Jewel Beth Davis--Jesus at the Rite Aid

I walk through the aisles of the local Rite Aid in Dover. Convenient but high priced and crammed with marketing ploys: bright lights and primary colors, much like McDonald’s. Signs jump out at me like animated electronic waves grabbing onto me to distract from my goal.

No. I refuse to be distracted. My boot heels beat the floor, announcing I am a customer with a purpose, not here for browsing. I’ve come for allergy pills and nasal spray, for which I’ll pay at least $5 more than if I’d gone to WalMart. But I can’t go to WalMart. They treat their employees horrifically and I try to be socially responsible. The music on the loudspeaker is a mix of the sixties through eighties. Barry Manilow sings, “Time in New England takes me away…” I stop for a moment and listen to music that conjures up images of a long-ago intense relationship that crashed. No, I won’t think of that. I keep moving.

I round the corner and enter the last aisle adjacent to the pharmacy. A man in beige pants and sweater vest is shopping for something at the other end of the aisle, near the anti-itch sprays and creams. I register that he’s a man in beige, but nothing else about him stands out. His features are also beige.

I step down the aisle, and as I do, my left ankle snaps and folds over unnaturally. A searing pain explodes from my ankle and tracks up my leg, shooting all the way up to my hair follicles. Without knowing how I got there, I am on the floor tiles, moaning and clutching my ankle- in the middle of Rite Aid. The tiles are cold and gritty.

“Ohhhhhhhh,” cascades like a waterfall from my mouth. Little reoccurring explosions continue sparking in my tibia. I can’t stand up. I lie on the floor on my side, gasping. The pain ricochets back and forth. It is everything, nothing else exists. I ride the pain, bucking. I am inside it. The color of the pain is purple and red with intermittent yellow flashes. Sharp stabs and lightning strikes travel through my ankle and up to my knee. I can’t slow my breathing.

The beige man moves towards me. “Are you all right?” His affect, which is flat, belies his words. His voice carries no expression.

I think he will offer me his hand and help me stand.

“I don’t know if I can stand yet,” I say. I feel panicked, my thoughts are racing, and my breaths are rapid and shallow. I wonder if I’ll be able to walk or if I’ll need to go to the hospital in an ambulance. I drive a manual transmission. I use my left foot for the clutch. Will I be able to drive home?

“Wait. Don’t try to stand yet. Stay where you are,” the stranger says. Perhaps he’ll call someone who works in the store to help me. None of the employees have seen me yet. The pharmacy workers can’t see me lying on the floor from where they stand behind counters. Maybe they can give me an ice pack. I am mortified, lying here unable to get up. Any minute, one of them will come along and find me here, helpless.

I am unprepared for what the beige man does next. He kneels beside me and lays

both hands on my ankle. He bows his head and closes his eyes.

“Dear Jesus,” he announces to somewhere towards the sky, which is actually the ceiling, “please take away all this woman’s pain and with your power and glory, heal her ankle completely. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Lord, thank you, Jesus. In your name, may she be healed and pain free.” Then he stands, his expression not registering any emotion. He says, “How is your pain? Is it gone?”

"No," I scream at him silently within.

I am speechless, gob smacked. I am never without words, but my mind is in shock. He is unaware that he’s invaded my personal space and foisted his religious beliefs on me. I suppose he just assumes everyone believes in Jesus. So, despite that I am furious; that he inserted himself into my life and imposed his religion upon me; that he touched me without my permission; that my ankle is still painful. Instead of telling him the truth, my first impulse is to avoid hurting his feelings.

“Yes, much better, thanks.” Sometimes I really disgust myself.

He doesn’t help me up. He merely walks away with a quiet air of holiness.

I feel confused. What about my feelings? I suppose that he meant well but his actions were intrusive. He never asked if he could touch me. He prayed using words that oppose my religious beliefs. And he didn’t ask what I needed. He didn’t even help me up. He just walked away.

Next time…next time, I’ll say, “Please don’t touch me.” I’ll say, “Stop. I’m Jewish.”

There. Now I feel better. But really…I don’t feel a whole lot better.

Why? Because it’s not him I’m so angry with; it’s me. I’m angry with myself for not saying anything. Why didn’t I defend myself? What was I afraid of? Certainly not Jesus. I allowed this stranger’s feelings to be more important than mine, and I didn’t speak up to protect myself. People often tell me that I say everything I’m thinking. Clearly, that’s not true.

The extreme pain subsides and settles into small pulses. I get up on my own and I’m limping a bit, but I can walk. No employees have discovered me in my crisis, for which I’m both relieved and annoyed. I pass by the pain medicine section and purchase the allergy medicine, drive home, ice my ankle and take Ibuprofen. My ankle gets better after several days. All is well.

Except for the fact that a stranger, whose name I don’t even know, imposed his religious beliefs on me when I was vulnerable.

In my fantasy, I hear myself saying to the stranger: "What in God’s name were you thinking? You think it's all right to touch a woman without permission? You didn't help me at all. Get me some ice or some pain killers. Not all this mumbo jumbo." I pause. "You left me on the floor!"

No one likes to hear women speak up. I often get into trouble for doing so at work at the college. I'm not polite enough, not gentle enough, not kind enough, or nice enough. I don't even know what nice means. A director with whom I went to college and worked at the Palace Theatre, told everyone at the theatre, as an example for a character, to be a bitch like Jewel. I am often direct, straightforward, seeing no need to walk on eggshells, but a bitch? Yet often, in unexpected situations like this one at the Rite Aid, or when a doctor kept his hands on the rounded globes of my lower body during an exam, I said nothing. The doctor kept me in the stirrups with the sheet over me, talking into my private parts, long after the examination was over. I did nothing. These experiences haunt me.

Women are taught to be nice. And polite. We’re taught not to offend. We're taught to believe that men know what they're doing, and we should trust them. God forbid we should hurt some man's feelings. We women are often touched, whether appropriately or inappropriately, by strangers, and we don’t speak up. We have been well trained. We've been wound up tight. It’s caused us trauma, fear, and lack of confidence. It’s time to uncoil and speak up.

We are all the women. We are the women in China with our bound-up feet. We are the women of the Victorian era with the boned stays of our corsets pulled so tight that we can't breathe, leaving deep red grooves in our skin. We are the women of the fifties with our tight, unforgiving girdles so the actual shape of our bodies doesn't intrude on the world of men. We are the women who wear thongs that male designers created for men's pleasure and we women spend our own money to purchase. We are the women of the 2020s, wearing spindly five to six-inch heels causing twisted and sprained ankles, so we can never ever run away when we need to.

Jewel Beth Davis is a writer and theater artist who has worked professionally internationally. She holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and an MA in Theatre Movement from Wesleyan. Jewel was a Professor of English and Theatre at NHTI for many years and now teaches writing at Merrimack College. Thirty-six of her literary nonfiction and fiction stories have been published in national literary magazines, most recently in Tiny Moments IV Anthology now sold on Amazon. Her stories have been nominated for Dzanc’s Best of the Web and the Best of the Net Anthology.