TheBanyanTree: What Separates Us / Philadelphia Crossroad

[B Drummond]

    Philadelphia is a foreign place to me.

    It's in the north, I a child of the south.
    Its winters have bite. Ours, at their worst, can gum you.

    She crossed from the far side of the street, woefully  
underdressed for January's killing chill, and came directly to the  
driver's side window.

    She stood shivering in short sleeves in my periphery while I  
pretended not to have noticed her standing there in her faded, dirty  
dress.

    I conversed with my business associate, a man very familiar with  
the streets of Philadelphia and its inhabitants.  A light tap at the  
window brought a finger to the power window switch and an  "Whatever  
you got, I ain't buying" gaze to my face.

    "Mister, you gotta' dollar for a woman in need?" she asked, with  
the steady, self assured firmness of a seasoned salesman.

    I shot a brief glance at my business associate and saw nothing  
but the whites of his eyes.

    "Can't help you, M'am," I said.  She hesitated for a moment by  
the side of the car, sighed, and then marched to the next car caught  
in the same traffic logjam in front of us.

     "She's in need alright," my business associate snorted, "in need  
of a fix or her own special brand of medicine."

    The street ahead converged with one on the left similar to an  
entrance lane on an interstate.  Something, or maybe someone, that I  
couldn't quite make out for certain prevented our lane of traffic  
from moving any faster than an arthritic snail.  Meanwhile, I watched  
the woman work car after car ahead of us with the same result.   
First, a tap on the window, an exchange of words, a shaking of the  
driver's head, and soon the glass was up again in its proper place,  
warding off the winter's bite from the car's occupants.

    After an excruciatingly long wait, the traffic slowly began to  
move.   Our conversation became animate again and we eagerly awaited   
a steady movement that would free us from the wretchedness of this  
inner city Philadelphia neighborhood.  I swear that bombed out,  
postwar Berlin would have outshined the place.

    About that time, as we were ready to finally move more than an  
inch at time, she came in our direction again.  We was no longer  
shivering.  Convulsing would be a better description.
    Her head was bowed so that her chest supported her chin when she  
managed to quiet her convulsions.  She never glanced into the cars as  
she passed them. I'm sure she could
    not have seen anything more than the filth that was that city  
street at her feet as she dragged one foot slowly in front of the other.

    As she made her way to our car I looked at her intently and she  
lifted her head.

    I have never seen tears so large pour from eyes so desperate.  I  
swear they left tracks down her face an inch wide.  Her whole body  
was shivering violently but somehow, someway her face was rigid with  
the exception of salty water pouring from what had to be the endless  
fountains of a truly lost soul.

   She said nothing and I found that could not say anything, though I  
tried with all my might to form just one word, "Wait!"

    It didn't come.

    My finger must have hit the window down button, I'm sure.  I  
don't remember.  But I do remember her face.

    It's impossible not to remember it. I have tried.

    And it's always in my nightmares.

    It's there as the epitome of defeat, shame, desperation,  
destitution and an utter loss of faith.

    I dug quickly through my wallet but found only 1 dollar, all I  
had.  I heard a horn behind me.

    She reached out her hand and took the money.  I watched it wave  
in her convulsing hand like a flag in a gale.

    "Thank you, she said, her words chopped all up, "Thank you."

    As we drove off I said haltingly, choking back my own tears, "I  
could never again consider myself a human being if I had not tried to  
help her."

    My business associate and I drove in silence until I dropped him  
off at his business later that hour.