The Dark and the Lights

by Katrina Irene Gould
 

Jogging my junior year of high school, something I did every school day, rising at 5:30 to run to the railroad tracks and back along our poorly lit rural road. My glasses are broken. I go anyway. Fifty strides from my front door I hear a low growl. One of my town's unclaimed, unchained dogs stands on the dark side of the line drawn by the streetlight. I stop dead. I can't see it, I can only hear it growling low in its throat. I want to yell, shoo it away with a loud authoritative voice - but a yell squeezed through a throat and vocal cords taut with fear comes out a croak, as in a nightmare. I don't want to be bitten by a dog. I can't even tell which direction the growl is coming from. Is it between me and safety?

***

Walking fast, my freshman year of college, through campus at 2:00 in the morning, the streetlights bright. They show a layer of mist settling in several feet above my head. My women's studies classes have warned of the dangers of being in just this situation, alone, after dark, outside, walking. I am at once cowed by and rebellious about the statistics. I don't want to be attacked by a man bent on harming me; I don't want the threat of this man keeping me from doing what I choose. Still, I'm on alert, looking this way and that. I hold a fork I stole from the cafeteria in one hand, mace in the other. I will try to do some damage if attacked.

***

Biking with my friend and roommate, Susan, my sophomore year of college on our way back from the mall theater where we've just watched a double feature. Trees line the bike path on either side with the river beyond the trees to the south. Two women have been attacked on this part of the path, one of them dragged off her bicycle. We wonder, if someone is willing to throw themselves upon a bicyclist, how are we safe? We need to let a would-be attacker know there are two of us. Our musical repertoire includes the Little River Band and Jackson Browne, but we favor Elvis Costello's “Less Than Zero” for the Way, Way-ay! which we belt out at the tops of our lungs, and dissolve into fear-fueled laughter.

***

Biking with Susan again, returning home from a small house party thrown by my ex-boyfriend from freshman year in a part of town neither of us has been to before. The night is a success. Carl and I are able to be friendly and relaxed with each other. Susan and I meet new people and flirt with a couple guys. Each of us are pleasantly tipsy, and I practice riding with no hands, something I’ve never been able to do - until now.

***

One year my sister is grabbed walking home from her boyfriend's and forced into a dark alley. She is rescued by two women passing by before he rapes her. A friend of mine, on her way home from her job as a cocktail waitress, is dragged into some guy's car. She is not rescued.

***

One would be excused for thinking there was a plot among men to keep women under control. For example, they leave their dogs unchained.

***

Last night, my husband and I had three more flyers to distribute to neighbors, inviting them to a gathering. After dinner, we set out. It had already been dark for more than an hour but was not yet so late we hesitated to interrupt people in their homes. I wear my glasses, and still, in the stretches beyond the reach of the streetlights, my steps are tentative. I worry I might trip. The air is moist and cool. The old cedar on the northwest corner of our block is outlined blacker than the night sky behind it. My husband says, “It's nice to be walking with you at night for a change.”

* * * * *

Katrina Irene Gould has spent thirty fulfilling years as a psychotherapist in Portland, Oregon,  but her deepest love is still writing. She first published a short story at the age of nineteen in the now-defunct YM Magazine. In the intervening years, she's published in The Rocky Mountain News, numerous articles for the Eugene-based Women’s Press and The Bend Bulletin, as well as in professional journals and local papers in Portland, exploring how therapy intersects with life, parenting, and women's issues. She regularly contributes reflections on the Buddhist dharma for the Pine Street Sangha.