Encounter

WITH THE OBSCENE—In kindergarten, we were taught, if a siren sounded, to duck beneath our desks, scrunched into a ball like a beetle, arms over our heads, before a brilliant light seized the room. I was struck with terror, imagining light, like melted butter, drowning us. Such a simple naivete in that classroom, that school, that country, that a wooden desk, kitchen table or tenement walls could save us from  an atomic bomb, Japan’s dead children unacknowledged. After were issued dog tags with names, parents’ name and addresses, our teacher told us it was in case we got lost.

WITH HATE—When I was nine, a girl who’d never paid any more attention to me than other classmates did, said she wanted to show me something. Wariness warred with hope that unquestioned compliance proved I was one of them.  Christmas decorated streets led to the Catholic church, its stillness and thick incensed air a blanket smothering me. She led me between the pews till we reached a bloody sculpture; a man I knew was Jesus suspended from a cross, hands and feet nailed, blood pouring from his side and from a tangle of thorns on his head.

“This is what we do to Jews,” she laughed loudly as I ran down the aisle and out the door into my future of months of nightmares.

WITH AMERICAN INTOLERANCE—I have been gifted with a concussion by a gang of boys clothed in the words “Dirty Jew.” I have been labeled a murderer by a bus driver who said “I don’t drive Christ killers,” and closed the bus door. My gay friend was been beaten to prove the manliness of five men. My African American friend was informed that she couldn’t frequent certain grocery stores. A Muslim woman in a hijab was loomed over by three men until I took the seat beside her and glared. Asian elders in my friend’s family were attacked and cursed during the Covid epidemic.

WITH SEXUAL HARASSMENT—I  have been groped, gripped, pinched, grabbed, fondled, mauled, felt up, clutched, grasped, chased, threatened, taunted, corralled, smirked at, called names, followed. I have been nearly raped.

WITH EMPLOYMENT—After high school, I had a variety of dead end boring jobs, with male supervisors who sometimes “stepped over the line,” all part of the culture of demeaning mere high school female graduates. When I finally got my degree, and moved into a supervisory position I was paid less than my male-coworkers because I’d eventually have a husband to take care of me financially.

WITH RALLIES—At sixteen, while I marched for John Lindsay’s civilian review board, a woman from the silk stocking district whacked me in the leg. Marching for a higher minimum wage evoked screams from those watching along the sidewalks that I wasn’t even worth what I was already being paid. Marching for civil rights I was assured that I was nothing but a “nigger lover.” I marched for gay rights where, as viewed by the homophobic, I was a lesbian. Marching for women’s rights, I was directed back to the bedroom and kitchen where I belonged. Marching against Vietnam I was told to love America or leave it. Marching against the invasion of Iraq, for reproductive rights and against the politics of Donald Trump, I was insulated by millions everywhere who also marched. After the re-election of Trump, I informed a friend I was done, done, done! She laughed and said, “I’ll pick you up at 10:30 for the rally tomorrow.”

WITH DEATH—When I was forty-one, unaware that my “cold” was walking pneumonia, I died. I watched my motionless body flow toward the legendary light, then heard my dead mother’s voice caution, “Not now, too soon. You’re not finished.” I plunged back into my body. At eighty-one, in a hospital room, my blood pressure hit monumental highs, my heart pounding fiercely, and I couldn’t stand up. I drifted in and out, a pincushion with tubes everywhere while my husband held my hand and told me he loved me. When I was released the following morning,  a nurse whispered “None of us thought you were going to make it.”

These two encounters—just practice for the real thing.