To Walk Alone
This afternoon, I had made plans to meet with Rebecca after work to catch up, as we hadn't seen each other in a few weeks. When I arrived at the L-dub, the building was empty and locked, and Rebecca's husband Mark was sitting on the porch. We chatted while we waited for her, about traffic, street patterns, etc. When he mentioned that he didn't have his cell phone, I decided to give Rebecca a call to let her know we were waiting for her.
Then she said she couldn't be making it, and that Mark had to meet her at their son's school, that her daughter had been grabbed. At first I thought grabbed as in, someone pinched her ass. Upsetting, indeed, but not so so serious. Then Rebecca went on to say how the two young boys (brother-types) who were supposed to be with her had walked on ahead, and that a boy jumped out and tried to drag her into a garage. She managed to struggle away.
I handed the phone to her husband, whom she only told he had to get there immediately. He hung up and asked what was going on, and I told him only the briefest of recaps, that his daughter had been grabbed in Collegetown. He fairly ran to his car and left.
This event is on the heels of a homicide that has had Ithaca a flurry for the past three days. A woman's body was found with lacerations to her neck, off a trail in a popular park. Police have linked it to a police chase Tuesday night, where a man tried to outrun the police, then tried to kill himself-- that event in turn was linked to an apartment fire that same night. All we were told initially was that the woman was white and thirty-ish. I think everyone went through the long list of thirty-ish white women they knew (as there are many in Ithaca), trying to think who it could be. Ithaca is very small, and there's a very good chance that I would know the person. I personally wondered if it was someone involved in the Youth Outreach program, as the last few crime stories I read involved those youth. Last night they released the name of the victim and the man, her husband; I learned this morning that she was a good friend of a good friend of my coworker. My coworker had met the young woman twice, and her husband once. They were even, Ithaca being as small as it is, at the same yard sale Elliott and I went to last weekend, albeit at a different time.
And, to further illustrate my frame of mind, I just finished re-reading The Women's Room by Marilyn French, a novel that narrates the injustices women endured just by living in the 40s through the 70s. One story within the novel harked on an 18 year old girl raped first by a young man on the streets of Chicago, and raped second by the justice system that gave him barely a slap on the wrist because she probably wanted it. As the rape occurred, the character didn't fight back because she didn't know she could, and she didn't know how her attacker would react if she tried.
All this causes me to reflect on my own youth, and think how to relate to Rebecca, to her daughter. And I can relate. I think just about every woman can, at least in some way. If I, the girl no one would date in high school, withstood various near misses in my youth, then it must be a common experience. Whereas Elliott has maybe one harmless story about almost picking up a prostitute by accident, I have about half a dozen instances where I very nearly could have been violated or victimized.
Take, for instance, the evening Marina and I thought it would be an awesome idea to meet up at 1:00 a.m. to "loiter." We picked a halfway point between our houses, approximately 6 blocks for each of us. My judgement, I admit, was poor. That morning, we had smoked with some friends some marijuana with mysterious red lines running through it (we learned later it was probably PCP). So I'm thudding along Broad Street in my graceless walk. There's no one on the road, no one else on the sidewalks. And a car pulls up to me and the man inside asks if I need a ride. I say no thanks, and think nothing of it. Once I reach my destination, I have to wait for Marina, who is late. Another car pulls into the parking lot where I am, and a bald man (in my memory I picture him looking like Sargent Slaughter), questions me about what I'm doing out that late, that he's the neighborhood watch, tells me about his house and his dogs, etc. It freaks me out so much that I go wait in the bushes at the William Hall library across the street until I see Marina. We "loiter" for maybe 20 minutes. It's not as fun as it looked in the movies. I head home, this time taking Naragansette Blvd, hoping to get less attention. Sargent Slaughter once again pulls up to me, tells me that he's informed the police of a suspicious person (me), and offers me a ride again. I tell him no thanks, I'm heading home now, and he leaves me alone. I was weirded out, and never did much loitering again. It only occurs to me now, a decade later, that the person who should creep me out is the first man. Was he just being nice? Maybe, it's possible. Could he have thought I was a prostitute trolling for some customers? Possibly, though I would have horrible business sense if that were the case. Could he have wanted to force himself on me? Again, it was possible. Throughout my youth I shrugged off these ideas because I didn't consider myself desireable. I don't think I quite understood that rape wasn't about desire yet. And my self esteem was such that if someone did ever make a move, creepy as it may be, it would be flattering; I could believe for that brief moment that I was attractive.
