Suss: another literary journal

The lit­tle girl is ten, maybe eleven. At first I don’t see her, and for a moment I think it’s just the two of us, the man on his bicy­cle and me. I curse myself for being too stub­born to join a gym, a safe, warm place with lots of peo­ple around. Her bike is pink—it’s thrown on its side off the trail—and she’s stand­ing with her hands behind her back against the trunk of a large oak, half bent at the waist. Her eyes are blue, and pierc­ing, and I can’t help but think she looks strange, some­how, yet her pres­ence there reas­sures me. There is noth­ing to be afraid of, I say to myself, see­ing her, watch­ing. He waits up ahead like every­thing I’ve ever been afraid of, cir­cling around and around, but when I see the girl and our eyes lock for the briefest moment all I can feel is relief. Surely I am safe, with her there. She makes broad day­light broader, brighter. I am not alone with him; she is a witness.

I am run­ning. The same as always, this is a place I’ve been past before, just this way, at dusk. I’ve imag­ined moments like this, fan­ta­sized with anx­ious denial about com­ing upon some­one just this way, with­out any means to defend myself. As I approach, my move­ments become thicker, my feet pound­ing harder and harder in the dirt. It’s as if he has been wait­ing there for me, like he’s ready, but for the lit­tle girl. No, there’s some­thing else hap­pen­ing here, some­thing unfa­mil­iar. Something I haven’t thought of before. It’s like walk­ing in on a con­ver­sa­tion I’m not sup­posed to hear. They both look at me for a moment and then—or am I imagining?—at each other.

Suddenly he moves. Like a giant wave crash­ing, he’s off his bike and across the trail beside her; he grabs her tiny arm and they are gone among the thick pines.

Alone, I am ter­ri­fied. My heart is in my throat and I sud­denly feel as though I’m run­ning for my life, a thick blast of speed lift­ing through my heels and up the back of my neck. It hurts at first and then I am no longer feel­ing. I think, didn’t some­one warn her—Don’t throw

your bike aside in the com­pany of strange men!—and I am angry with her for being so fool­ish. My mother’s voice echoes in my mind, a rush of that over-the-shoulder feel­ing I’ve grown used to, as a kid alone in play­grounds, a teenage girl in the dark by camp­fires, and as a woman liv­ing here in the city. Don’t put your hands behind your back! Don’t let him be alone with you like that! This sin­gu­lar mes­sage: never go with­out a wit­ness. As I stare at the place where they once were, the tree where she stood, where he grabbed her, where they dis­ap­peared, I can’t help won­der­ing if now I am her witness.

So I must choose—do I keep mov­ing and leave her behind? Do I stay and look for her, take her hand, find her mommy, through the cold sink­ing in my stom­ach, the rat­tlesnake that has begun to coil up inside me, tighter and tighter, forc­ing my legs to pump faster? But there is noth­ing to be afraid of, I tell myself. It could all just be a mis­un­der­stand­ing; he could be her father—or step­fa­ther. Enjoying the air on an evening bicy­cle ride.

But this is not so inno­cent. This is some­thing instinc­tual, some­thing fairy-tale, the dragon cir­cling and Rapunzel in her tower. His quick move­ments, the thick absence in the trees.

Running past, I don’t slow down. I just keep going for­ward. It is all I can bring myself to do. My legs won’t stop; I can­not force my head to turn to see. Counting my breaths, two, three, four, I don’t even twitch, don’t blink.

I don’t look back. And when I finally stop, miles down the trail, sweat­ing and pant­ing and exhausted, I know that fear, that tight­ness that makes me move so fast I’ll never even know what there really is to be afraid of, that is some­thing I never will be able to outrun.