Mugged
by Jean Hodgson
February, 2005
It was a dark night in an ominous part of the Mission District in San Francisco in the 1960s. I had just left a friend’s apartment. I was carrying his treasured lecture notes with me. Waiting at the bus stop, I knew I’d have to make a transfer to get home. Pairs of lustful, lonely eyes stared aggressively at my long, straight, strawberry-blond hair as I cast my gaze upon the concrete ground. The eyes, not I, had the power. A young woman’s only defense was to look away, a sign of weakness. To dare to stare back, to assert the right to see, would have been, as every woman instinctively knows, not a defense but an invitation. Ironically, my disempowerment and loss of sight kept the wolves tentatively at bay a few yards away, but if I looked up, they would move in, I knew.
My discomfort drove me to a more foolish choice—I started to walk home. Disappearing behind the wall of the corner building, I walked fast into the shadows, still keeping my eyes averted and gripping my friend’s notes. I wanted to see. I moved my eyes from side to side but didn’t dare look behind me. I could walk almost as fast as I could run, but I didn’t dare run. That would be another sign of weakness. I must weaken myself to be less weak; I must reduce my power to be less powerless.
After a few blocks, I no longer felt the eyes upon me, but I still thought it best to direct my gaze only straight ahead and hastily move onward into the desolate distance. I had never been on foot in this area before. I wasn’t certain of my direction, but it was vaguely familiar, as I had traveled this street several times by car. I was approaching a long stretch of a curved thoroughfare without intersections. The streetlights were too few to light the vast space without help from lighted buildings, which were absent. A sidewalk bordered only one side of the boulevard. The sidewalk was sandwiched between the wide road and a five to six foot tall wall. Beyond the wall was a eucalyptus forest. I think the street was called San Jose Ave. The stretch was about a quarter mile long. No one was ahead of me. I kept up the quick pace.
Halfway along the arc of the walkway, I relaxed somewhat, for I saw that I was succeeding in making my way without being accosted, and I believed I would soon be in less perilous territory.
About every minute, a car whizzed by and filled my ears with the noise of rushing wind. There were no other sounds, but for some reason, at that moment, I turned partly around. About ten feet behind me, I saw a tall, thin black man from out of the corner of my eye. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder.
Surely this must be someone I know—a friend, I thought.
“I want your money,” he said.
Although I did have some money, I looked him directly in his eyes and said, “I don’t even have any money,” as if I were aware of the irony of his trying to rob someone who had no money at all, and as if I could empathize with his bad luck.
I must have been convincing, since that was the end of that issue. With my eyes still glued on his, I read his face. I saw the angry-hurt-frustrated look of the ages built into generations of black men, built upon almost two centuries of injustices and suppressed rage, founded upon beatings, hangings, rapes, slavery, abuse, degradation, poverty, humiliation, and the near certainty that even the mildest of protests would be met with unbearable ruin or death. I read those feelings, and I saw a flash of surprise in his face as he saw that I read those feelings correctly—a flash of surprise, and a slight softening at the recognition of a human response.
My empathy for the historical black man was genuine, as was my empathy for what I assumed was his own history of being a black man in a country still putrid with prejudice. But before his brief softening, I had read something else in his expression—that it was I who was the cause of these injustices. And he read something else in my face that may have been a bigger surprise to him than the first, for, while I acknowledged all the injustices against him and his race, my face was innocent. I was not the culpable agent of those crimes; I was not the receptacle of that shameful bias. My face was without guilt. I think he saw that—for a second or two. He was taken aback. For that brief pair of seconds, I think he saw that I was not guilty.
A car whizzed by like a hurricane. He still held my left arm. My eyes disconnected from his. I pulled away and spun to the right, waving my right arm, screaming, “Help! Help!” as loudly as I could. I believed in my rescue. My voice was inaudible against the sound of the rushing car that was gone before I had even called out.
He pulled me toward him. Again, I looked him directly in the eye. The world was silent. I was deeply calm. My face was still innocent. But my pulling away and screaming had shaken him. I believed that the goodness of the universe would rain on me, and I would be saved. He was rattled. His fragile belief in my innocence was wiped away. He hit me in the face with his fist. He started to hit me a second time. I blocked his arm almost as if I were hitting him back—a feeble protest, but one nevertheless. I had never been struck before. I did not consent to being struck. He was angered by my protest. To him, I was the White Woman. He knocked me down again.
