I wrote this short story about eight years ago, when Out of Ideas was first published. I'd watched the scene unfold on a beach in Florida. I wondered how Karen Sorenson might react. This is what resulted.
Happy International Women's Day. This is for Pat, Beth, Katy and all of the strong women who keep on keepin' on.
Like
a Girl
“I’m going to kill you, bitch.”
He burst out of the shadows, never
hesitated; lunged at Deputy Karen Sorenson before she could fully dismount the
Sheriff’s Office bike she rode to patrol her beat. The struggle was personal,
instantaneous, vicious – a strong, determined man’s stale-alcohol grunts,
insane eyes that burned in unrestrained fury, and a hand that clawed
desperately for her duty weapon while his other savaged her. Her initial
reaction – disbelief – soon gave way to an overpowering anger that someone
would put their hands on her.
“You’re gonna die,” the man
screamed, his meaty paw around the butt of her pistol.
Now and then, snippets of this
harsh memory intermingled with the soft, balmy Gulf breeze that blew strands of
her long blonde hair across her face. The images were still vivid enough,
sometimes, that a tingle started at the back of her neck and caused her
shoulder blades to press together.
But now as she stretched out on a
fabric beach chair, with warm and reassuring sugar-white sand underfoot, the
reincarnate feelings of violation subsided. A rejuvenating, balmy summer sun
soaked into her skin as though she had solar panels and her whole body was a
battery. Canvas and steel creaked and groaned, her lean six-foot frame
searching for just the right position.
She had reacted to the attack just as she was
taught, tying up her assailant’s arms and driving her knee into him once,
twice…half a dozen times, until he vomited all over her and let go. She threw
him to the ground and handcuffed him before she called for paramedics. For both
of them.
Her eye still had a bit of black
and yellow beneath it, hidden under her sun glasses. At least it was open
again. The arrestee laid in the hospital, guarded by grim sheriff’s deputies, his
surgically-repaired internal injuries healing slowly.
It hadn’t been the first time she’d
fought for her life, or injured someone who had attacked her. That fact only helped
her to understand the healing process, not to avoid it. The emotions of the
event would linger, but eventually dissipate into nothing. She would ultimately
extinguish the residual feelings of fear, anger and invasion, of battling a man,
alone, who was intent on murdering her. Only cold recollections would remain.
But, the injuries she had sustained
paled in comparison to the cruel wound of a peer, passed on innocently by a
friend. Women cops let people get too close – that was the locker room talk
from one of her male colleagues. Chicks didn’t realize the danger they were in until
it was upon them. They are soft-skill oriented, talking and reasoning with
people. Guys played contact sports – guys knew when it was game on.
“A guy wouldn’t have let him get
that close,” the male cop in the locker room had commented to her friend.
Now, ten days after the attack,
she skimmed a brain-candy romance novel, while her husband Adam sat nearby,
deep in contemplation. A work-related binder was open in his hands, to a
section about flaps or wings or something. His semi-annual Federal Aviation Administration
exam was just weeks away. If he failed it, the regional airline that employed
him as a captain would let him go. Occasionally, he sighed or groaned, perhaps reminded
of some arcane tidbit of aviation trivia he would need to have at the tip of
his tongue.
Between them, their four-month-old
daughter slept in a baby carrier, shaded by a kid thing she’d bought online. It
was a sort of tent, shielding tiny Alicia from the direct rays of the Florida sun. She slept
peacefully, tiny lips pouting from time to time.
“Honey, is today a metaphor for
who I am?” she asked, setting her book aside for a moment and looking across
Alie’s gazebo at Adam. “I’m a mommy reading a romance novel, and you’re reading
about airplanes and stuff. I’m such a girl.”
“Yeah, you’re a girl. I think
that’s pretty obvious.” Adam barely peeked above the binder.
“Maybe I should… I dunno, maybe I
should be reading street-survival stuff or something. You know, some kind of
rough-edged cop book. Do you think it would help me with my hard skills?”
Adam set his book in his lap and
stared at the Gulf for a moment. Then, he peeked into the beach tent at his
daughter.
“Why?” he said, sitting back in
his beach chair. “I think you’re just fine.”
“You’re supposed to think I’m fine.
Husbands are supposed to be supportive.”
“What’s the matter, Kit? What
happened?”
She held out her hand to him, to
give him a chance to touch her. The diamond of her wedding set sparkled in the morning
sun as he reached to grasp her. He momentarily rolled her fingers in his
strong, masculine hand and let her go.
“A guy at work…” The words caught
in her throat.
She’d had no trouble telling Adam
what had occurred, when he sat with her in the emergency room while the doctor fussed
over one last stitch in her eyebrow. As the adrenaline faded, replaced with the
realization that losing the fight would have meant death, strong emotions had
begun the healing process. Adam lovingly absorbed them on his solid shoulder. The
sleepless night that followed was memorable only because he had stayed up with
her, celebrating the dawn with orange juice and pancakes.
“What guy?” Adam’s eyes galloped
from questioning to alert…to provoked.
“Oh, a guy. Another cop. Vinnie
said a guy in the locker room said I let the suspect get too close.”
“Was the guy there?”
“No.”
“Then how would he know?” He
snapped off the rhetorical question as though her accuser was standing in front
of him – accessible, available…vulnerable.
“I don’t know.”
“You’re a talented professional. When
stuff happens, you take care of business. That’s what you did.”
The way Adam said stuff – he wanted to say shit. She had
to smile at that. But, it was never too early to shield Alie from a prematurely
salty vocabulary.
