LITMIR.BIZ

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to the side. My assailant rocketed into the narrow walkway and I gave him as assist with a sidekick to his ribs. I felt my foot connect and I heard a grunt. I hoped it was a grunt of pain.

      I turned to run down the alley and nearly fell over the can now spilled at my feet.

      I jumped over it and continued running, yelling at the top of my lungs. Behind me I heard a thud as the attacker also jumped over the can.

      I hadn’t disabled him with that kick.

      He was following.

      Damn this poorly lit alley.

      I picked up my pace but the following footfalls sounded like they were gaining on me.

      I zigged left and then turned as the knife came slashing down again. I chopped down hard on the arm holding the knife and used that momentum to hook my right foot behind him and flip him on to his back. I heard an “oomph” as he fell back, but it was muffled by his stocking masked face.

      He had grabbed my left wrist as he fell. I twisted and wrenched away from his grip and that meant the slashing knife meant for my chest only raked down my arm from elbow to wrist. I jumped back, keeping my eyes on my assailant and cursed myself for leaving my cell phone in the kitchen.

      I braced myself for another attack and I heard a noise. The revving of an engine of a car entering the alley behind me. I turned and ran toward it, yelling my head off. My attacker turned tail and ran the other way.

      I kept my injured arm by my side and waved the other arm, flagging down the car. Two guys getting ready to race down the alley caught me and my bloody arm in their headlights.

      They cut the engine and opened their doors.

      4

      “Discipline” may be identified neither with an institution nor with an apparatus; it is a type of power, a modality for its exercise, comprising a whole set of instruments, techniques, procedures, levels of application, targets: it is a “physics” or an “anatomy” of power, a technology. And it may be taken over either by “specialized” institutions (the penitentiaries or “houses of correction” of the nineteenth century), or by institutions that use it as an essential instrument for a particular end (schools, hospitals), or by preexisting authorities that find in it a means of reinforcing or reorganizing their internal mechanisms of power.

      Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish

      I sat on the ground next to my rescuers’ car with my head between my knees, a tee shirt loaned by one of them pressed to the cut on my arm. Lots of commotion around me that I struggled to sort out. I seemed to see it through gauze.

      A car squealed up and braked facing the kids’ dented Chevy.

      I raised my head to look. The University had arrived in the person of its private police force (the second largest police force in Illinois, following the City of Chicago). The university cops had by and large seemed okay to me. Many of them were said to be moonlighters from the suburbs. I’d met a couple when we’d had a break-in at the departmental office last spring. Frost’s computer had been stolen while she was out to lunch. She hadn’t bothered to lock her office door. The officers pointed out this was not a good practice, though Frost had then given them such a glare they had departed without delay.

      An African American woman in uniform pushed through the crowd of neighbors now gathering from other homes that backed on to the alley and maybe even a few from the pizza place on the corner. She knelt down beside me.

      “I’m Officer Matthews, University Police. Do you need medical attention?” She had a short, brown fringe of hair peeking out from under the visor of her cap, large, warm brown eyes and skin the color of caramels. Her uniform trousers strained at the thigh and hip. She looked like a slightly plump kindergarten teacher, though a kindergarten teacher with a side arm. Maybe I should have stayed a cop, gotten a job policing the university rather than trying to teach at it.

      “Ma’am, I asked you if you need medical attention.”

      I made an effort to sit up straighter, look her in the eye.

      “Yes, yes I think so. Yes I do. I was cut and I think it’s pretty deep. “

      I stupidly lifted the arm my assailant had slashed and I felt the pain jar my whole side. I gasped and slumped back down against the car.

      Matthews called over to another officer who was standing at the back of the car questioning my high school heroes.

      “Mel, call for an ambulance. Now.”

      She turned back to me.

      “Ma’am, assistance is on the way. Name?”

      Out came the notebook.

      “Kristin Ginelli, 6756 S. Rosemont. That house over there.”

      I used my head instead of my arm this time and just nodded toward my house. I realized I still had on my headband from class. I looked down. I still had on my white Tae Kwon Do uniform, though now splashes of blood were visible between the various patches on the front. I wondered what Officer Matthews though I was playing at, running around in a martial arts uniform with blood on it.

      “Can you tell me what happened?”

      Matthews was still squatting next to me, looking concerned. Maybe she wouldn’t hold my outfit against me.

      “Male, above medium height, stocking mask and knife.”

      I shuddered involuntarily. Matthews took off her own jacket and put it around my shoulders.

      “Thanks. Anyway, I was taking some trash out to the cans and he just slashed at me. Just slashed down with the knife. He didn’t say anything. Just tried to knife me.”

      “Is that how you sustained the injury?”

      “No, not then. I . . . we struggled and I knocked him down, but he came at me again and tried to, tried to stab me, I guess, but I pulled away and the knife just got me on the arm.”

      I nodded toward my tee shirt covered arm but didn’t move it.

      “Then the kids pulled into the alley and he took off.”

      “Race? Age?”

      I struggled to remember if I’d seen his hands. Gloves, I thought.

      “No, can’t get a fix on that. Gloves, dark alley. Age, I’m not sure. Not young. Older male build. Tall. About as tall as I am. Male. I’m sure of that. He was wearing a stocking mask.”

      “Did he speak? Ask for money? Anything?

      “He grunted twice. Once when I kicked him and once when I knocked him down but he never said a word. Not a word. One minute I’m at the cans, and the next minute this knife is swinging down at me.”

      Matthews stopped writing for a minute, looked me in the eyes.

      “You kicked him? Knocked him down?”

      “Yes.”

      I didn’t feel up to explaining.

      “But you didn’t recognize him?”

      “No.”

      I knew what she was thinking. This was not your typical bash and grab robbery attempt like most the crime in Hyde Park. It didn’t even sound like an attempted sexual assault. I am not a rival gang member. What else was there? Was there a maniac running around in a stocking mask with a knife?

      Running around. Running around.

      Suddenly a thought so vivid, so horrible popped into my mind that I jerked backwards and hit my head on the car door.

      “Are you all right?”

      I struggled to get up.

      “No, no. Let me go. The back door—my house—I didn’t lock it. The perp. He could have gotten in. My six-year-old sons and a student couple are in there.”

      I

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