The first thing I heard was the crack of my own coffee mug against the sidewalk.
The second was my neighbor shouting that I had threatened her.
I had done no such thing.
At eight seventeen on a bright Tuesday morning in Westbrook, Pennsylvania, I was standing beside my mailbox with a grocery bag in one hand and my phone in the other when sixty-three-year-old Lorraine Kessler crossed the street and hit me across the mouth.
She wore a pale blue cardigan and sensible shoes, the same clothes she wore to church every Sunday, and for a moment I simply stared at her.
Lorraine was five feet four and usually walked with a cane when she went shopping.
That morning she moved with surprising speed.
She grabbed the collar of my jacket before I could step backward.
She struck me again, this time with the side of her fist against my cheek.
My phone fell to the concrete beside the broken mug.
Lorraine looked past my shoulder toward the intersection and began to scream.
Help me, she shouted, he’s attacking me.
I put both hands in the air.
Lorraine, stop, I said.
Her eyes met mine for half a second.
I saw terror rather than anger.
Then she reached into her pocket, pulled out a small silver whistle, and blew it hard enough to turn the heads of two people at the bus stop.
A white delivery van slowed near our curb.
Its driver rolled down the window.
I saw the man’s face and recognized him from the previous night.
He was the man who had been waiting outside Lorraine’s house in the dark.
The man looked at Lorraine, not at me.
She blew the whistle again.
He kept driving.
One of the people from the bus stop was already calling the police.
I crouched to retrieve my phone, and Lorraine shoved me hard enough to knock me onto one knee.
Don’t pick that up, she said.
I looked at her hands.
They were trembling so badly that she could barely keep them closed.
When the first patrol car came around the corner, Lorraine abruptly stepped away.
She smoothed her cardigan and pointed at me.
He tried to drag me into his house, she told the officer.
I said nothing until the officer asked for my account.
I explained that I was coming home from the corner store and that Lorraine had crossed the street and struck me without warning.
