Storytelling

“How much did you drink?”

“I don’t drink.”

“You don’t drink.” Isa repeats as she types.

“I’m diabetic.”

“Good.”

I guess she means it’s good that I wasn’t disgustingly drunk when it happened, not that it’s good I have diabetes.

“You told him to stop at the beginning,” she continues. “Then you froze and went quiet, is that right?”

Isa’s phone keeps lighting up as if to tell me its owner doesn’t enjoy waiting. Emails after messages, she’s one busy lady. I see her lockscreen—a marigold flower in full bloom on a black background. It has flames for petals and a wrinkled human face in the centre. A hummingbird is sucking the juice out of the human through those empty eye sockets.

“I know this is hard for you, doll,” Isa leans across the table and covers my hand with her own. “And I’m sorry you have to go through all this again. But you know how many people will want to tear us apart when this goes out. I need the complete story so I can be ready.”

I study the woman in front of me. She doesn’t look like Shane’s wife who called me a whore outside the courthouse, or his attorney who took every word out of my mouth and weaved them into a different story, or my former colleagues who posted their own verdicts about my character in the comment section when the judgment came out, and I suppose I should find comfort in the fact that she looks like none of them. I don’t particularly like how she’s making this about her, but in a way, this is indeed her fight.

I already lost mine.

Her phone screen lights up again. I bet she’s been on top of every important person’s call list ever since she published that bombshell on the circle of bullying and suicide cult across half of this country’s elite private schools. A big shot like this is happy to tell my story—an overdone story that’s happening everywhere at any time—I should be utterly grateful.

“I did tell him to stop—”

But obviously that wasn’t enough for him, or the jury.

Isa waits for the rest of my answer then realises she’s not getting any. She sighs and punches the Enter key a couple of times, and brings her line of questioning to a different section.

“Okay, let’s look at the big picture here. You said the first time was four years ago.”

I nod.

“You were a junior associate on Shane’s team and it happened in his office after the annual dinner.”

It did.

“After that, you stayed on his team and worked directly with him on several big matters. Three years later, you were promoted to Senior Associate, which, normally, would have taken you four to five years.”

Here comes the same narrative I heard in the witness box, and it’s going down in exactly the same fashion. I guess it makes no difference who’s got the mic.

“You said you filed formal complaints with HR, which only stated he was ‘making you uncomfortable’. But you stayed on the team.”

I stayed on the team.

“And you took the promotion.”

And the promotion.

Isa slumps into the chair and throws her arm over all the invisible evidence she just laid out. Give me something. Her hand says.

“23 June 2017,” I open my mouth. My throat is so dry I could light a match with it. “After the annual dinner, he said he had to pick something up from his office but he forgot his pass so he asked me to go with him. Then he assaulted me in his office.”

“Mai—” Isa frowns and grabs my hand again.

“—4 March 2018,” I yank my hand out. Isa’s nails claw across my skin and leave pink marks on the back of my hand. “He asked me to sit in on an urgent client meeting on a Sunday then assaulted me in his house—”

“—Mai, you need to calm down.”

“17 June 2019. 8 February 2020. Four years, four times. I wasn’t drunk, I wasn’t wearing inappropriate clothes, and I said no every single time—”

“—What you’re rambling on right now is irrelevant!” Isa yells.

I watch this woman declare the most important facts in the whole case “irrelevant”, and the worst part is I couldn't tell her she's wrong. Somewhere in the middle of the trial, they did become irrelevant. I walked into that courthouse as another naïve girl who was taken advantage of by a rich man on top of the food chain, then I came out as a calculating floozy who tried to ruin the legacy of a successful and loving man who made a mistake.

“But it’s true.” I swallow the lump in my throat and push the words through my teeth.

Isa picks up her phone to check how much time I’ve wasted her, then she slams it down on the table and jabs a finger at me.

“I didn’t want to go tough on you but sure.” She scoffs. “It’s not about what’s true, doll. It’s about what you can make people think is true. That’s the game of law, and that’s the game of journalism—get that through your pretty head.”

Get that through your pretty head. That sentence sends my heart racing. Shane used to say that in front of the whole team every time I made a tiny mistake.

“Look, I want to help you but I’m not a fucking magician, okay?” Isa continues. “You got no conviction, no other women coming forward, nothing but your words. I’m not doing this just so I can write another boring ‘no means no’ story.”

