The Grab

Emily had just begun the long escalator ride down to the metro station platform when somebody grabbed her ass. 

She had been riding the metro on that Thursday evening wearing a shimmery dress and very high, very expensive Louboutin heels because she was meeting her boyfriend at his mid-week company party, which promised to be a ritzy affair.

Admittedly, she wasn’t that excited about the party, but she loved her sparkly dress and was motivated by any opportunity to wear it. The dress was modest in cut, and yet it hugged her butt perfectly as the fabric narrowed ever so slightly over her hips to just below her knees. Her shoes were too high to be comfortable. She had paced back and forth across her apartment talking herself into-and-out-of wearing them before committing. Truthfully — she regretted her decision before she had even made it to the metro.

In retrospect, she wasn’t sure if it was the force of the grab or the shock of it that caused her to fall. As she lost her balance and stumbled, her glasses slipped to the side, they remained held in place only momentarily by one ear, the tip of her nose and the awkward angle that she held her head as she willed them to stay on. 

Her sudden reach to save them, caused her bag, which had hung so casually off her left shoulder just a moment before, to swing forward, slide off of her shoulder, and drop like a heavy weight into the bend of her arm, knocking her off balance again. This time, unable to catch herself, she toppled over and smacked her chin — hard— on the escalator railing.

This all occurred in a single moment, but it seemed like several distinct events in her mind and the transition from shock to rage happened exactly as she lost the battle to keep her glasses on her face. 

Emily steadied herself, looked around, identified her attacker, who had pushed his way past as he had grabbed her, and now stood, outrageously, just two steps below her. She swung her backpack directly at him. She made such solid contact that she was knocked back by the force of the impact and found herself seated, awkwardly on the too small steps of the still moving escalator.

The man she had hit, however, tumbled over and over, down the remaining 60 feet of the escalator, and landed, not with a thud like she expected, but with a final gentle roll onto the tiled floor. 

As Emily finally reached the platform, the concerned face of a woman moved into focus.

“Are you okay?” The woman asked and placed her arm gently around Emily’s shoulder, directing her around the motionless body of the man crumpled at the bottom of the escalator.

Emily simply said, “my glasses”

A cacophony of responses echoed off the walls of the underground station. 

“Her glasses!”

“She needs her glasses...”

“I have them!”

“Over here, they are over here...”

The crowd parted to make way for a young woman holding up the glasses like a winning bingo card. Miraculously, they were undamaged.

“I am fine.”

“I am fine.” Emily repeated. “Thank you so much.” As she attempted to stand her knee buckled and collapsed back to the ground - her leg unwilling to support her. 

“Ooh!” she cried out. “I don’t believe I can stand.” Emily said growing distress - she had wrongly assumed that she was going to get up and walk out of the metro station and put this entire event behind her. As she began to absorb the severity of her situation she began to cry. 

“Emergency services are on their way dear,” said the woman who had helped her off the escalator. “You just stay right here.”

“My shoe,” Emily said. “I...I need to find my shoe.”

Those shoes had been such a ridiculous purchase. ‘Its no different than an expensive car repair,’ she had reasoned to herself, and ‘they would last forever’, and ‘every successful woman of a certain age deserved a pair of dream shoes.’ And now she looked down at her one remaining $1300 shoe that was missing a chunk from the narrow heel and had a long scuff mark, she pushed it under her bag so that she wouldn't have to look at it.

Starring down at her bare feet a long forgotten memory surfaced. Almost 30 years ago, after high school graduation, she and her best friend had gone backpacking around Europe. In a sleeper car somewhere in Italy, she was awoken by a man that had climbed into her bed and sexually assaulted her. She awoke to his hands grabbing at her breasts, trying to undo her pants. The space was too small for her sit up and when she struggled to move away she found herself pinned up against the wall. She didn't scream. 

That was the first thing her friend asked her, “why didn't you scream?” It seemed so odd after the fact, and she had not given her friend an answer.  Her friend had, against Emily’s pleading, insisted that they tell someone about the assault. And so they had wandered through the mostly darkened railway cars until they found a man in uniform. In mostly English, with some halting Italian, but with lots of emotion, her friend told him what had happened. Emily had said nothing. The man had looked at Emily carefully, his eyes meeting hers for an extended moment before moving down to focus on her bare feet. He then, with much drama and irritation, shooed them back to the sleeper cars. They had tried to report a sexual assault and had instead been reprimanded for walking around barefoot.

As they disembarked the following morning. Emily saw the man that had assaulted her and he saw her. “You are not my type.” He sneered in disgust as he walked past. Her entire body buzzed as shame flooded her; she looked around to make sure nobody else had heard. Of all the stories, she and her friend retold themselves during and after that trip, that night was never mentioned. Emily never told her friend about seeing the man the next morning. She shuddered now to think of how young and vulnerable they had been. 

Suddenly, Emily sat up straight and looked around the metro station as if she had never been there before. “Oh MY god,” she said out loud. A guffaw erupted from her chest and her eyes filled with tears even as she laughed. In that very moment, Emily realized for the first time, that the shame she felt that day in Italy was not hers. It belonged to her attacker. He had been ashamed to be seen by the young woman that he had assaulted. She had lived with a secret double edged shame her entire life. She believed that she had not screamed for help, as she should have, but had not been raped because he found her repulsive. It was so obvious now, the foolishness of that reality, believed by the naive and traumatized teenager she had been. And just like that she was free. 

The Louboutin didn’t appear as the glasses had. Instead, the young woman who had delivered her glasses took off her own shoe. And placed it gently near her. She said nothing. Then as if by some unspoken message the woman around her began removing one of their shoes and setting it gently near her. People walking by murmured questions, and then they too removed their shoe and hobbled off in one shoe, as if it made all the sense in the world.