The Night I Was Hit With a Gun

A memoir

Photo by Maxim Hopman on Unsplash

When I was 15-years old, I rejected the advances of an aggressive young Jamaican boy who had recently moved into my Harlem neighborhood.

My dismissal of his passes made him angry and he verbally threatened to hurt me. At first, I brushed it off and didn’t take him seriously. But after the initial incident, there were other times I would see him around the neighborhood and he would physically grab me by the arm and make the same threat. He wasn’t afraid of anyone seeing or hearing him terrorize me. Although I didn’t show it or express it to anyone, but eventually I did begin to fear him.

By this point, I was used to the familiar feeling of being unsafe in my environment.

One Saturday night in the summer, I went outside to meet up with my friends. It had been a hot day and my block was crowded with kids and teenagers who were having water fights. My apartment building was located on 8th Avenue and I started walking towards 7th Avenue, before I could reach the end of the block, I saw the Jamaican boy walking towards me and noticed he was pulling a gun out of his waistband.

I immediately stopped walking and froze in place. As he got closer, I could see the sinister grin on his face. He grabbed me and we tussled for a few moments with the gun in his hand. The next thing I remember is being hit with the butt of the gun on the right side of my head. He laughed as he walked away from the scene of the crime.

I was dizzy from the assault but I stumbled back to my building and sat there for a while trying to make sense of what had just happened while my head throbbed in pain. As I wiped the tears streaming down my face, I decided it was time to climb the three flights of stairs to my family’s apartment and tell them about the assault. I didn’t realize that my younger brother had jumped in to help me. That might’ve been the action that saved my life. Although there were many witnesses, no one else intervened.

I continued to attract aggressive boys and men who felt the need to exert their predatory prowess over my feminine nature and petite frame.

That incident was not the first time I had to physically struggle or was attacked by a young…