A (long) story:
I am on a vacation, all by myself, for the first time since before the pandemic. I booked a long weekend in Salem, MA the weekend after Halloween so I could avoid the October madness but still experience the New England autumn – and feel a little witchy. I spent the day going to museums and visiting cemeteries and wandering through little shops, learning about the dark history that makes this town more than just a suburb of Boston. I bought books and listened to presentations and chatted with a candlemaker before heading to the wharf to watch the sun set on the water.
On a beautiful, clear autumn day, there were crowds of people everywhere (even more than the locals were expecting, if the discussions at more than one sales register were any indication). But as I crossed the street for a better view of the sky reflected on the water, I found myself in one of those weird pockets of desertion. A pair of women with strollers had gotten more than a block away on one side of me, and a group of teenagers had turned a corner on the other side of the bridge I was about to cross. It was just me and a man in a hooded jacket I made cheerful eye contact with as I crossed the street...and almost stopped dead in the middle of it. I can't tell you what it was, but every single hair on my body stood on end and the back of my neck prickled with warning. There wasn't anything in particular about this man, but every instinct I had screamed at me. So when I stepped up onto the sidewalk a pace behind him, I slowed to put distance between us and leaned on a low wall to take a photo of the marina. He slowed too, and I watched him take something from his front right jeans pocket and put it in his jacket pocket, where he left his hand. So I stayed leaning on that wall, watching him from the corner of my eye and listening for the approach of someone, anyone else. He slowed to a complete stop in the middle of the bridge and angled his body towards me but his face down, into his hood. I turned to the crosswalk, walking away from him, and went back to my original side of the street, relieved to see a family of three approaching from a side street. I walked slowly to let them overtake me and noticed that he, too, had crossed to this side of the street and was standing now near the other end of the bridge, still angled toward me with his face hidden. The family turned into a parking lot just before the bridge and I was alone again. I paused as if taking another photo and waited for a pair of men I could hear coming up from the marina and talking loudly. They emerged onto the street between the man and me and I used the opportunity to cross the street once more, this time mid-bridge and with the men from the marina in my eye line all the time. I followed them across the bridge and watched as the hooded man stood behind a signpost on the other side of the street, apparently doing nothing. I turned a corner, pretending to be going into a busy, loud beer garden half a block down. The man in the hood made to cross the street to my side once again, but was overtaken by a crowd of tourists and instead turned around and walked into a parking garage. I followed a group of women up the street towards the apartment where I'm staying, keeping an eye out for the gray hood and denim jacket the whole time. I followed the women past the apartment and onto the busy main drag, where I ducked into a vintage clothing store and bought myself a dress I don't need but that has a cut that the lovely woman working there told me was flattering. The whole time this was occurring, this book was nestled in my bag, bumping against my side. I had bought it in the gift shop of the Salem Witch Museum. When I finally got back to the apartment, I put everything I'd gotten today on the bed and it jumped out at me and I suddenly needed to read it. So I sat down and read it.
Maybe I was never in any danger. Maybe it was something as simple as him planning to grab my bag from me and run. But every single cell of my body rang an alarm bell about that man and that situation. And this book is exactly what I needed for the rage and helplessness and fear I felt in that moment – and have felt in countless others before. It didn't make me less angry or somehow soothe me, but gave me permission to burn with the rage felt by women every moment of every day, and let me know I wasn't alone.
