Host: Sarah Austin Jenness

[Uncanny Valley theme music by The Drift playing]

Sarah: [00:01:28] Welcome to The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Sarah Austin Jenness. This hour includes six stories told by women around the world, some from our open mic StorySLAMs and some from our community program where we craft stories with people who might not think they have stories to tell. So, get ready because we're going from a trailer park in Phoenix to Pittsburgh, Melbourne and Seattle, then to the high mountains of Nepal, and finally an apartment building in Manhattan. [crowd murmuring] We met our first storyteller, we'll call her Katie Smith, in a Moth community workshop that explored family homelessness. She had enough material right from the start to write a book. Katie told this story at Seattle's Fremont Abbey, which was actually also a temporary shelter in the 1990s. [applause] Here's Katie live at The Moth at a night we called Home, Lost and Found.

Katie: [00:02:22] Picture it. It's November of 1977 and my family and I are pulling into Phoenix, Arizona in the late 1950s, maybe early 1960s. Four Door Ford Fairlane, dirt brown. We live in it. We've lived out here on the road for three and a half years. Sometimes it's a car, sometimes it's a van, sometimes it's a yellow school bus. But we've lived out here for three and a half years. And I'm sitting in the backseat and I'm cross legged because there's so much junk that you can't put your feet on the floor. There's so much trash in our car. And we're pulling into Phoenix, Arizona.

Now, my mother's in the passenger seat. My older sister Abby is right next to me. She's 11 and I'm 9. And my mother's boyfriend is in the driver's seat. His name is Lucky and he sure as hell isn't. [audience chuckles] And we're pulling into Phoenix, Arizona, and my sister and I, we're really excited and I'll tell you why. Because we're going to get a house. We're going to get a trailer. We might even get to go to school this winter, which is pretty awesome for us. Now imagine in a city. There's houses and neighborhoods and I don't know what you think of when you think of a trailer park. There's old people and there's the little gravel yards. Well, that's not where we're at. See, every city in America has one of our trailer parks. It's over here. And it's where the monsters live. And it's where the whores and the drug dealers and the people who are afraid of INS. It's where the old people who can't afford a house live.

There are Bambies and fifth wheelers and campers that are actually up on sticks, and that's where people live. But then, me and Abby were really excited. You know why? Because we get indoor plumbing. You have no idea [chuckles]. Out here for three and a half years, there's a mason jar or a bucket. We're lucky in the winter we get a house and we get a trailer. It has shag carpet. This is 1977. And this one's old [chuckles] for 1977. It's got the wood panel walls and the shag carpet but we've got a room. We've got a room with a door and it doesn't close altogether, but that's okay with us because we've got a room. We've got a bunk bed and I'm on the bottom, Abby's up there on the top.

And every trailer park, like where we live, there's a 7-Eleven down on the corner or a Circle K or something like that. There's always a Kwik-E-Mart. Me and my sister, we go down and we scavenge because that's what we like to do. Be surprised things people throw away. People throw away treasures. People throw away food. Now us, we scored ourselves a Barbie Dream House. Let me tell you what, it's pink. It's covered in Magic Marker. Some pretty, not so pretty drawings. But we took our own Magic markers and we turned them into flowers. There's one of those elevators that goes up and down. Then we took and it's broken. So, we took a shoelace and we made it so it goes up and down. And we got ourselves a little room.

I got myself a bag of Barbie parts that I have been carrying it around for three years. Pieces of it have been growing. We put them all together. We play, let's have a good time. And this is where we are. Now, it's Christmas and we're sitting in our little trailer and we're at a round dinner table. Now, me and Abby, we've gone and scored ourselves in our scavenge. We went and flocked Christmas trees. You got to picture it. It's white plastic and it's pretty scary. [giggles] We got ourselves some Christmas decorations. We got ourselves some lights, but were too afraid to plug them in because we figured if somebody plugged them in, they're probably going to burn down our house.

Okay, so we've got ourselves and we're here in this little dining room. And the tree is in the corner, it's got some bad decorations on it, but we're pretty pleased with ourselves. I got five whole dollars to go buy Christmas presents with. I didn't really spend it on presents, probably spent it on food or candy or something [chuckles]. But I made Christmas presents with a little bit of yarn. I'm not very good with the crocheting, so I just used my fingers and I made a toothbrush holder that you can hang from the rear-view mirror. I made a little-- like a little scarf that's kind of sad looking. And I made a potholder, you can weave it with your fingers. All little girls do it. I'm sitting there at the table and Mom's got a canned ham and a box of Stove Top stuffing and some instant mashed potatoes and we're having dinner.

