In Broad Daylight: A Rat On the Doorstep and A Predator At the Laundromat

I wasn't looking for either - but I should've been.

Recognize this absolute gem of a human? Let me know.

Exactly two weeks ago, as I was going outside with our dog, Jasmine, I stopped short, the doorknob still in my hand. Something was off. Jasmine edged in front of me to nose at something. There were an awful lot of flies back here, for some reason. And they were swarming awfully close to the ground. What - Oh, dear Lord.

“Jasmine, back!" I called sharply. Guiltily, she trotted back to stand behind me. Now I could clearly see what she - and all those flies - were interested in.

It was a dead rat.

Somehow, in the space of the single hour between now and our last trip outside, this rat had materialized, dead, on the exact center of the doorstep. In broad daylight! And despite the flies, the rat - long and gray - was totally intact, though unmistakably dead. It wore a dazed, doofy half-grin that put me in mind of a man I'd once seen passed out in a wave pool in Cancún, wearing a single sock.

What was the rat doing there? How had it arrived so perfectly positioned on our doorstep, then promptly died? It was too perfect, as if someone had placed it there intentionally. And in broad daylight!

I was nearly sick. I had to have Dave get rid of it.

Later, my mind jumped back to a similar event: a wet spring day in Indianapolis at the start of the pandemic. I was in the bathroom and was preparing to sit when suddenly, I noticed a big, fat, slimy slug perched cheerily on the toilet seat.

“Auuuughhhh!” I'd screeched, fleeing as if from a bomb. Again, I'd asked my husband to take care of it. But I have never stopped checking toilet seats for slugs. Just in case. There was a slug on the toilet seat once, so it might happen again, right?

When it did, I'd be ready, I thought.

I would be. If I were watching for it, I'd be ready. Right?

* * *

Exactly one week ago, I was still checking the back doorstep for dead rats when laundry day rolled around.

Though it's hard for me because of my arm, I actually love doing laundry. The process of taking something stinky, stained, or gross and utilizing the exact right potions and techniques to make it clean again is restorative, even meditative to me. More alchemy or wizardry than chore, doing laundry soothes my soul.

Dave loaded up my car for me. In a great mood, I headed out. Just four minutes later (this is so cool! I thought - for before we moved, this laundromat, my favorite, was half an hour away), I turned into the parking lot. I hoped there would be a close parking space, and - aha! - there was. Just one, right in front of the door. Perfect.

I parked my car away from the entrance as I finished my cigarette. I pinched out the cherry onto the asphalt, putting the butt into my “car trash” bag. Then I eased my car over and into the glorious parking space.

As I turned off the car, though, my stomach dropped.

Under the laundromat’s ample awning sit two benches. They make a nice refuge from the desert heat, and there are a lot of people around who don't have anywhere else to go. On this day, the benches were occupied by three older men - apparently between 55 and 65, I would later explain to police. They watched very intently as I pulled up, cackling and elbowing each other. And as they watched me, I saw a glint in their eyes that gave me shivers.

I raced through the high-speed internal dialogue usually reserved for calculating how cheaply I can get a new batch of Torrid leggings by combining reward points with sales:

They're going to hassle me. Do I really need to park here? I don't want to walk past them.

You have to park as close as you can. You can't carry that hamper very far. And anyway, you'd still have to walk past them. They're loitering at the entrance.

Do I really have to do laundry today?

Yes! You're out of clean Torrid leggings! Plus, you love laundry.

God. Okay, then - I just won't make eye contact, how about that?

Do what you have to do.

Wrestling a hamper out of the back seat to carry inside, I wasn't able to hold my keys in my fist, the protective way women often do when we’re alone. Instead, I kept my head down and tried to move quickly.

“Miss?” one of the crackly voices called. I ignored it.

“Hey, miss? ‘Scuse me?”

Any woman might be “miss.” Plausible deniability. I kept walking.

But then, six feet from the entrance, a shadow blocked my path. I stopped walking and looked up.

“Hey, miss? You got a cigarette I can borrow?”

A very tan older man with shoulder-length grayish-blond hair stood before me, wearing a white T-shirt and a dark baseball cap. His skin looked like leather and smelled like whiskey - it was coming out of his pores.

