Her posture is as if she’s still got that finishing school textbook balancing on the top of her head and it’s not until you get up close that you see her regal headdress, as tall as Marge Simpson’s hair, is in tatters, the color of cream shaded with the soot of the subway. Every single night when I get off the 4 train at the Wall Street stop, she sits on the same wooden bench, legs crossed as if she were sitting on a satin settee, her bags on the ground overflowing with the essentials of a woman constantly on the move, a woman without a regular bed. She wears slippers with her little toes peeking out from leather that’s walked too many miles.
And she is writing, focused and furious, her pen making grand gestures with every punctuation. I thought it must be her journal charting everything that day had brought to her, but no. I only saw numbers written in a stuttered calligraphy, none of them adding up. It’s Jack’s typewritten page from The Shining.
She needs money, it’s clear, but there’s no Styrofoam cup or hand-printed sign that claims her as an unemployed mother of three or just back from the war or so many other signs you see in this city. Just her, lost in her writing, her headdress in need of a good washing, and an empty stare when she glances my way.