Park Home: Tale Of a Bench and a Bag LadyAuthor(s): MAVIS BURKESource: Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 49, No. 1/2, <italic>At Home the Green Remains</italic>(March-June 2003), pp. 49-52Published by: University of the West Indies and Caribbean QuarterlyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40654328 .

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49

Park Home: Tale Of a Bench and a Bag Lady

(based on news report of a 'bag lady' who was found dead shortly after her regular park bench refuge was removed by order of the municipality on complaints from local residents)

by

MAVIS BURKE

I never thought of myself as comfortable or even comforting. No curves or softness about me to make a person want to hold me close for a cuddle. Angular with a hardness that was unyielding and yet possessed of a sense of permanence. At least you could know that I would always be there for you whenever you were in need of support, or so we thought.

The changing seasons made little difference to our being. We lay together even after the last of the autumn leaves blew across your face and the rushing of the wind brought the russet to your cheeks. An old great coat warmed us as we dreamed of spring when the birds and the squirrels would keep our company again.

The sounds of the city were our lifeblood. Once the first awakening used to be the trucks swishing the city streets so clean it seemed that rain had passed by unseen. But that was before downsizing days. Instead we listened for the coming of the feet - hurrying, hurrying as the rush hours begin. The bus stops and then it's quick, quick, down, down and heads disappearing below the subway steps. Some- times they were afraid of being left behind and ran down, pounding and pushing to get ahead of the day. None had time for me before you came and joined our destinies.

They would throw the read newspapers carelessly into the wire garbage bin beside us and we were glad to get both news and warmth. You would read, I never grew tired of hearing your voice until your words choked in your throat with fits of memory or coughing. Still you would exclaim about some far off place you must have known before the troubles made you old before your time, seeking a refuge from yourself.

The cigarette butts you picked up didn't help. They didn't last long and used up the matches hidden in the pocket of your coat. One day a young girl tossed a whole pack at you before she took the bus and you put it away like a treasure, hiding it even from me. You didn't need to worry about me, for I knew it would come in handy soon to calm your fears or push back the surge of empty stomach to your head.

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We were not always alone so you were careful to secure your stuff. Sometimes an older person would come and sit, waiting impatiently for the next bus and muttering about their heavy shopping bags and the weather, always the weather. You edged away soundless, but I felt your heart beating faster as you pressed up against me and fear crept through your trembling limbs. But soon they would be gone, climbing with difficulty slowly up the steps into the bus as the driver, anxious to keep his schedule, urged hurry from his driver's seat.

Their voices must have touched your memory for that was when you would smooth out a page of the old newspapers, rummage in your brown purse and produce the photographs. Their curling edges would no longer stay flat but

you held them up to your face and chuckled at some remembered time and place -

perhaps a dream peopled with love and laughter - until the tears fell on your swollen fingers coming out of the knitted mitts that matched the scarf around your neck.

Nothing else you wore matched. The scarf and mitts had been left you by the well-dressed lady who brought you a large coffee every Wednesday as she hurried to some unknown assignation. You both seemed embarrassed and no words were ever exchanged. Just a nod and a smile, but she still came. Not so the

others, for, like myself, the regulars were never certain of your mood and would

peer at you to gauge where your demons were that day, before they gave you a

greeting.

Once you made the friendliest woman rush away in desperation. She was the Thursday person who talked with you and brought a plastic bag with food and clothes for you whenever she came by. But that day without warning you began shouting and calling loudly that she was trying to steal your money. "Police! Police! Help me," you screamed. The plastic bag fell from her hands. Cookies and

apples spilled out at your resentful feet and she hurried away with frightened eyes. We all knew that she would not return to greet us again or bring her special brand of fear for your loneliness. You left the things lying on the ground until the birds came to peck at the apples even as the dust gathered over their bright surface.

It was the odd bit of change thrown at you that kept life going. Hidden

away in these coat pockets they would be enough to get a coffee from the machine when you walked slowly down the subway steps to seek refuge in the washroom before cleaners and security staff turned you away. Sometimes the effort to climb back up the steep narrow, threatening steps was almost too much. You came back to me gasping and clutching at your chest. You sat with eyes closed until things quieted down again. You sighed before we settled into our usual mindless com-

panionship.