If her arm was long enough, she would’ve drilled her nail down my forehead. My body starts shaking—not completely out of fury—and my heart could burst out of my chest like the Alien at any second. I reach out for the pouch sitting on the table and knock over my glass of water. My trembling fingers manage to pull down the zipper on the third attempt, and a chocolate bar falls out along my syringe and a vial of insulin.

“Are. You. Okay?” Isa spits out those words one at a time. With a stern face, she watches me lay myself down on the carpet and tear the wrapper open with the help of my teeth. The barely chewed chocolate melts in my mouth and drips down my throat, but it’s taking forever to reach the bottomless pit in my stomach. Isa sits down next to me and picks up the vial of insulin. She rubs the vial with her thumb as she leans over and studies me. Her face is so close our noses could touch. For a second, her lockscreen image flashes before my eyes. The human face marigold and the brain sucking hummingbird.

“Calmed down now?” She sits up straight and leaves me on the floor. “Look, I still want to help you and here’s what I’m gonna do: We gotta stop fighting that ‘sleep your way up’ story. Nobody’s gonna believe you, you might as well just own it.”

I crack my lips, but Isa makes a “Stop” gesture and goes on.

“It’s okay, I’m not judging. It’s probably more relatable that way—men are never going to stop staring at us, and sometimes a woman just has to make the most of her situation. You could be an opportunistic bitch whose ambition backfired, but that doesn’t mean you weren’t exploited. The real question is, who made you do this? Why do women have to leverage their body to fight their way up in the patriarchal corporate jungle?”

I lie on the carpet, waiting for the strength to return to my limbs and listening to Isa transform a piece of fiction into social commentary. Did I actually benefit from this? I ask myself. Was that my true intention all along when I went back to the office with him after that annual dinner? I think hard and it drags my heart down.

“That’s the only angle you have, and it’s not a very sympathetic one.” Isa continues. “Right now, you are more of an accomplice than a victim. If we want to make this work, we need something stronger to get people across the line.”

Much stronger, she adds.

She picks up the syringe near my leg and takes the cap off.

“She gave her testimony on oath, but you thought she was lying. She told her story as best as she could, and you still weren’t convinced.”

She keeps on talking, but it’s no longer to me. She sticks the needle into the vial she’s been playing with and draws a full barrel.

“Now she’s killed herself. How far does a girl have to go to prove her innocence? Maybe she did it out of despair, maybe it was the shame, but does she really deserve this? How many more of Mai do we need?”

She lays the syringe in my palm and closes my fingers around it.

“Now, that’s a more compelling story.”

I try to pull myself up from the ground but Isa keeps me down with both hands.

“Oh, don’t worry, you don’t have to actually kill yourself.” She pats me on the shoulder. “I’ll take you to the hospital immediately. I can say I happened to be in the neighbourhood so I decided to check on you, and I found you just in time, which is a tiny miracle.”

I grab her forearms to push her away. Isa slaps me across the face and as I struggle to stop the room from spinning, she’s rolled on top and sat on my thighs.

“Help me help you!” She rolls my shirt up and drags my fist and the syringe to my waist. “It’s okay, doll, just imagine this is some magic potion. It will take you back to the night before any of this happened.”

The needle drills into my body and sinks deep. Isa presses her thumb on top of the plunger and pushes the entire dose inside me. She bends forward and whispers in my ear:

“It’s okay, just let it happen.”

Just let it happen.

I heard those words before, when Shane slid his hand inside my jeans.

Isa holds the syringe in place for a few more seconds before she pulls it out and wipes the blood off my skin.

“I’ll help you win this.” She declares. “Leave it with me.”

She rolls off me, pours herself another glass of water at the sink, then sits down at my dining table and starts typing. Leave it with me. She repeats.

For a few long minutes, all I hear is the noise of the keyboard and my breathing. Then there’s no more breathing.

The typing is fast and uninterrupted. I guess Isa is the kind who naturally has sentences flow out of her mind like water. She punches the keys hard, and no doubt her feisty, powerful narrative will destroy Shane and other men like him.

Who am I at her fingertips? And what kind of tone does she use when she sums up my life? I can’t see her screen or her expressions. But I’m sure it will be an influential article. It will be a memorable story.

I guess Isa agrees, she’s giggling.