Second Class Citizen

When he backed me

up against the tree

inching towards me

menacingly

with his big powerful car

I couldn’t believe

what was happening.

I was holding the space

for a car full of dogs

waiting to park

just behind him.

 

He got out of the car

and I said

You can’t do this

this spot is taken.

Six feet tall, he sneered

You can’t save spaces

in a parking lot.

 

I have two dogs

and they won’t allow

them in the store –

it’s too hot in the sun

I need this spot,

I tried to explain.

I have dogs too

the man replied.

Are they with you

I asked?

– Giving him

a chance to redeem

himself.

 

No. My dogs

are home.

Then you of

all people should know

how I feel.

He laughed,

his mouth twisted

into a grimace full of scorn,

tossed a golden mane

dismissing me.

Walked off

so full of himself

and his rights.

 

“You Bastard”

I cried out twice

as two employees,

both boys,

snickered enjoying

the fun at my expense.

One had the audacity

to tell me

I was troublemaking

in a public parking lot.

 

To them

a 73 year old

woman being driven

from a tree shaded space

while advocating

for animals and human decency

was nothing but a joke.

 

In the car

I cursed the man

flung poisoned arrows

his way,

knowing that nothing

would take away

the pain of knowing

that as a woman

and as an elder

I had less rights

than these arrogant

men and boys.

I am by virtue of my sex

a second class citizen

in a woman hating culture

that just won’t quit.

 

Working notes:

 

The encounter in the parking lot followed another that occurred when I tried to enter the store I have shopped in before with my two dogs. This time, barred at the entrance, I was asked if my dogs were service dogs. When I said they were I was interrogated. What was my problem? I suffer from PTSD I told them and these dogs are my support system. All this was true. “An emotional problem doesn’t classify as a reason to enter the store with animals.” What?????

 

You can be sure that if I was an ex-military man accompanied by dogs who said he suffered from PTSD no one would have barred him from the store.

 

To be singled out as a “second class citizen” twice in one day because I am a woman diminished me as a human being against my own will. Old wounds surfaced. I am full of holes that I cannot repair because lack of accountability on another’s part ensures that shame will once again attach itself to me.

 

The Homecoming

 

Two giant brown 300 lb. pigs were chasing us down the road next to my house a few days ago. PIGS??? This was the second alarming threat that had occurred in the two weeks since I had returned to Maine.

My friend Bruce mitigated the entire incident by suggesting that these monsters were just walking “fast” while snorting crazily on a public road while they stopped all traffic in their wake. My two little Chihuahuas and I felt differently but then we three are not physicists and we have been harassed by unfriendly, bullying, and most recently, dangerous dogs since my neighbors moved in eleven years ago… One attacked me in a public place last summer.

The pattern of woman/animal elder abuse (now I am 72) is well rooted in this “place.”

Naturally, I called the town office and left a message. Knowing the drill, I next called the dog officer whose robot replied that I should call the police. When I finally got a dispatcher she told me to contact the dog – catcher. Round and round we go. Yesterday I got a text from the Town Clerk asking if I had heard from anyone about the incident. “Of course not,” I replied. We have been here before.

It all began here the year (2003) the town forced me to obtain pictures of the German Shepard who was trespassing and threatening the life of my rabbit. To “prove” that I wasn’t making up the story, I followed protocol and after nine months got the necessary pictures of the offending dog to the town hall. There I was told the pictures weren’t good enough proof. I went home. The very next morning I heard blood curdling, high pitched, and oh so pitiful baby-like screams – Racing out the door in a frenzy I found my dead rabbit still in her pen with her guts ripped out. In shock (murder does put a person into a state that is like any other) I put Moonflower in a paper bag and called the town hall.

“You got what you wanted” my rabbit is dead.”

Their response was that the dog officer had to see the rabbit to make sure. The dog officer, appeared in minutes, a remarkable feat considering his gross nine month negligence, while I stood at the door screaming hysterically “do you still need more proof” as I pulled the dead rabbit out of the bag by her ears while bloody intestinal body parts slithered to the ground. He left.

The dogs – there were three in all – returned to look for the spoils and this was when I got the pictures of the man walking by my window dragging Moonflower’s killer dogs away.

I buried my rabbit on my land here and have never visited her grave. Ever.

Little did I know this was only the beginning…

I built my house on my beloved land (which I have had for 30 years) in 2004 and by 2005 had acquired what was to become the worst neighbors I could ever have imagined. Neighbors who refused then, as they do to this day, to collar and contain their big dogs (this is the law), and who allow them to bully my present dogs by running into the road and threatening all of us. The remarkable thing is that these people continue to get away with this behavior because the Town of Woodstock, the dog constable, and the police ignore the behavior, even after one of these same dogs attacked me in a public place last summer.

By the end of the month last year I had moved to Abiquiu, New Mexico for a break from my exhausting and terrifying life with a full blown anxiety disorder and suffering from PTSD. Eleven months later I returned to flag obsessed western Maine and picked up where I left off. Yesterday, while walking down my road we were threatened again by  a dog, this one a huge Saint Bernard (who is normally chained).

I spent all yesterday afternoon with robots trying to get help from ANYONE in the state department who would be willing to intervene. So far, nothing. Needless to say I have low expectations.

I borrowed a gun. As a woman who has been anti –gun prone since her brother killed himself with one in 1972 I find to my horror that I have now joined the crowd. (Three days later the gun was returned. Guns are not the answer.)

Welcome home Sara to “the way things should be” (one of Maine’s favorite cliches)