It was 9:00 o'clock one evening when Stan dropped by the Teen Haven Center on 20th Street to say hello to Barb. She was out of town, and Toni and Stephanie had come expressly to spend the night with me so I wouldn't be alone. I was pleasantly surprised to see him. Although I hadn't planned to put the girls to bed that early, a rare opportunity to socialize had presented itself. So against their good-natured protests, the girls took their baths and gave me their goodnights.

Stan and I sat at the kitchen table on the third floor of the old row house that was the Teen Haven Center and visited.

He was a slender, nice-looking guy, intelligent, in his mid-twenties. Barb and Doug had known him since he was a fourteen year old gang member on the streets of Philadelphia. He'd come a long way since then. He'd told me once he'd been thrown through a storefront display window in a gang rumble.

Stan always seemed glad and very gracious when he saw me, and we'd sit and talk about works by black authors like Malcolm X and James Baldwin. Stan was certainly not wanting for attention from many beautiful young women. I was flattered that he showed any interest in me, but he had never asked me out. One night several months ago at the Broad Street Teen Haven, he had dropped by to visit. The conversation turned a little personal, and I think he found out that I had never been kissed, even. That seemed to fascinate him, and after a while he took my hand and leaned forward, gently coaxing me, but at the last moment I backed out. I turned my head and said no. As a Christian missionary in an inner city youth ministry, I had certain ideas and guidelines about how physical intimacies should progress. I thought dating should come first. I didn't hear from him after that, and assumed that he'd lost interest.

It was a price I was used to paying for my beliefs.

This night as we sat in the kitchen, he mentioned that he really needed a place to stay. I accepted this without question. Stan had spent many nights at Teen Haven over the years. I told him he could have Barb's room.

I was making preparation to go to bed around eleven, when he called me to the room he was sleeping in.

"What do you want?" I asked, standing in the doorway.

"Look over there out the window," he said.

I entered the room. Nothing prepared me for what happened next. Suddenly the lights snapped off, and before I could say a word, he had me by the throat. I could feel something sharp pressed against my jugular. In the dark, breathing hard, his voice shaking, he whispered to me that it was a knife, and to do what he said or he swore he would cut me. Then he started moving me toward the bed. My mind simply refused to grasp what was going to happen next. Maybe it was that I'd had very little sexual experience and was scared of it. Maybe it was that six weeks of self-defense training I'd had back in college that had been rusting in some far corner of my mind for three years. I don't know.

Right before he forced me down on the bed, I gasped, "You'll just have to cut me then," and somehow twisted out and away from his grip. I moved quickly over to the light, snapped it back on, and we just stood there staring at each other.

"I'm sorry." he apologized almost instantly.

"It's ok," I said. "As far as I'm concerned this never happened. But just leave. Now."

"OK," I think he said.

But he made no move to go.

So I said, "I'll wait for you to leave, go now," and walked out of his room and back to mine. And stood there silently in the middle of it, listening for the sound of his foot steps going down the stairs. But the house was deathly quiet. With each passing second came a growing sense of danger, and the more paralyzed I felt to even move. The air and the silence were thick around around me. Why wouldn't he leave? It was like he was under control of something that would just not allow him to leave. Then I saw my Bible laying on my dresser. Finally I took a step, grabbed the Bible up against me, then stepped out into the hallway. The girls' bed room was right next to mine. I opened their door and slipped inside, locking it behind me. Then I sat down in a large stuffed chair between the door and Toni's bed, and tried to read.

Immediately Stan was on the other side of the door.

"Open up, I have to talk to you," he pleaded.

"No! Go away, Stan!"

"I'm serious, you open this door or I'll break it down!"

And he did, he kicked it open, ripping the little latch from the door post and sending it flying. I screamed and scrambled out of my chair right over the top of Toni's bed, grabbing little, sleeping Tony up against my chest and dragging her with me to the opposite side.

"Go away, Stan, please!" I begged. And started to cry.

Toni woke up out of a dead sleep in my arms and said, "Jeanne, what's wrong!" in a panic.

I held her slender nine year old body against my chest, literally clung to her for protection.

Across the room her sister, Stephanie, eleven, sat straight up in bed. "Jeanne, what's wrong!"

I just buried my face in the curve of Toni's slender brown neck and sobbed,"Oh, Toni, I'm scared, I'm scared!"

With all three of us awake, Stan sat down in the chair I had been sitting in.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he reassured us. I just want Jeannie to come back to my room to talk to me."

Stephanie had this knowing look on her face. "Don't go with him, Jeannie," she warned. I wondered how she knew.

"Stan," I said desperately, "If you don't leave, I'll have to call the police!"

All he said was, "I wouldn't do that if I were you."

That's all he had to say.

I was absolutely afraid to move away from Toni. She was my safe haven. No harm would come to me as long as I had her in my arms. Little Toni, a hard look on her young face, caught her older sister's eye and jerked her head toward the office, where the telephone sat. Steph hesitated, then started to climb out of bed, and I shook my head no, emphatically, for her to stay where she was.

