The Dust of Our Bones: Pt. 4

It was a frequent stop for me and although I hated it, I was familiar with the routine. How easy it was to stop in after a work errand and grab a drink for a coworker. The corner gas station was not a place of preference, but one of convenience. Every trip inside gave me anxiety but I had learn to push it aside, grab the Big Gulp, and leave as quickly as possible.

This particular day—my last day in the gas station—was different. Anxiety was higher; hands already shaking when I pulled into the parking space. I see a man enter the store and have half a mind to wait until he leaves. I rebuff. “Get ahold of yourself,” I think. “Just hurry up and go inside.”

So I do. I snatch up my keys and phone and flurry inside, using my long legs to lengthen my stride as long as possible to keep things hasty. I hold my head high and push through the glass doors.

He’s there, the man I had seen enter moments earlier, standing at the front counter, carrying on—noticeably intoxicated. I recognize the young face of the cashier but cannot recall her name. She had been sweet and kind to me, sometimes giving me the coworker drink for free. She holds an iPhone as she giggles, filming the man and his wild antics. I briefly assume she knows him.

I ignore them and keep my gaze steady toward the drink machine. He does not ignore me. Instead, he bolsters his voice to raise it what seems to be an octave and says, “Damn baby! How you doin?”

My face flushes red and I walk quicker. He laughs and repeats, “Girl, how you doin?” I register what sounds to be a bout of laughter from the cashier and as embarrassed as I am, I still feel I’m being rude. Without looking at him or breaking stride I mumble, “I’m fine, how are you?”

I arrive at the drink machine as a tremble takes over. I bend over to grab a cup and I feel his presence looming behind my vulnerable form. My stomach does somersaults as he brings his sexual moaning. I stand up straight as quickly as possible and see he is hovering right next to me, so close that a simple shift of weight would send us touching. My hands shake. “Shit, girl,” he moans. “I want some of that. Your husband must be lucky.”

I steady my breathing as tears fling into my eyes and all I can think is “Hurry up and get out of here.” I wish now I would have abandoned the mission and left, but completing the task was all my mind could focus on.

I hear another laugh and look behind the man who continues to hover and moan. My whole being sinks lower into shame when I realize the cashier has moved her position behind the register, her pink Otterbox aimed at my vulnerable and shaking self. She laughs behind the camera as she films.

The man retreats to his position to the counter and briefly humiliates another customer by shouting comments about the man’s beard. Good, he’s distracted. I finish filling the drink and rush quickly to the counter to pay.

The man is apparently finished antagonizing the other patron’s beard and has settled his eyes back to my body, looking it up and down as if his eyes were a 3D scanner. He lets me know again how lucky my husband must be.

Change rattles in my hand as I hold it out, begging the cashier with my eyes to simply take my money so I may leave. But she is smiling and distracted, continuing to hold the small eye of an iPhone camera in my face. Finally, she lowers it, takes my money, and says, “Have a good one.”

I shuffle toward the door and I hear the man laugh, “This is all going on Snapchat!” And the cashier’s laugh follows his.

In my car I shake and weep. I drive back to the office and park. I am trembling, crying, sobs overflowing as I try to convince myself to get it together and go back to work. The tremors do not leave my hands for another several hours, I close my office door when I feel the sobs rising up again.

I call corporate and leave a voicemail to file a complaint; I recognize the tremble in my small and broken voice. I request a callback from a manager to report the incident. No one ever called back.

I shuffle the incident in my head back and forth, trying to make sense of it. Hurt turns to shame and brews into anger. I curse myself for staying in the store so long, I fear being by myself in public. At a movie theater, I ask a brother to stand outside the bathroom door. I do not trust and I feel shame deep within me.

The most troubling aspect to me is the girl who filmed the incident. I cannot make sense of it. Did she not she I was in distress? Or was she too focused on her friend, who was being so funny and so outrageous? Was the whole thing just one humorous stretch of social-media worthy antics, a scene for later playback when a laugh was needed? Would she share it with her friends, just to show them what a hoot this man (who I assume they would all know) could be?

I recall the girl's eyes and her smile as she told me kindly I didn’t have to pay for the drink all those times before. I know there is no maliciousness in her. She did not film this to demean me, to harm or humiliate me.

She filmed it because her world, as so many of ours has become, ended at the screen before her eyes.

The more connected we are with the world buzzing on our iPhones, the less connected we are with the humanity around us. How many times have I, too, opted for the safety of a constructed media world instead of engaging with the often uncomfortable world unraveling around me?

We forget the fragility of humanity; lose sight of the tact and grace and care it requires to grow. Technology today has replaced our ability to empathize and react according to that empathy.

I tell myself also that the girl filmed it because she did not know me. That if we had been the ones with a friendship, she would have rushed to my aid and told the man to back off. The thought tumbles into others and soon I am thinking of all the times I have excused apathy, cruelty, or rudeness by saying, “They just don’t know me.”

Why do we have to know one another to be kind to one another? WHY DO WE NEED TO KNOW ONE ANOTHER TO BE KIND TO ONE ANOTHER?

We—I—the world needs to stop marginalizing people; stop shoving them to the corners of our lives and forgetting about them because “We don’t know them.” Do we not realize we are all connected?

Do we see there is no need for polarization, for crowding one thing out for the space of another? Do we not see our humanity is not hue or tone or shade but in itself full color, capable of different tellings and renderings depending on the way the light hits it? That there is enough room in the expanse of our creation for the celebration of what makes us different and the reverence of what makes us the same. Connectivity is not sameness; rather, it is a symphony of dynamic and different notes strategically threaded into something beautiful. Each part giving of its own craft and yet fully contributing to the greater harmony. We are not factioned; we are fashioned. We not divided; we are designed. Methodically, intentionally, to bear our differences in a way that celebrates the whole of we are: together, unified—humanity.