Page 32 - the NOISE August 2013

chapter twenty
Friday, January 13. Grand Jury.
I sit on a wooden bench outside the court room and Mom’s here with me. She’s saying she loves me and it’s going to be okay. Even thought mom’s being here means more than I can begin to know how to express, Mom has no idea who I am anymore. I don’t either. And I don’t believe her. Nothing will ever be okay again.
The DA Lena is speak- ing to me. She says re- member to answer the
questions with a yes or a no. She says don’t forget that the knife is not a knife, it’s a screwdriver
or a putty knife. Forget it. Just call it a “sharp object.” She says remember to say “vagina” and “anus.” She says remember to say “kicked,”“screamed,” and “hit.”
Mom’s cringing, cambering in more with each new word DA Lena says, and I want so badly to make it better for Mom, to take away her hearing, to protect her. But I know I can’t. So instead I tell myself to recall the things the DA Lena said. I’m on purpose not wearing my contacts or my glasses so I won’t have to see the jurors’ faces.
Someone grabs my hand, leads me to a room, to a wooden chair in a wooden box. I try hard to make believe that it’s made out of old Lincoln Logs and I tell myself that this actually makes me feel a little better even thought I know it really won’t. The box looks out on the lawyers and the jury and I for sure am going to be sick and all my air’s running out, can’t get enough. I can just make out a black blob-like thing next to me.
Everything gets quiet and the DA Lena approaches me, and she asks me if I’m okay, if I’m ready, I hear myself answer yes, and one by one she asks me the questions we practiced and I try to answer them just like she told me and the questions are mostly in the same order as when she asked them before.
With each new answer, I’m rattling more with shame. And even though I promised myself I wouldn’t cry, the gunky mascara and eyeliner are landing on the front of my garbage bag dress. I want so badly to be brave, to answer all the questions like I’m smart and capable. But I can’t.
By the end of those questions, I’m sobbing, cannot speak anymore. The DA Lena says thank you, nothing further. I blot my chin with the tie wrapping up my garbage bag dress. The black blob says you can step down now, miss. An arm leads me from the wooden box, down the middle aisle and the DA Lena motions me to follow her out of the courtroom and I do. Mom’s there waiting for us and she makes for my sake like she’s stopped crying. But we both know she hasn’t.
The DA Lena starts talking. “You did good, Laura.”
I know that’s a total lie, but I’m thankful for it. We leave Mom and the DA Lena leads me to an elevator, excuses herself for a moment, and when she moves away I don’t know what to do. I’m unraveling, pulling apart and I can’t see anything. So I stand still. But then I feel eyes on me and I hear new voices. I can’t tell where they’re coming from.
“That’s her, that’s the girl.”
The voices mold in that air. If only me not being able to see the world would mean that the
world couldn’t see me, too. If only I could go missing then no one would know—where I was, that I was. If only no one knew that I was. Then no one could think of me as raped-girl.
But I can’t make myself disappear. I’m stuck here and I can’t change this. I’m the poor thing, the girl who can imagine, the one trying to stop her tights-covered knees from knocking to- gether, her eyes from flooding. I am the girl. And everyone knows. The girl is less than nothing.
chapter twenty-one
Friday, January 13. He’s indicted. Tuesday, January 17. He pleads not guilty.
Not guilty — like it never happened, like none of it ever was. But, then how? How can I be here, like this?
chapter twenty-two
More time passes. My insides are shuffled and I can’t ever sleep. Lindsey pallbearers me to and from each class. Or we go over in the Lezzy. Or I try to walk myself. Cars pass by and I look at each driver’s face. I hear footsteps behind me, turn around, make sure it’s not him. When I think about what happened, about the “not guilty,” the right side of my brain spasms, feels like it’s close to a rupture.
Thursday, January 26. The Gentleman.
The phone’s ringing. Lindsey picks it up, says some lady wants to talk to me. I grab onto it.
