"Ma'am can I have a banana?” a raspy voice said, and I
stopped, and realized I actually had two bananas, just purchased at the deli
and hanging from my wrist in a semi-translucent bag. “Of course,” I said, and
handed her one. She took the banana and then clasped her chest and
keeled against the nearby brick wall, gasping for air, dropping both the banana and
her half eaten bag of pork rinds, which fell into a puddle of dirty water. She
was a slight creature, in an oversized black nylon jacket and dirty jeans,
cornrows with bald patches here and there, and a red baseball cap pulled down
over her forehead. She had no teeth, and her mouth hung wide open, gaping and
cavernous, the top of her mouth receding, the bottom opening and closing around
a glob of pale yellow mush that she was trying to spit out, with a look of wild
panic in her eyes. I took a firm grip on her arm and said: “Spit it out. Can
you breathe?" She nodded, spitting globs of chewed pork rinds onto the
street.
“Press
my wrist,” she gasped, and I did. “I got asthma,” she said between gasps.
“Asthma.”
She pulled out a dingy small metal inhaler from her jacket pocket.
Then
she caught sight of the pork rinds on the street and started to kneel down.
“Forget
that,” I said, sternly, tightening my grip on her. “Put the inhaler in
your mouth.”
She
nodded, took a breath and with all of her might tried to clamp her mouth down on
the inhaler. She pressed down firmly, twice, and the chemical mist circled
around inside her mouth, and wafted out.
“Breathe
it in,” I said, being a former asthmatic myself, in childhood. She
couldn’t close her mouth, but she inhaled as best she could and she stopped choking, and leaned on my shoulder.
I was still holding her in a tight grip, and tears were running down her face.
“My
banana,” she gasped, and bent down to pick it up. “I got HIV, AIDS, and they
tell me I’m gonna die but I take those pills and they didn’t want us no more,
that’s why they moved Gristedes to get us out of here. All the HIV AIDS
people.”
“They
tell me I’m gonna die and my…grandfather told me I was gonna live to see the
first.... woman…president and I was going to be…” her words went into
the brick wall and got garbled. “I’m afraid… I’m not going to… live that
long,” she said, sobbing.
“The
Dominicans and the Koreans and the Caucasians…”
“Should
I let em?”
“Jesus,”
I whispered. “No you shouldn’t let them.”
“They
died,” she said. “They died in a drive by shooting in Queens in 1978, both of them. And my brother he survived but my husband he died but he
wasn’t driving and that was a long time ago and now they saying they want to do
this to me cause I’m causing trouble wherever I go. They say, “That’s Dolores,”
and they call the cops. I live at the Marion Hotel, right over there” she pointed across the street. “It’s HIV, AIDS and
Tuberculosis. That’s who they got in there.”
We
went to McDonalds but they would not serve her, so I ordered a cheeseburger for
her, and she exploded out the door cursing. We then went to Gristedes and she
bolted in and out of the store, telling me what to buy—eggs, orange juice,
bread, etc—and then she would vanish, only to return a few minutes later. She
stayed next to me on line and a woman in front of us whipped around and barked:
“Stop it.”
“Stop
what?” I said.
Dolores
ran out and waited for me outside. Then she bolted straight out into Broadway
traffic, yelling something I could not decipher. I finally caught up with her
in the doorway of The Marion hotel, and we said goodbye, in some kind of
language that was halfway to madness. We were in her world and I didn’t speak
her language, but I tried to say something to her about some kind of promise I
was not sure I could keep. Something I knew in childhood and couldn’t quite
translate. I was trying to tell her no, it’s not like that, but yes it is like
that. She ruffled my hair and pushed me away.
She
scrunched up her eyes. She was crying again.
"Dolores,
please don't cry."
"No,"
I said. "We're fine, thanks, we're just talking."
They
nodded and went on their way.
Now
Dolores was telling me about the people who came and washed her yesterday, by
force. She showed me her clean feet. She had leather backless sandals.
Something about how she cooked the eggs but got chased out because it was
a weekend. Slept in Grand Central Station.
New YorkThen
she was talking about Hillary Clinton again, and her anxiety that they would
never let her become President, because she is not from New York.
I
asked her if she had anybody that she trusted in her life, and she said:
"God."
"But
no person?" I said, and she shook her head.
Layered
within sheets of delusional rants, pieces of her story emerged.
"I
was in college," she said. "And I got pregnant so I had to drop out.
I had a job.I worked in Bloomingdales. I met Bloomberg. I have to tell
you a secret."
She
smiled and jutted out her lower lip for emphasis.
"What?"
"I
am a Pataki Democrat!"
I
laughed and gave her $10.
She
wanted cigarettes so I got her a pack of Kool menthols, and then when I came
out she said she wanted a newspaper. I asked which newspaper she wanted and she
made me laugh again. "I want the Wall Street Journal," she
said defiantly.
"You
got it," I said, and bought it for her.
I
didn't say that I had spent the entire time since we met writing about
her. But I did say I wanted to open a tiny file in her mind that maybe
things could change, get better.
"I
have been telling people about you," I said. "Do you know what your
name means?"
Her
answer came back like a shot.
"Pain!" she yelled.
© 2006 Celia Farber
Swedish born
Celia Farber is widely known "as the world's most dangerous AIDS
reporter". Serious Adverse Events: An Uncensored History of AIDS, a selection of over 20 years of writing, in a tradition that includes George Orwell and Hunter Thompson, has recently been published by Melville House. Fear and Trembling will appear each Sunday. (Hank)
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