Another cascade of thoughts washed over me, in half the time it would take to say just one of them out loud:

He knew I had cigarettes. He'd just seen me extinguish one. Yes, I could lie and say that was my last one, but that never fools anyone - plus, then I couldn't smoke as I waited on my clothes.

And honestly, I was afraid he'd decide that, if he couldn't bum a smoke, maybe there was something else I could do for him.

So my move was clear.

“I do,” I said, setting down my basket. Keep the hesitation out of your voice, Sally. “Hang on.” I doubled back to my car, retrieved one cigarette, and turned - but he was right behind me, peering over my shoulders.

“Them’s purty undies,” he said, gesturing at the lingerie in my other laundry hamper. The two old men on the facing bench smirked.

Hurk! “Here you go,” I said, as if I hadn't heard the last. He muttered after me, but I grabbed my laundry basket and went inside without looking back.

Except I'd forgotten my detergent. Dammit, dammit, dammit, I thought, as I went back to my car, my head down.

Sure enough: “Miss? Hey, miss! Yoo-hoo!”

We were four feet apart; I had to acknowledge him. “Yes?” Don't seem too interested, but don't make him think you're being rude.

“You got a light?”

Oh, for God's sake. In my car, I fished one out of the change compartment and handed it to him - again, he’d followed me, gazing into my car with interest. “Keep it,” I tried to say evenly.

Clouds of sickly-sweet liquor sweat formed around me as his eyes widened. “Ohhhhh! No shee-yit? Woooow. Come ‘ere, honey,” he said abruptly. “Come give Papa a lil’ hug!”

Eww! I'm not a hugger? I have a bad arm? I'm married? I thought wildly. I wasn't even sure that was true. To my left, I heard his two cronies laugh. “Oh -”

I tried to say, “Oh, no thanks,” but it just came out “Oh, mmmf.” Quite suddenly, he had grabbed me by the shoulders and pinned me against his chest, my nose smashed into one of his armpits. A sour smell overcame me: mustard and piss and something like stale dirt, if there could be such a thing. Involuntarily, I gagged.

He released me just enough to palm my butt and squeeze hard. I felt his chin graze my right breast. Then he changed his angle and came at me with his revolting mouth. I took the chance to swivel, and a split second later, he kissed my shoulder instead of my lips.

Again, this happened in public, at 12:55 PM, on a Tuesday.

This happened in an ethereally beautiful, tiny desert town of artists and hippies. This happened near the ninth most popular national park in the US. This happened next to the Natural Sisters Vegetarian Café and, on the other side, Boo’s Organic Oven.

This happened in broad daylight.

I don't remember how I detached myself from the man. Eventually I scampered back into the building, where it was just me and an attendant. I noticed I was breathing hard as I said, “Um, some guy - out there - just grabbed me - and kissed me.”

She frowned; blinked. “Really?” she asked. “That's … that's not good!”

I jammed quarters into the machines and left. Parked in safety at the Joshua Tree Visitor's Center, I called Dave. Then, desperate, I called my first husband.

I called the laundromat. I was a regular: maybe they could switch over my laundry from the washers to the dryers, so that I didn't have to come back for a while, in exchange for a healthy tip. Really, there wasn't any amount of money I wouldn't have paid. But the laundromat had only an answering service. I left a message, but, not hearing back, I went back anyway.

It's very poor etiquette to leave finished, washed laundry inside a machine. Of course, it's a much more serious breach of propriety - and, like, the law - to grab, grope, and kiss a passerby. But I felt the onus was on me to behave properly.

Looking back, if that's not internalized misogyny, I don't know what is.

When I arrived, the man was gone, and so were his two buddies. Everyone was in a flap.

“Do you want to make a police report?” the owner inquired.

“Should I?” I asked stupidly

“Look, I chased the guy off, but I got two pictures of him,” the owner answered. “Go home, collect yourself, and call the non-emergency line and make a report.

“We can't have this kind of thing happening here,” he added. “It's assault.”

I did go home. I made my phone call, feeling silly and exposed. As I waited for the sheriff's deputy to come take my report, I started feeling queasy. I felt much worse now than I had when the incident actually happened.

In my lifetime, I’ve experienced rape. Why the contorted phrasing, Sally? What I mean is, plainly, I’ve been raped. I have been molested and assaulted. And I have never filed a report. Why should this drifter, whose name I didn't even know, become the target of my ire when I had let others get away with much worse?

