Excerpted from My Storytelling – my strength, by Jessi LaCosta
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First published in 11/2005
In some ways it seems like centuries ago – and yet in others like it is still happening right in front of me. It was the late 80’s. I was only 16 and having weird dreams for two weeks. They bothered me so much that in my teenage angst, I called a friend. ……….
“Robert, you know how they say that if you die in your dreams that you are really dead? Well I keep dreaming of my death. No, not about to die, but different ways that I die -- DEAD, you know, not living? I know I’ve got to get a grip on myself, I just can’t shake his feeling.”
Fast-forward a day or so. I sold shoes at a high-end boutique in a small mall near my Baltimore row-home. My mom strangely enough stopped by with a lecture of getting home straight after work to do my homework. She hadn’t done that in months. Yes – it all comes back to me like wind whipping through an open window.
I close the store with a friend and walk through the dimly lit parking lot, dreading the homework that awaits me. Having lived in the city my entire life, I know to observe the scene. A little empty and quite – but nothing out of the ordinary. It’s rainy and foggy though and I felt an overwhelming sense of depression cling to me like saran wrap on a hot dog.
Open the car door, get in – get warm – oh why won’t this car start? I notice a rather large man approaching my car. I feel the saran wrap cling closer, as I unsuccessfully resist conversation.
“No, my lighter’s broken and I don’t smoke.” Desperately I try to roll up the window knowing my dream is about to materialize. The handle breaks, and a cold, dark metal object separates my forehead from his dirty, fat hand.
“Don’t make a sound. Open the door and let me in. I won’t hurt you if you don’t scream. I SAID LET ME IN!”
Seconds pass like hours as I open the door to the Oh my !@##@! – ugly, dirty, slumping man. I can do this, I can do this.
As he clumsily climbs into the back, driver’s side bucket seats of the 1974 Ford Mustang, he keeps the cold metal pressed to my head. Like they say, my life passes before me, however I want to laugh – the irony of it all – I suddenly think of the phrase, “dancing like sugar-plum fairies.”
“What, did you say something little girl? I didn’t hear you. Now drive to Old York Road!”
“I don’t know where it is. Please don’t hurt me. O.K. Falls Road. I’ll drive. But my rear defrost doesn’t work, I can’t drive fast.”
“You **&^@!@$ I said drive or I’ll kill you!”
So, out of the parking lot and onto Elm Ave. Stay calm. God is with me.
The funny thing is how calm I am. Statistics of women being battered, raped, murdered flash before me. It was bound to happen sooner or later. I’ve lived in the city my whole life, in some bad areas too. Mom, single and a writer and artist raised us wherever she could. It was in the bad neighborhoods where I have been safe. Yet, here in the parking lot of a boutique mall in a boutique neighborhood all this is happening.
All this analyzing kept me sane. Normally this is what got me into trouble.
“What are you doing? You aren’t driving fast enough! Don’t think YOU”RE getting out of this! Pull over now!”
Reluctantly, I pull over into an alcove of bushes across from Cross Keys. Strange, I used to love Cross Keys as a little girl. Now it seems removed, unapproachable. This large, slovenly, sad man makes me switch seats without ever getting out of the car, the whole time the gun still on my head.
So the grimy, hefty, pathetic man is driving now. I feel like an Eskimo in an igloo; cold, secluded from the world in a dark, empty house.
It’s hours, days, no maybe seconds. Nothing really makes any sense. He drives through the country, twists and turns in the road – ruining my childhood memories of beautiful woods and expansive fields. In a cornfield he pulls over. Grimy fingers lift his shirt displaying a rotund, rippled belly. This is why he must do to me what he is going to do. He is fat and ugly and can’t get a girl. He is tired of being a virgin.
O.K. probably no one will understand this. But, at that moment something inside me changed. Pity, remorse, and a strange understanding for this man ultimately saved my life. Don’t get me wrong – there was nothing – NOTHING – about what he did that was right, or OK or acceptable in any light. But, as I believed at a very young age, “Mommy – monsters aren’t born – people don’t start off being evil, something makes them that way, right?" – Well this man was human – even if in a sick, crippled way.
Everyone teased me then and still now about my incessant talking about how I overanalyze everything-- including why an ant didn’t savor my pizza crumbs. But talking – analyzing – this saved my life that night. I am sure it will again.
“You know, maybe you have been with the wrong girls. Weight shouldn’t play a part in your relationships. Have you asked them to have sex with you, or do you just hope that they will?”
Simple questions. Complicated answers. Time bought.
We leave the cornfield. Drive, drive ---remember streets. Keep the names in my head. Don’t look at his face! A bridge? Pennsylvania? Maybe I won’t make it back now.
“Don’t cry - I’ll shoot if you cry. I hate crying. I know where you live. I know where you go to school.” He had emptied my purse me earlier in the evening, devouring all stuff identifying SNAP. No more compassion. Utter revulsion – the things he was saying – ugh! You do what you can to stay alive. Hate him later – that is if there is a later. Swirls of color, tie-dyed world, lava lamp feelings.
Back in Baltimore, a wide, well lit alley, looks familiar. We are behind a neighborhood pizza joint near where I love. It doesn’t matter what time, in this area, some teenage drunk should be walking the alleys. Curfew must be in effect, no one here to even make him turn a shoulder.
It was that this moment I knew I would die. The lava lamp was unplugged. It was my dream. Not exactly, but close enough. The alley was dark and so was the man, but doesn’t life send blows and lessons in paralleled metaphors? Maybe, it was okay to die. The taste at first was nasty, but instantly a calm comes. Yes, at least now the tension will subside, it will be over......
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