Time to Jump

Bravery is what comes when there is no other option but to jump. I’m not a risk-taker. I almost never challenge the odds when they are stacked against me and when losing can cause harm either to myself or others. For me, the thrill of winning in such situations is never rewarding enough to make it worth taking the risk in the first place. I’m not a brave person. I would rather think of myself as smart and have often thought that we would be much better off if our national anthem ended with the words “and the home of the smart” instead of “and the home of the brave.” Nevertheless, when there is no other option than to jump, I pull my courage around me and leap.

For instance, the downtown area of my home town has become a scary place to be after two years of the COVID pandemic shifting the norm away from people streaming into downtown to go to work every day. Crime and risky behavior such as on-street drug use has steadily increased to the point that it is pretty dangerous to venture out there alone. As a person who is blind, the risk seems even higher, mostly because I can’t look around to see who is in my immediate vicinity. That is, I can hear people around me when they are there, but I can’t take a quick peak to see if they look suspicious, unfocused, or are just going about their business as am I. Instead, I put my head up and my shoulders back and walk with as much confidence and don’t-mess-with-me vibes as I can muster. Fortunately, this usually works. I also believe there is a street code that keeps some people from targeting me which most likely springs from the fear of blindness and the unhelpful thought of “there but for the grace of god goes I,” a phrase I’ve always abhorred. If you do believe in a god of some sort, how much comfort do you think it gives others to hear you say that god bestowed his grace on you, but not the other guy?

These are just some of the thoughts that ran through my head as I stood at the bus stop, waiting for the bus that would take me back to the relative safety of the suburbs. I was aware that there was someone behind me on the bench in the bus shelter and I could hear music bleeding from headphones and the occasional sounds that I attributed to someone playing a game, sometimes winning and sometimes losing. This was totally speculation on my part, but I assumed that this was a young person waiting for a bus as well. Per typical bus-rider protocol, I didn’t attempt to engage.

Next I heard another person approach the shelter behind me. Again, this is not unusual and I didn’t give it much attention beyond noting the addition to my immediate surroundings.

“What’s that you are playing?” asked an adult male voice.

“Nothing’. Just a game,” said a youthful-sounding voice.

“I like games,” the man said. “It looks like you are pretty good at that one. What level are you on now?”

The youth muttered something I didn’t understand, and the man laughed. “Excellent! I bet you could teach me a thing or two.”

There was a bit of silence, and then the man said, “Hey, are you hungry?” This caught my attention. Just the other day, I had attended a workshop on human trafficking and how to identify dangerous situations and what to do if you suspected fowl play. It is a disturbing issue and one that is far more widespread than I had known. Approximately 1.5 million people were victims of human trafficking in the U.S. in 2019 and that number has been increasing significantly during the pandemic. About 50% of those were children, with most being girls. This didn’t include victims trafficked across international borders each year. Utmost in my mind at that time was the fact that traffickers often find victims, especially children and young adults, at public transit stops and stations and then they use the bus to move them away from familiar surroundings.

Really though, what were the chances that I would now encounter such a situation. Not very likely. I was just still a little worked up over the stories shared in that workshop which I found very hard to hear.

“Leave me alone,” muttered the youth. I thought he or maybe she sounded more annoyed than scared, but I stepped just a little closer to hear better. Brave? No. There were other options than leaping at this point, but I wanted to know what was going on.

One of the advantages to knowing how to move without using vision is that I can step backwards without looking around, thus avoiding any signal that might alert the man that I was paying attention. My back was still turned to them and I was hoping that the man had written me off as unimportant once he saw the white cane in my hand. I am used to being underestimated and for once I didn’t mind. Slipping my hand into my pocket, I tapped in my pass code to unlock my phone. Screen-reading software on my phone makes it possible for me to use it without vision, and I could hear it through my Bluetooth headphones which were concealed by my long hair. I had one ear bud in my right ear, but left my left ear open to listen to my surroundings.

One of the tips provided in the workshop was to not get involved directly, but to call 911. I wasn’t sure that action was really required, but I wanted to be prepared.

How could I make a 911 call without the man hearing me? Do they take texts? I wasn’t sure of the answer to that, but it prompted me to remember that the local transit agency had a security line that people could call or text in case of an emergency on their vehicles or property. Well, I was at a bus stop, right? With my hand still in my pocket, I swiped through my contacts till I found the number I had entered for transit security.