And then it starts. He's mad because I gave him bad presents and it's my fault. He starts yelling. Mom starts yelling back. He starts hitting mom and mom hits him back. This happens every day. They're either hitting each other or they're hitting us. Because that's the way it is in our world every day in all the houses next to us. And all the houses we come from. I think it's my fault. So here we are, me and Abby, we've gone to bed. I got pajamas, which is pretty exciting. On the road I sleep in my clothes because you kind of have to. But I got pajamas and I'm on the bottom bunk and they're screaming and yelling. And we're awake because while on the road we get downers to go to sleep and uppers to work. And here we don't have any, so we're wide awake. He's dragging mom down the hall by her hair.

We can see a little hole in our door. She's got Mama by her hair and she is thrashing back and forth trying to get out of his grip, and her hands are up like this. She's flopping back and forth like a fish. And here's where it's different. My older sister Abby, she takes herself from the top bunk and she launches herself through the door on top of him. And it's different because he drops mama and he takes my sister and he rips her off and he chucks her into the wall maybe 5-6 feet. These are those wood panel walls. There's a hole where her head hit. She's kind of disoriented, but she's able to stand up. And mama yells, "Run." Mom does not yell run very often. This happens all the time. But when it happens, we do. So, we head out the door.

You got to imagine-- picture it. It's a long stretch way down to the 7-Eleven. There's broken asphalt, broken glass, and I'm running barefoot and we're running and mom's screaming. Now I don't scream anymore. I don't scream running one. I don't cry. I just run. Because I know that's how I'm going to live. And so we're running. We're running down towards the 7-Eleven. It's like the face of fucking God. We're getting to the 7-Eleven. There's Santa Claus. It's bright fucking red. It's Rudolph's red nose. And here we are, we are running. You got to imagine it. The lights around us are turning off. All of the neighbors' lights are going off as we pass them. Because nobody will call because they don't want the cops there any more than we did. But we are running and I am not screaming.

And here we are, we're at the 7-Eleven. And that lights come, there's flashing lights. It's finally Christmas lights, and it's the police. And they take us to one of those shelters, those battered women's shelters. The walls are all neutral colors and the mattresses are all rubber and they got giant jars of peanut butter on the bottom shelves with spoons for all us poor kids. But we're not safe yet. Me and Abby, we know that. And it's because we are still here with her. She is as quick with the back of her hand as he is, sometimes faster and she turns more quickly. We are not safe because we are with her, because she will go back and we know that. It's not very long of course. She calls him on the payphone. We meet him in a parking lot.

There we are, piling in. This time, it's a Lincoln Continental, rust colored. It's huge. It's got a lot of space in it, doesn't have very much trash in it yet. And we're piling in and we're moving on. Same thing. We're headed, I don't know, east, I think to Oklahoma, bunch of Bible thumpers and whatever, who knows? We've been there before. Only it isn't because not very far down the road we pull into a Greyhound bus station. Mom buys two bus tickets and she puts us on this bus. She says, "You're going to go visit Sydney for two weeks. I'll come get you." She turns around, she's walking off the bus and I got a window seat. I'm pretty excited. I called shotgun. I like the window seat, keeps me from getting car sick. And I'm sitting there in the window and Mom's walking away. She says, "I love you. Be good. I don't want people thinking you are trash." And she's out there in the car.

Our bus is pulling away. And as clear as a bell, I'm looking out the window at mom in the car and a handful of Christmas presents on the back dash, which would have been where I was sleeping. And I think I am 9 years old, only 9, and I will live to see 10.

[applause]

Sarah: [00:12:35] That was Katie Smith, and we're not using her real name. [pleasant music playing] She's a self-described opsimath, which if you don't know, is a person who begins to study or learn only late in life. Katie didn't see her mother again until she was 16. She's a writer and she said taking part in this Moth community workshop made her writing more brave. We'll have another story from this collaboration with the Seattle University Project on family homelessness later in this hour. Next, Catherine Palmer at an open mic Moth Night in Pittsburgh, where we partner with public radio station WESA. The theme was Last Minute. Here's Catherine, live at The Moth.

