Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America

The slowing of time for Clara as she is mid-jump on the dance floor is a supernatural element of the story used to explore the impact that sexual assault can have on someone. For Clara, through the first person point of view, time literally slows to where she can consider her past and her choices, all in the split second it takes her to return to the ground. This is a literal interpretation of the idea that victims of sexual assault often experience the assault for what seems like a prolonged amount of time or continue to experience the effects of the assault long after the physical act is over.

While in the air, she considers her possible options for how to react to being assaulted. However, with each of these options, she realizes that the societal implications and blowback would only make her situation worse. For example, when she considers walking away when she returns to the ground and telling someone, she thinks of how “for [her], there will be questions. If not from the cousins, then from any and everyone else. Why did you wear a skirt? Why were you at the party? Were you talking to him before?” (254). In other words, each of these questions that will come at her—from her reporting being sexually assaulted—will serve to blame her, the victim, as if she somehow invited the sexual assault upon herself.

Through these extended reflections embedded in such a brief period of time, the text undermines the idea that sexual assault is simple: Assault occurs, the abuse is reported, and the abuser is punished. The expansion of this split second of time and its exploration throughout the text through Clara’s point of view reveal the complexities and the difficulties of abuse for the victim.

Ultimately, however, Clara realizes The Importance of Support Systems at the conclusion of the text. As she returns to the ground, she makes the decision to pretend to fall, make it look like an accident, and slip out of his grip. As her abuser gets up and angrily calls her a “bitch,” her cousins step up and angrily defend Clara. Ultimately, he backs down, as the abuser sees that her cousins “are spread at [her] left and right like vengeful archangel wings. His defeat is a matter of simple math. [She has] the numbers on [her] side” (260). All of the possible outcomes that Clara considered in her split-second return to the ground spoke to the injustice and unfairness of society’s inability to support and defend sexual abuse victims. However, what Clara did not calculate was the support system around her that she had in her cousins and the fact that they stepped up to help defend her, giving her the support she needed to walk away from the situation.