Dirty Law

“I…” I look down at the dirty clothes I grabbed out of my hamper. “I… No, I changed.”

“Do you have the clothes?”

“No…” I lower my eyes. “He took them.”

The nurse nods knowingly and purses her lips. “Well, these may still have some evidence on them. We’ll collect them anyway.”

I swallow. “Collect them?”

“Yes. I’ll have you stand over this paper mat and disrobe. During the examination you’ll wear a paper gown. Afterwards we’ll give you some clothing to go home in.”

“Home.” I say the word blandly. I do not want to go home. I want to curl up somewhere, yeah, but not home.

Home isn’t really “home” any more.

He has been there.

“Or I can give you a list of shelters, if you need them.” I nod at her. I’m not safe from him anywhere, so it doesn’t really matter.

The next hours pass in a blur of acquiescence. She asks me to turn to my side; I do. She asks me to open my mouth; I do. She asks me to spread my legs; I do. When it’s all over, I feel numb and violated again.

“Would you like anything, Nami? Water or soda?”

I shake my head, eyes blank.

“I’m going to ask you one last time: do you want me to call the police?” The clothes she gave me were nice enough, fresh scrubs that fit all right. To me they felt cold and foreign. They were anathema to my skin, like the way he had felt inside me. All of this—from checking in to spreading my legs—had been one giant reminder of the event. A big, neon sign that blared I, NAMI DEGRACE, WAS RAPED.

I look at the nurse, my voice clear for the first time all night as I answer her question: “Yes.”

I spend so long talking to the police that when I wake the next morning it feels like a dream. Did I really tell them everything? I shake my head, feeling hungover despite having had no liquor.

God. The way that one policeman looked at me, it was as if I drenched his firstborn in acid. I wanted to scream at him that I wasn’t lying, that it was the truth, but then I would have looked crazy. After all, he hadn’t actually called me a liar. He was just very…cold.

Aloof.

Hateful.

He told me the police would “look into the matter”. When I asked him about my rape kit, they said it could sometimes take months to process.

“Months?” My face went ashen. I couldn’t handle this for months. “But I told you who it was. Can’t you bring him in and test it?”

“Well, frankly, Miss…” The officer glanced down at his pad impassively. “Miss…DeGrace,”—he said my name like the mere word on his tongue was tainted—“the evidence isn’t all that compelling.”

My heart fell into my stomach. It was exactly what I feared. There was nothing wrong with the evidence. The evidence was clear as day on my body and in the kit and in my memory.

It was him.

I remembered his graying blond hair.

I remembered his mean blue eyes as they smiled at me. They acted like everything was fine the entire time. I would have preferred anything to the way he looked at me. I would have preferred hate. I would have preferred contempt. Anything, because the way he looked at me made me question it all. It was as though he felt it was all okay. As if he felt it was deserved. The way he acted was as if what he was doing to my body was completely within his right.

He was jovial when he left. He was completely deaf to my cries.

“It would probably be best if you dropped the accusation. Nothing will come of it, after all, save some bad press.”

“Bad press for him, you mean,” I added, immediately regretting it. In lieu of a response, the officers merely glared.

“Well, we have your statement, and we’ll let you know.”