The deputy arrived. He was kind, and he made an obvious effort to stay at least five feet away from me. He took my narrative, nodding thoughtfully, saying at every interval that he was sorry that happened to me.

Then he turned to me, a somewhat sympathetic expression on his face. “I just need to ask you, why didn't you make the report immediately?”

I wanted to throw his heavy clipboard. Why didn't I make the report at that time?

• Because public sexual harassment is so common that I was tempted to blow it off.

• Because I didn't want to hang out at the laundromat all day.

• Because no one saw it happen except his friends, and even with the pictures, no one knew his name.

• Because I couldn't bear to have to manage the feelings of all the horrified people at the laundromat.

“I think I was in shock,” I said. The deputy nodded thoughtfully and made a note.

“And, I mean, I did report within two hours,” I added. It wasn't my fault that no one had arrived until nearly four hours after my call.

Another wordless nod; a scratch on paper.

He has been kind, I told myself. He doesn't have to be.

“Now,” he asked, “what do you want to happen here?”

“I - I'm sorry?” I stared, caught off guard. “I guess I kind of thought you would tell me what happens now.”

“Well, this crime was committed against you, not me. I didn't see it. So it's up to you whether you want to press charges or not.”

I felt my blood pressure soar. “I guess I - I want whatever is supposed to happen to happen?” I croaked. “Um. Yes. Yes! I do want to press charges.”

The sheriff's deputy explained to me that if this man were caught, I'd be agreeing to testify in court to what had happened. Was that all right? he asked.

“Bring it on,” I answered, in someone else's voice.

* * *

When I had said I thought I was in shock, I was more right than I knew. I don't think it actually wore off until the next day. That day, I woke up to find myself very upset - about being upset.

On the phone to my mother, I complained that my previous rape experiences were so dramatic, so severe, that a grope and a forced kiss seemed to barely rate on the sexual-assault scale.

Now, one never knows what my mom might be doing. She could be anywhere in the world, really. Indeed, at that moment, she was on a weeklong silent retreat at a Franciscan convent in Iowa. She wasn't supposed to talk at all, let alone about rape. But, God bless her, she listened to to me rant about everyone else who had wronged me sexually in my life.

I'd imagine no parent wants to hear about all the times their kid has been raped. But in between meditative labyrinth walks and spiritual counseling sessions, conversation like that must be an exquisite vibe-killer.

I'm so glad she did listen, though. Because, in talking to her - in free-form venting - I got to the root of the problem.

“All of this stuff happened to me before I was 25!” I exclaimed. As she knew, some of it happened well before age 25, startlingly so. “And maybe because it was so long ago, and I've had so much time to put it in perspective, I've forgotten how bad those experiences actually were?”

“Hmm,” my mom said thoughtfully.

“And maybe I'm kind of mad at myself for not reporting those things, even though I didn't have the wherewithal to do it?” I ventured.

She waited, listening. She knew I was getting closer.

“And maybe” - aha, here it was - “I just thought because it hasn't happened in such a long time, it wasn't going to happen again! Maybe I - I just thought that part of my life was over.”

No question mark here; no upward inflection in my voice. This was the definitive statement.

I truly thought the problem had been those specific people who had harmed me earlier in life. I thought that, since they were now out of my life, I was safe.

What a remarkably naïve idea.

Once, I had almost sat on a toilet that had a big slug on it. I was still watching for slugs on toilets, but that experience - that particular watchfulness - hadn't kept me from nearly stepping in the remains of a dead rat on the doorstep. And now, for heaven's sake, I was still watching for dead rats on the doorstep, without realizing I was just as likely to find something else, somewhere else unappealing. Somewhere I hadn't been looking.

I might find a scorpion in a basket of clothes. Or a rattler nested in the debris under a tree. Or a spider, maybe, just chilling in the bathtub.

Or a sexual predator. Right outside the community laundromat.

* * *

In no way do I mean to suggest that being forcibly groped and kissed is as bad as being raped. I know that from experience. But what happened to me last week was still a violent intrusion upon both my body and my sovereignty thereof. I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

But unfortunately, the fact is that sexual assault can and will pop up where it’s least expected. Unfortunately, the sane and safe choice means to always expect it. A slug, a rat, a predator: I forgot that I was supposed to be watching. Because they're out there.

Even in broad daylight.