Lesson #7

Sometimes You Just Have To Do What's Right, Even if You're Scared

One morning, I was on my way to work, walking quickly down a normally quiet street with row homes on both sides. Suddenly, the calm was broken by a woman’s voice, shouting, “Help! Help me!” I looked around for the source of the screams and saw, across the street from me, a young, white woman, wearing a skimpy nightgown, struggling to escape from a big, black man who was holding her by her nightgown while hitting her in the face.

My first thought was, I could just keep walking and get the hell out of here. But the woman saw me and looked right at me as she screamed again, “Help me, help me!” between blows.
I ran toward them, adding my screams to hers. “Stop it! Stop it! Leave her alone!” I waved my arms in the air as I approached. I was desperately hoping that someone in the surrounding houses would come out and help me, but no such luck. The man continued to smack the woman as I circled around them, screaming and waving my arms. He stopped just long enough to tell me, “Hey, you don’t know what she did to me!” Then I heard the roar of a motor and saw a city bus coming up the street. I ran into the middle of the street and waved my arms in front of it. The bus driver stopped and opened the door as I ran around to the side and told him to “Call the police! That guy’s beating her up!” The driver pulled out his phone and said something into it, then looked at me and said, “Okay, they’ll be right here.” He closed the door and pulled away. I was left standing in the street, while I saw that the woman had managed to escape and was scurrying up the steps of one of the houses. The man took a couple of steps toward me and said angrily, “You just did that because I’m black and she’s white.”

“No I didn’t! The injustice of his accusation made me mad, and I felt compelled to straighten him out. “If I had heard you screaming for help because you were being beat up by a bunch of white guys, I would have done exactly the same thing.”

“Look, lady, she deserved it!” He started toward me.

I was beginning to regret my bravado. Just then, we heard the sirens of approaching police. He ran one way and I ran the other.