Mr. GE

“Mister GE” 919 words.
In the summer of 1941, when I was thirteen years old, my parents felt less poor. With Social Security now a law, they no longer worried as much about saving for their old age, or that proverbial rainy day. So, Momma rented a superior room for the summer in a pretty Rockaway Beach house. This room had cross ventilation and an electric refrigerator. After years of fussing with melting ice water overflowing from the catch basin under the icebox, she was delighted. But the electric machine didn’t work. Ordinarily, my mother would have waited for the repairman, but I was happy to send her out to play Mahjong with her friends while I had an excuse to sit and read alone in the peace and quiet of the empty house. Since the visit had been pre-arranged with the General Electric Company, and the man would be in uniform, my mother agreed.
The repairman who came was short, stocky and heavy. I could see the blue shadow of a beard forming along his square jaw line. When he took off his cap and jacket, both embroidered “GE,” I could see his gray hair and bulging muscles under the blue company shirt.
“Can you fix the refrigerator? It’s not working,” I explained.
I stayed near him, chatting away, as always feeling safe with an older man. He maneuvered the huge box away from the wall. “My goodness,” I marveled while he checked the wires. “Aren't you strong! You moved that big refrigerator away from the wall just like that.” I smiled in admiration.
For the first time since he'd stepped into the apartment, he looked squarely at me. “Not that hard to do, but yeah, I'm pretty strong,” he said.
“I could tell, just from looking at your muscles. You remind me of somebody.”
“Yeah? Who?”
“Mike. He kept our food cold for us also. See, he was our iceman in the old room.”
He laughed as if I’d made a joke. “He was your iceman?”
“Uhu,” I said.
“Yeah, well, I don’t sell ice any more, but I used to be in the ice and coal business. Now that was a good business, In those days, I could lift a hundred fifty pounds, easy.”
“You could?” I laughed. “That’s much more than I weigh. I bet you could lift me.” I smiled again.
“Sure I could. Want me to show you?”
Before I could think, I was in the air. “Oh, put me down.”
“Okay,” he said, pushing me against the wall. He let me slide down so my feet were on the ground. But his body pinned me there, pressed into mine.
“Oh!” I said. “No, please.”
His hand came up under my skirt, clawing at my underpants. I squirmed, more afraid than I'd ever been in my life, but I couldn't break free.
“Stop. Please stop,” I whimpered.
He found the elastic band on my underpants and pulled, raking my belly with his nails.
I pounded on his chest. “Mister,” I squealed in terror. “Please, Mister, stop that. Mister G-E. Mister G-E-E. . . .”
He seemed to hear me for the first time since he'd grabbed me. He looked into my terrified eyes, slowly relaxed his grip, sighed, and took a step backward, still enclosing me with those huge arms, his hands now flat against the wall behind me.
“Listen,” he muttered urgently. “Please. I’m sorry. I didn't hurt you, did I?”
“Yes you did. You scratched me.”
“Oh, God! I'm really, really sorry. But an accidental scratch isn't the same as purposely hurting you, now is it? Is it?”
“. . . . Maybe not, I guess. . . .”
“Look. I’m very sorry. I don’t know what got into me. Please don't tell your mother what happened. If you do, I’ll lose my job, and then what will happen to me, and to my kids? I have three at home to support, kids just like you. . . . Please don't tell.”
I wanted to think. “Get away from me.”
He looked at his hands as if they weren’t his, and removed them from the wall. I slid around him and sat down on my cot to consider. I had been frightened but was sure he had come to his senses. And certainly my family had taught me to understand the crucial importance of a job in a man's life. I took a deep breath.
“Just don't come near me again, all right?”
“You bet,” he said. “I'll be done in a jiffy.” And he was.
After he left, I examined the scratch on my belly. It was quite faint. If my mother saw it, I could say I’d scratched myself somehow in the water. I remembered Lily and her girlfriends, their perpetual gossiping. When they whispered about IT, they said men want IT so bad, they just go crazy. You have to be careful not to provoke them. Once you do, you can get into real trouble, and you’ve got only yourself to blame.
I rearranged my clothes and sighed. I realized I’d had a narrow escape from something terrible and uncontrollable. This once, Lily and her friends had been right. I would not tell my mother and have the man lose his job. It had been my fault, I dimly understood. Even adult men were not always safe. I reaffirmed my resolution to stay away entirely from sex. How I’d spend my summer, I didn’t know. I’d have to rely again on my chessboard and books.