Halloween
One day, some years ago, when I was taking summer courses up in New Haven, I left the campus and walked over to the train station to come home. New Haven is not a city without its problems, but I'd never felt threatened there--not once, not anywhere, day or night.
There was construction going on between the main terminal and the platforms--huge, dark, corrugated-steel tunnels running out to the Metro-North trains. I ran down the stairs into the tunnel to go and wait for my train on the platform. When I reached the bottom and turned into the tunnel, I saw out of the corner of my eye a man standing against the wall.
"Do you know when the next train leaves?" he asked, and in my memory he asked in an almost-whisper, and there was something wrong--something very wrong--though I couldn't put my finger on it in that moment.
"No," I said quickly, and kept walking, quickly, and didn't look at him--didn't connect at all.
I climbed the stairs onto the platform. There were plenty of people there, and it was daylight, but I couldn't shake the feeling: something bad. And then I saw him climbing the stairs, too.
He was in his 30s. He was slim, with messy light-brown hair. He was wearing a wet, white t-shirt, and the collar was ripped off so that the shirt hung in a large circle, and he was holding it at the neck so that the shirt didn't touch his chest. And he was doing that because his chest was covered with angry red welts--burns or blisters or something. They were oozing; there were angry blotches coming through his shirt where it touched his body. He stared at me. He smiled--not a good smile. He walked toward me, and I turned and walked to the other end of the platform, near some men in business suits. He followed, standing ten feet away, holding his shirt, staring and smiling.
The train came and I got on, and he followed. I moved into the next car, and he followed again--through two more cars until I found the conductor and said, "A man is following me," and I think I might have been crying a bit at that point. The conductor looked behind me, saw the guy, and told me to sit where I was. And so the man with the welts sat where he was, too: six aisles away, facing me.
And that's how it stayed for 40 minutes, until the guy stood up and walked off the train in Greens Farms--one stop before my own.
When I got off the train in Westport I was sure I'd see him clinging like Spiderman to the side of the train, waiting to attack. I was sure he was waiting, somehow.
I tell the kids this story. Liam says, "He might have just thought it was funny that you were so spooked by his boo-boos." Could be. Maisie says, "What was he doing down there in that dark tunnel?"
"I don't know what he thought, " I tell them. "I don't know what he was doing. I only know that he made me feel like I was in danger, and you always have to trust what you feel--even if it means you're rude to somebody. Even if it means you run or cry for help and it turns out there was no danger."
Of course, here it is, twenty years after it happened, and I still wonder if he was smiling because I was spooked by his boo-boos--if he was taunting me. And I wonder what he was doing standing in the dark in that tunnel.
posted by I n g e r @ Sunday, October 29, 2006
2 Comments:
you get the heebie jeebies and run. i don't get them often, so they're rare enough to trust.
i was so afraid of the knifesharpener when i was small, that i used to drill myself in case he ever caught me. i was small, and not at all native to cursing (i was actually a very polite child), so i'd stumble on the word, so i had to practice. in school and on tv we were only told to look out for people in vans with curtains and candy, but i remember thinking that if the news knew about it, all the perverts did too, and since this mode of attack was being advertised all over the place, the jig was up. i remember thinking that the child molestors had gotten together and decided collectively to take another tack, although i didn't know what it would be. a smart child molestor wouldn't give you the chance to run away. you had to invent one for yourself. so i did. this new response didn't include running and getting a grown up, or stopping, dropping and rolling. i devised it myself, long before the news and school started reporting the stats about your odds of surviving if you are moved from an initial crime scene to a secondary one (not good). note that i considered the following word the filthiest, most obscene thing that could be said. that children ought never say it (i was a very polite child), which is exactly why i picked it. someone wouldn't ignore a child who was yelling obscene things at the top of her lungs.
"kill me right here, motherfucker. kill me right here. i'm as good as dead anyhow."
i haven't had the occasion to need this yet(good luck paired with a readiness to run, perhaps? knock wood; spit twice), which isn't to say i haven't used it.
last year, on the way to the post office, less than a few blocks from my house, someone came up quickly behind me and grabbed me by the shoulder. when i saw his face, i could see that he wasn't a child molestor (i was years away from being a child), or a murderer (he didn't make my hairs stand up that way). i think he only meant to snatch my purse. but those words came tumbling out anyhow, and i braced my forearm against up between us, to defend my face and hit his if i had, and started swinging with my keys with my other hand. except for the keys, i went perfectly rigid. he ran. people stopped. in new york. where people never stop. i kept my purse and who knows what else. which means that it worked, even if the menace he presented wasn't the same one for which the shout had been intended.
i haven't any idea how i knew as a little girl to do that, or say that, or how i knew it might work. but i knew it. which is proof that even before you know, you know. which means get away first, and ask questions later. you can't ask questions when you're quartered in a plastic bag on the side of the new jersey turnpike.
run!
I agree...trust your instincts, no apologies!
alan
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