Walking at Night

For my first few months of college, the other students in my dorm would make fun of me anytime we were out walking together after dark. Where I come from, if it’s dark, it’s cold. I was enamored of the warm fall nights on the Santa Cruz campus, and I walked around looking up all the time. I wanted to see the stars.

My friend Matt liked walking at night too. He and I met in the UCSC orchestra; he was concertmaster, I sat in the back of the violin section. Matt was a gifted violinist, but he looked like a football player. He was well over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and bright red hair. He had enormous hands. The conductor would sometimes ask him for fingerings to share with the rest of the section. When he showed her how he positioned his hand, she laughed. No one else would be able to reach the notes he could.

We dated briefly, but decided we were better as friends. And so I had a hulking violinist walking alongside me, keeping me safe in the night.

The Santa Cruz campus is huge, formerly part of Cowell Ranch. On one side, there are vast fields overlooking the Pacific. On the other is a redwood forest. Matt and I would walk down the hills and out into the fields, where we could see the stars and the ocean. Everything felt vast and filled with possibility.

When I moved to Chile, night walks were more fraught. Santiago was a crowded, noisy city, filled with men who would call out to women passing by. “Oye, Rusia! Rubia!” they would yell, commenting on my light brown hair. We were told to ignore them, and for the most part, we did.

But sometimes they were impossible to ignore.

About halfway through my year abroad, I got an email from my friend Emily. “My dad died. I’m going home.”

Emily and I were close in high school, meeting on the swim team and rooming together at Fine Arts Camp. She had been studying abroad in Spain when her dad had a heart attack. I decided to skip going to Machu Pichu and instead go home to Anchorage. I wanted to be there for her.

The last night before my trip, I met up with a couple friends for beers. We went to a new bar that was just a few blocks away from the apartment I shared with three Chilean students. I marveled at how close it was, and said it might become my new local bar.

After a couple drinks, my friends and I parted ways. I wanted to get to bed at a relatively reasonable time, before my flight the next day. My friends were going one way and I was going the other, so we said our goodbyes.

One of our main modes of transportation in Santiago was the ubiquitous taxis. It was always a gamble to hail a taxi because their meters were always broken, and some liked to take advantage of gringos and their unfamiliarity with Chilean prices. I learned to negotiate upfront and be clear about where I wanted to go and how long I thought it would take.

I would also get nervous about taking taxis by myself. We had all heard stories about the things that happened to women alone in a car with strange men.

My favorite taxi ride was one that started out looking like that. As soon as I got into my seat, however, a small boy’s head popped up from the seat in front of me. The driver smiled and said, “Copilota.”

The little boy was fascinated by the fact that I spoke English, and he wanted me to recite English versions of all of the prayers he knew. I was happy to say the Lord’s Prayer for him, but I faltered when we got to the Hail Mary. He raised his eyebrows at me disapprovingly.

The night before I left, I tried to get a taxi. It felt kind of silly, since I was so close to my apartment, but we had all heard stories about what could happen to women walking alone at night.

Two taxis sailed by, but neither stopped. I decided to walk after all. It was so close.

My apartment was across the street from the Mapocho River, which flows west from the Andes and divides Santiago in two. The river is wide, about a block across, and there were stories about corpses floating down it during the dictatorship.

I was just about to turn onto the bridge when he appeared in front of me.

I couldn’t see the man. He looked like a shadow. And he was standing between me and the bridge.

“Hey girl,” he said in Spanish.

I ignored him and tried to push past.

“Where are you going? Can I come with you?”

I said no and started walking faster.

A few seconds passed. I was on the bridge. My apartment was just on the other side. I hoped he would lose interest.

Then I heard him: “I’m coming with you.”

I walked toward my apartment, hearing his footsteps behind me. I was afraid to run, sure he could overpower me easily. I counted the steps to safety, praying that I would make it.

Just as I was stepping off the bridge, I heard him behind me. I tried to run, but he grabbed me around the chest and put his hand over my mouth. I struggled and screamed, doing everything I could to get away from him. He began to drag me under the bridge.

Just then, the traffic light changed. Some cars drove by. We both looked up, suddenly aware of the street light and how visible we were in the intersection. The man let me go and ran away. I screamed the worst words I could think of in Spanish as he disappeared (ironically, concha tu madre).

I ran across the street and up the stairs to my apartment, collapsing inside. My roommates called the police.

The next day, I got on a flight. I was going back to Alaska.

I didn’t tell anyone there what had happened. I was too raw, and I couldn’t make space for their emotional reactions. I needed time to process.

I was angry about the scuffs in my new leather shoes. I threw away the hat I had been wearing pulled down around my ears. I thought about how, because it was the middle of winter in Chile, I had been wearing my baggiest winter coat. It didn’t make a difference.

I wanted to numb myself with food, to gain weight. I thought about slashing my face as a way to keep men away. I knew it wouldn’t matter.

I spent a month in Anchorage and then returned to Santiago. Part of me really didn’t want to, but all of my things were there. And if I didn’t, I would have to explain why. So I went back, to the same city and the same apartment.

My friends in the program were worried about me. They knew what had happened because I had called my friend Sara on the night of the assault. My roommates thought it was important for me to talk to my friend, even though it was late and I was a wreck. My friends surrounded me, concern in their eyes. They wanted to help, but weren’t sure how.

I went in to tell the director of the program because it felt like the right thing to do. He seemed sympathetic when we talked, but later sent a letter to everyone in the program saying that it was my fault for walking alone at night (motherfucker). The unfairness of it knocked the wind out of me. I had become the cautionary tale.

My friend Alena went in like an avenging angel, trying to educate this man about rape culture. I fell in love with her. (To be fair, everyone did. At twenty-one, Alena was a dead ringer for Uma Therman.)

This summer will be twenty years since the assault. I have been thinking about having some ritual around that anniversary, some way to mark it. I am grateful that I did not die that night, and I will carry these scars for the rest of my life.