Three Hallways

Emerging Writer Series

Every two weeks or so I am publishing an essay from an emerging writer. This week, “Three Hallways” by Pam Sourelis. After MFA school (Vermont College of Fine Arts), Pam published three short stories in literary journals, which had her feeling confident about her chances of growing as a fiction writer. But shortly thereafter, her heart, her mind, her whole self was captured by the spirit of Horse. She spent the next 20-plus years learning from them, blogging about them, writing about them in regional horse newspapers, sharing stories about them—and dogs and cats and bunnies and birds—in her weekly newsletter. An editor, writing coach, and animal communicator, she has returned to creative writing, has entered the fray, and is breathlessly thrilled to be here.

III

Twenty-five years ago, on a cold evening in Chicago, the sun long gone, I set my shoulder against the unlocked outer door of my apartment building and, grocery bags in hand, pushed into the small hallway. Before putting my bags down and grabbing the keys from my purse, I noticed a hand-printed sign above the mail boxes: Someone had been held up with a gun outside the building earlier that evening.

I sometimes remember the note also saying that the perpetrator had been apprehended. Other times, I don’t remember it saying that. But what I consistently remember—when I choose to remember this at all—is that as I walked over to and unlocked the second door, entered the inner hallway, climbed the stairs to my apartment, unlocked my apartment door, walked in, and carried the grocery bags to the kitchen, I was calm. I wasn’t worried for my safety. I wasn’t afraid to be in my lovely apartment or worried about walking down my beautiful street in my reasonably safe city neighborhood.

Sometime that evening—maybe as I was preparing dinner, washing and cutting the vegetables I had purchased that afternoon, boiling a pot of rice, or tearing lettuce and chopping green and red bell peppers for a salad—maybe as I clicked on the light behind my reading chair and settled in with a book or a pile of student papers—maybe as I stood over the bathroom sink, brushing my teeth—sometime that evening, that sense of calm shattered.

I was crying and pacing, then sobbing. My field of vision narrowed. My brain was wild with the sense of capture, of quiet terror.

I

Until fairly recently, unlocked outer doors of apartment buildings were common in Chicago. You walked inside, fumbled for keys, checked for mail, then walked over to (sometimes up the stairs to) and unlocked the second door that led to the apartments. When I was a child, before I carried my own key on a chain around my neck, I would push open that unlocked door and enter the outer hallway that smelled like vanilla and something else I still can’t identify but that was comforting because it was familiar; it was home. I would ring my doorbell, climb the steps, and wait for my mother to buzz me in.

One late summer morning when I was seven or eight, I returned from the National Tea grocery store two blocks away with a loaf of bread my mother sent me to buy so my sister and I could have sandwiches for lunch. I rang the doorbell, climbed the marble stairs, and stood at the second, locked door, one hand holding the paper bag, one hand on the doorknob, waiting for the buzzer, when two teenaged boys burst through the first door, demanding to know what was in the bag. I was a quiet child, withdrawn, with a terrifying father, and so I tended to be afraid of men even when they weren’t threatening. These boys, who were most likely “just being boys,” terrified me. They remained right inside the first doorway, never climbing the steps, keeping their distance. The door wasn’t even closed behind them; one of them held it open.

I burst into tears. The boys were immediately startled, as though they hadn’t considered how their intrusion and demand might affect a little girl, minding her own business, carrying a loaf of bread home for lunch.

One of them tried to calm me, still from a distance, urging me not to cry. The buzzer finally rang. I let myself in.

I was still crying when I walked into the apartment. My mom asked me what was wrong. I couldn’t speak. Sitting on her lap, I was eventually able to calm down, and she managed to somehow convince me that it was safe to tell her the story. I don’t remember what she said, how, or if, she comforted me. But the story slowly leaked out.

She asked if they had hurt me. I told her no.

They had just made me afraid of hallways, of what might jump out at me as I waited for the buzzer that unlocked the door.

II

Sixteen. A few days before Christmas. My boyfriend and I went to a movie. I don’t remember where we went. I don’t remember how we got there. I don’t remember what we saw. It was late afternoon as we headed home, already dark. I was a junior in high school. We were the same age, but he’d been accepted early to the University of Chicago and was living in an apartment near the campus with a couple of other guys. He wanted me to see his place.

So we went. We were only there about an hour. I had to get home for dinner. Six o’clock sharp every night. We listened to music. We played around a little, kissing. I’m guessing he wanted more, but that’s all we did. (Later, the cops, laughing, said “Was it the boyfriend?” At least I think they did. Maybe I just knew that’s what they were thinking. I could see it on their sneering faces.)

My boyfriend called a cab. He was going to ride home with me and then ride back. We put on our coats and headed out of the apartment to wait for the cab to come.

I knew to wait inside the locked inner door. My mother had chiseled this rule on my brain. Wait inside the locked door. Always. But he opened the door and we stepped into the outer hallway, the hallway with the unlocked outer door. I followed him. I knew, but what was I supposed to say?

