Like most mothers, mine hugs me extra-tight before I leave for school in the fall. Unlike most mothers, she also gets teary-eyed when I go on dates, for a jog in the park or to the grocery store on a milk run. Due to her obsession with televised news, she believes that when I step out of my front door the chance that I will be raped, murdered, killed in a car accident, kidnapped or tortured drastically increases. So the idea of me getting into a cab all by my lonesome, putting myself in the care of a stranger, is very unsettling for her, especially when it’s in a foreign country.
Straight off the plane in Paris two summers ago I managed to communicate that I needed to get to the outskirts of the city to my cabdriver in broken French. He seemed confused at first, then put on his headpiece and began to speak to a friend on the phone. “Elle est un femme.” Immediately the headline, “American Girl Gang Raped in Back Alley of Abandoned Warehouse,” came to mind. Who knows how many friends he’d called? Where were we? I didn’t see the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe! I was less worried about meeting my friends on time than with the idea that my cab driver was a rapist, the influence of my mother clearly present. I wished to God that I’d brought the can of mace that mother had insisted on me carrying.
I started to think about how I could throw the door open and roll with my bag onto the street without being hit by the car behind us. Reaching for the door handle I looked up to see my friends standing outside the hostel, just in time. Sweaty but relieved, I paid the cab driver and thanked him profusely-for not ruining my life (not to mention my mother’s). Our paranoia seemed undeserved.
But my mother, who hadn’t experienced my “success” in Paris, continued to protect me after I left home and moved to D.C. She made buddies with a cab driver named Hankie on her way to BWI airport after dropping me off at school this year. (He actually goes by Hank, but my mother adds an “-ie” at the end of the names of people she likes or feels sorry for. My grandmother’s 83-year-old boyfriend is “Ralphie,” not Ralph).
“He’s real nice and he drives safe,” she said. “And he takes 10 percent off for regulars.”
“Driving safe.” That’s mom code for driving slowly, I told myself. Why would I want a slow cab driver? I decided to call Hankie anyway for an early morning court appointment in Maryland. En route, despite my success in Paris, I couldn’t seem to put my mother’s fearful influence behind me. As the cab ride proceeded, Hankie offered to stop off and treat me to an orange juice. Later, he said, “If there’s anything I can do to make your day any better, you just let me know.” I clutched my belongings a little closer and pulled my skirt a little further down my thigh.
Upon our arrival, Hankie, after convincing me that he would love to wait one or two hours for me to finish my appointment, got out of his car with his umbrella (there was only a fine mist in the air) and walked me to the courthouse from the parking lot. During the walk, he offered me his arm. I said, “No thank you,” got uncomfortable and found myself veering from underneath the umbrella.
Despite my discomfort on this first outing I decided to call Hankie last week to drive me to the airport. He asked me to remind him of the magazines I had mentioned in our first cab ride because he wanted good ones for the back of the cab. He then typed them into his Palm Pilot, conveniently stuck to his steering wheel; keeping safety first, he used it only at stop lights. He told me to tell my mother he said hello and to wish her well for him. When we arrived he stepped out in his professional attire, unusual to cab drivers: black slacks, black dress shoes with white tennis socks, a white polo-style shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a black tie. He gave me my bag and blew me a kiss.
And I realized that what had made me so uncomfortable about Hankie at first were not any creepy, old-man vibes or serial-killer traits. It was merely the shock of having a cab driver treat me like a lady. What’s wrong with offering a young girl some orange juice? Obviously Hankie hadn’t been watching the news as much as my mother had been.
I wish it was easier today, with all of the rapes and murders and muggings on television, to get to know and trust a person like Hankie. I wish there were more cab drivers that called me “Miss” and blew me kisses. Only then would I shake the burden of my mother’s influence and open up to the niceties of strangers.
