I watched her as she approached the convenience store… and she was crying. What was making her cry?
It’s a lonely part of the street at that early hour. The sky was lightening; but the sun had not cleared the tree line. It’s a “semi-commercial” part of Norwalk… a mixture of small businesses and homes. The houses are multi-family structures… many of the residents are Latino, mostly from Peru or Ecuador… and some of the store fronts boast multi-lingual signs… check cashing services, legal services… that sort of thing.
My breakfast hang out is there, too. The Family Diner… it’s Greek owned; but unlike the other Greek Diners in our neck of the woods, which typically remain open 24 hours (and menus that have pages upon pages of entries & have every cuisine imaginable except Chinese), the Family Diner is open just for breakfast and lunch. I go there for my fix of eggs over easy, whole wheat toast & homefries… it’s a place where you sit down at the counter, and without being asked your coffee is there, newspaper, too & in 3 minutes your breakfast is hot before you. And it is where I took Suzy for lunch one day to say that I was moving out of the house.
In the early hours that I am there I usually see the guys who drive the trucks… delivery trucks, utility trucks, city trucks, repair trucks… and they come in for their breakfast fixes, too. Or they head across the street to the “convenience” store.
I don’t remember “convenience” stores being around when I was a kid. Or maybe they were there; but we didn’t call them that. Or maybe they were there; but the product mix was different. I guess that must be it. And although I have never been in this particular convenience store across from the Family Diner… I can tell you what’s inside… tobacco products, candy, packaged cookies, chips and assorted other “junk food”, phone cards (real big deal for the South Americans in the neighborhood), wire services for money — also big with the Latinos who have to send half their pay away to family south of the border, cold drinks, ice cream, newspapers and magazines (some in Spanish), bread, peanut butter, pickles, ketchup, toothpaste, deodorant, tampons, condoms & lottery tickets.
Lottery tickets. Oh my… not just our State Lottery, not just Power Ball; but countless “instant” lottery scratch-off “games”… and the machines to handle the daily numbers. Stand in back of folks trying to pay for the newspaper & listen to someone rattle off which tickets they want & what number they want to play… $20 – $30 is put on the counter as they turn to walk away. It looks like they can barely take care of their basic needs (do you think that bread and peanut butter would have been a better way to spend your money?) & yet they spend $20 or so on lottery tickets the way you would spend a dime to make a phone call.
Unreal.
And here she comes walking down the street. I notice her. Here gait shows some urgency, hands thrust into the pockets of those long oversized sweaters… she has on jeans, and from her stride I can see that she is slender. Her sandy brown hair is mussy & pulled up in a bun… in a way that I have always found sexy; because to me it has the look of “I’ve just gotten out of bed”– and in this case she probably had. Her head is down, and then she takes one of her hands out of her pocket… a tissue there — to wipe her runny nose from the cool morning air? No… a tissue to hide a cry, to relieve the stuffy nose that came from a good cry & something that hadn’t stopped yet.
What does she need at this early hour? What can be so important that would bring her to the convenience store at this time of day? What is her addiction? Does she need smokes? A scratch off game? Maybe it will bail her out of a money jam if she wins? And the tears? Who has mistreated her? What makes her hurt? Where is someone to help her… to give her support… to make her whole?
Why is she crying?