Lost and Found

The 5:47 M60 arrives on time. I swipe my MetroCard, slip it back into my wallet, and slip my wallet back into my bag, or so I think. I sit staring at the line of empty cyrulean seats. I'm thinking that here on public transportation is one of the few places rich and poor, educated and not, white collar and blue, healthy and sick, groomed and dissheveled, come together.

A man gets on at the next stop and bends to pick up something from the aisle. I wonder if there is a leaflet or litter. He comes up with a blue wallet in his hand, my wallet, and offers it to the gray haired woman in the single seat in front. She shakes her head.

"It's mine! Oh, thank you!" I say.

How can I thank him? How can I let him know that he has prevented me from starting my day with no money for my paper, no ticket for my train to work, no driver's license, no credit cards. Not to mention a photo of my daughters forced to pose in the golden-pink light of late afternoon in the fall of 2001. The man takes a seat in the back of the bus. I turn to see what he looks like. I want to see his face. He wears a black Northface parka and braids pulled back into a knot under a knit cap.

Off at Park Avenue and 125th. I buy my paper at the 24 hour kiosk and outside a man gently accosts me. "I'm hungry. Will you buy me some food." It is a request. Not a question.

"What do you want?"

"Anything. I"ll eat anything."

We go into the Cuban deli. I suggest the almond porridge. He says he can't have milk. I buy him two hard boiled eggs for a dollar. He sits at a table inside and eats them out of a paper cup with a plastic fork. Up on the platform, waiting for the 6:13 to Southeast, watching the sky lighten from midnight blue to dark blue-gray, I am sorry I didn't buy him orange juice, too. I would have wanted orange juice with my eggs.

Snow Day!!

5:14 the call came. Snow day!! Chappaqua is so hilly and so high-- that we seem to get an inordinate amount of snow days. Up there the rain we're getting in the city is feezing rain and snow. So the roads up there become icy and slippery -- plus there are warnings of flooding. Perfect! (And I even got a good parking place yesterday afternoon so the car can stay put until tomorrow!)

6:13 to Chappaqua

My alarm was set for 5:20 does not go off. At 5:55 I wake. The train to Southeast leaves the Harlem Station at 6:13. I consider waiting for the 6:56 which will make me late for work. By 5:59 I'm dressed and out the door, the elevator down takes another minute, a cab is pulling up to the corner of 108th and Broadway at 6:02, and the driver in a knit turban that seems to hold enormously long, braided hair, speeds me to the station at 125th and Park Avenue. I think we'll make it. We're stopped at every light on 125th. Money for the fare is in my hand. I ask the driver to make change before I even pay him. He gets a $2.00 tip for a 9 dollar fare. The trains whistle blows as I'm mounting the metal stairs to the platform. I arrive up breathless. It's the 6:09 to Stamford. My train arrives in 4 more minutes. Maybe I could have bought a cup of coffee.

Deer on the Road

Between Hastings and Dobbs Ferry on the Sawmill River Parkway in the thin morning light, a flashing yellow arrow on the back of a police HELP truck guided cars to the left lane. Of course, I started looking for an accident. About fifty feet further, a deer lay on the pavement, ripped open, gutted.

Lo Siento

Yesterday I walk to my car parked a block away on 109th. Coming towards me is a woman, nicely dressed, weaving along the sidewalk. She says she needs money for a MetroCard. I suspect she's not sober. I say, "I'm sorry," something I learned to say in Madrid where I was told to say "Lo siento" if I wasn't going to give money to a beggar, as if I were saying, I'm sorry I can't give you anything, I'm sorry you need to ask.

Where's a Terrorist?

On Friday I'm on my way to Philadelphia via Amtrak; I'm at Penn Station in New York at Zaro's Bakery to pick up an egg salad sandwich. There's a woman in line in front of me asking what kind of Danishes they have. She's rather big, a blouse coming untucked from her navy skirt that hangs to mid-shin. She's hanging onto a suitcase on wheels. The saleswoman says, pointing to another counter, "They're over there. You can go over and pick one out."

"But I don't want to go over there. I want to pay here."

"I can go with you," the saleswoman says.

"I don't want to go over there." She's giving the salesgirl a hard time.

I say, "why don't you just tell her what kind of pastry you want and she'll get it for you."

She looks at me like I'm crazy, pays for her other order, and mutters as she walks away, "Where's a terrorist when you want one."

Milk Run

6:00 am. Coffee's made, already poured into the mug I take in the car with me to work, but I'm out of milk. I grab my purse, a jacket, take the elevator down, hope to find a store open. A homeless woman puffing on a cigarette butt passes my building as I rush out.

"Do you have 50 cents?" she asks.

"What do you want?" I ask.

"A cup of coffee."

The storefront kiosk is closed. East of Eden, its vegetables and fruit spread before it under bright lights -- is closed. I run into Absolute Bagels, ask for coffee with milk, plan to buy the woman a bagel as well, run out to ask what she likes -- seeds or no seeds -- and order a cup of milk to bring home. I open my wallet to pay. No money. Not a dollar. The coffee is on the counter. I start to walk out -- but the woman behind the counter pushes the coffee towards me. "Take it."

I hand the coffee to the woman; she's thin, has ink dark skin, stooped shoulders, lips that draw in over her gums. And I apologize that I have no money to buy her more.

She is not alone. It seems there is someone who has staked out every city block asking for money or food. Yesterday, walking down Broadway to the subway to get to a reading at NYU's Torch Club, I passed a man asking passersby, "Will you buy me a hamburger? Will you buy me a hamburger?" I was late and rushing and the words didn't resonate until I was a half block away. I thought of turning back. I thought, again, of my former mother-in-law, a survivor of hunger and Auschwitz, who instead of giving money to beggars would take them into the nearest diner and order them a hamburger, pay for it, and leave them there to eat it.

They sit before handwritten, cardboard signs telling you that they have no work, that they have a family to support, that they haven't eaten all day, that they are hungry. Down in the Village, beside the ABC subway entrance, a man in his 70s had his foot on a fire hydrant, playing his acoustic guitar like he'd played backup for Rod Stewart or Mike Jagger; slides, trills, fancy fingerwork, incredible sound. His gray hair hung stringy to his shoulders, his face was pale and wrinkled, and his guitar case lay open to receive dollars.