People on the Street

This is a linguist-in-chief Anne-Michelle Tessier guest post. You may recall AMT’s writing here at Rose-coloured in the past on baseball, dogs, and myriad other interesting things. She is also my friend, and came to visit this past December, and since there wasn’t a photo for this post I just put a picture from her visit in the header. I think we look nice. Anyway, as friends often do, we share some common interests, and one is people on the street. A very Rose-coloured post. <3

About ten days before Christmas, I was walking to my gym along the main weird road of my neighbourhood, listening to a podcast probably about true crime, when I looked up and saw a woman ahead on the sidewalk, weaving dangerously. She was carrying two heavy cloth bags of dry goods, plus a cane that was swinging wide and useless. Her thin frame first swayed sideways, then stumbled with increasing downwards momentum, then half-sat half-fell down onto the asphalt, finally laying out on her side. She tucked her chin in a little towards her chest, as she landed on the thick padding of her massive wool sweater, and I had a flash of the thought that she might have fallen enough times to have some protective instincts, even in her current state.

The woman had fallen safely short of traffic, but her cane and groceries and head were all fairly ill-placed, and as myself and a bystander who was waiting for the bus hurried towards her to help, we all knew the woman was in a bad state. She smelled of cigarette smoke, but not of alcohol; she was maybe 5’2” and 90 lbs at most; she was slurring a little, crying a little, and the bus-waiting man was radiating his disinclination to get close, so I reached under one of her armpits and 80% lifted her to her feet. He gave her back the cane, and she said thank you, thank you, you guys, I’m so fucked up, and I said I know, it’s ok. She leant heavily on my arm and said something like these bags are so heavy, I don’t know how I’ll get home, and I suspected I knew where she was going, so I asked and she said right there, pointing her cane vaguely at the assisted living building that was no more than a block back behind me. I said I’ll get you there, it’s ok, I can carry these, and I put both bags in my left hand, and I locked my right arm tight under her left, like we were going to win the regional three-legged race together, and I said lean on me and we started back. The bus-waiting man had somehow made himself actively invisible by now; I don’t remember him in my field of vision as we headed off, but I shouldn’t blame him. It was dark and cold and he was waiting for a bus. I on the other hand was just walking to the gym for the exercise. Of the three of us, I was almost certainly the one with the least to worry about.

The walk back to her front door, which had probably taken me 45 seconds the first time, took us perhaps eight minutes. She was crying and talking about how I was being so nice, and I was so strong and so WARM, how was I so warm? I asked her name, and to my shame I do not remember what she said although it might have been Vanessa. I told her my name was Michelle, which is what I do at coffee shops, and I kept telling her it was ok, I wasn’t in any hurry, and we would get her home. Her running commentary was focused on the points that (1) she didn’t belong in this building where she lives because she wasn’t even an addict; (2) she was so cold and tired and her bags were too heavy; (3) something insulting about Muslims that I couldn’t actually follow, possibly about just one Muslim in particular who had done her wrong, possibly stolen her job; (4) she was so grateful that I was being so nice; and, repeat. A couple times she re-introduced the observation that she was fucked up, and I told her again that I knew, and that she’d be home soon. The bags were indeed a little heavy.

As we walked, very slowly, she started to remember how to use her cane, and it felt as though she was now hugging my arm less for stability and more for warmth, maybe reassurance. It then occurred to me to be baffled as to how she had appeared in the middle of the sidewalk with these bags at the moment I saw her fall. The closest store where she could have acquired their contents was a good fifteen minute walk away at my own pace, and how ever could she have teetered from there to here? Maybe she had been sitting on the ground near the bus stop with the waiting man, when the drugs (?) kicked in, and she had hopped up and immediately floundered? Had someone abandoned her there? Something else?

We made it to the assisted living house’s front steps, and she asked me to walk her into the lobby and deposit her groceries. It felt like an urgent care waiting room, with social workers at the front desk. She gave me a fierce but wobbly bear hug and said thank you Michelle, thank you, and I saw that one of her hands was gripping the front desk before I turned and went. She had dropped her cane onto of her bags.

I walked back to the bus stop, where the waiting man was gone, and on to the gym. I felt lucky to have not been in a hurry. I felt guilty for not remembering her name. I remembered how smoothly she had landed and bounced slightly on her side. I wondered if the Muslim guy even exists, and if her fall had crushed her cigarettes.

I then had a moment of uneasiness… had I let her cling to me too close and too long? Had she robbed me somehow? Immediately I knew this was nonsense: if she had been faking the slurred impairment she was actually Meryl Streep, and if not, she could not have had the dexterity to pick my pockets. I still checked to make sure, and when I confirmed she had taken nothing I felt guilty again. But it wasn’t anybody’s responsibility to not make me feel guilty, by having a fucked-up night or a fucked-up life.

And then I went on with my own night, and life.

I don’t think that I would recognize her if I saw her again.