“Where’s your mom and dad?” the man asked.

“I don’t have a dad.” It is hard for me to tell male and female voices with children just before puberty, but this sounded like a young girl, not that gender mattered.

“Where’s your mom, then?”

“She’s at work.”

“So aren’t you hungry? Want a hamburger? Pizza?”

“No-o-o,” the girl said, still in an undertone more annoyed than scared.

Then I heard clothes rustling and body movement, but couldn’t distinguish exactly what was going on. Was this more aggressive behavior? I started typing out a text message. “Possible kidnapping 3^rd and Pine bus stop.” I paused to consider what else I should include in the message.

Then, more movement and what sounded like muffled speech. “Come on. That’s right. Damn girl.” The sounds now were definitely more urgent. A struggle was clearly going on. I pressed send on my message and took my hand from my pocket. It was time to jump.

Turning toward the two on the bench and summoning my best I’m your mother and don’t argue with me voice, I said “That’s enough!” I moved toward them, not sure what I was going to do exactly, but I needed to get a hand on the youth in case I really needed to intervene. I didn’t want to hit the wrong person. Intervene, yeah right. What was I going to do? Go all Wonder Woman on him?

“Come on,” the man said, followed by a muffled yelp from the youth. It sounded like the girl was fighting now. From what I could still hear, the girl was closest to me though the man was very close as well and probably blocking my way. I stepped that way and stumbled over a foot. I have a lot of practice regaining my balance after stumbling over something I didn’t know was there, and I didn’t fall. Instead, I put down my left hand and touched the girl’s shoulder. I still held my cane in my right hand, but it was a folding white cane, not a good sturdy walking stick. It wasn’t designed for defense but it was what I had to work with. I thrust my hand holding the cane toward the man, holding it at an angle  as though it was blocking for me. With my hand and my cane pushing into his neck and face, the man shifted some of his attention to me and away from the girl. I had a slight advantage as I was standing and he was still seated on the bench which allowed me to use my body weight to push against him. “I’ve called the police,” I said. “This is over now.” I don’t know where the commanding tone came from, but I was willing to use whatever came to hand or mouth as the case may be. “Let her go. This is over.”

The girl pulled away and I said in a much less controlled voice, “Run! Just get away,” and she squeezed around me and out of the bus shelter.

“Bitch!” the man yelled. “Fucking blind bitch! I should cut you!”

I was already backing away once the girl was loose, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to successfully run away as I had instructed her to do. I’m not exactly young and dodging poles, trash cans, planters, and other street furniture while running isn’t my superpower. I was hoping that since he hadn’t deployed a knife already, that he was bluffing.

“That’s it, “ I said. “We’re done here.” I guess I thought that if I said it enough it would be true. But really, what else was there to say?

The man got up and after a few more threats and curses, started running away from the bus stop. I let out a huge breath and sought the bench with my hand. My knees were weak and I was shaking. It was a reaction to all the adrenaline, I knew, but uncontrollable all the same.

As I was gasping for breath and trying to calm myself down enough to decide what to do next, I felt a small hand on my right one that still gripped my cane. “You saved me,” she said in a small voice.

“Oh! You’re still here?”

“Yes ma’am. I just went around the corner till I saw him run off.”

“Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”

“No. He bruised my arm and scared me.”

“I’m Marty Barnes. What’s your name and is your mom really at work?”

“I’m Janet. Yes. I’m supposed to be with my big sister, but she was busy with her friends and I just slipped away.”

I was about to suggest that she call her mom or her sister so that someone could come and pick her up, when I heard the sound of a two-way radio speaker accompanied by a man’s cautious steps. “Transit security,” the man said. “Did someone call in an incident?”

I stood up and stepped toward him. “Yes, that was me.”

Janet and I relayed the incident to Officer Perez who spoke into his microphone alerting other officers in the area to be on the lookout for a man matching the description Janet was able to provide. “We need to contact your parents, Janet, and we will need a statement from you, Ms. Barnes.”

Now that the crisis was over and we were down to the routine details of law enforcement, I wondered at my own actions. At some point, Janet, her mother who had come to pick her up, and Officer Perez all used the word brave to describe my intervention. Brave? No not really. What else could I have done? I wasn’t going to stand there and let this young girl get abducted. It wasn’t really a conscious decision to take specific action, but a reaction to what was going on around me when it became apparent that harm was about to happen. The only option left was to jump, so I did.