K. Randis - Spilled Milk

Rob’s cell phone rang just as we paid. His raised his eyes in surprise and flipped his phone shut. “The jury is back. Verdict is in.” I checked my phone. The jury had only been deliberating for three hours.

Everyone was allowed in the courtroom when they read the verdict and I sat between Mom and Gina. Heather and Rob stood in front of us and mumbled whispers continued until the jury filed into the courtroom. Two women in particular stared at me without blinking for several long seconds. They didn’t smile or offer any signs of encouragement. Gina squeezed my hand. “This is it,” she said when the judge walked in.

The judge never smiled or looked up. She moved her cloak over her chair and shifted papers around on her bench.

“Has the jury come to a unanimous decision?”

The foreman of the jury stood up. She towered above the podium and I thought she looked professional in her blue skirt. I targeted the piece of paper floating in her hand that revealed what twelve people thought should happen to a man they didn’t even know. “We have your honor,” she said.

Her focus remained on the judge, and never once lingered to Earl sitting only a few feet from the jurors. His focus remained on his thumbs. The tipstaff handed the paper to the judge and she looked it over. After a minute’s pause she looked at the foreman.“And you’re sure that the jury has made every reasonable attempt to reach its verdict?”

“We have your Honor.” The foreman, for the first time, looked at me.

“Very well. It is with great regret that I inform the court that the jury has remained deadlocked and issues a verdict of a hung jury. Unable to agree upon a verdict after an extended period of deliberation and unable to change its votes due to severe differences of opinion, it is issued from this court that the trial be classified as a mistrial and any re-trial will be done at the discretion of the plaintiff.”

While the judge thanked the jury for their time and gave them their dismissal instructions, Heather and Gina rushed me from the room. I couldn’t see through the tears and even though I didn’t completely understand what had happened, I knew they didn’t say guilty, and for me it meant my world was ending.

“We’ll do it again, we’ll just have to come back at them again. It’s okay Brooke, we’ll do it again if we have to.” Gina tried to wipe the mascara running down her face.

Heather lead me into her office. “It’s not necessarily a bad thing. It means the jury couldn’t come to a decision, so we’ll re-group, patch any holes, and next time…”

“I can’t do this again!” I cried. I buried my face. “This can’t be happening, I can’t go through all this again.”

It had been well over a year since I went to the police. I’ve had to stand in front of countless strangers, time and time again, to tell them intimate details about my body and what happened to me. It never got easier, the same words still stuck to the roof of my mouth when I tried to say them, the pain was always full torque.

“You can.” Heather grabbed my shoulders and held back her own tears. “You can because you’re such a strong person. I’ve never seen someone testify the way you do.”

“Miss Heather, we have an issue out here?” The secretary from the front room pointed toward the front of the building as she walked into the office.

“Not now Melinda.”

“Miss but it’s important. It’s the jury. They’re outside the courthouse. They want to talk to Brooke.”

Heather met Melinda’s gaze. “They want to what?”

As I approached the double doors leading to the front of the courthouse I could hear Heather behind me. “My word, in the fifteen years I’ve been here, I’ve never seen anything like this.”

When I stepped outside, I was surrounded and hugged by twelve complete strangers. The women were crying, the men were crying, and they all took turns shaking my hand. “You are the bravest girl we’ve ever met,” said a curly blonde woman.

“Don’t think for one second we didn’t believe you.” A latino man crossed his arms in front of his chest. “We believed you, okay?”

An older man with white hair and a beard to match knelt on the ground in front of me and took my hand in his. “I am so sorry, please forgive me. I had so many questions, and the jury can’t ask questions.” He looked at the other eleven people above him. “I was the one they couldn’t convince. I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t understand.” If they believed me, why didn’t they convict him? Why were they here?

“We’re going to help. We want to meet with the D.A’s office so next time, there’s no questions, no doubt in any jurors mind that that monster is guilty.”

Heathers mouth dropped. “Really?”

Two women pushed to the front of the crowd. “Really. We want to be there when he’s put away. We’ll meet with the lawyer as early as tomorrow if you need us.”

“Wow. Okay, well let’s get your names and numbers then.”

A woman who smelled like jasmine touched my shoulder. “I knew from the second I heard you speak that he was guilty, there was no way I was going to let anyone sway me. I’m sorry we had to put you through that. I was trying to make eye contact with you without coming off as too obvious, to let you know I believed you.”

“I was too,” said the curly haired lady.

“Would explain the stares I was getting,” I confessed. “It kinda looked like you were mad or something though.”

She shook her head. “I’m Dawn, by the way. And don’t worry. Next time, we’ll get him.”

A trial was rescheduled for three months later, should I choose to testify again. I stopped answering my phone and spent the next few days hidden beneath the darkness of my comforter. Calls from my boss went to voicemail and Cristin stopped sending texts after the fifth day.

Over a year was a long time to fight, to constantly have your guard up. The nightmares diminished a bit since I moved out but they came back full force after the hung jury.

“Brooke, you failed your algebra class? Didn’t you go up to pre-calc in high school?” Jason read over the sheet of paper in his hand.

I eyed the print out of my grades sitting on the floor of the bedroom and muffled my response into a pillow. “Apparently some professors have attendance rules. Don’t show up so many times and they fail you.”

“Why didn’t you give him the letters from Heather, she wrote your excuse letters right?”

“I can’t do this anymore.”

I felt Jason’s weight next to me on the bed, but I didn’t look up. He rubbed the top of the comforter that I hid beneath. “What can’t you do?”

“Everything.”

“What’s everything?”

“College, apparently. Court. My family. You.”

“Me?”

I ignored the hurt in his voice. “I can’t do this anymore. It’s too much.”

“You think it would be easier if I wasn’t here?”

“I think it would be easier if I didn’t have to worry about anyone but myself. I screw everything up. Everything is just happening so fast. It’s so hard, all the time. When does it end?”

“You don’t have to worry about me, I’m not going anywhere.” His hand stroked my face and I knew he meant it. “And you didn’t screw anything up. This wasn’t your fault.”

“Really? What’s not my fault?”

Midge told me I would get to a point where I would feel real anger, a fury so deep about everything that I wouldn’t know where it came from. It wasn’t like me to be like that, so I never believed her. Suddenly it was very plausible.

“My mom can barely survive. She’s got four kids living in her house now that she’s struggling to feed because of me. She’s so money hungry all the time she’s sacrificing the relationships she has with her own children just to make a buck. My older brother is in complete denial of everything that has ever happened in our life. Did I tell you that he told me he wouldn’t believe the accusations I was making until a jury decided? He still keeps in contact with Earl, can you believe that? Not to mention that he’s eating himself into a coma. My own siblings don’t even believe me because he’s their father, and it didn’t happen to them, so they can’t even imagine something like that going on right under their nose.”