Memory

I do not remember. I honestly do not know. It’s been so long ago. I do not know what you looked like. I just know that your eyes were brown, brown and sad. I wanted to make them happy but I did not know how. I do remember the way I felt when you were near me. Pure Heaven. And the touch of your skin. Your hands were like lush velvet. They caressed me and I was home.

Harsh

Her voice showed it. It was like a whip, a very strong whip. She talked. She knew that trying to reason with him was useless. He would say whatever and try to make it sound right when it was all wrong. She was tired. She wished she wasn’t tired, but she was. She wanted none of it. None of it at all. The word she most used was guy. She called him Guy. She didn’t want to use his name. Guy was more than enough when she was angry with him and today she was very angry. His tales of quitting his addiction were the best fiction ever. She normally loved fiction, but in the form of novels. His fiction was just too much—more than she could, or wanted to, stand. She wouldn’t give him what was going to harm him—not this time. Not ever again.

The Woman in the Bus

A rainy night in Brooklyn. The bus was warm but something was not right. People laughed and talked. Someone pointed at her, at the fat woman seated in front. The driver stopped the bus. I will not move, he said until you get off. You smell bad, really bad. She looked down at her light blue pants and her yellow sweatshirt. I washed this morning, she told him. Please get off, he repeated. Will there be another bus soon after this one? Silence. No one bothered to respond. Someone seated across from her noticed the big stains on the woman’s clothes. When she got up to leave, the other person saw that the rear part of her pants were soiled as if by urine. The passenger remembered the time when she had been homeless, with nowhere to shower at least 2 times a week. She too had smelled bad. Who knew what circumstances had brought this woman to look the way she did. After she got off the bus,a young woman followed her. She took out her wallet and handed her money. The woman opened her eyes very wide. The young woman boarded the bus again; the driver used a spray to wipe clean the homeless woman’s seat.

The Woman

She waited. It was getting late but she still waited. She didn’t know what she was waiting for—was it for food, for money? She wasn’t sure. She knew one thing. Things had changed. They had changed for her in a big way, in a short time. It wasn’t as easy anymore; it had never been easy, but it seemed to her that one or almost 2 years ago, it had appeared easy or easier. Now she could stay seated on her crate for hours and get nothing or maybe a dollar and some change. She wasn’t young and people saw that. But it was the same—nothing or nothing much. It was cold out there; after the 7 o’clock people stopped walking by her, she shook her head. What’s the use? What is the use of all this? This is not a game to me. I am not slumming. She put her large yellow cup in her Fresh Direct bag, got up from her seat slowly and started walking. It would start all over again tomorrow; she would go through this ordeal tomorrow, but for now, she had to have some relief. She was free. No begging, no stress.

So Much

She wanted to leave. She didn’t care where she would go. Anything would be better than where she was. Anything would be more tolerable than the same, the same old all the time. The same dullness, the feeling of despair and hopelessness. Sometimes she would look up apt the sky and cry out. Deliver me, please deliver me, she’d say to no one. The job she didn’t like and the place to live she didn’t want to go back to. A little at a time she was figuring out a plan. She had to buy a ticket whether it was on a plane, bus or train to go somewhere. A city not too far away would be best. Money was a problem. She didn’t have much. Something. Something had to happen to make her feel better. For the time being, she’d be patient and continue with her life as if there was nothing much wrong with it. The evening news–that would keep her company for one more night.

A Cat

Under the sidewalk. That is her home now. She lives and hides in a dirty little space under the sidewalk. The river is a few feet away. The view from the other side of the city is amazing; it is all lights from the expensive skyscrapers. But the cats doesn’t know his and even if she did she wouldn’t care. They displaced her from here home under the trailer, the one inside the lumber yard. Somebody removed the trailer and for a while she lived where ever she could. The other cats kept her company; 5 or 6 of them, all boys. They were trapped; now there is just her and the broken sidewalk with a broken TV set that somebody dumped. One girl cat in a city of half a million homeless cats. She not young. She could use a corner all her own, a corner somewhere safe.

Waking Up

Her eyes. Her eyes were tired. She did not want to open them but she had to. The phone next to her bed was ringing. Too late. She picked up the phone a minute late. They would call back or she would call them back. It didn’t matter. She wanted to rest. That is all she wanted. The day had been a tiring one. It had made her sad that had lived it but she was glad that it was over. She had done too much. She had to understand that the days of rushing here and there without being exhausted had to end. She turned off the lights and went back to sleep.

Oh But Never

She never meant for her kindness to be misinterpreted. She never meant for him to think she was doing it because she was in love with him. Her kindness was very generous. She gave him her time, she gave him affection in a platonic way. She knew that the traumas of this past had made him walk around life with plenty of emotional baggage. Sometimes she thought that he was like a traveler at the airport lugging 4 heavy-duty suitcases, suitcases that were an unbearable burden. And yet he had to carry them because they were his and nobody else’s. She minded the lack of emotion on his part but she understood. She was the opposite, maybe feeling too much even after years of disappointments and regrets. She had learned passion many years ago and she still held on to it. He, on the other hand, had learned that it was better not to respond to the heart. From now on she would be careful. She would feel for herself; she would fend for herself.

Puddles Part 2

She and the stranger had gone through puddle after puddle in the pouring and never-ending rain. They had held on to her friend after he had fallen not once but twice. He had done his best to make his legs cooperate but his best had been betrayed and overruled by his owner and long-time master, the can of beer. That day he had drunk several cans but this one, the last one, had done him in. If it had been able to talk, the can would have said: You are mine and don’t you forget that. Ever. Before his second fall, her friend had put the can in the back pocket of his pants. She, without uttering a word, grabbed the can and threw it by the curb. She felt shame for him and for herself. The garbage truck had just arrived. The guys would pick it up along with the rest of the trash and it would be gone from her friend’s reach. She was exhausted when she and the stranger got her friend to the door of the building. It had been quite a task; her friend’s body had forced the three of them to zigzag through the wet and shiny streets. The stranger had held on to her friend’s arm but she only managed to grab the sleeve of his jacket. She shouted at the stranger’s back that she had tried to get her friend to the right doctor for several years. She wondered if the stranger thought her incompetent or just plain ignorant. She was grateful for his help. How many people in that part of town would have stopped to help her? None. Her friend lived in a neighborhood where people did drugs and got roaring drunk in plain sight. She often thought how could that possibly happen in a neighborhood where people were known to pay 2 million dollars and more for a one-bedroom condo. The ambulance and the police were often called to arrest alleged criminals and take sick people to the hospital. Tonight, she did not want to go up to her friend’s place. Her headache told her that all she wanted was to be somewhere normal, away from reminders of she had just experienced. In the morning, when he woke up and had a shower, he would probably call her and thank her for being there for him. The traumas of his past were ever present and he suspected people’s motives. He had once told her that the first questions when someone was nice to him were: What does this person want of me? What are they up to? Now, that he was safe inside the building, she became aware of her clothes. They were wet through and through. It hadn’t taken long to walk him back home, but those 10 minutes or so had made her feel that she had fallen into an ocean. She would reward herself for her good deed when she got back to where she lived with a strong cup of hot tea. She walked to the bus stop. As she got on, she told herself she should have asked the young stranger’s name. She and her friend owed him big time.