Memories of Assault, Age 13

My parents always struggled to make ends meet when I was a child. I am quite confident they lacked disposable income to easily dole out to my brother and me for our leisure activities. Our monthly allowance amount escapes me, but it was definitely not sufficient to support the lifestyle of our high school friends, nor teenage necessities like designer Pepe jean jackets and theater movies. I insisted on working a newspaper route before school to supplement my paltry allowance and even opened my own checking account in anticipation of new wealth.

I remember the route being a bike-able mile from my home in the ‘wealthy’ part of town where fancy homes with boat docks were situated around a lake. I had arrived at age 13, a tough, determined high school freshman girl, un-intimidated by the bike trek in the wee early morning hours before the sun came up.

Lakeshore Drive was flat and easily navigated, despite the hefty bundle of newspapers in the orange canvas bag slung over my shoulder. Enormous Sunday newspapers required return trips to reload at the beginning of the route where the Globe-Gazette had dropped them.

The snow and ice of the Iowa winter often pummeled me as I rode my bicycle in the car tracks along the desolate road sometime before 6:00 a.m., my scarf covering most of my face and icicles forming on my eyelashes. My parents were asleep as I ventured out alone for an hour or so before beginning the school day. Did my parents approve of my early morning job or simply succumb to my pressuring? Regardless, I managed that paper route nearly two years.

Unfortunately, one spring day gained me the attention I sought to avoid in school or otherwise. I remember the joy of wearing fewer layers, as I began the paper route with a lighter load, surely not a Sunday. I had finished delivering to the third home along the route wearing headphones and listening to my Walkman on its highest volume. I was oblivious of the stalker who hid in the bushes in anticipation of my arrival. Pillowcase on his head and stark naked below his shoulders, he must’ve startled me because I screamed, “Help!” at the top of my lungs. Punching and kicking in fear I was about to be abducted, or raped by the penis I saw, I was relentless in my attempts to escape, though unsure if I inflicted him any harm.

Fortunately, a light across the street flickered on, illuminating the sleepy neighborhood and the pillow cased bandit disappeared somewhere out of sight, having successfully delivered numerous punches to my nose and brace-filled mouth.

Hysterically crying, I desperately fled to the brightly lit house across the street and the strangers called my parents. My father arrived in minutes, visibly shaken and grateful that I was alive. Needless to say, he cancelled my route that day. It was suspected that the accomplice, aware of my paper route, was not an abductor, rather visibly naked only for shock value, or so I was told by my parents. That was the only discussion I remember having with my parents following the horrific experience, my first memory of sexual assault.

Over 30 years have passed since the forced sexual encounter, yet the image of his penis, the brutality and my screams still vivid as yesterday. As a woman I am forced to remember, be on guard, aware of my surroundings walking home alone in the dark last night. I've gained resilience.

It's unfair, unjust that my daughter has to ask if she's safe to run alone (#MeToo). My husband and sons don't have the same safety concerns. Our parenting conversations continue...consent, responsibility, awareness, integrity and kindness, repeat. The memories never fade.