Free Sugar in My Bowl by Erica Jong

I’d put a cartoon I liked at the top, of Teamster president Fitzsimmons and Nixon having a toast together in bed, with their feet hanging out of the sheet bottoms.
    I went up to each vehicle and tucked a flyer inside the windshield wiper. I got a rhythm going with that song “Love Rollercoaster,” The Ohio Players, playing in my head.
    Love Rollercoaster, Child
    Say What?
    Why don’t you ride?
    Something hard punched me in the lower back, and I fell sprawling onto my hands and knees in the dirt.
    “Hey girlie!”
    I pushed up off my belly, my hands on fire, like the gravel had been shot into them. A squat muscular guy with worse teeth than a junkyard dog stood above me, with a wrench in his hand. He was smiling. I’d been smacked before, but neither my mother nor the nuns ever grinned at me while they were doing it.
    “What’s this crap you’re sellin’, girlie?—This is private property. You better get your can out of here.”
    He grabbed the goldenrod flyers in my satchel, which was still hanging from my shoulder. I scrambled to stand up, spilling most of them onto the ground. Blood was dripping on everything I was wearing, but I didn’t know where it was coming from.
    The wind picked the flyers up and started sailing them over the cars. I wished I could sail away with them. Already my mind was leaving the premises. I missed driver’s ed for this.
    My palms, that’s where most of the blood was coming from, like stigmata. The pit bull-man held up his wrench again.
    “Now look what you’ve done!” he shouted, like he was personally offended. “You little whore, you’re gonna clean up this fucking lot before I stick my foot up your ass—”
    We both heard a loud click, and he shut up.
    It was Stan —in front of me, between me and the bad man. Instead of just his blue work shirt, Stan was wearing a work shirt with a holster. There was something in his hand, too.
    He said two things. “Don’t talk to the young woman like that—we’re leaving now.”
    And to me: “Get in the car”—and threw me his keys. I caught them without a bounce.
    I don’t know what else he said. I ran with the keys—ran, ran, ran, like The Gingerbread Man —to Stan’s white Valiant, climbed into the backseat, locked the doors, and threw his old-dude basketball sweats over my head. I wanted to crawl in the trunk. It was ninety degrees, but I didn’t crack the window. I was freezing, shaking; my clothes were like wet rags. I’d never had a man look at me like that, like he was going to enjoy hurting me. He was a head shorter than me—even if he was twice as wide—and he’d made me pee in my pants.
    “Sue!” I could hear Stan jogging up to the car. I lifted my head up to peek out the window. He didn’t look hurt.
    I unlocked the door and handed him his keys. He took one of my cut-up hands in his, like it was a petal. “Are you okay?” he said.
    I burst into tears. Time for questions, that’s when I fall apart. “Who was that?” I sobbed through my snot. “Was he from the company or the union? What did you do?”
    “Hold on . . .” Stan got in the driver’s seat, started up the engine, and peeled out. “I’m taking you home; this was bullshit. You never should’ve been here.”
    I cried harder. What did that mean? I’d failed at my assignment, because I didn’t kick that bastard in the nuts? I was frozen? I was useless?—wasn’t good enough to pass out a fucking flyer?
    Stan pulled into the circle driveway in front of his duplex and parked at the door. “Don’t move,” he said.
    He came around to the backseat door and opened it up, crouching down so he could look me in the eye.
    “I’m sorry, I’m okay, I can get out,” I said, ready for another defense. But when I glanced down at my chest, I saw my shirt was ripped open too. Who did that? I started gulping air again.
    Stan put his arms around me; “Hold on to my neck,” he said. He coaxed me out of the car—and once he got me to my feet he