Catherine: [00:13:24] I'm a college professor, and if you are or were one of those students who do things assignments at the last minute, I'm your worst nightmare. I have no sympathy for the student who gets in trouble doing an assignment at last minute. Printers break, networks go down. But if you're doing things in a timely manner, this doesn't matter because you have time to fix that. But if you're doing it at the last minute, you're completely derailed. So, if I didn't care when things were due, I wouldn't give them a due date. No need to tell me your computer crashed. I know computers crash.

Honestly, in all of my schooling, I only ever pushed one assignment to the last minute. Unfortunately, it was this critical assignment in my PhD program where I really needed to complete a research paper, impress a professor, so he'd invite me to do research in his lab. So, I sat down on the weekend to look at what I needed to do. It was due on Monday, and I realized I had a week worth of work in front of me. And I didn't have a week. But I figured if I ignored personal hygiene and eating, [audience chuckle] I might just pull this off. So, I started to work like a woman possessed. It's kind of exciting to have that kind of deadline. And I really think to this day, I did some of my best writing in those hours. But we'll never know, because 13 hours into this, my computer crashed. [audience chuckles]

So it's the mid-1980s. I had one of the new Macintosh computers. And when something goes wrong with those computers, you actually get a picture of a bomb right in the middle of the screen. [audience chuckles] And I remember staring at the bomb, thinking, I would be in better shape if an actual bomb went off in my apartment. [audience laughter] A professor would have to accept that as an excuse, but that was not the case. So, the problem here was I had been working like such a lunatic that I hadn't printed anything, I hadn't backed anything up, I had nothing. So, I had this disk with all the information that couldn't be read by this computer. But I had bought the computer locally, and I thought, “I'm going to go down to the store. There were a lot of computer whiz kids at the store. Maybe they can retrieve this.”

So I got down there and I arrived unbathed, on the verge of tears and wearing clothes that were also unbathed. [audience chuckles] And I told my very sad story to the guy at the desk. And he said, "Well, we have this new intern named Mark. He's right around the corner. Go tell him. He might be able to help you.” So, I went over and I repeated my sad story. And Mark said-- he took my phone number and he said, "When the store closes, I'll have some time. I'll try to save this, but if I can't, I'll maybe be able to print it for you and you can use that." I thanked him profusely. From a little bit of a distance, I had realized how disgusting I was and I headed home.

A few hours later the phone rings and I brace myself, it was Mark. And he said, "I have good news and I have bad news." And I thought, well, they probably couldn't retrieve anything, but maybe they could print it. I said, "Well, what's the bad news?" And he said, "We can't retrieve anything. We can't print anything. It's gone." And I remember hearing myself say, "What the hell is the good news?" To which he replied, "I'd love to take you to dinner." [audience laughter] Honestly, that wasn't good news. [audience chuckles] Now, any young woman who has a mother or other young girlfriends knows that you don't ever accept a last-minute invitation on a Saturday night because you look pathetic and as if you had no plans, but actually I was pathetic. [audience chuckles] And I had a feeling I would never ever have any plans because I had destroyed my life not getting this assignment done.

The other thing young women know is if you're going to go out with a stranger, you meet them at a neutral place and you call at least one friend and say who you're going out with and where you're going. So, I proceeded to call no one and give Mark my address. [audience laughter] I had a whole new plan. I thought if this guy's a murderer, this could solve all my problems. [audience laughter] So I was thinking, if you're murdered, no one's going to pay attention that you didn't turn in your homework. They're going to be really upset. And I daydream in very vivid color and I could already see my parents getting all this sympathy. But then I saw the news kind of transitioning to what poor decisions I had made. [audience chuckles] 

But I really thought my parents would consider this a call to action, start a foundation, and educate other young women so this wouldn't happen to them. [audience laughter] So I had this all reconciled. I actually showered and put on new clothes and Mark arrived. Now, you've already figured out he didn't murder me. [audience chuckles] But for all young women in the audience, the fact that I'm still alive does not make any of these decisions less stupid. So, he didn't murder me and actually a few months later I married him. [cheers and applause] So the professor that I was trying to impress, oddly enough was more impressed that my computer crashed and I fell in love.

So although if you are one of my students in a class and you are doing something in the last minute and your computer crashes, you will most likely get an F, but you just might find the love of your life.

