That Takes Ovaries! (4 page)

There are certainly benefits to acting on the spur of the moment. Not only is there no time for others to shame her out of her actions, but when something happens fast and a woman responds
rapido,
the nay-saying voice in her head, the “Oh, you’re not supposed to do
that”
refrain, doesn’t get to utter a single disapproving word. It doesn’t have time to get in the way of her doing what her body and soul tell her they really want to do. When a woman wants something bad, and she wants it
now,
she doesn’t let internal obstacles (sometimes her worst enemy) get in the way–not fear, not fingerwagging. And when the deed is done, when things are calm again, pride bursts forth and she feels good.

Hey, wouldja look at what I just did!

Of course, not all impulsive acts ring with smarts. Whatever. There’s still a good story to tell when it’s over.

As I lay napping one lazy summer morning, a crashing sound jarred me awake. I got up to investigate. I opened the bedroom door, wearing only my short, pink, baby-tee nightshirt, and was immediately confronted with a man staring back at me. His hand was extended toward the other side of the door handle. I tensed up and said nothing. He did the same.

Of all panicked thoughts, my priority was,
I’m not wearing any underwear.

“What are you doing in here?” I yelled, leaning slowly toward the man, fists balled at my side.

With the foot of space between us closing fast, he backed up. Luckily, he did not choose the alternative. I bellowed again, “How did you get in here?” He turned nervously and looked at the open window behind him.

The stack of games I kept piled under the window lay strewn
all over the hardwood floor. Playing chips and dice were scattered everywhere, even under the furniture. Near the window leaned a shovel, which the intruder had apparently used to pry the window open, breaking the latch.

“You broke my window?” I asked, obviously a rhetorical question. “What are you doing in here?”

“I’m just looking for some money,” he answered meekly. He hesitated and then continued, “Do you have any?”

It was my turn to pause. Then my answer surprised even me: “I’m not going to pay you for breaking into my house.”

The shock of hearing this statement come out of my mouth completely distracted me from the fear surging inside my body. But it didn’t distract me from my primary concern, which remained
How the hell can I get ahold of some underwear?

Burgle-Man stood silently, reflecting perhaps on our situation.

While keeping my eyes fixed on Burgle-Man, I scanned the apartment with my peripheral vision. I was searching for my keys, my second priority. I’d need them to unlock the doublebolted front door in order to get him out. That was when I noticed my poster of Martin Luther King Jr. on the wall. I knew I needed to keep talking, and now Martin came to my aid.

Burgle-Man was a slight African-American, probably in his early forties, the ideal demographic for the tactic I had in mind. “You would look Martin Luther King in the eye and continue to rob this house?” I yelled, pointing to the poster. “You would know that the residents of this home believe in the causes of Black people, and you would still try to steal from them?”

Burgle-Man was speechless.

“You would ask my Black self for money, knowing Dr. King was watching?” I continued to scan for the keys, and continued to silently panic about my naked bottom half. I wondered if he would notice if I left the room just for a second to put on some underwear. But I had to keep talking. Eyeing other posters and prints on my living room walls, I asked Burgle-Man, “You would look at these celebrations of Sojourner Truth and
Toussaint L’Ouverture and cavalierly ransack this home for mere dollars?”

Burgle-Man’s chin began to quiver.

Where were those damn keys?
I wondered.

When I started my diatribe on Steven Biko and “our African sisters and brothers who struggle,” tears streamed from Burgle-Man’s penitent eyes. He cried, “I’m gonna change my ways! I’m gonna change my ways!”

“It’s alright, Brother,” I told him softly.
Who did I ever call “Brother”?
“If you start doing the right thing today, that’s what you’ll get to hold onto for the rest of your life.”
Whatever that meant.

Burgle-Man dried his tears while I spun my head around, looking for my keys. Of course, what I really longed for, needed, and had to have was my underwear. I could visualize the cotton fabulousness balled up in my dresser drawer just waiting for me. I hadn’t missed them so much since I’d messed in my pants in the second grade.

“What are you looking for?” he asked.

“My keys.”

“There’s a key in the back door,” he offered.

“You cased my place?” I hollered, vaguely remembering knocks at my front and back doors minutes before the break-in. He must have seen the key through a window from the outside.

“I’m sorry.” His chin started quivering again.

I grabbed the spare key from the back door (which led to the backyard) and used it to open my front door. “Okay, good-bye,” I grimaced.

“Are you going to call the police?” Burgle-Man asked.

“No, just get out. And don’t do this again.”

“I won’t,” he assured me solemnly, and retreated down the front stairs.

I relocked the door and collapsed on my couch, my legs no better than rubber bands. I sat still for ten minutes, quietly looking at Martin, before I got up and hammered the window shut. But first I got dressed.

