Every October, I get itchy. The air loosens, the light turns golden — and I uncork to question life in the municipality all over again. Several years ago on a crisp, October day, I was hit by a car suburbanite while on my way to a yoga matriculation in my Brooklyn neighborhood. As I stepped into a crosswalk, I noted that a moving car intended to turn left onto the same street yet had slowed, supporting me. I walked superiority and, enjoying a glorious sky whilom 15th Street that stretched all the way to the Hudson River, slowed my stride by just a fraction. And the suburbanite expected something else. He never stopped; he kept moving, a hair faster than I walked.
My ear felt it first: a mass of metal crashing into my body, into this frame. Everything reverted for me that day. The way I walk, the way I think well-nigh cars and drivers, the way I move well-nigh the world.
In New York City, drivers and pedestrians operate within a code. Let the pedestrian pass, but only if veritably necessary — and only theoretically if there’s a victual involved, or an warlike walker who really does not squint as if he is going to yield. Squint out, and nobody will get hurt. Drivers are the bullies in this game, pedestrians the enabling middle schoolers without power of their own.
For a unenduring moment on that October day, I forgot. I let myself enjoy a moment of relaxation under the morning sun, and I unliable myself to think that the suburbanite well-set with me; that he would indulge me to stroll as I liked. He and I misjudged one another, and he crashed his car into me. The gravity of his bumper on my left knee immediately took me up, up into the air, but the shock of that moment, of the violate of contract between pedestrian and driver, caused the lingering pain.
When I imagine the crash now, I see a woman in her late 40s on her way to yoga class, suddenly lifted like an ice dancer whilom the ice, so eager to please her judges, to get this right, that she performs a nearly untellable twist, wrapping her own stovepipe virtually her middle and pulling her legs up until they are tucked, infant-like, underneath her while traveling through the air and swiftly landing on her right hip in a curling thud. If there were a crowd, it would watch and wait, breathless, for the Rav-4 to screech to a halt at the moment of impact, a centimeter from this svelte heap.
But there was no prod and no applause. There was only a suburbanite and a soul on the pavement, for several seconds unable to comprehend what had just happened. Then the screaming. I screamed and screamed, realizing I was alive, quickly enlightened that my throne was intact. It took a moment or two to finger the pain. I screamed anyway, shock and wrongness tumbling through as I grasped vapor without breath. Days later, a man told me he heard someone on that street yelling over and over, “You hit me! You hit me! I can’t believe you hit me!”
When pain shot through my limbs, I knew I would be all right. I could feel, I could see the vast sky whilom me, I could tropical my vision and unshut them to this same scene: Cops peering lanugo on me, concerned neighbors shuffling to my left, the terrified suburbanite on one knee, whispering into my right ear, “I am so sorry…” A week later, he sent a pink notecard through the mail: “I am so sorry for what happened to you…”
For what happened to you.
The sting of this preposterous liaison is possibly the most lasting trauma of the whole experience. I held the letter in shaking hands and read it over and over. The witlessness of this guy, perhaps coached by his lawyer or his wife to thoughtfully segregate the stationery and use his own, gentle handwriting, and most of all to take special superintendency with the language of his note, troubles me still, and how could it not? He was showing some concern, but while taking no responsibility or plane whereas agency. That’s what culture is, a normalization. But there is nothing normal well-nigh any of this except a woman slowing lanugo as she walked in a crosswalk on a trappy day.
I did some research and discovered that 108 people were injured in 519 reported crashes on the same day as I was, Oct. 24, 2015. In a public database, that well-done fall day was simply normal — just flipside day in a year when 51,356 people were injured in 217,658 reported crashes. That averages out to 140 people injured in 596 reported crashes on the stereotype day — one crash every two minutes.
Weeks later I was worldly-wise to read the police report, which states that I, the victim, “seemed to stop in the street.” There was nothing well-nigh how the suburbanite kept moving, as New Yorkers do equal to the lawmaking of the city. The police report blamed the victim: I caused my own pain. Innate to this is an understanding, a normalizing, an visa that people overdue the wheels of cars don’t have the utmost responsibility to simply slow lanugo and prevent crashes.
Pedestrians learn this in New York: squint both ways, but increasingly than that, alimony an eye out for bad behavior, for anyone doing the wrong thing, considering the pedestrian, the human stuff with nothing tent her but her coat, will pay. Automobiles are moving boxes of metal that often protect whoever is inside. The fact that many, many drivers are moving too fast, are looking at phones and arguing with passengers, are usually unafraid to do as they wish, leaves pedestrians without protection. The vulnerability of the walker is an remembrance in the current system of municipality life. Struck pedestrians are left to think, “I ought to have expected this. How dare I relax while crossing a municipality street?”
Is it any wonder that since that day, I have struggled to navigate any street without fear? I notice myself wince whenever a moving car comes within a few feet. When I hear an ambulance blare, I tropical my vision and I am when in that crosswalk. And of undertow I marvel ruefully at what could have been. I had managed to save my organs, and my knees and right hip sooner healed, without years of therapy and acupuncture and simply waiting. I have waited for the bruises to fade (I had a hematoma that remained for years) and for the fear to lessen. There is a lump at the point of impact, overly reminding me to watch out. And there is a pessimism I siphon well-nigh drivers. I am waiting for drivers to do better.
Alexandra Beers is a Brooklyn writer and teacher.
