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Numb, I walk into work, and the manager notices something is off, so I tell her I was groped on the street by a group of boys. She finds me a seat in her office, fixes me a Pepsi, and offers to call the police. I say no, it’s not a big deal. Years later I will kick myself for this. I should have said yes, call the police. I should have.
The tall pale boy who knew what he was doing comes into the store and lingers from time to time. I have no choice but to make his sandwiches. I’m frozen. I am numbed into compliance, adding the sandwich meat, the cheese, the mayo, the shredded lettuce and eight slices of olives, salt and pepper, wrapping it neatly in paper as I have been trained to do, wearing my red visor and apron. I ask someone else to ring it up. I can’t talk to him.
One night that pale boy lingers in a booth until my shift is over. It’s dark out and I need to walk back to the dorm, but my new boyfriend is away from his phone, maybe at the library, and can’t be reached. A coworker, a muscular high-school guy, tells the pale boy he needs to leave the sandwich shop and not ever return, and the boy obeys and leaves. The coworker offers to walk me home, so I wait for his shift to end. He seems nice and doesn’t scare me, though I wonder why. What is it about this coworker that lets me know he’s safe? Is he just safe this one time? How can I ever know?
After that night my boyfriend walks me home from work every time, protecting me. He is barely larger than I am, but his maleness keeps me from being preyed on.
Age twenty. I am traveling in Melbourne, Australia, with another American woman, and we are riding the bus. A drunk Irishman sits kitty-corner from me and turns back to admire the “lovely Aussie lasses, oh yes, hmm-mmm, that one with the tartan skirt.” I wish I had worn my baggy jeans. My friend and I avoid looking at the man, avoid talking in our American accents, which will make things worse. We ride the bus past our stop and step off in a crowded neighborhood, entering a café and lingering until we’re sure the man hasn’t followed.
It’s no big deal. We know how to do this, to survive in a world of wolf-men.
Age twenty-one. I fall in love with a friend. He is kind and patient and funny. I let down my guard, one cell at a time, and learn how to be joyful with a man. I work second shift, after the buses stop running, so I borrow his truck to get to my internship and then to my temp job. Both are in industrial neighborhoods. The truck feels safer than the bus, but men whistle and yell when they see a woman getting out of a pickup truck.
Age twenty-seven. In North Carolina, I’m out running near my apartment, and a crowd of boys on bikes rides up on the sidewalk at me. They call me nasty names, threaten to ride over me, and I kick and thrash elbows and yell loudly. I’ve learned. A man nearby turns around to witness but doesn’t check on me after they ride away. I write it all down in my journal and then suppress the memory. Years later I’ll read my own words and not remember a thing, as if it happened to someone else.
Age twenty-eight. On vacation in Italy, I follow my husband as he weaves through train cars in search of empty seats. Men touch me and whisper nastiness in unfamiliar Italian words, but I get what they’re saying. Arms full of luggage, I curse all the stuff I brought with me, as the hands touch what is not theirs.
Next time I’ll pack light. I don’t tell my husband until later that night. He is a gentle soul who has never been in a fight. Unlike me.
Age thirty. I am living abroad and a man follows me home from my language class. Shit, not this again. My bad knee aches and I wonder if I can even outrun him. He slurs his words and weaves, so maybe I can. I’m pregnant, in my middle trimester, and I hope this winter coat hides my belly. I pick up the pace, making it look natural, trying not to limp. He follows, insisting I tell him the time, and when I finally do, he catches my accent and wants to know where I’m from. “Canada,” I throw over my shoulder as I stride away. No way am I admitting to being an American woman. That’s just asking for it.
Age thirty-one. Sitting on an international flight, I’m on the aisle, nursing my nine-month-old baby through take-off, when I feel eyes boring into me. Maybe I’m tense because I hate takeoff and landing, but I glance around and see that the man sitting diagonally behind us has his eyes fixed on my breast. I pull on the blanket the baby has kicked off and he kicks at it some more and pulls away from my breast, exposing my nipple. He hates being covered up. I coo sweet words, urge him back to nursing, and close my eyes. I breathe in. I breathe out.
I unclench my fists, relax my shoulders, and pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist. I try to erase the man’s leer. I breathe in the freshness, the sweetness of my son’s small head.
Age thirty-four. Back in the U.S., I am chosen for a jury. The judge reads charges that include sodomy and unlawful penetration. The victim, a little girl, is three years old. My ears ring and I feel faint. I tell the judge, tell him I’m too sensitive, but he keeps me there.
Not long into the voir dire process I am asked whether I’ve been the victim of a crime. Where to start? Were those actually crimes? I confess, “I was groped on the street once,” and soon I hear, “Juror number five, you may be excused.” All the parents are removed from the jury. I look for coverage in the news, but there’s nothing. Maybe they settled. I wonder about that child and who will protect her. She will always be on guard.
Age thirty-five. It’s a sunny fall day, and I walk my son home from kindergarten through the park. We linger so he can run around. I hold his Lightning McQueen lunchbox and tiny backpack while he vroom-vrooms over the skate ramps.
Two men come running at me. The taller one reaches his hands toward my breasts, and somehow I block him with a karate move a girl from the neighborhood taught me when I was eleven. The metal lunchbox connects with his cheek and nose with a hard thwack, and he jumps back from me.
“Ow, you hit me! Why did you hit me? I wanted to hug you!” His eyes are glassy and unfocused, and shame washes over me. My heart moves too fast, and I want it to slow.
I say, “You can’t just hug people! You scared me!” There’s more to say, but my son is watching, my son is listening, and we are still in danger. I take his hand and we cut over to a well-traveled sidewalk to hurry home. He is five years old. Someday his maleness will protect me, but the next day I drive him both ways, to and from school.
Age thirty-seven. When my son is six we’re walking downtown and a man appraises me with that look—you know the look. “Heeeey there, mama,” he says. I keep walking.
My son is quiet, and then he asks, “Why did he call you ‘mama?’ You’re not his mama.” I could weep. He is too young to hear the answer. I don’t tell him yet, but I will. He has to know.
Age forty-three. It’s a few days after the 2016 election, and I open Facebook to connect with friends, with other people who might be feeling grief and fear about Trump’s election. I want to reach out to people at risk, to those who might be feeling vulnerable, and let them know I’m there. Among the expressions of mourning and calls to action, among the statements of support to women, immigrants, and people with disabilities, there is this. A friend, a liberal woman, writes, “You all need to calm the fuck down.”
Another friend comments, “Amen, sister!”
I write, “I feel like I’ve been grabbed by the pussy.” Then it seems melodramatic and inflammatory, and I’m too tired for a fight, so I delete my post. But it’s how I feel.
I can’t watch or listen to Trump on the news, can barely stomach him in small doses of print.
Age forty-four. Trump becomes president. What else will I remember?