[cheers and applause] 

Sarah: [00:18:22] [upbeat music playing] That was Catherine Palmer at one of our StorySLAM competitions in Pittsburgh. She says she's still type A and probably getting worse with age. To see a wedding photo of Catherine and her forever IT guide, go to our website themoth.org. After our break. A 43-year-old woman learns to swim and a teenage girl grieves after an accidental fire.

Jay: [00:18:46] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by PRX.

[crowd murmuring] 

Sarah: [00:19:24] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Sarah Austin Jenness. Cal Wilson is a comedian in Australia. She came to our very first Moth SLAM in Melbourne where we partner with the Australian broadcasting company ABC RN and she threw her name in the hat for a chance to tell a story. [cheers and applause] Here's Cal Wilson live at The Moth StorySLAM in Australia.

Cal: [00:19:50] By the time I had my first swimming lesson at the age of five, I was already terrified of the water. I don't really remember how it started. I think I was held under the water by an older kid. All I remember is always feeling the panic and the terror and water being forced up my nose and I just hated the water. But I eventually learned to swim at the age of 43 [audience chuckles]. So, 38 years in between, it makes me sound like a slow learner, but I spent those years just avoiding the water because I just hated it. I would make up any excuse. I didn't like the beach because the sand would get on my book. But really, I was just scared of the water.

And we had school sports at high school and everyone had to go in the swimming and everyone else swam a length but they made me and three other losers swim a width [audience chuckles] and I got two strokes in and I stopped and I ran the rest of the way [audience chuckles] and I still got last. So, I've always been scared of the water. And then when my son was born six years ago. The thing-- by the time he was born, I was used to it being a part of my identity as an adult who can't swim. And it became like a mildly interesting fact to start a conversation at parties. Like as an adult, if you go, "I can't swim," everyone's immediately like, "Really? How come? Why not?" And they start interrogating you as if you've made it up. [audience chuckles] 

But the thing is, if I was going to invent something about myself, I would make it more interesting than not being able to swim. [audience chuckles] I would have said something like, "I'm really good at archery, I'm a magnificent archer." Or I would have said, "Oh, my father was partially eaten by a bear." [audience awe] I would have said something better than I just can't swim. So, when my son was born, I didn't want him to have the same fate as me. And so, I made sure that we started swimming lessons with him when he was tiny. He was seven months old. And when they're that age, you have to go in the water with them. But it was okay because it was only waist deep, I didn't have to put my face in.

And at that stage, when you are swimming with a baby, all you're basically doing is you're just swishing them around. It's like you're washing a marrow. [audience chuckles] Nothing very much happens in the swimming lesson. And then they get a bit older and they start to do more stuff like crawl off a mat into the water and you catch them. And I dropped mine, [audience laughter] I caught him again. I got him out of the water. I was panicking and I kind of fished him out of the water. And he came up with a smile on his face like he was Esther Williams at a water ballet. [audience chuckles] He just-- I was like, “We are not the same person.” And he's loved swimming ever since.

Last year when he turned five, I had this revelation that he loves swimming so much, he loves the water so much that I am going to be spending a lot of my time with him in the water. And I was like--, as his parent, I should be able to enjoy that and I should also be able to rescue him if something goes wrong and I should be able to swim.  Also, the secondary reason was I can't let my 5-year-old beat me. [audience laughter] So I started having swimming lessons last year at the same swimming school as my son, which was a very leveling experience. We weren't in the same class, obviously, because that would be weird, but were in the next lane to each other.

It is a weird thing [audience chuckles] to look around a pool that is full of swimming lessons, and realize that there are 50 people in that pool and you are the only person who is older than five. [audience chuckles] And you also think, “Don't think about what's gone in the water.” [audience chuckles] The first swimming lesson I had, I was terrified. And it sounds so stupid, but I was terrified. And the teacher went, "It's okay. All I want you to do is put your face in the water and breathe out." And I was like, “That is the worst thing you could ask me to do.” And so, I put my face in the water, and I freaked out. And I stood up again, and she went, "I know what your problem is. You've got to breathe air out your nose." And I went, “What are you talking about?”

It was a revelation to me. I had no idea. I had no idea you were supposed to blow air out your nose when you swam. I just thought you guys were better at dealing with the horrible torment of having water forced up your nose. [audience chuckles] I thought everyone just dealt with it and was like, "It feels like shit. But I'm fine. I'm fine." [audience laughter] And so, she cured me. She cured my breathing. It was amazing. The first swimming lesson, I did like five meters with a kickboard breathing, and I felt like Ian Thorpe. [audience chuckles] I was like--, obviously an Ian Thorpe with lowered expectations, but an Ian Thorpe, right? And I was like, “That's it. I'm cured. I can swim. I can totally do it.” And I went back to the next lesson thinking that I was not afraid of water anymore.

