Know My Name: A Memoir

by Chanel Miller

I didn’t know that money could make the cell doors swing open. I didn’t know that if a woman was drunk when the violence occurred, she wouldn’t be taken seriously. I didn’t know that if he was drunk when the violence occurred, people would offer him sympathy. I didn’t know that my loss of memory would become his opportunity. I didn’t know that being a victim was synonymous with not being believed.

In rape cases it’s strange to me when people say, Well why didn’t you fight him? If you woke up to a robber in your home, saw him taking your stuff, people wouldn’t ask, Well why didn’t you fight him? Why didn’t you tell him no? He’s already violating an unspoken rule, why would he suddenly decide to adhere to reason? What would give you reason to think he’d stop if you told him to?

I remembered my dad saying that in every relationship there’s a point of disillusion; the introduction of the first obstacle, where you decide to surmount it or part ways.

At twenty-two I was beginning to wonder if adulthood was just a series of endless losses.

It should have been enough to say, I did not want a stranger touching my body. It felt strange to say, I have a boyfriend, which is why I did not want Brock touching my body.

I was teaching myself to ask for help, and in return beautiful things were happening.

I understood what the woman meant, that a transaction as simple as receiving a piece of furniture from a stranger possessed an inherent threat, that any time we met someone online, we must scan for signs of assault, rape, death, etc. We knew this. But the guy did not speak this language; he just saw a desk.

When a woman is assaulted, one of the first questions people ask is, Did you say no? This question assumes that the answer was always yes, and that it is her job to revoke the agreement. To defuse the bomb she was given. But why are they allowed to touch us until we physically fight them off? Why is the door open until we have to slam it shut?

I missed the cluttered streets of Philly, the way lives overlapped, the crowded elevators and shopping bags bumping into my legs and the smog of buses and flimsy boxes of red chicken smeared in white cream from silver halal carts. My street was empty, the park empty, my house empty. I hated it.

Nice: I’m tired of being good, being nice, in this life, where rebellion is not wearing my retainer for one night. I want to evoke feelings, create enemies, appear a little corrupt, I want to bitch out some bitches, I want to fuck some shit up.

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.

Trauma was refusing to adhere to any schedule, didn’t seem to align itself with time. Some days it was distant as a star and other days it could wholly engulf me.

It had never occurred to me that the system itself could be wrong, could be changed or improved. Victims could ask for more. We could be treated better.

She warned me not to get angry. I learned that if you’re angry, you’re defensive. If you’re flat, you’re apathetic. Too upbeat, you’re suspect. If you weep, you’re hysterical. Being too emotional made you unreliable. But being unemotional made you unaffected.

Just be yourself, she said. Which self, I wanted to reply.

I thought of mothers who had commented, My daughters would never . . . which made me sad because comments like that did not make her daughter any safer, just ensured that if the daughter was raped, she’d likely have one less person to go to.

It hadn’t even occurred to me to assert myself, to do anything other than blindly obey.

Whatever weight I’d been, I shouldn’t have been ashamed to declare it; a rock weighs differently than a lion weighs differently than a pile of mangoes and none of it matters.

The friendly guy who helps you move and assists senior citizens in the pool is the same guy who assaulted me. One person can be capable of both. Society often fails to wrap its head around the fact that these truths often coexist, they are not mutually exclusive. Bad qualities can hide inside a good person. That’s the terrifying part.

As a woman, I’d tried asserting my opinion without coming off as self-serving or overcontrolling. So I repressed pissed-off victim. Now I wondered if I had handled it too gracefully, my composure a signal that what he’d done was of little consequence.

When I’d advocated for him to take classes and be in therapy, she mistook it as a nurturing passivity, gentle absolution. What I meant was take note of his mental health, because in my experience, when men were upset, lonely, or neglected, we were killed.

If a victim speaks but no one acknowledges her, does she make a sound?

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.

It was time to see what justice looked like. We threw open the doors, and there was nothing.

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?...

The judge had given Brock something that would never be extended to me: empathy. My pain was never more valuable than his potential.

I, too, was fascinated by the words people were using. Eloquent. Searing. Gut-wrenching. Visceral. Courageous. Cogent. A newly minted hero. Emily was a hero. Courageous and clearheaded, defiant and unapologetic, a figure of truth and power. In this person, I did not yet see myself.

