Herstory is Our Story

Alright, now breathe! In and out. In and out. My anxiety hasn’t gotten the better of me since law school, but I knew it would be back with a vengeance today. The incident in school lead to a midnight trip to the emergency room where an RN told me I was fine and just low on potassium. She sent me home with a banana and a large bill, but that is a story for a different day. Luckily, I invested in therapy and learned a couple tricks to come back to reality. The anticipation of today alone is shaking my heart and fogging up my lungs. Breathe in, breathe out, A – Anteaters, B-Bingo, C-Cantaloupe, D-Dynamite… I’m here, back in the court room.

I know I’ve got everything down. I’ve gone over every question, my opening statement, notes for my closing statement, time and time and time again. I studied every note I wrote, every syllable, every wide-ruled line in my black leather-bound notebook. It was a gift from my brother ahead of my first real case, this one. You would never guess this book has only been in my possession for a couple weeks. The binding is deeply creased so it is unable to lie flat, crumbs have slithered in between the pressed pages while I inhaled takeout dinners working in my car, and torn pages from ideas and arguments that were never going to make it. I can close my eyes and see each individual page, my handwriting scrawling across it with each invasive, horrible question I need to ask my client, and what she will say up on the witness stand, for the second time. Every excruciating detail she must recall in front of her parents, and the judge and the jury, both probably filled with men who look just like him. And he, he will also be there, sitting just feet away.

She was failed in criminal court. You have to convince the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime has occurred. It didn’t matter that there was DNA evidence. The defense attorney attacked her reputation. Before the assault, people would describe my client as adventurous, popular, energetic and self-assured. The defense attorney spun her best attributes 180 degrees; she’s a teen drinker, she dates around, she’s promiscuous, she dresses too old for her age, she was asking for it. The jury bought it. At least one juror bought it. Sometimes it only takes one to take the rest down with them.

In civil court, it is my job, with the help of the words in my black book, to convince the jury, that more likely than not, the defendant is responsible for the harm the plaintiff, my client, has suffered. In other words, the standard of proof is lower in civil court. Hopefully that’s on our side today. I spent the morning praying to a god I don’t believe in.

So now my client, she, is relying on me, for some inkling of relief in her life from over a year in court proceedings, ending now in civil court, $50,000 dollars in punitive damages and $20,000 dollars in compensatory damages to pay for the hospital visit, therapy, and the semester of college where she fell off the earth.

I need to win this, not because it’s my first shot at a career, but because she is me. She is my sister. She is my mom and my friend. No women gets to go through life without a glimpse of this experience. I see so much of myself in her. I was only two years older than her when it happened to me too. Unlike me, she is strong enough to take her body back and make him pay for what he’s done. I wonder where I would have been now if I made different decisions then.

The actual trial moves quickly. There are only two witnesses, the plaintiff and the defendant. Their accounts of what happened that night differ as much as night and day. What we do have on our side is the DNA evidence and her consistent, emotional testimony. She recalls through alcohol-fogged memories everything that was done to her against her will.

Days later, my phone rings. Its time. I call her and pick her up in a shiny 2015 black Nissan Altima. I rented this car to make my client believe in me, like I am somebody, like I’ve done this all before. This car doesn’t hold a candle to the car the defense attorney drives, but it looks a lot more impressive than the 2004 rusted Ford Taurus sitting at home. It seems silly now; how could the car possibly matter.

She doesn’t speak the entire 23-minute drive to court house, so I don’t intrude and sit, unified, in silence. The jury is finished deliberating and they have come to a decision. As the judge calls on the jury to announce their verdict, my heart cracks again with panic and apprehension. This is personal. And then I’ve heard it, the words I so desperately needed to hear. The foreman stands at the front of the group. The jury rules in favor of the plaintiff. The defendant is liable in the amount of $60,000. Relief washes over me and tears well. I hug her and I feel her, really feel her, hugging me back. It’s not everything we asked for and $60,000 dollars will never be enough to repair her self-worth, her trust or relationships, those are all things she will have to fix on her own, but this chapter is over for her. The healing can start. She never has to tell an old white man about what happened to her again.

I can barely see her expression through water logged eyes but I swear I can feel the weight lifting off her and all around her.

I ask her, “So what now? What are you going to do next?"

She self-consciously, but excitedly responds, “I’m going back to school! I think I want to become a district attorney. I want to do what you do. And with the rest of the money, I’ve decided to donate it to the Joyful Heart Foundation's campaign to End The Backlog.”

As she speaks, my hand subconsciously traces the outline of that black book in my pocket. No matter how I got here, I am in the right place.