The light is green. I move forward and get into the right lane so I can pull over and turn around, and as soon as I make that turn, I know I’m in the wrong neighborhood. There’s a lot of people hanging out in front of apartment buildings and they are mostly young men.
I want to just turn into the first parking lot and go back the way I came, but there’s a crowd hanging out there that does not look very friendly. I continue up the street, make another right, and hope I can just go around the block to get back on Beverly Boulevard. There are fewer people out on this street, mostly because it’s warehouses, but there are no more streets to turn onto.
A girl who is very pregnant drags a suitcase to an empty bus stop and I wonder if she’s escaping or coming home.
Maybe my life does suck. Maybe I did have some bad breaks. And maybe my old neighborhood in Denver wasn’t the safest in the city. But it was a far cry from the living conditions I imagine lurk behind these crumbling buildings.
I would be scared to death to walk anywhere here, let alone be pregnant and dragging a suitcase.
My heart is beating fast even though I realize this is irrational. “Don’t be stupid, Grace,” I tell myself. “You’re not lost. You’re one block away from Beverly and you have a help button on your rear-view mirror if you need it. Just make the next right turn and it will dump you back where you were.”
I finally come to another street where I can turn right, but as soon as I make that turn, I realize it dead-ends at a large apartment building.
There’s a few groups of people hanging out in front of it, talking and laughing. So I just pretend like I belong and pull into the first driveway so I can turn around.
“Nice car,” a young teenage boy calls out. He says it loud enough that I can hear it through my closed window. Loud enough to make every head turn to see what he’s talking about.
I ignore them all, but internally I’m wondering how frightened I have to be to push that little panic button.
I would be mortified if I had to use that.
Instead I just put it in reverse, do a two-point turn, and pull back out onto the road so I can backtrack my route. I really don’t want to turn back onto that street where all the crowds of people were. It looked like a neighborhood you see in movies where drug dealers hang out on the corner.
I see that girl again. The pregnant one with the suitcase, only now there’s a boy with her and they are fighting. She screams obscenities at him, and just my luck I get stuck at a red light in front of their bus stop.
“What the fuck you looking at, bitch?” the boy yells at me when he notices my stare.
I turn my head away quickly. Please, please, please turn green.
And the next thing I know the girl is screaming. She’s on the ground and there’s blood coming out of her mouth.
I honk my horn. The boy flips me off. I open my door. “Stop that or I’ll call the police! Stop that!” He’s still hitting her and she’s curled up on the ground protecting her belly.
“You want some too, bitch?” the boy says, turning to me. “Get back in your car before I knock your teeth out.”
I get out and close my door. “Knock my teeth out?”
“Oh, you want some, huh, bitch?”
I squint my eyes at him. He’s about five foot ten. Not too tall. Skinny. Maybe one sixty. And his eyes are blazing with anger.
I look at the girl on the ground. She’s still crying and bleeding, but she’s trying to get up. A few people have appeared from nowhere. They stand close by, but do not try to help her. “Do you need a ride somewhere?” I ask the girl. “I can take you so you don’t have to wait for the bus.”
“She ain’t goin’ nowhere, bitch.”
I look at that boy and wish I could knock his teeth out. “I didn’t ask you. I asked her.”
“I speak for her. Now get, before me and my boys take your pretty blonde ass around the building and keep you for ourselves.”
My eyebrows shoot up and I take a step forward. “Oh really? You think you’re gonna take me somewhere against my will? Because I’ve got to tell you, I’ve been there, done that, my friend. And I’d like to see you fucking try.”
He just stares at me, then looks over to some other boys who might be his buddies. They don’t say shit. He’s on his own. “She ain’t going. Tell this bitch you staying here, Rosa.”
“You know what, Rosa?” I never take my eyes off this little punk who thinks hitting girls and threatening to kidnap them is just another day in his life. “I don’t know who this guy is, but I do know he’s an asshole. So if you’d like to get the hell out of this place right now, all you gotta do is say so and I’ll take you.”
The punk looks over his shoulder at Rosa, then back at me. “She’s stayin’.”
“I’m not staying,” Rosa finally says. “I’m not staying.” She grabs her suitcase and starts pulling it towards my car. There’s a whole line of cars behind me, watching this whole scene go down. I’m surprised they aren’t honking. I suppose the YouTube possibilities trump getting where they are going on time.
Rosa approaches the punk, clearly scared to walk past him, so I take a few steps forward with my hand out to encourage her. “Come on.” She tries to hurry past him, but just before she gets clear, his hand darts out and cracks her in the face one more time.
I flip out. I lunge forward, covering the few paces that separate us, and hurl myself at that asshole’s back. He flies forward from the momentum and crashes to the ground. And that hammerfist to the neck that was next to useless against a raging, adrenaline-pumped Derek Hauser back in Nebraska does the trick for this stupid kid who thinks the world is his to hurt.