Almost Getting Abducted from Burger King Taught Me Self-Doubt is Dangerous
Learning to trust your gut and speak up
A young woman in a parking lot looking concerned as someone follows her by YuriArcursPeopleimages
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I was wearing tight zebra-print pants. I recall them vividly; they were soft with short faux fur and flared legs. Late 1995, it had to have been, because I was on my way back from visiting someone in the county jail. I broke up with him in the mid-90s, so it couldn’t have been later than 1996. Hence the pants.
The first strange thing about the man’s presence was the fact that he was white. I’d chosen to transfer buses at Burger King, rather than the bus depot because it was late afternoon and I hadn’t eaten anything. It was one of those terribly inconvenient transfers that would take more than forty-five minutes before my next bus came. A hot burger inside a warm space was decidedly more appealing than shivering and tensed outdoors.
This particular Burger King was across the street from a facility for families in transition from homelessness to…well, where systems like these operate, the ultimate destination is a whole conversation.
In Westchester County, NY, the vast majority of folks “in the system” were Black. Years later, I would end up visiting the same building in my capacity as a social worker. At the time, though, all I knew was that seeing white people in this area was rare. I was used to this — being the only white person around.
I set down my cheeseburger and soda and heaved the heavy fur coat off — a gift from my daughter’s grandmother, which had been a gift from the old woman she took care of for work. Shoved it into the space between me and the wall of the booth, and sat down.
It was a relief; though I was not yet even seventeen years old, the cheap white patent leather chunk-heeled boots (did I mention it was the 90’s?) pinched my feet and threw an ache into my back.
That was when I noted with suspicion the white man who was not only sitting about four booths away from me staring in my direction but not eating anything. I sized him up — grimy Carhartt jacket, thick glasses, stocky, ugly haircut. He resembled Stephen King (for the record, I LOVE Stephen King, both creatively and politically; his dustjacket photo nevertheless always scared me). This association compounded the creepy factor that was fast-escalating as he continued to stare at me unabashedly.
I threw a dirty look and unwrapped my burger from its yellow, thin wax paper. Sipped the sweet mix of fountain sodas from the gaping straw — Sprite, Orange, and Cola. I was unsettled by the man. He drummed his hands on the table in front of him, still staring. My eyebrows furrowed. With his thick glasses, I hoped he could see my expression clearly. The message inherent: what the f*** are you looking at?
He slid out of the booth, stood up, and began to walk toward me. My neck tightened. I didn’t know what it was about him, but he skeeved me out. I held my body tight as he walked down the aisle, maintaining my glare. He broke eye contact and then passed me.
He’s leaving, I thought to myself as I heard his footsteps turn the corner. Good.
I bit into my burger and checked my watch. A Timex with a blue face, and fake gold band, small and feminine. That was a thing then, to have a watch. It was a thing grown women did. Having had a child, I felt that I should fall into this category, though I wasn’t at all grown.
Still, thirty-five minutes to go before my bus came to bring me home. The light was changing outside, and sunset beginning to approach. The temperature would drop, and I braced myself mentally for standing out in the cold again. Even with the coat. Even as I much as the cold pained me, I was too hardheaded to wear a hat, too vain about messing up my hair, and preferred to suffer. Hence the boots.
I’d learned the hard way that I could not discount the possibility of the bus coming early and passing right by; I’d chased more than one bus, with varying results depending on my shoes and the drivers’ inclinations. I would have to go outside at least three minutes before the scheduled stop to make sure I caught it.
I took another bite of the burger and looked up from the table. The man was back. I hadn’t seen him pass me, and ascertained that he must have deliberately walked around me to the aisle further away and looped back. He sat in the same booth, again facing me. No other diners between us. He began slowly picking at a small paper sleeve of fries.
My brain began to calculate and speculate. Why would a person sit in a fast food restaurant without eating anything, and THEN choose to go get just a small order of fries? Maybe he was also waiting for the bus? No. It didn’t seem right. Without knowing how I knew, I knew he wasn’t there for the bus stop. Perhaps this deduction was also based on his whiteness; aside from occasional senior citizens, white people were rarely seen on the bus on that route.
If I were a canine, you’d have seen fur standing up in a straight line down my back. I slowly picked away at my burger with small bites, despite my appetite having abandoned me. I glanced up at him repeatedly and noted that he did not take his eyes off me. I rolled my eyes, sucked my teeth, I cringed, and made all of the faces of deep disgust which would have told a normal man I was not interested. And despite the fur coat and zebra pants and big bust and flawless updo and makeup, I was still quite clearly a teenager. He shouldn’t have been looking in the first place. He was definitely over 30, at least. Not that that had stopped many before him from trying.
It was partly my youth and partly the acculturation of girls generally that hemmed me up and held vocal confrontation at bay. What if I was wrong? Girls just couldn’t go around accusing men of doing bad things without proof — we’d look crazy. Foolish. Especially white men. Accusing Black men was dangerous for them, and a betrayal, a code broken. Accusing white men was dangerous for me, liable to open cans of worms I didn’t want to be opened. Sure to meet with a sort of chiding dismissiveness at best and unwanted attention at worst. How could I know he was actually some sort of pervert looking to victimize me? My gut knew for sure, but I hadn’t learned at that point that this, in itself, was enough.
I decided to test him.