Things I learned as a Child

Don't talk.

Don't feel.

Don't cry.

Don't express.

Push it down.

Bottle it up.

Let it eat you alive, but don't talk about it.

Don't think you're important.

Don't think anyone cares.

Don't ask questions.

Don't dredge up the past.

Don't cause trouble.

Don't talk back.

Just don't.

We love you.

Saturday night outside a local dive

It's Saturday night. I have two parties to attend and I'm wearing that rare kind of red dress that makes me feel sexy. An old colleague I've missed is in town. It's a good night.

I meet up with work friends at the second party – a medieval murder mystery affair. That's what the red dress is for. I'm the saucy chambermaid.

When the mystery is solved and the party is done, some of us decide to go sing karaoke at a Chinese restaurant that has a lounge in the back. We meet outside and we're chattering pleasantly. Talk so small I can't remember it.

We walk toward the door and we notice a couple about half a block away. They're stumbling, hanging on each other. Drunken lovers.

The guy shoves the girl to the ground. She gets up and runs away. One of my friends runs after them brandishing a plastic sword. I fumble in my purse for my cell phone, but another friend finds hers first and is talking to 9-1-1 before I can get mine out.

We run after them, partly because we're afraid of what our friend with the sword will do. He's been drinking and I worry he's acting out of an alcohol-inspired bravado. But we're also trying to give information to the police – tell them what the couple look like, what they're doing, where they're going.

We follow them around a corner. A police car rushes by us, but goes past the couple, who are now walking back toward us. The guy has his arm wrapped around the girl. She looks conciliatory.

Our sword-wielding friend reaches us first. He says the girl said she's okay, but what we saw wasn't okay. We look at each other, all thinking the same question but no one saying it out loud. Should we just leave?

But the guy breaks away from the girl and shouts at her, accuses her of throwing a beer bottle at him. She lifts her finger to her lips, trying to shush him. She's seen the police car drive by.

But the guy lifts the girl up and throws her against the ground, like something you'd see on one of those wrestling shows on television.

My friend is still on the phone with the police and starts begging them to hurry. The girl gets up and the guy leads her away, around another corner.

I start walking faster. The cop pulls up beside us and we point, saying, “It's them.” He whips around the corner and stops them.

We stop at the corner and mill around, waiting to see what happens. I can already tell from the girl's body language with the police – she's tossing her head and laughing – what story she's weaving. No, he didn't do anything. Nothing happened. He didn't hurt me.

She's done this before.

And I'm waiting, watching the police, wanting them to lead him to the patrol car, but knowing they won't.

I edge closer and fish in my bag for my business card, the one that says I'm a reporter. I think maybe this will give me some credibility when I say, “I saw him do it.”

And the cop finishes talking to the girl, and she and the guy walk away. The cop walks toward us and I ask, “Did she say nothing happened?”

“Of course she did.”

“I saw him throw her down twice,” and I hand him my card.

He jogs back around the corner. When he comes back, he shrugs, explains the girl was drinking and both the girl and the guy say they were just playing around.

“That's not what I saw,” I insist.

But he shrugs again, says there's nothing he can do, even with four witnesses. He says something about my “perception of an assault,” like I didn't see what I saw. Like what I saw wasn't abuse, wasn't a crime.

And his face isn't the face of someone who can't take action. It's the face of someone who doesn't want to take action.

“But thanks for calling,” he says.

The sense of futility strikes me so hard I blink back tears.

I'll tell myself tonight that I did what I could, that it's beyond my control, that it was brave of me not to walk away, to give the police my name and insist what I saw was a crime. And maybe that will let me sleep tonight.