Sidewalks

One of the most beautiful moments in my life involves a homeless prostitute, two sacks of garbage, and a filthy California sidewalk.

It was several years ago and I had been working the early morning shift in a downtown coffee shop at the time. Because coffee was one of the last remaining items on my ‘safe foods’ list, I was surviving pretty much on caffeine and hadn’t slept for a couple of days. My head was pounding and my eyes were red and tired. When I walked inside the shop to begin my shift, my manager said I looked wiped out and I thanked him. I thanked him very much. What else could I say? It didn’t matter that much to me. I was in a deep depression during that time and I felt so low that there really wasn’t any way I could fall much lower. Plus, I actually liked my manager. He played cribbage with me sometimes during our lunch breaks, and I suspect that he let me win on more than one occasion.

As I was grinding the coffee beans for the day (which was my favorite thing to do because the grinder had a mind numbing white-noise quality to it, and I love the smell of grounds), my manager asked me to take out the garbage (which was my least favorite thing to do because the bags weighed about fifty pounds each and my arms were embarrassingly weak). Sure, I said to him, that’s my favorite thing to do. Oh well, I had needed the fresh air anyway.

I was lugging the heavy sacks out to the tidy row of bins lined up in the gutter along the sidewalk’s curb. Two men were sitting at a table on the brick patio, drinking their coffee and watching me as I struggled to lift the garbage off the ground. I felt their eyes on me and I was woefully mortified that I couldn’t hoist the stubborn sacks from the ground. My strength was completely depleted. I was silently cursing myself for being so weak, for being exhausted, for wanting to cry, for being pathetic. I stood motionless on the sidewalk that was covered with mysterious stains from the usual downtown Saturday night crowds. My eyes burned and I tried to keep from crying by focusing on the stains blotting the cement beneath my feet.

And then a woman came up beside me and swiped one of the bags from my hand. She casually tossed it into the bin like it weighed absolutely nothing at all, and then she grabbed the other bag from my hand and threw it away too. She startled me. Even though it was pretty quiet downtown—the streets practically empty because it was still fairly early in the morning—I hadn’t noticed her footsteps approaching. It was as though she just suddenly appeared out of nowhere. I looked up at her and immediately recognized her as one of the many homeless prostitutes that frequented the streets in the area. I thanked her. I thanked her very much.

She was quite drunk, kind of wobbly on her feet as she slurred something to me about how we needed to stick together. I thanked her again. I turned to walk back inside the shop, but she quickly reached out and grabbed a hold of my hand. She squeezed it tightly and launched into a story of her life that I couldn’t understand. Her breath was heavy with the scent of strong whiskey as she spoke to me in garbled sentences. She paused briefly and exhaled a deep breath, gathering her thoughts as she took extra care to pick her next words. She said very clearly, “All I want is for someone to treat me like a human being.”

My heart caught in my throat. I didn’t have any words to say in response. We just kind of stood there, two broken people holding hands on a filthy sidewalk, staring at each other in a silence that, much to my surprise, wasn’t very awkward. Then she said, “What I really need is a hug. Would you give me a hug?”

I would. And I did.

She crushed against me and laid her head on my shoulder. “Life is shit sometimes,” she said, and started to cry. Then she started to shake. Then she started to sob. “Life is shit,” she said again, “but we have to keep going. It’s shit. But keep going.”

I couldn’t speak. There was nothing I could honestly say to make it all better, to make her okay. Because it was not okay that she had to live a reality in which being treated like a human being had become her ultimate fantasy. It was not okay that she had to get herself completely drunk by 8 a.m. just so she was able to make it through her day. What could I say? Nothing. So I just held onto her and let her cry.

Behind her, the two men on the patio seemed amused as they watched the scene unfold in front of them. They looked at us and then back to each other. They started to chuckle. They started to laugh.

I didn’t care at all that they were laughing at me, but I was furious that they were laughing at her.

She lost her balance and kind of collapsed into me, but I held us both up. Two minutes before, I could not lift a bag of garbage, but now I was somehow strong enough to support her entire weight. My arms shook beneath the strain, but I refused to let her fall on her knees in front of those laughing men.

She regained her balance and stood upright before letting go of me. It was the single best hug I have ever received. She thanked me before turning around and heading back down the filthy sidewalk. She walked right past those snickering men and somehow managed to retain a certain indescribable grace, keeping steady on her feet and using her fingertip to sweep tears from her face.

She was beautiful.

I stood there and watched her leave, then I turned my attention to the men. I glared at them, but I said nothing. They had stopped their laughing, but I still stood there glaring at them, hating myself for not being able to think of something to tell them. What could I say? I said nothing. Life is shit sometimes. I said nothing. But we have to keep going. I turned around, walked inside the shop and went back to brewing coffee.

Because we have to keep going.