The Homeless "Lady" by Julianna Rowe

 The Homeless “Lady”  by Julianna Rowe

Why am I drawn to that filthy homeless woman with her matted hair like a dog that has never been cared for?  I suspect there must be bugs in it.  Her hands are brown with dirt, and she is wearing layers of clothing unfit for any human.  My God, she has no shoes. She sits inside a large cardboard box and I can see only one blanket.  That mangey dog that hangs around her must be hers.  I checked with the doorman and he tells me they call her “Loose Lefty.”  The story goes she used to sell herself on occasion for food.  That’s the loose part anyway.  Lefty?  No one is sure where that came from. 

God, I live in this beautiful luxurious high-rise where I can see her from a distance. Why am I drawn to watching her? I have a view of the Hudson River and magnificent city lights in all directions.

I need to call my therapist.  I have become obsessed with her like that guy in the movie was with Siri.

Hell, I even bought a pair of high-power binoculars to watch her.  I am missing my lunch hours and am late for meetings due to my preoccupation with some dirty old homeless woman.  

Then one day I pulled out my binoculars to find she was gone.  All day I searched leaving my work unattended. I was panicking.

She had become an integral part of my life, but why?

I noticed the dog was very nervous with her gone. I decided to leave my post and binoculars and go to the homeless village where I started asking questions.  Where is she?  Did she die, which for some crazy reason freaked me out? Then I started checking hospitals but I had no name to offer but “Loose Lefty.” 

I then went to every ambulance center asking every shift if they picked up a homeless woman on 51^st and 106^th Street West.  I finally found out who picked her up and what hospital they took her to.

I had found her.  She was somewhat cleaned up but in bad shape and was treated with disrespect due to her appearance.  This angered me. So, I physically picked her up from the hospital bed and carried her to my car.  The hospital called the Police…. But the Police had more pressing matters to tend to than that old woman.  They said if I paid her bill, and I did, there was no cause for alarm at that point. The fact is I threw the cash on the desk all the while holding her before I had walked out.

I took her home.   I called an old girlfriend who came over and helped with her hair and bathed her.

 I bought her all-new clothes and toiletries.  At first, she was talking like a street person in a rather rough manner, but then something happened when she looked at herself in the mirror. Like she found who she used to be, her old self that had class and had cared once upon a time.  I even went and got the mangy dog and had him cleaned up.   She would not say who she was, in fact, she didn’t talk too much.  Although she was quite excited about the dog.

A couple days later I went back to work leaving her on her own in my apartment.  While I was gone, she became bored and started snooping thru my papers and photos.  She saw something that shocked her, causing her to run away. But she left the dog behind with me.

I came home to find her missing.  I took the dog out and when I returned, I noticed she had gone through the old scrapbooks my brother had left me. 

I had not seen my mother since I was seven years old.  It was then I found her pictures in the old scrapbook. I threw it down and ran directly to the homeless village but she was not there.  They would not have recognized her anyway with her new clothes and clean hair, not to mention she smelled differently.   

It would be another four months before I found her again. I had searched every homeless tent city, the underground homeless areas, under railroad bridges, hospitals, and even the morgue, but then she had no name. I could not go to the police because I had no name to offer to fill out a missing person report. And then. On my walk home, there she was, sitting on a park bench by herself in front of the high-rise Sentry Insurance building.  

I said, “Mother.  It’s okay Mother, it’s me, Christopher, come on, we are going home.”

And we both cried for a long time.  I then realized she had run away because she was embarrassed for me to see how she had allowed her life to end up, homeless and existing in a large Cardboard Box.

And they lived happily ever after.  

Of course, they did.