But this thing happens when you've been afraid of something for so long, even though intellectually, you know you don't have to be frightened of it anymore, your hind brain doesn't believe you. And so I went back to the second lesson. I put my face in the water going, "It's okay. I breathe out air through my nose. It's okay." But my hind brain was going, "No, the wetness kills us. Game over, man. Game over." And it took me weeks to get over the fear of putting my face in the water. But gradually, I got better and better, and I learned how to swim. And I stopped using a kickboard. And then finally, finally at the end of the term, six months after I started, because I didn't want to rush it because it had been 38 years. So, I don't pick it up quickly. [audience chuckles] 

At the end of six months I swam my first 25-meter length and I got to the end of the pool and I was so euphoric and my little boy was at the end of the pool and I went, "Mummy just swam my first length," and my son went, "Good job mummy, go and do another one." [audience laughter] And I had this revelation that I've done a whole lot of things for the first time. I've swum my first length, I've gone to a pool on purpose for pleasure with my husband and I've swam so much, I got sick from lactic acid and I was sick in the car park and it was amazing. [audience chuckles]

The only side effect is that now that I can swim. I've got to tell everyone about it really quickly because at the moment I'm still a 44-year-old woman who's just learned to swim. But in six months’ time I will just be a 44-year-old woman who can swim. And that's every 44-year-old woman. [audience laughter] And so I'm going to have to come up with a new story at parties that makes me mildly interesting. So, I'm going to go with being a magnificent archer. [audience laughter] Thank you.

[cheers and applause]

Sarah: [00:25:37] [pleasant melodious music playing] That was Cal Wilson at our first Moth Story SLAM in Melbourne, Australia where theme was, you guessed it, Firsts. She's regularly on Australian TV and tours with her one-woman stand-up shows. Next, Liz Allen, who was part of our Moth community workshop that explored the issue of family homelessness [applause] with this story of losing her family's house in a fire. Here's Liz live at The Moth in Seattle, Washington.

Liz: [00:26:12] It was a quarter to midnight, New Year's Eve 1997. We got a call that our house burned down. I was 13 at that time, my sister was 15 and we were on a family ski trip. So, when we came back to the house, we had just our ski clothes and we came back to like an empty carcass. I remember my dad turning around and being like, "Guess we should go to a hotel." And my mom being like, "There'll be an indoor pool. It's a good thing. We packed our suits." And so went, we checked into this hotel and kind of started an adventure for me. We sometimes got to eat room service or go to the continental breakfast before school.

My mom had went back to the house and rescued a couple bowls and she would put them out on the counter with some fruit and cereal for the morning so we'd feel a little bit like home. So, my mom was kind of a ray of sunshine. I called her the month of May. She was a secure attachment for me, really, as a kid. My dad was-- drank quite a bit, and he was fairly inconsistent, like, emotionally also. His physical presence was really inconsistent. But she kind of made the best of it always. If he didn't show up for dinner, we would sing into spatulas around the kitchen. I remember her trying to teach me what vain meant. It was like a vocab word in sixth grade. She put on Carly Simon, You're So Vain. And we listened to it, like, 14 times. [chuckles] 

And she really made the best of every situation. And this was no exception. I remember sitting on my bed. My sister and I, at this point, for the first time ever, were sharing a room. In the hotel, the kitchen was in between, kind of dank kitchen and tiny living space. My parents were on the other side. And so, I was sitting on my bed, trying to do my homework, and I realized I needed scissors. But when your house burns down, you don't have things like scissors or markers. I mean, you really don't have anything. And I remember being pretty frustrated. My mom was like, "Well, we'll just go to Staples." And I was like, “School supplies [excited] in the middle of the year. This is awesome.” [audience chuckles]

And we dragged my sister. We walked out of the room and down the hallway, down the elevator, across the lobby, across the parking lot, and went to Staples. And I got to get a whole bunch of stuff. I got scissors, I got a ruler, I got some markers. My mom let me buy. It's kind of ridiculous. My mom let me buy a $24 stapler. [audience laughter] It was like two pounds. It was for a desk for adults. We had no desk, [chuckles] I was not an adult. [audience chuckles] But it was awesome. It felt really special. And of course, there's no place to put that stuff in a hotel room. So, it just sat in the Staples bag on the floor.

