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The ParkNovember 04, 2009 From To Be Rather Than to Seem. From seventh grade through high school graduation, I attended Winsor, a private girls' day school on the Brookline side of the Boston city limits. Most days I took the MTA -- as it was then called, and as I stubbornly still call it -- to school and back. My father would drive us to Riverside, the terminus of the Green Line's Highland Branch, park his VW bug in the vast parking lot, and we'd commute together. I got off at Longwood, the next to last stop before the trolley went underground, and my father continued into Boston, transferred to the Red Line at Park Street, and crossed the Charles River into Cambridge. At the other end of the school day, my mother would pick me up, or I'd get a ride with one of my schoolmates who lived in the western suburbs. From one end of Longwood station's inbound platform, a few short steps led over a concrete wall and into "the park," a wooded area that runs along the Muddy River between the trolley tracks and the Riverway. Winsor was a stone's throw from the Riverway, but Winsor girls were not allowed to go through the park. Winsor girls were supposed walk up Chapel Street, in the shadow of the castle-like Longwood Towers apartment complex, turn left on Longwood Avenue, follow the bridge over the Muddy River, cross the Riverway -- when the red and yellow lights signaled it was OK -- to Temple Israel (in whose parking lot I smoked many of my first cigarettes). There we'd make another left and follow the sidewalk to Short Street and Winsor's front door. Just across the busy Riverway we could see the path that emerged from "the park" onto a wide grassy shoulder. The park might be, by several city blocks, the shortest distance between school and subway station, but the traffic was too dangerous to go that way. So we were warned every September when school started and frequently throughout the year. Four lanes of cars, two inbound and two outbound, sped along the Riverway, and there was was no crosswalk, no light. A pedestrian could easily get seriously injured or even killed. True, the traffic was dense and fast, especially during the morning rush hour, but for an alert and reasonably fleet teenager -- even one encumbered with books, shoulder bag, or backpack -- it posed only a moderately interesting challenge. The real deterrent was the windows that overlooked the Riverway. Waiting on that grassy swath for a break in the traffic, you were a sitting duck for any Winsor teacher or administrator who happened to look in that direction, and the old fogies made a habit of doing exactly that on a regular basis. Needless to say, the bolder among the Upper School students, those in the high school grades, ran the risk from time to time, especially when we were running late and a sprint through the park was our only chance of sliding into home room without incurring at least a teacherly glare and maybe a reprimand. Usually we made it, unscathed by either car or official rebuke. Even if we were caught, we were never marched back to Longwood station and ordered to come round the long way. By sophomore year I'd figured out that if you got good grades and didn't have a conspicuous attitude problem, you could get off scot-free when your less academic cohorts were called on the carpet. I'm pretty sure I was spotted much more often than I was caught. Getting away with going through the park won you bragging rights, like cutting gym to go for a soda at "the Hole," a nearby soda fountain and convenience store, or coming up with a really creative excuse for why you didn't have your homework done. When, and how, did I finally learn that it wasn't traffic that made the park off-limits to Winsor girls? I don't remember. One day no one knew; the next day everyone did. That's how I recall it, and that's why I don't think the intelligence was passed down from older students, like the name of the girl who a few years before had gotten pregnant and had to leave school freshman year. Now it's so obvious: what worried the adults was the possibility of rape. Perhaps a woman had been raped in the park, or mugged, or flashed by a furtive guy in a trench coat. Perhaps a student had heard her parents talking and figured it out. Within a year or two I couldn't believe I -- we -- had ever been that oblivious; or that the silence of the adults had been so effective for so long.
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