Beverly Donofrio - Astonished: A Story of Evil, Blessings, Grace, and Solace

Even though I do know the important question is not why this happened to me but what Im going to do now; and even though I was fifty-five and the attacker was a serial rapist in a small town, raping gringo women between fifty and sixty; and even though I, along with the entire town, felt like evil had come for a visit and it was not personal; and even though this little round-faced pervert with a big-billed baseball cap woke me in the middle of the night in the middle of a deep sleep in my own bed with a knife inches from my face, I was absolutely shocked that he chose me. This was not supposed to happen; I was supposed to have escaped: I had hot flashes and liver spots and was finally in the final stretch. Id survived all these decades without experiencing this thing I dreaded as much as deathand had just been looking for a monastery to join, for Christs sake.

Why now? Id lived for thirteen years in New York City, eleven of them in Alphabet City, back when there was a crack house on every other block and storefronts where everyone and his brother came to slip five bucks under a glass window to purchase little baggies of pot, a fix of heroin, a toot of cocaine. Back then there was a roach exterminators office on the ground floor of my building, where you can now buy green smoothies and wheatgrass shots. The neighborhood was crawling with, excuse my judgment, lowlifes, who all knew I lived alone with my twelve-year-old son. I couldnt walk from my building to the corner to get a carton of milk without some guy or three or four making a crack, Mmmm, mama, take me home wit you, or even more annoyingly, tsk-tsking his tongue as though he were enticing a cat. Standing in crowded subway cars men jammed knees between my legs, pressed hard-ons against my butt, tongues wiggled lasciviously; across the aisle a man in a coat opened his legs to flash me. Alone in a movie theater I was a magnet for creeps to jerk off beside.

The first words I ever published, in TheNew York Times, in the Metropolitan Diary, told how I was waiting for the light to change at First Avenue and St. Marks Place, when a man came up and said, Hi, remember me? Im the guy who told you you had nice legs over on Fourteenth Street.

Really?

The second year I lived in New York, in 1979, I moved into a loft on Broadway between Prince and Spring with my boyfriend. One night I stood in the street doorway, my key in the lock, when a guy shoved up against me, panting. Give me your money. I had five dollars in my pocket, which I handed over.

Is that all? he said.

Yes. It was the truth.

Your husband home?

Hes upstairs, I lied, then he pinched my crotch and ran off.

The boyfriend and I didnt last, and I moved to the East Village, where one night, soon after the move, I was walking down St. Marks Place alone at four in the morning.

If I was going to be raped, why didnt it happen then? I prided myself on being fearless, but I was virtually never cautious or even careful.

One of the other stragglers on St. Marks rushed up from behind and grabbed me, pinning my arms to my sides, his breath high in his chest. I got you! Youre coming with me.

It was as though some motherly, emergency-room-nurse creature zoomed into me. Calm down. Look at the water, I said. It was streaming in the gutter from an opened fire hydrant. Its okay. I slipped out my arm and rubbed his back. Youre okay. Whats your name?

Snake.

Your names not Snake.

He breathed out Bobbie, and I knew I was safe. When we reached the corner he asked for a dollar to buy a cup of coffee, and I gave him a quarter.

Then one day the tide clearly began to turn. I was thirty-six. It was a Sunday in winter, and I was walking on my block down Avenue A. My hair was black, but Id begun getting gray hair when I was twelve and by now had a full head of salt and pepper, wishing for a nice hunk of white to grow in front and make me look like Cruella de Vil. So, this day, on the other side of the street a guy calls, Hey, lady, green legs dont go with gray hair. I was insulted. Green tights did go with gray hair, and I fully intended to wear green tights until I died.

A few years before this, a friend and I walked 110 blocks from Columbia University to my place on Twelfth Street and Avenue A, and four, no exaggeration, four men exposed themselves to us. Once when I was a typist, sitting in a pool of secretaries outside the doors of the offices where all the men worked, I received an obscene phone call. He murmured, all breathy, You know what I want to do to you... , and I said, Excuse me, is this an obscene phone call? Hold on, let me put you on speakerphone. Naturally, he hung up.

* * *

In my hometown, I was signing books after a reading in the basement of Holy Trinity Church. A woman came up and said, Oh, Bev, the things those boys used to say to you. Remember? Fifth-grade catechism?

I did not remember anything except their calling me up to blurt on the phone, Knockers, headlights, bazoombas, brassiere. I had the great misfortune of developing breasts early. But my breasts never developed into much, which would not account for my continuing to be such a target for the wrong kind of male attention.