And that's kind of what my life was like at that point. I was a little bit famous in school. I got to get out of gym class, and things seemed to be moving along, which is why it was a little bit surprising. I woke up a couple weeks later in the middle of the night like 1:30 in the morning, and to crying. Now there's a lot of hotel noises. There's weddings go on and grandparents visit grandkids, etc. But this was a different-- Like a different sort of noise. And it felt really close. I remember pulling back the covers to my bed, and creeping out towards the door to the kitchen. There was a light coming out through the bottom and I could hear crying coming from the kitchen. And I just remember being a little nervous, not sure what to do.

So I like cracked the door just to peek so I could kind of peer in. And there's the fluorescent light of the hotel room and the kind of drab kitchen cabinets. On the counter was these individual yogurts, tiny bags of carrots. When you have a hotel refrigerator for a family of four, you can't buy the big yogurts, you have to buy individual stuff so it fits. And in the middle of the kitchen was my mother on her knees, crying. She had on these like pink rubber gloves, a sponge and some soft scrub. I don't know where those items came from. And she was cleaning our refrigerator. It was confusing to me as a kid, right, I lived in a hotel. People came and made our beds and cleaned our stuff for us.

I didn't know what she was doing, why she was crying. It was like 1:30 in the morning and why she was cleaning. So, I just watched her and I really felt her loss. It was the first time it dawned on me that this was like real loss. Like we had lost our photo albums and she had lost her wedding dress. I had lost my bike and my stuffed animals, my favorite pillow. And we had lost other things too, these intangibles, the driveway where we learned to ride our bikes and the banisters that we pretended to be horses. The garden she and I kept in the back. It was the first time I realized we weren't going home. We were not ever going to go home. And my eyes started to fill and I closed the door. I rested my face against the door frame and I cried. And together we grieved.

[applause]

Sarah: [00:31:44] That was Liz Allen telling her story at a Moth showcase called Home Lost and Found. Liz loves to climb up rocks, bike down hills, and buy plane tickets. She's now a human rights lawyer in Seattle, Washington. [In the Round by Stellwagen Symphonette playing] After our break, a doctor's life is threatened by armed militia. And an 80-year-old is shocked in a good way when she returns to her apartment after having a stroke, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.

Jay: [00:32:31] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.

Sarah: [00:33:09] Welcome back to The Moth Radio hour from PRX. I'm Sarah Austin Jenness. This is a Women in the World hour and our last two stories were unearthed thanks to our community program which began in 1999, where we offer storytelling workshops and performance opportunities to people who feel underheard. You're about to hear Dr. Kusum Thapa. She told the story at a Moth night called Vital Signs along with other global health experts from the Aspen New Voices Fellowship. She speaks deliberately as English is her second language and she said she was trying not to cry. She had never told this story in public before this night. [cheers and applause] Here's Kusum Thapa live at The Moth.

Kusum: [00:33:54] I'm in the high mountains of Nepal in an assignment with the government. As an obstetrician, I've been helping out in a health camp there. This is almost eight hours drive from the hospital where I have been working. I'm missing my colleagues there. I'm thinking about my family because I've left them now for quite some time and I get a phone call. I quickly grab the phone, I think it's from home, when suddenly I hear a strange man's voice. "I want you to change the report of a young girl who is 13 years whom you examined two months back and gave the verdict." Before I could even think about what he was talking, he went on to say, "I belong to the armed rebel and you know what the consequences would be if you don't."

I was very frightened, disturbed. These people had a reputation of killing, extortion, kidnapping. I just did not know what this meant for me. Flashes of this young girl came to my mind. She had been brought into my office with her mother and accompanied by the police. She looked frightened, barely able to speak. She was just 13 years and she had bruises all over her body with clear evidence of sexual assault. I had given the verdict of sexual assault. As I thought about it, I was really worried. My motherly feelings really got ignited. I thought for this young girl and I quickly then rang up home and told my son to stay indoors and be safe.

