Freitas - Consent: a memoir of unwanted attention

Trauma is a jumble. Of feelings, of memories, of nausea and sickness in a persons gut, of confusion in the mind.

This memoir is about a trauma in my life, a state of siege that began one spring and that was not alleviated until nearly two years later. By the end of it, I was in a heap.

Ive done my best to put what happened in order, but Im not sure if I got everything and its timing exactly right. There was so much of it to make sense of, a labyrinth, really, that sometimes I get lost in its twists and turns. When I try to remember what happened, as it happened, often what I get is one big flood of memories, all piled on top of one another, melted together, the layers difficult to distinguish.

But know this: each event I describe is one that is seared in my brain and, sadly, likely always will be.

T he package sat, unopened, on the coffee table.

It had been there for days. Through sun and rain and summer thunderstorms. Next to it was a fat candle from Pottery Barn that Id bought on sale and a stack of books I was reading for graduate school. In front of the table was an old, wood-framed couch. Id thrown a thick blanket over it to hide its cheap cushions, stained from former occupants of my university-issue apartment, with its cinder-block walls and tall bright windows that I loved with all my heart. It was the first place Id ever had all to myself. Behind the table was the hulking television set Id won during my first year of college and had lugged around for years. It was from my residence-hall lounge, and the RAs had raffled it off at the end of the semester. I was the lucky winner theyd pulled from the hat.

The package was thin, a rectangular manila envelope, my address handwritten on the front in careful script. Its contents could have been anything. Happy photos of friends or pictures from a wedding. But there was an article sealed within that dull yellow envelope. The draft of one.

I knew this because the author, who was also my mentor, told me so, along with his directive that I read the essay inside of it, that he needed me to read it. I would be a bad person, a bad student, a bad friend if I ignored this duty as Id ignored so many other needs and requests from him lately.

He sent it to me on the day he left for a monthlong trip. It was the end of July, it was hot and humid, the blacktop outside my apartment literally steaming with the heat. He called to inform me the article was on its way, that I had the entire month to get to it. Maybe he believed that lack of time or warning was behind my failure to read anything else hed sent recently. Maybe he thought that allowing me a whole month was a kindness.

During the four weeks he was away, he called to ask if I was reading, if I had already read. He called over and over and scolded when it became clear that I had not yet fulfilled this simple obligation. Time was running out, August was waning, and I hadnt even opened the envelope.

Don-na, hed say over the phone in that singsong way he always spoke my name. Im coming home. I want to be able to talk about this when I get back.

Why, why, why? I wondered, silently, as I promised himbecause I did promise himthat I would get to it soon, maybe today. Why me? I was a nobody graduate student. He was an important professor, famous in certain circles. Didnt he have colleagues whose opinions he could solicit? Why did he care about mine?

By then I knew the answers to my own questions. The desperation in his voice was evidence enough. But still, the knowledge was murky and vague, fearful and suspicious. Id pushed it deep into the recesses of my brain, done my best to kill it. I was in denial and I relished this denial, so fierce and powerful that it was almost magnificent.

As I sat there, watching television on my couch, that ugly manila envelope taking up space on my table next to the remnants of my latest take-out dinner, a part of me was still hopeful that I was wrong; that the nagging feeling consuming my insides would turn out to be a product of my melodramatic imagination.

Day after day I rose from bed, walked out into my living room, wishing that the envelope had vanished overnight. But no, it sat there, among my things, just steps from my hideous Pepto-Bismolcolored kitchen, where I cooked lavish dinners for friends, for my RA staff, for myself. Seeing the envelope each time I came in the door was like discovering someone had left a ticking time bomb in my apartment while I was out buying Advil at CVS. I would agonize over its presence in my house and my life, doing my best to disarm it.

It was just an article. An innocent thing. A stack of papers, typed up and printed out and stapled together. Strings of words in black and white. What was I afraid of? What, really, was the big deal? I read articles all the time. I was a graduate student, a voracious reader. Reading was my calling, my purpose, my joy.

Just do it already, my mind would push, one minute. But I dont want to, it would tug, the next. Come on, Donna, I would admonish myself. Its not like an article can actually hurt you. Its not like its packed with knives and bullets and poison.

Back and forth, back and forth went this spiral of thoughts. As the days marched forward, the questions of how Id gotten to this place, and whose fault it was, plagued me. Whose responsibility was it, really? Mine? His? The answer was so hard to parse out, but parse it out I did, and then I did again.