a car zoomed past us, nearly making us swerve off the road and down into the gorge.  I caught sight of the man's face.  It was he who tried to pull Joan out of the car.  We drove on the short distance to my house, looking behind us to see if anyone was following.  No one was.  We sat in my driveway for a few minutes, but neither of us wanted to talk.  We asked each other if we were all right, several times, and finally parted. I went inside, and noticed my hands were shaking. I burst into tears. There was no word for what I felt, at least no single word.  Injustice, terror, sorrow, rage, exhaustion, some huge unspeakable longing for protection. Nothing had happened, not really.  I was safe.  I hadn't been beaten or raped or stabbed or hurled over the cliff, but I could see the possibility; I FELT the possibility in a way I never had before.  I had certainly heard stories from friends, mostly non-white friends,  of instances of this kind, and although what happened to me paled (you'll pardon the pun) in comparison, still, I had a glimmer of understanding now as to what it felt like to be Other.  In a situation involving Us vs Them, I had been Them, Those people, someone outside the circle of protection. I wondered what the men in the cars were doing now that they were presumably now at their destinations.  Did they feel any shame?