I got up immediately. The man held me by my left arm. Another car dashed by, consuming all other sounds with its violent currents of air. I pulled away again, screaming with all my might as I waved my right arm wildly. My shout was muted and helpless, my gestures of no use. The car passed. The man pulled me back. I looked him directly in the eye. He was more rattled than before. Silence. My face was serene. I felt no pain. I strangely felt no fear. I did not doubt that someone would call for help. My composure shook him. He hit me again. I fell.
I rose up. My eyes met his. Another car stormed past. I pivoted to the right against the fulcrum of the hand that grasped my left arm. I screeched and stretched my arm out as if to embrace the passing car. The car was gone. He pulled me back. My eyes fixed on his. I was still not guilty. I felt no fear. I was certain the driver would get help. There was silence within me, as in the depths of an ocean. The man was shaken. He raised his arm to strike me. I was the White One. I fell.
I got up again. He pulled me toward the wall.
“Get up there,” he ordered, “I have a gun.”
The wall was as tall as I was. He could not lift me over the wall if I struggled. I’m less likely to be harmed, I’d be better off shot, on this side of the wall, I thought.
I looked him in the eye. A choice lay before me. I felt the fear and finality of decision. My heart pounded.
“No,” I said. My heart throbbed.
Visibly shaken, he knocked me down again. I got up. Calmly, I looked into his eyes. I stated matter-of-factly, “You had better go now before you get caught.”
He paused, flustered and baffled. He had little regard for the justice of his world. I think he felt more awe for the “justice” of my world—of the just world I had created in my own image and that I later found existed only in my own mind. He took my advice and left, but first he gave me another blow to the jaw, and down I went.
As I pushed myself up from the ground, I saw him twenty-five feet away, his hands on the top of the wall. He saw me look at him. He paused, watching me begin to gather up the scattered pages of my friend’s precious notes, one by one. Before he pulled himself over the wall, I thought he shook his head, invisibly; I thought he shook his head, inside. I picked up all the papers that I could find. Grasping my friend’s notes, I ran home. It was another couple of miles, the last mile uphill.
As I ran, I felt the fear that had been absent throughout most of this encounter, but the fear was still strangely muted. I wondered if I had been injured. I felt my face. I had never felt any pain. His blows had had the impact of a mallet’s tap on an inch of cardboard that cushioned me from his fist. My body seemed intact. Something felt right about this outcome.
When I arrived home, I called the police. Two men came and took a report.
When they were finished questioning me, I asked, “Did anyone call the police? Several cars drove past us. The passengers must have known what was happening.”
“No,” said the policeman with the heavy build. “No one called.”
So my faith in my rescue had been illusory. Still, it helped save me.
The tall, thin officer asked, “Why didn’t you call us before you ran all the way home? We could never catch him now. He’s had too much lead time.”
I answered, “Sorry, I didn’t see a phone booth on the way. Besides, I was anxious to get home.”
They turned to go. The officer with the heavy build swung back, “You shouldn’t be out on the streets at night.”
I looked him in the eye. “No, it was he who shouldn’t have been out on the streets,” I said.
The officer wasn’t pleased. The two of them left.
The next day, I explained to my friend that some of his notes might have blown away. Under the circumstances, my friend understood. He said he ought to have waited with me at the bus stop. Later, when he inspected his notes, he told me nothing was missing.
The second day after the mugging, I went to a neighborhood karate school to inquire about lessons. The instructor told me that, within a month, I would be able to beat up a mugger. He said, “Within three months, you’ll be able to wipe out two boxers and a street fighter.” I fell for that one. I did take karate for several months, though. It was fun kicking and punching in the air. Later I got to break other students’ holds around my neck, kick, spin around, kick backwards, take advantage of a push against a wall to bounce off of it, punch, kick, punch again, and lay 10 men out before me. I think this practice was probably as useless as the feeble protest of the aborted swing at the mugger that I had made. Remember, it had only made the mugger mad. My true weapons were my wits, my ability to see the mugger, my fearlessness, my faith in benevolent rescue (baseless as that was), and, especially, my lack of guilt and the gaze of my eyes into his. After all, he didn’t get a cent, I didn’t get a bruise, I didn’t lose a page, and I scared the hell out of the mugger.
I never stopped going where I pleased.
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