BRATTLEBORO — I learned lessons as a very young girl that have colored my life as a woman - for better or worse.
The neighborhood I grew up in was teeming with kids. That was what everyone had the most of: kids.
On most days - especially in summer - the six-block radius of my neighborhood was loud and busy and rowdy with kids of all ages playing, fighting, yelling, roller skating.
But not on Sundays.
On Sundays, all of the kids and some of the parents went to church. Catholic church, Methodist church, Southern Baptist, Congregational ... churches and services for just about everyone. We weren't a religious family, but sometimes I would go to Sunday school with a friend, or my dad would drop me off and pick me up after.
But, on one Sunday in July of 1954, I did not go to Sunday school. I can't remember why. Instead, I went outside to jump rope and wait for my friends to come home from whichever churches they had gone to.
I jumped rope up and down the sidewalk in front of my house - stopping at the corner every few minutes to look and see if any of my friends were walking home.
Because the Massachusetts Blue Laws were mightily enforced, none of the local businesses nearby were open, so it was quiet with almost no traffic and few people out and about.
I had been outside for about half an hour when a white sedan pulled up to the curb. The man who was driving rolled down the passenger-side window.
I knew about ”stranger danger,” about the ruse of offering candy or asking for help finding a lost puppy. We had all had those warnings drilled into our little brains both at school and at home.
This man leaned over and said the magic words to me: ”Little girl - do you know how to read?”
Did I know how to read? Wasn't I in the top reading group at school with 3rd graders? Didn't I have a million gold stars on my reading chart? Didn't I have my own library card?
Yes! Yes! I did know how to read.
He went on.
”I'm visiting a friend, and I forgot my glasses and can't read his address. Do you think you could read it for me?”
* * *
I'm 95 percent sure that I may well have fallen for the lost-puppy scenario - I have to be honest. But, somehow, this perfect stranger knew exactly what to say to make me walk over to his car.
He knew to wait while he opened the door and held the piece of paper out to me, so I could lean in to see the address, making it oh, so easy for him to grab my arm and pull me into the car.
While he tried to hold onto me and close the car door, I began hitting him in the face with the wooden handle of my jump rope.
I twisted my body around so I could kick at him - all the time trying to push my body out that open door. Even at 7 years old, I knew if he was able to close that car door and drive away, it would not be good.
I finally hit him in the eye hard enough that he let go of me. I fell out of his car, picked myself up, and started to run. Then - and I don't know why or even how I could do it, because I was so terrified - I stopped running, then turned around and looked at his license plate.
He pulled away, so I could only see a partial license-plate number: “G7E.” I repeated those to myself as I ran home, up the stairs, and straight into my room. Grabbed a crayon and wrote it down. G7E.
Then, I told my mother and father what had happened.
* * *
My dad wanted to immediately go out to look for my assailant, but my mother convinced him we had to call the police. Two police officers arrived at our house within minutes.
I repeated what happened, gave them the license-plate numbers, and told them it was a big, white car. They left to search for him.
I remember that I wasn't crying - I actually don't ever remember crying about the incident. I was really calm and more upset at how enraged my dad was than anything else.
The police found the man about two blocks away, sitting in his car, eating an ice-cream cone, and watching some kids in their Sunday School clothes play on the swings in the nearby schoolyard. He obviously was determined to find somebody that morning.
They brought the man back to my house, I went downstairs with my dad and identified him, and they took him away.
His eye was red and cut from the handle of my jump rope, and my dirty footprints remained on the front of his shirt where I had kicked him. Much later, I would hear my mother talking to my uncle about how this man had abducted other kids. She described how he was out of jail on parole and that there would be a trial.
A few days later, another police officer - a detective - came to our house to talk to me about what happened and to ask if I was brave enough to tell a judge what had happened so he couldn't do this to another little girl (or, as it turned out, another little girl or boy - he was an equal-opportunity molester).
I said that I could do so.
They told my mother that when they arrested him he said he was driving by and saw me trip and fall and had stopped to see if I needed help. I told them that was not what had happened.
And that was that.
Nothing in the newspaper. Nobody really talked about it. No thoughts about whether I should maybe see someone to talk about what happened.
I went back to my life of Ginny dolls and roller skates and jump ropes, although it was a while before I played on that corner again.
* * *
Several weeks later, my mom, my dad, and I went to Brockton District Court for the trial.
Someone - a district attorney, probably - talked to me about what happened. He asked me to repeat my story several times, and then I sat in a chair next to the judge, swore I would tell the truth, and told what happened.
The man - Frank Stackpole was his name - decided for some reason to testify in his own behalf. His story was quite different from what he had told the police and not even close to what actually happened.
In this new version, he described driving by the corner near my house, thinking he might see if the ice-cream stand was open, when he noticed me on the corner “jumping around and being flirty.”
Now, I guess there is a very dark and disturbing world out there, a world where a 7-year-old ponytailed girl in red shorts, white Keds, and a striped hand-me-down T-shirt could be viewed as being “flirty” while jumping rope, but I'd prefer not to dwell in that world.
He said he drove by twice, apparently to verify the “flirty” part. On his second drive by, he said I “waved” at him to stop.
When questioned as to how I was being “flirty,” he said that I was not so much flirty as I was “very friendly,” that he could tell I wanted him to stop, and that he thought I wanted to go for a ride.
I can remember vividly interrupting him very loudly, “He's a liar” and being shushed.
At the end of the day, he was found guilty of not only violating his parole but also of attempted abduction and assault of a child. He went back to prison for several years.
I never saw or heard about him again.
The judge shook my hand after the trial and said that I was one of the best witnesses he had ever had in his courtroom, that it was very brave of me to fight back, and that I was a smart girl to memorize his license-plate numbers.
Afterwards, my family and I went to the Rexall Drug lunch counter and had grilled-cheese sandwiches and milkshakes.
Not a bad day: I put away a child molester and had a yummy lunch.
* * *
Except for relatives occasionally whispering about the incident with my mother, I don't think it was ever talked about again.
It didn't take me very long, though, to realize that I now knew some things I hadn't known before:
1. My words had power. People would listen when I talked.
2. Some people will take the thing you love the most (in this case, reading) and try to hurt you with it.
3. Men would do stupid and scary things to get something they want.
4. Because I was a girl who would become a woman, I would always need to be extra careful in this world. And I would always be a little afraid.
Important and scary lessons learned.
The thing about this experience that has haunted me for 62 years: How did he know that asking me if I could read would be the way to get me to come over? He could have asked two dozen other kids in my neighborhood that same question, and the answer would have been either “No” or ”Not so good.”
Had he been watching me when I walked home from the library with my older sister, a stack of books in my arms?
Did he see me sitting on my stoop reading by myself?
Did I “look like” a reader?
It still makes me crazy. It was the one thing he could have said that made me immediately feel okay about him, and that filed me with such pride that my defenses went down.
I guess this is why pedophiles are so good at what they do. They either research the kids they're after, or they're pretty goddamn lucky.
And that's terrifying either way.