A voice says hello. It’s a woman voice. The voice says that it’s the dean of some college at the university. I imagine her goggle glasses, mouse-brown mom-perm, ill-fitting suit.
“How are we doing?”
“Okay.”
“We’ve been concerned about you.”
She asks me what I know about the rapist. I say I don’t know much but that he’s a stranger, that he’s not a college student, that he’s from Syracuse. But the truth is I know more—his leath- er jacket, his laugh like tires on gravel, his face like a chalkboard.
Then her voice starts to sound like someone talking to an extra dunce-y toddler. She says she knows his grandfather well, that everyone does at the university, that he’s a wonderful man.
The woman has many questions to ask me, she says. Did I know that his grandfather is the president of the city’s single-largest employer? Did I know his grandfather is on the university’s Board of Trustees? Did I know that this man is responsible for the largest sports complex on the university campus? I’ve been there, I think, for football games, for concerts.
I can’t understand why she’s saying what she’s saying. Or why I’m listening. I don’t want to know about him. I don’t want to know about his family, their connections. I don’t want to know how much money they’ve shoved at the university.
Then she goes oleaginous, like what she’s about to share is an extra-special secret. But I’m no fool. I know it won’t be.
“He brought his grandson to a fund-raising event recently. Such a nice, polite, well-mannered boy. Well-dressed. A gentleman.”
My breath’s bellowing in my ears and my blood’s clamoring inside my wormy capillaries through to my clogging-up arteries, and I wish I could think of some way to shut her up, to stop all of her terrible talking. But I can’t.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“You have a right to know. And, honestly, it’s hard to believe he’d do something like this.”
My mouth’s maelstrom-muttering. “He was caught raping me.”
Her throat sounds stuck. Her orchestrated exercise not having gone as planned, she takes a short recess, starts again. Then she asks whether I know that he has a girlfriend, a friend who is a girl. Did I know that this girl called her office when he was arrested, said it’s a mistake, that he’s not capable of doing this?
My body is prickling with hate. Because what he did to me is all there is. It’s all I am anymore. “Why are you calling me?”
“We want to make sure that you’re okay. We care.”
I know they don’t really care how I am, that they’re after something, want to figure some- thing out. It could be whether I can be swayed not to testify against him if I learn who he is. It could be whether I’m going to make trouble for the university. I’m turning to powder.
“I’m not okay.”
“We’re sorry to hear that.” “Thanks.”
I hang up that phone, stare at my fingers. Lucky me. My rapist is rich. He comes from money, old-boy connections. My rapist is important because he comes from a family that controls lots of things that happen at my university. My rapist is nice. He’s smartly dressed, polite, well-man- nered. My rapist is a gentleman. My rapist pled not guilty. He couldn’t have raped me.
The syllogism:
Major Premise: He is smartly dressed, polite, a gentleman.
Minor Premise: Smartly dressed, polite, gentlemen do only good things.
Conclusion: He must do only good things.
Except he isn’t and he doesn’t. I know I should be storing all of this information in my head
somewhere, that everything should be a whole lot clearer to me now—who his family is, what the university wants me to think, what I’m up against. I don’t understand what to do with any of this, can’t bring anything into clear focus.
When I find words again, I tell Lindsey what I know now about who he is, who his family is, what the university’s official line is on him. Lind listens, opens her arms fields-wide holds me as I quake against her. I feel her spine bones through her T-shirt. She’s not eating enough and that’s because of me, my fault.
Then Lindsey turns to war mode. Together, she says, we’ll put all of our smarts together, and we’ll figure out what to do with all we know. This is good, really. We’re informed. We know how to arm ourselves, which weapons to use. I say okay, you’re right. I say I’m not going to spiral, promise. But we both know. That she’s most likely not right, that I’m already corkscrew-curling up, circling.
| laura gray-Rosendale is professor of english and president’s dis- tinguished fellow at northern arizona university. her new book, College Girl is available wherever fine books are sold.
32 • AUGUST 2013 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us
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