The next day, the military escort took me back to the hospital. Apparently, the rebels had demanded that the medical superintendent call me back. As I traveled down the eight hours journey, it almost seemed like eight days. Flashes of this young girl kept coming to my mind. She had gathered up so much courage to report this case in a time when so many more like her were suffering in silence. As I entered the medical superintendent's room, it was really hot and small. I looked there. I saw these six men seated comfortably in the couch. They looked like normal people, like any of us. But I knew at once that these were the rebels. The medical superintendent asked me to sit down, and as I sat down, he told me that these people wanted me to review the report. I knew what that meant because I had already received the phone call. I asked the medical superintendent that I wanted to talk to him alone.

With a lot of hesitation, the rebels left the room. I told the medical superintendent that I would not change the report. I was ready to face the consequences. I told him the consequences would be that they would kill me. I would rather die once than die over and over again if I changed the report. He looked at me. "Is this your final decision?" I said “Yes.” As I walked out of his room, I saw a few of my colleagues there, and that comforted me because I knew that they would be in the committee to review the case and they would definitely stand by me. I had the military escort take me back home, where I met my son, hugged him and just cried. Every knock at the door frightened us, and we waited for yet another phone call.

After about an hour, I got a phone call. It was from the medical superintendent's office. The person at the phone said, the case has been solved. I was really excited. I said, "Wow. So, the rebels have agreed to it.”  It was not in their nature to accept these things. The person said, "The verdict has been changed. They have given a verdict that the girl is not sexually assaulted." I was stunned. I sat on the floor all numbed. I felt for this small girl. Her last effort to really get any justice was lost. I felt for myself also my credibility had been lost. I had a reputation and a good recognition in that area. In a fraction of a second, that had all gone.

I thought of these colleagues of mine. I thought of them because they had themselves seen girls even younger than this one. And now they had turned their back to all of them. They had turned their back to me. I felt I could no longer now work with them. So, the next day I gave notice. I left this place which was home to me and the work which I so much enjoyed. These were colleagues I would be really going out with, having Saturday outings, having dinner. I would really be supporting them. So, much so that at one time I'd even asked my husband to donate blood for one of their clients and now they had all turned their back on me.

I left home and now I know and I did understand, and I do understand what it is to leave home and to be displaced from home. I was stepping into the unknown. I was just thinking that it was really disturbing for me to think about leaving home, leaving my practice, leaving my colleagues, and treading into what really seemed an unknown place for me. But one thing was sure, what was sure was I would always speak out for these girls. These girls deserve justice. They deserve the right to live with dignity. I decided I would be their voice. Thank you.

[cheers and applause]

Sarah: [00:41:47] That was Dr. Kusum Thapa. [soft melodious music playing] Kusum lives with her husband and her son in Kathmandu, but her home in this story has been deserted for over a decade. Kusum's life is still dedicated to reducing preventable deaths of women and she's working now to train frontline health workers to respond to gender-based violence in Nepal.

[crowd murmuring] So we've come to our last storyteller in this hour, Beverly Engleman. Bev was part of a workshop with Caring Across Generations, an organization dedicated to reframing conversations around old age. Larry Rosen, one of our story directors, went every day for a week to Beverly's apartment to help her craft what you're about to hear. [cheers and applause] She was in her 80s when she told this story about the aftermath of a stroke. Here's Beverly live at The Moth in New York City.

Beverly: [00:42:45] I've always thought of myself as a very independent person, doing things for myself and by myself. My father used to tell me, "Being independent is probably the best thing you can do for yourself because when you rely on yourself, you will never be disappointed or let down when other people don't live up to the expectations you have of what they should be doing for you." And this is the way I chose to live my life. So, it's not surprising that later on, when I had two hip replacements, in both instances I took myself to the hospital. I never thought of doing it any other way. And then as I got older and arthritis became a very important part of my life and I found that I couldn't walk as well as I used to, I went from a cane to a walker.

The walker had four wheels and handbrakes and a basket in which I could put things and a seat that I could sit on if I needed to. It became part of my life and a constant companion. And I felt it deserved some kind of recognition. So, I decided to call it Alice Walker.  [audience laughter] Now, aside from the obvious reason I chose that name, Alice Walker and Celie, the main character from The Color Purple, led very difficult lives, but they were survivors, and I felt I shared this with them. Over my 80 years, I've had some hard times, but I am a survivor. So, Alice and I walked all over the Upper west side together. There was no place I felt I could not go and nothing that I could not do with Alice by my side, or should I say, in front of me. [audience chuckles]

And all of this came to a crashing halt on September 20th of 2014 when an MRI revealed that I had had a stroke. And I wound up at New York Presbyterian Hospital Stroke Unit. It was there that I encountered two of the most devastating symbols of total dependence, the call button and the bedpan. The first time I rang the call button, it took so long for the nurse to respond, I was sure she was coming from a galaxy far, far away. [audience chuckles] And if there's anything worse than waiting for a bedpan, it's waiting and waiting and waiting for someone to take it away. I realized how dependent I had become on the people around me, and it was a very frightening experience. And after five days, the doctor said, "You're not ready to go home yet. You won't be able to take care of yourself. You have to go to a rehab place."