The seconds stretched into minutes, and the minutes into an hour. Stan continued to sit there. I could tell the girls were fighting to stay awake.

"Don't fall asleep on me," I told Toni softly. She looked over at Stephanie. What happened next seems strange. Somehow the three of us just shut Stan out. We started laughing and giggling and talking to each other. We told stories and jokes and played Can You Guess What I See Now, and every other game we could think of. It was like an overnight party. Except that all the while my mind kept fishing feverishly for some way to get to my car keys and escape from the house.

And all the while, somewhere far away, out there on the peripheral, Stan sat watching us.

Every so often we'd all fall silent. The girls' eyes would droop, and I could feel sheer exhaustion coursing like brown sludge through my veins. It got so bad, I considered giving in to his continued insistance that I go "talk" to him. Maybe he really didn't mean me any harm, I told myself. But the girls always stopped me when he urged me to go with him.

Eventually, Steph decided she needed to go to the bathroom. Stan said we could go. Reminded us he didn't have to let us go, but he did. The girls and I walked down the hall in a tight little group. As we entered the bathroom, he walked right past us and sat in the office right next to it. Shaken, I shut and locked the door, flushed the toilet, turned on the faucet, raised the bathroom window to see if I could climb out to the street.

"Don't leave us alone with that man," Stephanie said. And she didn't say it like a child. She said it dead serious, like he would use them in my absence.

"I wish Ronnie, or James, or my Uncle Jimmy were here," Toni pouted. "They'd take care of that man."

Ronnie, Toni and Steph's oldest brother, used to live at the center. Toni had no idea how much my heart echoed her simple sentiment. Or that for me the sun rose and set in Ronnie's eyes. Or how much I had hated it when at a young sixteen, he'd decided to leave us. James, their loveable fourteen year old brother, still lived with us, but was away at camp.

The sad fact was there was no one here to help us. The three of us huddled on the floor for a while and whispered. Finally, Toni said, "I'm hungry. I wish I had a Big Mac right now, and fries..." She licked her lips and rubbed her tummy.

I just stared at her. "All right," I said suddenly. "Let's go get one. Let's just open this door, walk down the stairs, and leave."

The girls both looked at me with wide eyes.

"He's not going to leave," I told them. "So, let's us leave. Now."

"You all didn't have to lock yourselves in the bathroom." Stan sounded almost reproachful as we stepped into the hallway. "I wasn't going to hurt you."

When we announced our plans, he just listened quietly.

Then he said, "I'll leave too."

I told Stephanie to run into my room, just a few steps down the hall, and grab my keys from my desk. We waited for her on the stairway. At 2:00 in the morning, the girls and I walked out of the building, leaving it wide open, and got in the car. Stan came behind us.

"Can you give me a ride?" He asked. Amazed at his persistence, I shook my head no.

"I won't be bothering you again," he said. "Tell Barb I'm sorry."

With that he walked away.

I drove the girls to an all night hamburger joint on North Broad Street close to Center City. Sitting at the counter in our pajamas like three refugees from the twilight zone, we listened to a drunken customer and the waitress trade obsenities while we ate. From that place I called Annie at the Mt. Vernon Street Teen Have. Got her out of bed. Told her we needed a place to stay the rest of the night. When we got there, she was waiting for us.

I remember in the days that ensued, feeling bad for Barb and Doug and Stan, wondering how he could choose to close that door, long open between him and Teen Haven before I ever came on the scene. I also remember feeling bad for me. Many people pressed me to go to the police, but I never did.

To this day, if the light goes out suddenly and unexpectedly, I have a knee jerk reaction. For a moment I'm back in Barb's bedroom at 867 N. 20^th Street in Philadelphia, some twenty five years ago.

But the reaction isn't as intense as it used to be.

Toni and Stephanie and I went on to share many moments together during my years at Teen Haven. It just occured to me, at age forty-eight, and twenty-five years after the fact, that I am officially a "black" person. I have been officially received. One day the three of us were in a McDonalds on North Broad Street. Some black Muslims were sitting at table next to us. I worried, from experience, that they would harass us for being together and mentioned something to the girls about their presence in a low voice.

"Yeah," Toni said disgustedly. "It's a wonder they don't try to sell you one of their newspapers!"

I just looked at her. "Why, Toni," I said, keeping my voice down, "They wouldn't do that!"

"Why not," she wanted to know immediately.

Amazed at her innocence, I explained in hushed tones, "Because I'm white and you're black. They don't like to see us together."

"You're not white," Toni announced fiercely. "You're like us - you're black!"

And if that weren't enough, she tossed a defiant glance over in the direction of the Black Muslims, and said it again.

At that moment, it felt like everyone in the restaurant was looking at us. For a second I wanted to crawl under the table. I felt so embarrassed. And so proud.

For if Antoinette Williams thought that I was black, no bigger honour has ever been given me in my whole life.