This tiny courthouse had been flooded with colorful rectangular envelopes, clogging the mail slots. She handed me a heavy bag that I cradled with both arms. We were both still in shock, didn’t know what to make of this new ending we’d been given. As I carried my loot to my car, it rattled, full of small treasures: a Ganesha necklace to offer me protection. Dangling bicycle earrings. Letters from a teacher in New Zealand, a softball team in Arizona. A woman had taken stunning photographs of pine trees to replace the triggering memory with beauty. A watercolor painting of a lighthouse. Two purple chocolate bars from a woman in Ireland, to replenish the supply that Grandma Ann had given me.

This part made me cry. So touching.

My mom was right: You have to wait and see how your life unfolds.

I thought of the man in the thick black jacket, sitting by the tracks in the foldout chair, hired to save lives. I realized, since I was seventeen, that was the job I wanted. The only difference was that I sat on a chair at home, writing the words that would get you to stay here, to see the value of you, the beauty of your life. So if you come on the worst day of your life, my hope is to catch you, to gently guide you back.

But the incredible thing is that a victim is also the smiling girl in a green apron making your coffee, she just handed you your change. She just taught a class of first-graders. She has her headphones in, tapping her foot on the subway. Victims are all around you.

How to distinguish spontaneity from recklessness? How to prove nudity is not synonymous with promiscuity? Where’s the line between caution and paranoia?

I wonder if there is a time in every woman’s life when she feels like swallowing stones. Perhaps she wonders why her period is late or wakes up in an unfamiliar bed, or comes across a list of her body parts divided neatly into numbers. Does it make her want to swallow stones? Large, smooth ones, gulping them down. I imagine them settling into my stomach, a pile, then walking into a pond, not to die, but to sink the body, while only my spirit emerges from the water. Much cleaner, I could start over, unencumbered.

At the front desk there is a box of white tokens. You can place one on your mat to say, Do not touch. I like the way it communicates a subtle need, wished I could tape it to my forehead in public.

I was overdue for a Pap smear, a procedure that sounds like a disease found in penguin shit.

We know that acquaintance rape is far more common than stranger rape. When we undercut the severity of acquaintance rape, or drunk rape that happens at parties, healing becomes largely delayed, the recovery process butchered, the predator undeterred.

We go into a party or meeting thinking it’s just a party or meeting. But when we are taken advantage of, and come crawling back damaged, they say, How could you be so naive, you failed to detect danger, let your guard down, what did you think would happen?

Privilege accompanies the light skinned, helped maintain his belief that consequences did not apply to him. In this system, who is untouchable? Who is disposable? Whose lives are we intent on preserving? Who goes unaccounted for? Who is the true disrupter, the one firing, the one fingering, who created a problem where there never was one?

My advice is, if he’s worried about his reputation, don’t rape anyone.

The evidence presented during his trial and the conclusions that were made about his character were only from one night of his life, from strangers that didn’t know him: a fraction of a fraction of his existence. Victims are not fractions; we are whole.

The real question we need to be asking is not, Why didn’t she report, the question is, Why would you?

I did not come into existence when he harmed me. She found her voice! I had a voice, he stripped it, left me groping around blind for a bit, but I always had it. I just used it like I never had to use it before.

Our bodies kept it in storage no matter how many times our brains took it to the trash, no matter how many times we were told to move on, take the blame, grow up, no matter how many years passed, if we built families, had kids, our kids had kids, still our bodies remembered.

Cosby, 60. Weinstein, 87. Nassar, 169. The news used phrases like avalanche of accusations, tsunami of stories, sea change. The metaphors were correct in that they were catastrophic, devastating. But it was wrong to compare them to natural disasters, for they were not natural at all, solely man-made.

Call it a tsunami, but do not lose sight of the fact that each life is a single drop, how many drops it took to make a single wave. The loss is incomprehensible, staggering, maddening—we should have caught it when it was no more than a drip.

As a survivor, I feel a duty to provide a realistic view of the complexity of recovery. I am not here to rebrand the mess he made on campus. It is not my responsibility to alchemize what he did into healing words society can digest.

The place to be remembered is not where I was assaulted, but where he fell, where I was saved, where two men declared stop, no more, not here, not now, not ever.

My writing is sophisticated because I had a head start, because I am years in the making, because I am my mother and her mother before.

Three years and eight months after that night in January, the case was closed.

We may spend half our time wandering around, wondering what we’re even doing here, why it’s worth the effort. But living is an incredible thing, just to have been here, to have felt, if only briefly, the volume and depth of others’ empathy.