We were never apart for long. You would hide your face and hunch

yourself against me when the going-home cars would slow down to see you where

you were when they had left for the office in the morning. A full day's trading on

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Bay Street and you remained in the same spot still. Teenaged boys dashed by on bicycles. Skateboarders brushed the toes of your worn boots. "Go home, old lady! Get a job! Get a life!" as they whizzed by, laughing.

Once long ago three young girls with faces half hidden by their Eastern veils, handed you a small bouquet of yellow tulips and smiled at you. You held on to the cellophane stems even after the petals opened wide and fell off, for suddenly someone had touched you. One day a man and his accordion settled down beside us, and his music spoke to our hearts. As he played his Viennese waltzes they seemed to revive some experience in your memory. You swayed and smiled and waved your arms in time to the music. I thought I could see you like a princess floating over a ballroom floor holding bunches of yellow tulips, laughing and wearing a gossamer gown.

Afterwards you walked slowly across to the gas station across the inter- section and came back later refreshed, wearing another dress and sweater, the heavy coat folded over your arm and hair brushed back in a ponytail. Then you took out some of your coins and gave to him to bring soup from the doughnut shop across the street. They knew you there and sent a large carton of soup and bag of doughnut holes for you to share. You closed your eyes and smiled inside as you had one of your whispered conversations with unseen companions. When you looked around he was no longer there. The music lingered in the air and faint strains would sound from the subway stairs, but we never saw the music man again.

One day there were other visitors to see you. Persons from the Council stopped by to ask you questions about your name and family and where you lived, and why you were always a fixture at this spot. I was afraid that you might scream at them as you did at the Thursday lady, but instead you sat silent and looked down at your hands and twisted your wedding ring. When they had left you looked at me and laughed hilariously. I knew that meant that you were hurting. You pressed close to me for comfort and made sure your stuff was close beside you with your treasures, for they were all your worldly goods.

It was after that you began talking to the children, calling them to breakfast and to get ready for school. I couldn't see them anywhere in the stretch of green lawn behind us or the sidewalk in front. But I knew that you held them close as you tied a shoelace or stroked a face and held their hands out to the street. You waved goodbye as the school bus blended with the one leaving the bus stop and left you bereft, standing without hope.

You began to wander away for hours at a time. I wondered where you went when you headed along the pavement carrying your stuff. One evening you came back pushing a grocery cart with everything in it. I was glad your arms didn't have to hug it all to you as you moved slowly along under the neon signs and billboards proclaiming the good life in some other place and tim£ Now you would

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52

put the newspapers over your coat and hide away the purse down in the cart as you peered around to see where danger lurked.

The fears began to come more often and you shrank into yourself if anyone came close. The gardeners with their brooms and rakes came to know your loud cries of fright as they tidied up the flower beds and trimmed the grass to wait for summertime. The bare limbs of the trees began to bud and even the air seemed fresher but you sat brooding and did not seem to know or care that nature's new beginnings were all around us. Your eyes looked out at friends - who were- not-there. Then you would smile and sing snatches of songs that must once have made you happy. Except for hurried trips down the subway steps you stayed close to me, or should I say, close to home, for this is what we shared together. I knew that you would always come back to me so long as there was someone to help you make it up those stairs again. Making no demands on each other but being there. It's likely all you could ask in a city such as this.

The birds began to come back from their stay in southern climes. Their voices sounded in the branches above us and you seemed to become calmer. You leaned contentedly against me, and dozed in the sunshine but kept one hand on your shopping cart with your possessions as if there was no trust anywhere.

You leaned back wearily, resting yourself against the space filled with large black and white letters proclaiming to the world - "Be an Owner Not a Renter!. Don't pay rent when you can live cheaper in a house! Live Well and Pay Less for Your Own Home!" and urging telephone and fax for gift of promised paradise.

It was the first real spring day and the flowerbeds began to beckon with their tight buds bursting to the light. You stood for a while to relieve the cramp in your legs and then pushed the shopping cart out on the pavement heading towards the usual intersection. I settled down, sure of your return before evening light. It was after that I felt the blows around my grounding. It took three strong men to drag me from my accustomed space and throw me in the back of the city truck with other benches and discarded bits of city property, leaving a gaping emptiness where once was a park home. The truck drove off bearing our dreams into eternity

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