The cab never came.

A few minutes later, we spotted a group of guys across the street watching us. They headed towards us in unison, not casually, like crossing the street was something they’d intended all along, but focused on us, dodging a car that swept by. A subtle shiver ran through them, holding them together, broadcasting they were up to no good. I wanted to flee to the other side of the locked door. I wanted him to pull the key out of his pocket and open the door. Open the door. My God, open the door!

He said not to worry. He had this under control.

The guys pushed open the outer door, smashed the bulb of the hallway light. I don’t remember what happened next. I remember my boyfriend standing against the wall near the entrance with a gun to his head. I don’t know how he got there.

The cab never came.

Oh, but wait, I do remember that I was pushed up against the wall opposite my boyfriend. They took turns smashing their filthy mouths against mine. A man came in from outside. I struggled to meet his eyes. My eyes were pleading, help me, help me. He caught my eye for an instant, looked away. Walked up the stairs. Unlocked the second door. Disappeared. A toddler ran into the hall. The man scooped up the baby and again disappeared.

The cab never came.

They forced me to take them in their mouths. We were standing; I tried to kneel. This made them angry. I couldn’t reach if I didn’t kneel. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. What do you want me to do? I pleaded. I would do anything. A gun was at my boyfriend’s head.

They walked me back up the marble stairs, knocked me to the ground and stripped me from the waist down. Then they took turns. There were five of them. Maybe six. I lost count when they started the next round.

The cab never came. 

You need a little break here? I need a break. So here’s another story, an interlude, an intermission. Sixteen, seventeen years later, I’m walking home from the store. Broad daylight. “Safe” neighborhood. A scrawny punk teenager speeds up to walk closely behind me, making kissing noises with his filthy mouth.

I’m eating a Baby Ruth candy bar. Do you know those? They’re nuts and caramel covered with chocolate. They’re long and fairly thin. They kind of look like turds. Or something else.

I turn to this little scab, look him in his putrid face, dead on, and with my teeth, savagely tear off the tip. Of the Baby Ruth. He pales. I stare, chewing, imagining his shaking knees. He scurries across the street. A cockroach.

The guys in the hallway got scared off. I’m not sure by what. The man seeing what they were doing didn’t scare them. My telling them a cab was coming didn’t scare them. Nothing seemed to scare them. But something made them cut and run. My boyfriend turned to face me, and I told him to turn back around while I got dressed. My little sister’s brown suede boots were gone, boots she’d bought with hours and hours of babysitting money. My coat was gone, too. But I had underpants and slacks. Not jeans. Something. Corduroy? Wool? No, I’m allergic to wool. So not that.

We needed to go inside to call the police. No cell phones way back then. My boyfriend unlocked the second door. He unlocked the door. Unlocked it. I walked into the inner hallway and collapsed on the bottom stair.

Next thing I knew there was all kinds of commotion. People coming out of apartments, wanting to see what was going on. How come they were so curious all of a sudden? Where had they been before? The man with the toddler didn’t show his face. My boyfriend raged that he was going to kill him, but someone stopped him from banging on the door.

I remember a woman’s voice saying that someone should run me a bath.

I remember a man standing in front of me. I remember light-colored trousers and a trench coat. I had my arms wrapped around his legs, my face buried in them. I heard myself crying. He had his hands on my shoulders. He kept me from flying into a million pieces. I never saw his face. I will never, ever forget him.

Here’s another intermission. A couple of years later, let’s say three, I was going to work one evening. (I worked in a restaurant in downtown Chicago, a nice place that my boyfriend’s parents owned—different boyfriend.) I walked the couple of blocks to the bus stop, stood waiting for the bus, and two of Chicago’s finest rolled by, slowed down, stopped. Hey, baby, you wanna get in back and have some fun?

We called them pigs for a reason.

When the police came and my parents came, I was wrapped in my boyfriend’s coat, and my stepfather carried me to the car (I had no shoes, and it was winter), and we went to the police station. When we walked in, me barefoot, wrecked, two policemen laughed. I must have looked really funny. Runaway? one asked. Like that was a fucking laugh riot. We went into some office and told them what happened. I had to look at photos and photos and photos in thick, bound books. That’s when someone said the part about the boyfriend doing it. Not to us, of course. An aside. A stage whisper.

Did I mention that I’m white? Did I mention that my boyfriend was black?

There’s more, but I’m done with this story now. The rape kit. My mother saying some stupid shit about sex being beautiful so, you know, I’d have something to look forward to just the same, even though we both knew she didn’t really believe what she was saying. And the next morning, sitting down with me at the breakfast table, long after breakfast was over, late on Sunday morning, and telling me how I shouldn’t have been there. I shouldn’t have been there. Me. I shouldn’t have been there. Not, how are you my love, my heart, my daughter? How are you feeling, my precious child? What can I do for you? Oh, my god, my precious child.

Not that.

And there really is more, but I really am done.