I was twenty-one and traveling around Europe by myself for one month. It was a source of pride for me that I paid for the whole trip with my own hard-earned money. No parental help whatsoever. While abroad, I was determined to see the Alps, so I set it up to stay with a host family in Switzerland and hopped on a train. I didn’t know exactly where to get off, but I wasn’t worried; I figured the ticket collector would tell me when I’d reached the right station by yelling something obvious, like, “Alps, next stop.” (I know, I know, silly me.)

After an hour of watching stop after stop pass by, I started worrying and decided to ask. I found the ticket collector by the train door just as we were pulling out of a station. I didn’t speak the language, so I asked in my native Spanish and he answered in choppy English.

“It was
this
stop,” he said. “You just missed it.” He pointed to the station’s platform, which was now zipping past us. “You’ll have to get off at the next stop, two hours away in Italy, and buy another ticket—”

“Another ticket?”

“—to take the next train back,” the ticket collector said as he walked away from me and into the train car.

“When is the next train back?” I asked, feeling the alarm rising up my chest.

“Tomorrow.”

“What?” I yelled. “I’m supposed to meet a host family back at the station we just passed
today.”

It wasn’t just that. I had nowhere to stay in Italy; no arrangements had been made. And I had no extra money for another ticket, or for a hotel. Just the night before I’d slept in a train station, and believe me, I was not eager to repeat the experience. So, in a crazed state, feeling the train picking up speed, I followed after the ticket collector who was walking down the narrow aisle between the passenger seats.

“What should I do? What should I do?” I asked him.

A man sitting nearby saw me panicking and said, “Jump!” I spun around and looked at him. He was serious. Suddenly, other passengers joined in, all urging me to jump. Even grandmothers. I thought of my alternative and nodded yes. They grabbed my bags from the overhead compartment and helped me to the door. I opened it, saw the ground rushing by, and jumped.

Yes, of course I was scared. But for some bizarre reason, in my anxious state, the thought of breaking down and having my parents wire me money seemed much worse than ending up in a full-body cast.

The ticket collector must have been shocked. He, or someone, pulled the emergency stop. The train screeched to a halt and the conductor stuck his head out of a window and frantically yelled something I didn’t understand, ending with the word
hospital.
I shook my head no and waved them off; I’d broken no bones. Then I stood up, a bit embarrassed (everyone on the train was looking out the windows at me), brushed myself off, grabbed my luggage, and walked the two miles back to the station.

Okay, so maybe it hadn’t been the smartest move. When I got to the station, I found my fall had ripped my heavy sweater all the way up my forearm, leaving a long bloody cut. But the cut wasn’t deep, and the Alps were great. So there!

Growing up female in the 1950s in New York City meant enduring packed subway cars and men who’d bump against you or press their bodies into you. A stranger’s hand would find its way here or there, often places you didn’t want it. This happened every day on the way to junior high and back. Not only was I young and wavering in confidence, but I was unsure about the groping:
Is this from the normal jostling of the train or are they purposefully doing what I think they are doing?

One day, though not on the train, I knew for sure. I was sitting in a movie theater with my friend Iris when a man sat down next to me. I knew something was strange because there were lots of empty seats everywhere, but he chose to sit right next to me. Soon after, I felt something crawling around by my behind. It was his hand.

I was confused, and my mind went kind of numb, like it usually did on the subway. Then, an unfamiliar and wild surge of energy built up inside of me and flew out. I grabbed his hand, lifted it way up in the air and screamed at him so loud everyone in the theater could hear: “Does this hand belong to you?”

He got up and walked away.

Iris laughed, shook my hand, and said some 1950s equivalent of “You go, girl!”

Twenty years later, in the early 1970s, I was the director of a small theater on the East Coast. During intermission, I’d stand around in the lobby because I enjoyed listening to people’s conversations about the play in progress. One night, a distraught young woman came over to me.

“Somebody took my wallet out of my coat!” She pointed to a man in a long tan overcoat at the other end of the lobby and said,
“That
man was sitting behind me.”

Dressed in elegant garb, the guy looked as if he didn’t belong in the predominantly hippie crowd my theater drew, so without hesitating, I marched over to him.

“Did you take something from the woman sitting in front of you?” I asked.

Only for an instant did I consider I might be endangering myself by confronting him. At that exact moment I imagined myself Wonder Woman, my childhood heroine. That promptly squashed any rising fears.

“No,” the well-mannered man answered, raising his eyebrows as if taken aback.

I didn’t buy it.

I pulled his unbuttoned overcoat open wide enough to reach in, fished my hand into the inside pocket, and grabbed the purse it easily landed on. I pulled the red leather pouch out, held it high, and called across the crowded theater lobby to the young woman, “Is this your wallet?”