I’ve been having a hard time sleeping lately. These two dogs in my neighborhood are driving me crazy with their barking. One’s a 12-year-old Siberian Husky next door. The other is a young German Shepherd on a tether 24/7 across the street.
I hear their every howl, whine, begging/pleading for freedom. Lately, the Husky has gone silent, which bothers me more than the noise. It feels like he’s given up. When he howled, I’d lie in my dark, silent room, listening to him—a silent witness to his lonely life.
Sometimes when I’m out in my garden, pulling weeds, I lock eyes with him in his cage. He stares at me with his giant green eyes, daring me to do something. He should be running across snow-covered terrain in Alaska, not caged up in a tiny pen. I look away, embarrassed. Why should I walk around free while he’s imprisoned for life? It doesn’t feel fair.
One day, the German Shepherd across the street, breaks free from his yard. My front door is open, and when I look up, improbably, he’s inside my house, a big goofy smile on his face. I can’t bear to take him back to his life of solitary confinement, so I let him and my dog play together. His owner shows up a few minutes later, collars him and starts dragging him home. I know it’s none of my business, but this dog has no words to speak for himself.
I run to catch up with the dog’s owner. “Your dog is so lonely,” I say. “It’s not right what you’re doing, keeping him tied up all the time.”
We get into a heated argument. She tells me how overworked she is with young children and how she didn’t think it would be this much work raising a German Shepherd, and he is way too hyper and strong for her to train, and maybe she should have gotten an easier-to-raise dog like a poodle, but it’s too late now.
“I am so sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know.”
I volunteer to walk the dog, even to try to train him.
Nothing changes, though. Her dog is just too wild and strong to work with. This is all just so wrong. The dog stays tied up. I think back to when I was 18 and heard the story of a wealthy man with a red Ferrari whose license plates said, “Life’s not fair”. He got a flat tire one day and a guy pulled off the road allegedly to help him, but instead sliced his neck open with a box cutter and drove off with his car. Hence the saying “Life’s not fair".
Two years later, I am stranded on the side of Highway 5 with a flat tire on my way from Los Angeles to Berkeley. It’s a hot, dusty day, long before the time of cell phones. I am so young and so naïve. I have no idea how sinister the world is, or how vulnerable I am standing on the highway alone. A hot gust of wind blows my skirt up, as I stand facing the oncoming cars. A man and his wife in a pickup truck pull up. They seem nice and safe. I don’t know then what I know now—that no one is safe. I haven’t yet read about the true story of a husband and wife who drove around picking up hitchhikers—women like me in distress-- and imprisoned them as sex slaves in their basement. I am lucky. They change out my flat tire and drive away.
At 22, I believe I have my whole life ahead of me. I don’t think death will ever find me. One day, while I am driving alone cross country from California to Louisiana, I stop at a dusty gas station on the outskirts of the Grand Canyon and see four donkeys caged up in a tiny pen. I am outraged. How dare they be in such a tiny cage when they should have the whole wide world to roam? I drive to the neighboring town, buy a lock cutter, and race back. I cut the lock, throw open the gate, and shout, “You’re free! Go!”
Nothing. The donkeys don’t even look up from their 28-square-foot patch of dirt. They continue munching hay. They don’t see the open blue horizon right in front of them—all the possibilities. How are they to know there is something else? How can I explain it to them?
It’s not easy leaving a prison—self-made or otherwise—for a freedom that may or may not exist. It takes me several tries to leave my husband, M. before I actually do. Once, after a 3 a.m. screaming match, I tear out of the driveway down the road, with no socks, shoes, purse or cell phone. I am back in 30 minutes.
In our worst fight ever, M. pours cold pickle juice over my head. He shoves me up against a wall and smushes moldy tomato paste into my hair. We are both out of our minds. It’s just the kind of day in a sleepy little town where nothing bad happens when a husband and wife might blow each other’s heads off with the shotguns that have been sitting dormant in their his and hers closets.
I douse my hair under the sink, sweep it up in a towel, and walk out the door. M. follows me, dumping the contents of my wallet on the street—credit cards, dollar bills, library card, crumpled Chinese cookie fortunes--all getting soaked in the rain. I keep moving trance-like.
“I’ll burn your paintings if you don’t come back,” he says.
I keep walking.
“I’ll burn your grandmother’s paintings.”
I stop. I won’t let him burn my grandmother’s paintings.
I go back to the house with him. Somehow, he convinces me to stay.
I spend the next year-and-a-half weighing the pros and cons of leaving. I wish for him to drive off a cliff. I wish for myself to drive off a cliff. Then, one day, I go to the dentist’s office, sit through a cleaning, and get in my car to go home. Except I don’t go home. I signal right when I get to my street, but I don’t make the turn. I keep going straight. I pass my street, pass my house, pass my husband. I never go home again.
I realize then what I realize now—I may not be able to save anyone else, but I can save myself.