Perhaps that's why I responded the way I did to the man driving the white van along Park Ave the summer after high school. I was driving my Maxima to bother Melissa while she worked. He flashed his lights at me, and drove up very close to the back of my car. For the hundred feet or so that the lane split into two, he drove along side me and shouted at me that I was beautiful. He wanted me to pull over and talk to him. Despite it being the early days of cell phones (and I always had my Nokia with me), it didn't occur to me to call the police and let them know these insistent creep was following me. Or, a tactic I hear is very smart, to drive to the police station, if he's that intent on following me. No, frightened me, I pulled over into a parking lot, still in view of Park Ave, and stayed in my car. He got out of his van and walked up to me and crouched at my window. He was fairly short with a receeding hair line. He went on to say that he saw me driving every morning, that I was beautiful, would I like to get some coffee with him? Could he get my number? I told him, "I'm seventeen years old." He responds, "I'm thirty three, do you have a problem with that?" (Uh, yeah. Most states do.) I felt at the time flattered, but wise enough to not want to go anywhere with him. I tell him I'm on my way somewhere important. When he presses for my number, I write it faintly in pencil on a small piece of paper I hope he loses. Why it didn't occur to me to make one up is beyond me. I guess I assumed he could tell when I was lying, and that it would anger him. Incidently, I never hear or see from him again, but everytime I see a white Ford delivery van, I freak out a little inside. Sure, it felt good to think this man found me attractive...but then you think: he watched me driving every morning. A tad stalkerish, no? And then nearly kills me trying to get my attention in traffic. There is something wrong with a man who picks women up in a parked van, never mind one moving at 35 mph.
While the memories are certainly with me, at the time and for the last decade or so I've shrugged them off as harmless. Hell, even Marina seemed to shrug off an attempted rape in the Providence Place Mall parking garage. When the man came up behind her with a sharp piece of glass and said "I'm going to rape you," she said, "Uhg, really? I've got my period." That was enough to make him settle for simply mugging her and taking $70. She was shaken the day of, and then fine. So why should any of my occurances be considered a big deal?
In a way, I know that if Rebecca's daughter were anything like me at her age, she'd shrug off today's trauma, and go on living as she has, as if it's just another anecdote. I would have never told anyone except my friends (my mom still doesn't know of the aforementioned incidents), and then I wouldn't have told the story seriously. But the situation is different. Her attacker was violent, he grabbed her. No one even came close to me. And Rebecca is different. She and her daughter have a far closer relationship; Rebecca works with youth who have endured far worse, and I imagine they are going to talk together and as a family about what happened, how her daughter feels, how she will feel, what she can do, what she shouldn't do. And her daughter is probably going to listen. And that's wonderful. That's progress from how I clumsily filed these away in my memory to bring out occassionally to stupidly stroke my ego.
But still. Why is it that a young teenaged girl still can't walk alone? Why is there always someone pulling over or grabbing her or even trying to protect her? Why is it that we can do so much more than we ever could before, and yet still not do some of the simplest things? Why can't we ever settle into feeling safe in our surroundings without being wrenched back to reality by domestic violence homicides and pre-teens getting grabbed on the street? And why, when these things happen, don't we know how to deal with them?
Maybe I need to make a rulebook for my future daughters. With the best self defence maneuvers. And tips like "Program the police's number into your phone," and "If followed while driving, head towards the police department, here's a map," or "If someone creepy won't go away without your phone number, memorize the local police's number, so you can write it down without thinking, and give THAT to the bastard," and "If you want to loiter in the middle of the night, wait until you're old enough to drive yourself to your destination. And bring your phone." And, as Blair's mom insisted, "Here's a can of pepper spray. It's illegal in this state, so keep it hidden unless you have to use it." But I hate the thought of raising young women to be afraid, to expect these things to happen. Because that's not progress either, is it? That's just being forced to adapt and respond to something that won't ever change. So what will it take? Any ideas?