Jury of One

33

I was raped.

She had said it the first time a week after it happened, while her parents were away and she could steal off to the city again, this time under far more humbling circumstances. She didn’t know if she would say it. She hadn’t even said the word to herself. But she had done it, filed a report with the city police, to a very understanding detective named Jill.

It has been two weeks. Give us two weeks and come back, said Jill, who had agreed to respect Shelly’s privacy in the matter. She would not call Shelly at her home or contact her in any way.

So Shelly has taken her third trip to the city in a month. She thinks of the comforting words of Jill the Detective. And the other words, too. Shelly should be tested for “STDs,” she had advised. Syphillis. Gonnorhea. Herpes. AIDS. Take a pregnancy test, too.

Precautions, all of them. Probably nothing to worry about. Shelly hasn’t been able to schedule a visit to her doctor yet. She can’t imagine doing it.

She closes her eyes as she approaches the police station. She turns and walks away, then stops and looks back. Twenty minutes doing this, which is okay because she is early anyway, she doesn’t want to seem too eager, but that doesn’t make sense, either.

Will there be a line-up of suspects? She can’t identify her attacker. Tests performed? Maybe the man confessed!

Two women race by Shelly on roller blades. A vendor on the corner is arguing with a woman over the price of a hot dog. The sun has come over the buildings to rain rays down on the police station. Summer is in full bloom in the city, even if hasn’t officially started yet. She should appreciate the energy of the city’s north side, but what had passed for cosmopolitan and vigorous now seems cold and heartless.

She walks again past the rows of blue-and-white squad cars parked along the street. Two uniformed officers are standing by a car smoking cigarettes and looking with disinterest at Shelly. She draws a breath and returns to the police station. There is a different person at the front desk, an older woman with a saggy chin and bifocals resting in the middle of her nose.

The man who emerges from behind a door is large, old-looking for an officer, closer to her father’s age, dressed in a shirt with brown stripes and a plain tie. He has large, scaly hands with dirty fingernails and a stomach that hangs over his belt. His neck is thick and stubbly with whiskers. “Hello, Shelly,” he says. “I’m Officer Stockard.” He motions to the back room. “Let’s have a talk, okay?”

Where’s Jill? Shelly returns to the same conference room where she spoke with the female detective. Something doesn’t feel right. Something in the officer’s expression, his tone of voice, his curtness. There is a file folder resting before him and a fresh notepad. He looks down at the file and starts to speak, then catches himself and looks up. “How you holding up?”

“I’m okay.”

“Sorry to hear about what happened.”

“Thank you.”

“Shelly, we’ve looked into this thing. I’ve talked to a lot of people. We have some problems. Some-” He strokes his chin, then levels his eyes on her. “Some real inconsistencies.” He opens his file, which contains about a dozen sheets of paper. He seems annoyed. “We get a lot of these,” he explains. “A lot of people who say they were assaulted.”

Say they were assaulted? Her stomach seizes.

He raises his hands, then places them together on the table. “Who’s Andrea, first of all?”

Shelly clears her throat.

“You told your friends your name was Andrea. Why did you do that?”

She shrugs. “I was just-I don’t know. I wanted to-” She draws her arms around herself.

“You wanted to be eighteen, too, I guess. Didn’t you tell your friends you were eighteen?”

She nods. Yes, she did that.

“You said you were a high school graduate, just moved here from out east?”

“I said that.” She wasn’t looking at him any longer, just staring into the desk.

“So you see what I’m starting with here? You lied about everything.”

“I–I guess I wanted to be different.”

“You wanted to pretend.”

Her eyes fill.

“They said you looked eighteen, too.” She doesn’t respond to that. “Have you talked with your friends? Ms.”-papers shuffle; he bends back a page and struggles with the name-“Patriannis, for example?”

Dina, he means.

“Or Ms. Winters?”

Dina’s friend. Mary.

“No,” she answers quietly.

“Your friends aren’t too happy with you, Shelly. They said they never would have taken a fifteen-year-old to that party. They’re mad. I don’t blame them.”

Shelly loses control of her emotions. She weeps quietly, covers her face with her hands.

“Is there anything else you lied about, Shelly?”

She shakes her head no.

“I’m not saying I don’t believe you, Shelly. But if we take a case like this to trial-assuming we could ever find out who is responsible-that person would have a very smart lawyer who would ask you some very hard questions. You know what I’m talking about?”

She manages to say yes.

“He’ll say you lied, over and over again, to your friends, to your parents. He’ll say you looked like an adult. He’ll say you can’t identify who did this to you. He’ll say you’re lying under oath. He’ll say you’re committing perjury. You know what perjury is?”

She nods.

“You can get in trouble if you lie about it. I want to make sure you don’t get in trouble.”

A moment passes. Shelly grinds her teeth and fights hard not to sob. She will cry but will do so alone.

“Listen to me, Shelly. Sometimes-girls your age.” He leans forward and struggles a moment. “You make decisions and then you regret them. You want to take things back. So you think about them differently. A week later, things you did-they look different. You want them to be different. So you decide they were different. You make up a story-”

“I didn’t make it up.” The firmness of her tone surprises even Shelly.

“No one’s going to believe a liar, Shelly.”

She looks at the officer again, her emotions raw. “You think I made this up?”

“Oh, listen.” He breaks eye contact. “It doesn’t matter what I think. It matters what we can prove. Rape-rape is a difficult thing to prove.” He opens his hands. “Look. Did you ever say no? Did you ever say stop?”

Her breathing uneven, tears pouring down her cheeks and into her mouth, she says, “I’m not sure if I said it or thought it.”

“Was he supposed to read your mind?” He slashes his hand like a knife onto the table. “Listen. You lied to your friends. You lied to your parents. You claimed to be eighteen. You looked like you were eighteen. You had sex with some guy, you don’t know who, and you never told him you didn’t want to.” He shrugs. “Even if I ever find the guy, what am I supposed to do with that?”

I had passed out, she wants to say. He got on top of me. I couldn’t stop him. She wants to defend herself but this officer already knows these facts. He already knows these things and it doesn’t matter.

She is cold in the warm room. Shivering, uncomfortable. She looks at the single bulb over the table where they sit. She looks at the officer’s scaly hands.

The officer speaks gently. “I never said I didn’t believe you, Shelly. But we have a large case load, and prosecutors do too. No one is going to prosecute this case. And if they did, you could be damaged a lot worse than you already have been. And your parents will know.”

She wants to leave. She wants to run from this station, from this city.

A sheet of paper appears before her. “If you want me to keep investigating, you have to put that in writing and sign it. If you want me to stop investigating, you have to put that in writing, too. It’s up to you.”

“I wanna go home,” she mumbles.

He slides a pen next to the sheet of paper. “I’m sorry about this, Shelly. I wish we could erase what happened. But you put yourself into an adult situation, and you have to think like an adult. You have to decide.”