Remembering Michelle

Twenty-two years later, I can still hear her voice.

I can see her face, looking up, eyes open, skin pale and purple — a soil-stained, china-doll face. Dirt and leaves around her. This is how he left her.

This is what I see when I close my eyes, when I open them, when I’m driving to work or standing in line at the grocery store.

“Remember me.”

I do. God help me, I do.

Her voice isn’t loud. It’s soft. So soft I could almost pretend it isn’t there, but it cuts through me like a scream. It comes out of nowhere. And when it does, there’s no shutting it out.

“Tell them what happened.”

She deserves that and more. But the parole board doesn’t deal in what people deserve. They deal in time served and good behavior. They deal with a Preacher proclaiming reformation, as though he deserved it.

A man of God, they called him. The community trusted him and loved him. When he stood at the pulpit, they heard divine authority.

We trusted him, too. My husband was his friend.

Twenty-four years. That’s what her life was worth in the arithmetic of justice. After fifteen years had passed, he was eligible for parole. He could be eating breakfast in the local diner, coffee and eggs in front of him. Bowing his head, thanking God for his freedom.

The same God whose name was in his mouth when his hands were around her neck. And the people at the next table would pass him the ketchup, not knowing what he had done.

In my mind, she will always be in that hastily dug pit. Leaves caught in her hair, just enough dirt to hide, but not bury her. Cyanosis for make-up. And that stare, frozen for eternity.

“Tell them my name”.

I remember watching the news. I was states away, safe in my own home, or so I thought. When they announced that Michelle was gone and that he had done it, then my world tilted. I didn’t need to be at the crime scene to see it. I saw it in my own living room. Because I knew it could have been me.

I knew the look in my husband’s eyes when he was angry, the hands that grabbed too hard, the voice that used scripture to silence me.

Michelle’s death was a mirror I couldn’t look away from. If it wasn’t for her and the horrific price she paid, I might still be there. Still shrinking into the corners of my house, pinned there with the weight of his body, convinced it was my cross to bear.

Her death was the only thing loud enough to tear through the silence of the lies I’d been told.

People have told me that I have an empathic gift. That I’m sensitive to things other people feel.

It wasn’t a gift; it was cold-blooded terror. I knew that the only difference between Michelle’s story and mine was a few years and a shallow grave.

I felt the weight of my husband’s rage. The certainty that one day he’d go too far and I’d be the one in the ground. That atrocity saved my life. It was a warning, not a gift. The voice of a woman who had been murdered was loud enough to be heard by a woman who might be next.

The living move on because they have to. But I can’t, and she won’t let me — or maybe I won’t let her.

“Say my name.”

Michelle Piwowar. Her name was Michelle.

Michelle Piwowar, who loved running and lit up when her children were around. Michelle, who had the longest, most beautiful curly hair I’d ever seen. Michelle, who loved to bake fresh bread for her family. Michelle, who was more than what he made her. More than a body in a hidden patch of earth. She was more than a victim. She was my friend.

I’ll say her name and remember she was a person, not just a crime or a page in his redemption story.

Why can I still hear her?

Maybe nobody else is listening. Because the world wants to forgive him and forget her. She’s trapped between being the woman she was and the victim he made her, and I refuse to let either version disappear.

Remembering is the only thing I can still do for her. But it’s more than that. I hear her because I owe her my life.

I can still imagine her face, purple skin, and those unblinking eyes. I don’t just feel horror anymore. I feel a debt. I hear her voice in the quiet moments, and I realize she wasn’t just whispering for herself. She was screaming across state lines, screaming through the news reports, loud enough to shatter the walls of the prison I was living in.

She screamed clear enough for me to finally hear the truth about my own marriage. Before my own story ended in the dirt.

And yet, after I left him, I could still hear her.

Michelle, it’s been 22 years since Robert took you from this world. I am breathing this free air because you stopped breathing yours. I will never forget it. I owe you my every breath.

I remember Michelle. I will always remember you.

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Remembering Michelle was originally published in Women Write on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.