Dear brothers,
Fresh in my mind, I can remember the feeling of helplessness and anger that rushed through me as I ran home. The day, or night, rather, started off fine. I was walking home with my friends, from one of their houses that we had been staying at. We had spent the day marathoning the old Star Wars movies, because her older brother had bought all of the VHS tapes for $5 at a garage sale. It was about 9:00, a nautical twilight kind of aura, just dark enough for her mother to shoot us a concerned glance as we left. Her brother was finishing up the movies with his friends. He would not come with us.
And as sick as it makes me, to need some sort of protection from a male, I wish he would have came. But he did not, and we genuinely did not think much of it.
She had brought her house keys, fitted into her tiny fist, sticking out. It was less than intimidating, to say the least. But she assured us that she lived in a white suburban neighborhood. She had assured us, and I remember her very words, "The only thing I have to fear is soccer moms and Republicans." We had laughed.
Tiny, white knuckles, straining against the keys, we had laughed. And even though we were laughing, she held them tight in her fist and close to her body. I asked her seriously if she thought that she could do it-stab someone with her house keys. We had laughed. She had said, "It doesn't matter, I wont have to."
We rounded the corner, three of us left, on the way to another friend's house. We were dropping people off one by one, and then she would call her mother to pick her up from my house. Around the corner, out old elementary school sat in the center of a large and vacant parking lot. It was illuminated by nothing but streetlights and single pair of headlights from the back of the lot.
Filled with teenaged boys, large and loud and nothing to lose, the car sat ominously in the lot. I have no idea how my friends initially felt, but I know that my perception of the situation was immediately that of danger. My friend slowly drew her hand onto my arm, clutched her keys, and sped up her walk. Me and my second friend followed in suit, speeding up and exchanging knowing glances. I think we all sensed what was coming, though none of us wanted to mention even the possibility.
We tried to make ourselves small-unnoticeable,-as we crossed the lot. Our heads down and her vice-like grip on my right, I could feel a sense of unease disperse throughout my limbs.
And the car began to follow us, slowly, but definitely. My friend with the keys shook her head, pulling my faster, along with her, barely short of a run. My second friend, the one whose house we were making our way to next, stood to my left. I held fast to her hand, and joined together, we hurried along in what I can only describe as a calm before the storm.
Because then the car door opened, and the teenaged yells grew louder, and footsteps began to match ours.
We said nothing, holding fast to one another, and we began to run. It wasn't the kind of running that you felt in your legs, it was the kind of running you felt in your chest. Burning your lungs as if every breathe was one of smoke. I think my one friend was crying, as my other friend clutched tight to her keys, and the only thing we could hear was the malicious cries of the boys.
The only thing we could see was wet grass and cracked pavement, illuminated by only the streetlights that became to be further and further away as we ran. My friend has asthma, and nearly had an attack. I stumbled on a crack in the pavement, and rolled an ankle, luckily only obtaining a hairline fracture.
A hairline fracture. Yes, I'd rather have that than what I could have had.
We ran until my friend couldn't breathe, and she handed me her house keys so she could raise her hands above her head-so she could open her diaphragm. I held them in between my fingers, though I saw no point. Earlier we had asked her if she would be able to do it-to stab someone. She had said she wouldn't have to. Now, only minutes later, we had found that the answer was no. We had found that she could not. And I was sure that I would react the same.
The man had stopped following us a way back, yet we were unable to calm down. We were unable to forget. When we reached the house, I sat in a chair, ice over my ankle, crying in her mother's arms. It was the first time I had been followed by a man that was larger and older than me. I would not be the last time.
My second friend, the one whose house we had ran to, called me four times that night, even though I had told her I was alright every time. My mother hugged me once, yet berated me for walking with only friends late at night. My older brothers said nothing, only watched in confusion. I can only understand that they were confused because they did not, have not, and likely never will experience the sensation of vulnerability and numbness that I felt.
My friend's mother had called the police upon our arrival at her house. Our chests heaving and our faces teary eyed, my ankle swollen only slightly more than the swelling of voices: raised all at once to provide and explanation, an apology. I wondered when the world decided that preteen girls should be responsible for warding off the evils that surround them, I wonder still why those learned behaviors cause me to act instantaneously and instinctively.
It keeps me up at night, even years later. It haunts me, and I say that literally. It haunts me day and night and follows me like I shadow that I did not create. And even though it is not of my creation, that shadow lurks and follows, never ceasing to remind me just how feeble and impotent I am.
We had asked her if she could do it-stab someone- with her house-keys cool against white-tipped knuckles. When the moment came, we learned that she could not. At least, not then, young and naiive and happy. The world has taken the innocence from her soul, and replaced it with a scatter to retrieve the broken parts of herself and all of the young girls that look up to people like us-survivors.
I have no doubt in my mind, that if she situation-god forbid-rises again, that she will find the malice inside of herself to invoke the mental misery that we feel into the skin of those who provide it to us. I have no doubt in my mind that she could now find the courage to drive her keys into the chest of an attacker and feel no guilt, for people like those who come after us have driven all senses of guilt and helplessness from her frail body.
Dear brothers, older brothers, younger brothers, large or small,
Dear fathers, stepfathers, uncles and cousins,
Dear friends that are boys, boyfriends, neighbors that occasionally share a "good morning" with young girls,
Walk us home at night. Without you by our side, we can only expect danger. Without you at our side, we are seen as non-human and deserving of attack. Without you at our side, something may happen that awakes in us an experience that can never be lived down, and moments of panic and paranoia that we will never recover from.
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