Candice, my lawyer, begins to silently cry when I tell the room how Landon slapped me when I tried to run for the door, how he threw me on the pool table hard enough to knock the breath from me, how he wasn’t the first to molest me — but rather, he held me down, his hands bruising my arms as one of his friends took the first turn.
No, not one of his friends. Not a nameless brother.
I list out their names in order of how they raped me — Nick Simmons, Daniel Cole, Landon Turner, and last, Aiden Harrison.
There is a young girl with the lawyers of the boys who raped me. From the way she’s taking notes and listening intently to every move Landon’s lawyers make, I gather that she must be an intern or a new employee.
Her eyes well with tears, too, when I tell the room how I cried through the first one, begging them to stop, but that when Daniel pushed inside me and I knew there was no stopping them, I fell silent. I numbed out. I grasped onto the only survival mechanism I could in that moment, which was to just hold onto that pool table and wait for them to be done, wait for them to finish.
And silently pray that they would leave me alive in the end.
I didn’t know if they would, at the time. I wondered if they’d kill me, if those terrible moments of embarrassment and pain would be my last.
And in that moment, telling that room full of people what had happened to me, I knew every detail was true — down to the painting of a mermaid sitting on the edge of a sailboat, which I had stared at while they raped me, holding her gaze, letting the anchor she sat beside anchor me, too.
The room is quiet when I finish, and I hold my head high, looking each of them in the eye. I answer all their questions — clarifying timelines and terms, repeating names, explaining again why I didn’t go to the police immediately, why I didn’t get a rape kit, why none of my friends knew until very recently.
By the time we finish, I’m so tired I could pass out on the spot.
“Thank you, Erin,” Candice says, her eyes still red as she leans over to squeeze my wrist.
My mind goes fuzzy after that, a blur of legal jargon as they explain to me that the process of arresting the offenders is complex, and this is only one step. They inform me that should Landon or any of the other offenders try to contact me, I should call the police immediately, and that they’ll keep me informed on what happens next.
After a formal goodbye handshake with each of them, I excuse myself, and as soon as I’m out of the door, my legs begin to shake, all the adrenaline that had been coursing through me leaving my body at once.
I stare at the tile floor as my heels click along it, and in its natural fashion, my mind begins to erase the last couple of hours. I feel it almost like a black wall of steel slowly stretching toward the sky and blocking that part of my memory, as if to say you don’t need to see this, let’s just leave it in the past where it belongs.
When I make it to my car, I shut the door and stare at the steering wheel for a long time. I’m supposed to go to therapy, but all I want is to go home.
No, all I want is to go to Clinton.
But I know after such a traumatic event, therapy is the best place I can go. I know I can’t just leave it all buried, can’t ignore it, can’t pretend like nothing is happening or never happened in the past. I have to face it, sit with it — no matter how uncomfortable it is.
So, I fire up the engine and make my way across town.
I’m about five minutes late to the meeting, thanks to South Florida traffic and a random thunderstorm. So I rush inside with my hair a frizzy mess, not bothering with an umbrella now that it’s just a drizzle. I take my usual seat as quietly as I can, trying not to interrupt the person talking — a young boy, newer addition, talking about his addiction. I give him my full attention the moment I’m seated, even as I smooth out my damp clothes and try to fix my hair a bit.
When he finishes speaking, Jackie, our therapy leader, smiles and thanks him for sharing.
There’s a brief moment of silence, some of the other attendees offering words of encouragement to the young man, and I take the opportunity to fully settle in, letting my gaze wander the room to see who’s here tonight.