Over the past couple of weeks, I described my ill-advised tendency to intervene when a man hurts a woman.
Sometimes, I chase the perpetrator down the street.
Sometimes, I just scream at him.
But do I really believe this might fix anything? Do I expect anything I do might change years of abusive behavior?
Not really. I am not delusional.
But as my mom said, “Do it, anyway.”
After I got the homeless girl in my truck and dropped her off at a friend’s, I checked on her every few days. When she went radio silent, I left her alone, figuring the last thing she needed was another person stalking her.
A few weeks later, a Facebook message appeared.
“I have so much to tell you.”
The next message was her abuser’s mug shot.
He found her, as he had so many times before.
He held her hostage and beat her for two days.
He fractured her wrist and shoulder. He gave her a concussion. He left lacerations and a black eye and “cracked a few teeth.”
I wondered if my meddling triggered his rage, setting her up for another beating. I wondered if I had made her situation worse.
“What you did played a lot in my mind,” she said. “What you said about getting away from him. More so than you’ll ever know.”
Somehow, she escaped. She wound up in the ER and he wound up in jail.
Now, she is staying with a friend in another town. She started a new job two weeks ago. Her Facebook page shows her cooking dinner, playing with a dog, visiting her mother. She looks happy and healthy and at least ten years younger, but most of us do on Facebook.
It’s only been a few weeks. He is still in jail. She is still recovering from the beating. Anything could happen.
Once she has a few paychecks, she wants to take me out to dinner.
“When he had me hostage, I kept asking myself why you stopped to help me,” she said. “Why? Why did you do that? Why did you do that for a stranger? Then I figured that if you thought I was worth saving, maybe I could save myself.”
For now, at least, she has.
She knows that the odds are against her, but she did it, anyway.
Robbi Pounds is the staff writer for The Graham Star. She can be reached by phone, 479-3383 or by email, rpounds@grahamstar.com.