering with a fire extinguisher, trespassing on a construction site. We said maybe I should go dig a hole in the sand and get sent to jail to deal with him myself. We talked about his father’s mention of steak, Brock’s spelling proficiency. I said once I’d been eliminated from the spelling bee for misspelling zucchini. We realized half of us still didn’t know how to spell it. We went around and shared stories of assault, harassment, virginities stolen not lost, unwanted touches, in a tent, at the dance, times we wished we had asked more for ourselves. We all had a story, many stories. I had come the furthest out of all of them in terms of getting justice. I suppose this is what justice looked like, sitting exhausted with a melted cup of dripping yogurt.

  As the afternoon faded, Lucas drove to Lake Tahoe to join his family. Tiffany rushed back to school for final exams. My friends returned to their offices. At home my parents settled back into their corners of the house. By nighttime I was completely alone again. I had been looking forward to this moment since I could remember. At least I was done. I saw an email from Michele, who had been in touch with Amy Ziering, the producer of the documentary The Hunting Ground. Amy’s daughter had suggested the statement be published on BuzzFeed, by a trusted journalist named Katie J.M. Baker. I thought this would be fine. I scrolled through Craigslist looking at gigs and summer jobs. I wanted to teach art at a summer camp. I wanted to sit outside on a picnic bench and glue feathers to sticks, for stakes to be low, eating peanut butter sandwiches out of brown paper bags. I did not mind if I was paid eight dollars an hour, living in my high school bedroom. Whatever I did next, I’d get to choose. I jotted a few notes of camp names. This will be great. Tears started coming out of my eyes. I closed all the tabs.

  They tell you that if you’re assaulted, there’s a kingdom, a courthouse, high up on a mountain where justice can be found. Most victims are turned away at the base of the mountain, told they don’t have enough evidence to make the journey. Some victims sacrifice everything to make the climb, but are slain along the way, the burden of proof impossibly high. I set off, accompanied by a strong team, who helped carry the weight, until I made it, the summit, the place few victims reached, the promised land. We’d gotten an arrest, a guilty verdict, the small percentage that gets the conviction. It was time to see what justice looked like. We threw open the doors, and there was nothing. It took the breath out of me. Even worse was looking back down to the bottom of the mountain, where I imagined expectant victims looking up, waving, cheering, expectantly. What do you see? What does it feel like? What happens when you arrive? What could I tell them? A system does not exist for you. The pain of this process couldn’t be worth it. These crimes are not crimes but inconveniences. You can fight and fight and for what? When you are assaulted, run and never look back. This was not one bad sentence. This was the best we could hope for.

  At the very start of the sentencing, the judge said that the question he had to ask himself was, Is incarceration in state prison the right answer for the poisoning of Chanel’s life? I thought it had been strange the way he’d phrased it. To him, my lost job, my damaged hometown, my small savings account, my stolen pleasures, had all amounted to ninety days in county jail.

  I wondered if, in their eyes, the victim remained stagnant, living forever in that twenty-minute time frame. She remained frozen, while Brock grew more and more multifaceted, his stories unfolding, a spectrum of life and memories opening up around him. He got to be a person. Where was her redemption story? Nobody talked about the things she might go on to do. I had laid my suffering bare, but I lacked a key element. The judge had given Brock something that would never be extended to me: empathy. My pain was never more valuable than his potential.

  There would be no transformation. Behind bars or not, the judge had set him free, let him return to the recesses of his mind where he could do no wrong. So what was the meaning of all this? What’s the objective, the end game? Not once was he forced to imagine the life of the human on the receiving end of his actions. If anything, the fight had cemented Brock inside his distortions, fortified his need to hold his ground.

  I wondered if I was waking up to a truth that I had been the last one to realize; you are worth three months. A smarter part of me knew this was not right, but I could not pretend to know better. At that moment there was nothing to do but give in. I accepted that this would be one of the most painful nights of my life.

  I let myself be broken. Cries rippled through me. I had two arms locked around my pillow, my chin dug in, staring straight ahead. Hold on, I said. I felt my teeth against my pillow, suffocating my cries, careful not to wake my parents. My poisoned life, three months.

  But I also knew this feeling would not be infinite. As soon as the sun came up, the worst would be behind me. When the sun rose, I’d be inside a new life. One where I would never set foot in that courtroom again. Where is the sun right now, I thought. I kept looking outside, the world endlessly black, waiting for colors to shift. The blackness stayed immovable for hours and I wanted to run east, where the sun would pass over me sooner. Alone in my bedroom, eyes closed, I imagined it moving, this glowing power inching its way toward me, the earth turning heavy and slow. If you get through this night, you are promised to survive all the days ahead.

  I opened up my notebook. I stared at the empty page. Then I wrote, You are worth more than three months. Again. You are worth more than three months. My face crumpled, twisted, my hand trying to outrun my mind. Listen to what your body is trying to tell you. You are worth more than three months. A voice in my head said, What do you like? I said, I like drawing. What are you going to do? I will draw, I will speak. You are worth more than three months. I am not a burden. I am not limited, I am ever expanding. Your suffering means something. You are worth more than three months. They could never truly have rejected me since they had never fully known me. You are worth more than three months. The assault was never all of me. I could feel myself fighting, driving the pen into the page. You are worth more than three months. My hand tensed, struggling, then softening. The light in my room was gray, I parted my blinds to peek through, outlines of trees and cars emerging. I put down my pen. Sleep.

  10.

  IN THE MORNING my eyes were sore, it was bright outside, a fresh day. I wanted to relish being released from the clenched jaws of the case. I would fill my Friday with slowness and sun. I was going to ride Tofu down to the salt marshes to see the white herons. I would buy a milkshake from the creamery. I would go for a swim. At that moment in time, that was the entirety of my life’s plans.

  But my phone was cluttered with missed calls and messages. An email from Amy: Katie J.M. Baker was waiting for my permission to release the statement on BuzzFeed. None of the coverage of my case had given me reason to think a reporter would have my best interests at heart. But Katie had handled these kinds of cases before, and I felt so worn out, and the statement seemed of such little consequence, that I didn’t care much where it ended up, as long as my name wasn’t on it. I sat in bed saying hellooooo to clear my morning voice away, then called her. She sounded excited, effusive and kind. I told her they were free to cut whatever they wanted. She said the editors weren’t going to touch it. This struck me as strange; I knew there were too many pages, run-on sentences,
misplaced commas. Instead, she asked if there was anything I’d like to add. I told her, I want the judge to know that he ignited a tiny fire.

  The statement went up at 4:00 P.M. that afternoon. At the top of the article was a red rectangle calling out sentences from the statement in white lettering. Powerful formatting. But looking at it was like standing in an empty auditorium decorated with crepe streamers, worried nobody would show up. I couldn’t stand it. I shut my computer, went to the kitchen. I took the plastic ice-cube trays out of the freezer, popped ice cubes out into my cup. I wished for a silver refrigerator with dispensers from which ice effortlessly tumbled out. Those were the mundane things I wanted to go the rest of my life thinking about.

  I returned to the article; in the upper-left corner, there was a counter. In twenty minutes, there’d been fifteen thousand views. Katie had begun forwarding me emails from readers to me.

  I am crying at my desk. I can’t say much because I am at work but I will say that . . .

  I wept for your pain and wept for your triumphs. I do not easily weep . . .

  While I feel sick to my stomach after reading your article, I . . .

  It was hard to read, I had to stop and come back to it multiple times. I barely made it through, but I am glad I did . . .