Fear
I saw him snatch her bag and dump the contents onto the floor, screaming obscenities at her. She stood, stilled and frightened, dwarfed in the large subway station, everyone turning accusing eyes on her. Such an ordinary, nice looking woman! A grey pin-striped suit; black pumps; long, straight black hair that gleamed in the; black frames that magnified the tears forming behind them. She looked at the man accusing her, shouting words like “bomb”, “brown bitch”, “terrorist”, “killer”, “my home” as he went through her bag, scattering her possessions on the floor. Papers, cell phone, pens, a note book, one lipstick – only one when my wife carried at least five – a wallet, keys and coins that rattled against one another as his fingers turned and examined every piece of threatening item, looking for the dragon that would jump out at any moment and annihilate all of us. She looked at us standing nearby, her silence begging just one of us to help, to intervene, to speak for her, to say that she had done nothing except feel tired when she had placed her bag on the floor next to her. That her bag was her personal world, its only crime was to feel too heavy. Her gaze stopped on me, knowing that I would listen, I would understand. After all, I was dressed like her, in my tailored suit and briefcase, as if I, too, came from the same business world as her, that I was too educated and intelligent to fall prey to ignorant rants without some form of evidence. Evidence that wasn’t her skin color. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t speak for her. There were too many of them, and I was terrified of being a part of “them” instead of “us”. I couldn’t speak, so I didn’t. And so she was abused and accused, alone in a station full of well-meaning strangers.