I stare at him, his eyes still and glaring. I try to think, but the way he says it, I don’t know what the answer really is, how to respond.
“No, I didn’t. But they threatened me, so I didn’t have no choice.” I move my nails up my arm, dig deeper.
He nods. “Who do you live with, Ms. Johnson?”
“Don’t live with nobody.”
“Let me rephrase. Who is your apartment leased to?”
“My brother,” I say, raising my shoulders.
He nods like he was waiting for me to say this. “And where is your brother currently?”
I look around the room, hoping Marsha might appear, but the rows are still empty.
“He’s at Santa Rita.”
“The jail?”
“Yes.”
“What is he there for?”
I close my eyes, squeezing them like it might transport me back outside to where the sky is large and nobody’s eyes are on me.
“Drugs.”
“Is that why you were involved in prostitution?”
“What you talking about?”
“Drugs.” He gestures up into the air. “Did you enter prostitution to pay for drugs?”
I just about spring out my chair, then repeat to myself the mantra: calm, calm. “No, I ain’t done no drugs.”
He already has an idea, though, starts down the path of asking me about Marcus, Mama, Daddy. Says something about familial histories of erratic behavior or some shit and this is everything Marsha told me it might be, but I still want to crawl out my skin, shed it and return to only bones.
He takes a second to go to his table and take a sip of water. I look out at the jury again, hoping the faces might cement some sort of hope for me, but they’re still just a mesh of blank stares.
“Ms. Johnson.” I snap back into the room, the click of the court reporter on the keyboard. “Did you believe it to be wrong to have sexual relations with members of the police force?” The question is innocent enough, not even worth being asked.
“Of course it ain’t right.” I’m still thinking about Marcus, about getting him out the moment I exit this wooden trap.
“So why did you participate?”
“I told you, I didn’t have no choice.”
“You couldn’t have gotten up and left that party? You couldn’t have refused a ride from Officer Carlisle?”
The tremors start in my fingertips, right beneath the nails, and spread inward. Not up, not down, but inside. Vibrations to the rib cage. I wonder if this is what Trevor felt when they took him.
“I mean, I could’ve, but they didn’t give me no choice—”
“So they forced you to stay? Did Officer Carlisle use handcuffs on you, put you in the back of the car and lock the doors?”
“No.” I start tapping my hands on the podium, then scratching, like the wood might take all the tremors and make me hollow.
“Were you angry that you never received monetary payment for these acts?”
I stare at him. His glasses are slipping down his nose from the sweat.
“I guess.”
“Did you believe accusing these men of violent acts would result in payment of some sort?”
“What?”
“Did you believe that these accusations would make you money?”
The whole room stills, no one dares to tap a foot or brush a piece of hair behind their ear, thinking they might disturb the fragility of it: the moment they all expect me to crumble.
“No.” One word. One word. One word.
He takes a minute to turn around and survey the rest of the courtroom before coming back to look at me, a trick Marsha says they all use. I wonder if she’s included in “they.”
“You were underage at the time of the events in question, correct?”
“I was seventeen.”
“You understand that would make this statutory rape, yes?”
Marsha’s told me enough about it. “Yes.”
“Did you notify these men of your age prior to intercourse?”
This is the question Marsha and I hoped he wouldn’t ask, hoped he might skim over.
“They knew.”
“So you told them?”
“Not exactly, but they knew. I’m telling you they knew.”
He smiles, this soft smile that reminds me of these interviews I watched with Marsha when we were preparing where he talks about battered women, how he wants to keep us safe. He looks at me not like I’m the battered woman, though, but like I’m the little girl standing by watching. Like I’m confused. “How would they know, Ms. Johnson?”