When it feels like nowhere is safe

Editor's Note: This essay contains mentions of sexual assault and rape.

The first time I was raped I was 11 years old. I’d been sent paddle boating with my father’s boss’s 16-year-old son. His longer, stronger legs steered us to a small island at a far edge of the lake, and out of sight. Afterwards, he told me to wash the blood off of myself, and that if I told anyone, my father would lose his job. I never told.

Later that year I was spending the night at my cousin Marc’s house. We’d spent the afternoon playing in the yard. At bedtime we placed a styrofoam cooler under the window between the twin beds in preparation for the lemonade stand we were planning for the next day and went to sleep.

Sometime that night I woke up to a conversation. Confused, I opened my eyes and looked up to see a man’s face. He was holding me, sitting me up, talking about his cat. His hands were under the blankets, and on me. Once I could speak I told him my big, boy cousin was in the next bed, and he’d better go before he woke him up, and also the big dog Cleo was in the kitchen and might come in, and also my Aunt Jean was in the next room. I suppose I annoyed him away, but I didn’t fully wake up until, as he was leaving, he tripped. His back hit the cafe curtain rod, which came crashing down as he went out through the window he’d come in.

This woke up Marc, who ran to get his mother. My aunt called the police, who told me I’d probably been dreaming. I’d probably pulled the curtain down in my sleep, they said. After all, ancient Cleo hadn’t woken up, had she? Only after they left did we all notice the large imprint of a footprint on the styrofoam cooler.

In the last couple of weeks my past — like so many women’s pasts — has come roaring up out of the darkness.

I was 15 when I sat up from a deep sleep and realized the man hadn’t been talking about his cat. He’d been saying “pussy.” A little girl’s mind didn’t understand the meaning. A couple of cops might have, if they’d tried.

I could fill pages more with “and then another time,” but most women reading this would likely say, “Been there,” and most men would start to wonder what I’d done to cause so many of these tales. I get it. I’ve blamed myself plenty.

In the last couple of weeks my past — like so many women’s pasts — has come roaring up out of the darkness. November’s election results, the impending return of convicted sexual offender Donald Trump and his cabinet nominations rife with allegations of sexual assaults, have exalted our attackers, and set them free.

Most men don’t know what it’s like to live under force, to be controlled by it. They know what it’s like to live with it, to weigh it as an option; to choose when and if to use it on anything from a stubborn lug nut to a stubborn woman.

I was 19, this time asleep with my boyfriend in his father’s house in the bucolic woods outside Boston. I’d broken up with my previous boyfriend many months before, and so was not expecting the 2:00 a.m. knock on the door. Before I could ask what he was doing there, he pulled me out the door and threw me over the hood of the car. As we wrestled for the keys he broke my arm, shoved me in the passenger side, and drove us away. He flew down the highway screaming at me. Occasionally he’d slam me with his elbow. He fractured the ribs on my left side.

We were pulled over for speeding and the cop asked if I was OK. I said I was, because I wanted to stay alive. He gave my ex-boyfriend a warning, tapped the roof of the car twice and walked away. This seemed to reboot my ex-boyfriend, who said nothing as he drove to the end of the long driveway where we’d started, reached across me, opened the door, and told me he was sorry. I walked back to the house in the pitch-dark alone, barefoot on the gravel and dirt.

My stories didn’t end at 19. They weren’t always as dramatic as an ex-husband who ripped kitchen cabinets off the wall. They were usually more in the silent threat category; that little hitch in a conversation or situation that is deafening to women and invisible to men. If I balk now, there might be danger. And he doesn’t even know it.

I was walking the beagle the night before last when I passed a couple of 20-something guys loading their car with construction equipment. They were having a small argument about whether they could do it in one trip or two. I guess I laughed a little. The situation reminded me of my sons, who go to ridiculous lengths to only ever make one trip in with anything from groceries to furniture. I didn’t even know I’d done it.

“It’s funny?” one guy said, then shouted, “TRUMMMMMMP lady! TRUMMMMMP.”

I kept walking. A minute later the car drove past. The guy in the passenger seat rolled down his window and sang, “Happy Birthday, Mister President” in a loud, drunk voice.

They felt so free to taunt me, so newly liberated. It was chilling.

“Your body, my choice,” is the new rallying cry of white nationalist men in America. A social media post from journalist Jon Miller said “women threatening sex strikes like LMAO as if you have a say,” and has gotten about 86.7 million views.

It’s taken me two weeks to identify the cold, tight feeling in my chest. It’s the remembrance of nowhere safe to be, not even home; of liquor-hot breath in my face and on my neck; of pretending to have fun and wanting to cry; of watching my body move when I didn’t move it; of having no control when someone is stronger, and is willing to be violent.

It is fear.

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