The Bruise
Rebecca Johnson
Reba Kittredge Tyson
Word Count 997
The bruise bloomed into something resembling the Horsehead Nebula--a base of yellow ochre covered by a speckled paisley of purple and red dots. It covered my entire thigh and inched upwards towards the hip. The district attorney asked if I could come to his office so they could take a picture. I wore a dress so I could lift it without taking all my clothes off. They weren’t supposed to include my face, but the photographer had captured the curve of my lips. I was smiling.
At the trial, when they introduced the photo as evidence of my injury, I saw that smile and was horrified. I knew it was an attempt to mitigate the embarrassment I felt. I’m not mortified, the smile was trying to say, I lift my dress every day at police headquarters for a photo. No big deal! I was only 26 years old, still trying not to feel things too tightly.
I had been crossing the Brooklyn bridge from Manhattan on my bike when the attack occurred. It was early spring. I’d just played basketball with a group of journalists in a downtown gym we rented every Sunday night. Saint Something on Carmine Street. I had hesitated at the foot of the bridge. I knew it was deserted and, therefore, dangerous. Sometimes, I hauled my heavy bike on to the subway to avoid crossing it but I loved pedaling over its expanse, the dark waters of the East River roiling below, the rat-a-tat-tatting of my tires rumbling over the wooden planks of the walkway while the muscular cables of the Roebling’s masterpiece stretched overhead like a child’s game of cat’s cradle. Today, if you cross that bridge at 9 p.m., there’s always a crowd but in the early 1990’s, New York City was less populated and more fearful of the street crime brought on by the crack epidemic. You crossed that bridge at your peril.
I took a breath and pushed on. I was so young and so strong. I thought I could out pedal any harm that came my way.
At the first stone tower, I passed a lone policewoman standing guard. She was about my age. We smiled at each other and I let myself relax.
When I came to the next tower, I saw a heavy set man leaning against the railing, looking down into the water. I felt a prick of fear, but pedaled on. To turn back would have been cowardly and, worse, racist. The man was African American. As I passed, he suddenly turned and threw the full force of his bulk against me. I fell into the metal cables of the bridge. He tried to grab the bike, but I held tight, more from shock than anything else.
“Don’t fight me, bitch,” he hissed. “Or I’ll cut you.”
I released the bike. He wobbled away, this massive man on a woman’s bike, looking like a cartoon bear in a circus. Blood was gushing from my hand (I’d need two stitches later at the emergency room) but I didn’t feel any pain. Instead, I felt shock and indignation—fucker took my bike and threatened to kill me! I jumped up and ran to the policewoman. She used her radio to give a description of my attacker to any nearby patrol cars. Together, we ran towards the entrance of the bridge, me fueled by the adrenaline still coursing through my veins, she probably just happy for a little action on an otherwise boring night patrol. At the foot of the pedestrian entrance, we found my attacker, my bike and a dozen policemen waiting for us, their red and blue lights swirling in the dark night.
On the surface, this is the happy tale of a crime solved. Cops 1; Robber 0.
Or is it? My assailant, it turns out, had a record of previous assaults. New York has a “three strikes and you’re out law” on its books. If he was convicted of a felony, it would trigger a mandatory minimum sentence of 8 ½ to 25 years. If he had stolen my bike by cutting a chain, the police would hardly have lifted a finger. The problem was the violence and the threat of “cutting me.” But the threat, I later learned, was idle-- the only weapon found on him was a tiny turquoise pocket knife, something you might use to dislodge the grime under a fingernail.
When they arrested him, I had felt a surge of pride for my role in catching him. On the eve of the trial, a year later, I wasn’t so sure. As his legal aid lawyer explained to me, he might very well spend the next 25 years of his life in prison for trying to steal my stupid bike. In the courtroom, the man who had scared me so much on the bridge now appeared utterly harmless. I was a nervous wreck about testifying but he looked around the courtroom, smiling affably at anyone who caught his eye, barely paying attention to the proceedings that would determine the course of his life. No family or friends attended his trial. He seemed like a child. My appetite for vengeance (low to begin with), began to ebb as my guilt at the structural injustice of the world blossomed. But what could I do? Once I ran up to that policewoman, I had triggered a chain of events over which I had no control.
On the witness stand, I told the truth. Of course. I am cowed by authority and self righteous when it comes to lying. I figured my only chance at altering his fate was to downplay the seriousness of my injury, which I clumsily attempted to do. I remember the look of annoyance on the prosecutor’s face. To counter my waffling, he extracted the picture of the bruise from a folder and handed it to the judge. The judge looked at the photograph, looked at me and came back with his verdict. Guilty.
Rebecca is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in various publications including (alphabetically) Elle, Mademoiselle, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The NYT Magazine, Salon, Vogue (contributing editor 1999-2020). Johnson is the author of the novel And Sometimes Why. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and two children.