“Yeah. It’s one of the dangers of
solo bike patrol, riding around all quiet and stealthy. I surprised him. He was
wanted, had a serious felony warrant. He thought he could take me.”
“Well, he was wrong.” Adam wrinkled
his nose and went back to reading, having delivered his verdict on the subject
of her work encounter.
“Why do you think—“
“You throw like a girl,” a voice
behind her growled.
Twenty yards away, a ten or twelve
or so year old boy stood in the sand, wearing a baseball glove. Slender to the
point of skinny, he wore blue swim trunks and no shirt. After he’d received the
ball again, he threw purposefully.
Across the beach, an older man
stood awaiting the throw. He had on a Tampa Bay Rays baseball hat, an oversized
purple short-sleeved dress shirt covering a significant belly and jean shorts
that extended below his knees. In another era, the pants would have been called
clam diggers. On him, they just looked stupid. White socks and black
basketball-style shoes completed his wardrobe. Or, whatever the outfit might be
called. There was just enough resemblance with the boy to permit the conclusion
that this was Dad.
“Girl,” Dad repeated as the ball
arrived in his mitt. “Total girl.”
“Kit, take a few deep breaths,”
Adam said as he checked on their daughter. “At least he’s playing catch with
his kid.”
“He’s telling his kid that girls are
weak.”
“You aren’t. Don’t worry about
it.”
“But, it’s the kind of crap women
have to put up with all of our lives, and this is where it starts. To get a
little boy to throw a stupid baseball harder, his dad has to tell him he’s
throwing like a girl? Why not just say throw harder?”
“’Cause that’s not the way the dad
was brought up.”
“Ugh – my point? Totally?”
“Uh oh. When you lapse into
valley-girl speak… It’s the beach, it’s the weekend. Relax, unwind. Fight this
battle another day. Do you want anything from the cooler?”
“No.”
“Come on, girly girl,” the man
implored. “You ain’t gonna hurt nobody. Wing it in here.”
“That does it,” she said, slamming
her book closed.
“Honey, don’t.”
“I hear this all of the time. The
guy’s were yelling at Megan the other day that she fired a shotgun like a girl.
Then they said I… Have you ever told someone that they fly like a girl?”
“No.”
“You know the difference between
right and wrong.”
“Kit, is this about--?”
“Save my seat.”
She got up and walked toward the
beachside snack bar. It would look, to anyone else, like she was going for a
drink, or maybe a bag of chips.
“Babe,” Adam called after her. “Get
me something, please?”
She ignored him as she walked up to
the young man with the glove. Her timing was perfect, the ball sailing through
the air to the kid just as she approached.
“’Scuse us, darlin’” the older man
called out. “You almost wandered right into one of my heaters.”
“May I?” she asked the boy.
The young man’s eyes grew wide in comprehension.
He looked downrange at his dad, and then a thin, sinister smile took over. He
flipped the ball to her.
“Please don’t hurt him too much,
lady,” the son said under his breath.
She turned and looked at the father.
On the one hand, his face said he thought it a treat that an attractive blonde
woman in a skimpy bikini was going to throw a ball to him. Maybe there was a
part of him that wanted to say something suggestive. That would figure. There
was also a bit of impatience in his expression, too, as though she had waded
into the deep end of athleticism, and might drown.
No matter. She took a quick step
toward the guy and snapped the ball at him.
The man’s survival instincts were
just sharp enough. His glove arrived in front of his chest at the same moment
as the ball. A loud crack signaled that it had found mitt, not midsection.
“Ouch,” the guy exclaimed as he
pulled his hand out of the glove and shook it.
“Nice,” the kid said. “You play?”
“My dad had me in little league as
soon as I could hold a baseball. I played softball on my high school team. First
base, ‘cause I’m left handed, and tall.”
“You throw hard.”
“Thanks,” she replied. “Next time
he says you throw like a girl, don’t forget – it’s a good thing.”
She returned to her beach chair and
looked under the tent. Alicia was stirring, signaling the next round of
changing and feeding and burping. It wouldn’t be long – next spring at the
latest - before she was running around the beach, picking up tiny treasures and
clutching them as she stood on fat little legs at the water’s edge. Eventually,
she would spend beautiful beach mornings playing catch with her mom and dad. If
Alicia was so inclined, there was little league in her future.
But, she would never let anyone compliment
her daughter by saying she threw like a boy.
“Better?” Adam asked.
“Yeah.”
“Everything?”
“Uh huh. Alicia won’t do anything
like a boy or a girl. She’ll just do it.”
“She’ll grow up to be just like
her mom – doing what has to be done. Doing what’s right.”
As if on cue, her daughter snorted
her way into the conversation. Translated into mommy-language, Alie said that
she was ready to eat.
She slid into the tent and picked
her up. Discreetly, she covered Alie’s head with a blanket, undid the strap on
her bikini top and felt the magic, her three month old suckling contentedly on
her breast. A maternal glow sprung up from deep within her, feeding her soul
just as surely as she now fed her daughter.
What a miracle, to have a strong,
gentle, adoring man like Adam with whom to fall in love. They’d had a baby, a
tiny spirit that made them laugh and cry and feel things for her – and each
other – that seemed theirs alone.
The physical pain and mental
anguish her attacker had visited upon her subsided. The betrayal of a peer was
forgotten. In their place, the beauty of her life with this man, and this
child, washed rhythmically over her in harmony with the waves nearby. No matter
what she did for a living, and what it did to her, in her heart she was a mom,
and a wife.
She was a girl. Totally.
