And I Did Nothing

I wake with a start and glance at my clock. The old digital clock reads 3 A.M. and I briefly wonder what woke me up as I flop back down. The fan in my room buzzes away contently and I start to doze back off.

As I lay there with my eyes closed I hear a noise. Voices. My first instinct is that someone is in my home. I strain my ears trying to hear what is being said. There seems to be two voices. One voice is high pitched, but the other is louder and deeper. Briefly I wonder if the television or stereo was left on.

It dawns on me that the voices are more than likely outside my apartment; I close my eyes and wait to fall back asleep. “Most likely someone coming home late from a club or something”, I tell myself.

The voices yammer on for a minute. One of the voices sounds agitated about something. Groaning, I grab a pillow to pull over my head to drown out the noise. Then I hear it.

“Bang”

Once again my instinct takes over and I duck down in to the covers. Then I realize it wasn’t a gunshot. It sounded more like a “Clap” or a “POP”, like an open-palmed hand across someone’s face.

I freeze waiting to hear what comes next. A minute passes and there are no sounds. The small crack in the blinds lets me see out onto the sidewalk, but no one is there. Holding my breath I can hear the air conditioners running. The voices are gone though.

A thousand thoughts rush through my mind. Is someone in trouble? Should I go out there? What if someone has a gun? Should I try to go out with some kind of weapon? What if I just make the situation worse? What if the sound is really nothing?

Maybe it was just a slammed door, or a dropped book. Or maybe it was a fist.

I cannot help but think of Moira Jones. Moira was raped then murdered in a Glaswegian park on May 28th last year. Four people listened to her scream, and did nothing. No one even called the police. Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death outside of her apartment building while 38 people watched, and did nothing.

All sorts of terrible scenarios play out in my head. I reach over to grab anything that might be intimidating enough to be a weapon. Then I stop myself. There still haven’t been any noises. Maybe the voices were nothing. I look at my clock again. Over five minutes have passed.

Three weeks ago an unidentified woman was beaten and sexually assaulted on a busy Massachusetts road during Rush Hour. Hundreds of people drove by and did nothing.

“I will not be one of those people. If I hear anything else…” I whisper to myself.

Another air conditioning unit clicks on and the crickets croaking covers up all of the other noise of the night. The voices do not come back though. Slowly sleep comes back for me and I doze off as I lie looking out through the blinds.

I wake up with the alarm and shove aside the blinds. There are no police taking statements. No yellow crime scene tape or clustering reporters. No signs of anything.

I inspect the sidewalks as I walk to my car. Everything seems to be in its place. The grass is bright green, the sky is blue and the air smells like rain, but nothing remains to prove that the voices were ever outside my window.

It is a beautiful day and the birds as singing, but no matter how hard I try I can not help but feel like I let someone down last night as I peeked out my window, and did nothing.

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