Notes on a Silencing

by Lacy Crawford

I gathered that I was newly arrived to where my mother was, in this world of downstairs men at night, where I supposed all women lived. I didn’t like it, but she wasn’t surprised to find me here, so what choice did I have but to be here too?

“They are going to start college in the fall just like nothing happened.”

Consent is not possible. No matter what anyone else claimed, the law said it was not my fault.

The district attorney told me that this has happened time and time again. That a child is assaulted on that campus, and the school covers it up.” I did not care about other children. I didn’t know who they were and I figured they’d have to take care of themselves, just as I had.