The social worker gave me a choice of several places. And I had heard about Amsterdam House, and it had a pretty good reputation, so that was my choice. It couldn't have been a better choice. I was there for three months, and every day I would get physical therapy and occupational therapy, and even on the weekends, I would get the same thing. I got all the help I needed, but I was encouraged at every step of the way to do as much as I could for myself. And so, I went from the wheelchair back to Alice, who had been waiting patiently for me in my room. [audience chuckles] And we were able to go to the bathroom by ourselves. And instead of having the food brought to my room, I was able to walk back and forth to the dining room three times a day. And I even was able to get outside for short walks. I was back to living the kind of life that I was used to.

In January, it was determined that I was ready to go home. And while I was anxious to get back to my apartment, I was a little overwhelmed by the idea that I was going to be by myself, even though I knew I was going to get physical therapy and occupational therapy on an outpatient basis and even services from visiting nurse people. When I got home, the first thing I saw when I got off the elevator was a bunch of balloons that had been attached to my front door welcoming me home. And I thought, “Wow, this was totally unexpected.” And that was just the beginning. When I opened my front door, this old 40-year-old carpeting had been removed, leaving a bare wooden floor and extraneous furniture that had collected over the past 40 years was gone. So, it was easy for me to maneuver my walker around the apartment. In the kitchen, my refrigerator had been cleaned out and was restocked with a fresh assortment of food. My old mattress was gone, replaced by the one that I had ordered online and it was set up ready for me to use. And my Venetian blinds that were as bad shape as the carpeting had been removed and my apartment was filled with light. And I thought, “Who has done all this for me?”

I found out it was a team of people from my building including the building staff, my neighbors, and my friends. And I was totally overwhelmed because in all honesty, in all the time I lived there, well, I was friendly and greet people on the elevator and say, "Hi, how are you?" I never thought of asking them for anything, and I never really got to know anyone that well. But I decided since they had done this for me, it was time for me to reach out to them. And so, I put a note on my front door and it said, "The front door is unlocked. Please come in for a visit when you have a chance." And over the past eight months, almost every day, someone has come in sometimes to ask me if I needed anything, but a lot of times, just to come in and talk.

We would share stories about our lives, about our families, friends, things were interested in. And I realized, “You know what? I'm not alone. I'm part of a caring community of wonderful people, and not just anonymous tenant in a New York City apartment building.” And I thought, “It's not such a terrible thing to get help when I need it, especially when someone says to me, ‘How can I help you?’" This allows me to determine what it is that I need and want. And so now I choose to think of myself as an independent person with benefits. [audience laughter] 

[cheers and applause] 

Sarah: [00:51:06] That was Beverly Engelman at a showcase of stories developed in Moth workshops in underserved communities in Manhattan. [joyful music playing] Bev still lives in the same New York City apartment building. And Larry Rosen, who worked with Beverly, said, "Yes, she really does have a sign up that says, 'Door is open, Come on in.'" Beyond a place for telling stories, The Moth is a place for people practice the art of listening. So, thanks for listening here with us today. We hope you'll join us next time.

[Uncanny Valley theme music by The Drift playing]

Jay: [00:51:47] Your host this hour was Sarah Austin Jenness. Sarah directed the stories in the show along with Larry Rosen. The rest of The Moth's directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Jenifer Hixson and Meg Bowles. Production support from Mooj Zadie. The Moth would like to thank the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for their support of The Moth Community program, as well as Andrew Quinn and Rachael Strecher from the Aspen Institute and Catherine Hinrichsen from the Seattle University Project on Family Homelessness. Moth Stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Most Moth events are recorded by Argot Studios in New York City, supervised by Paul Ruest. Our theme music is by The Drift. All of the music in this hour was from Stellwagen Symphonette. You can find links to all the music we use at our website.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison with Viki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, The National Endowment for the Arts, and The John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.