I left work late today, around 7:45, and was in a rush to get home because I wanted to go for a run before The Office season finale at 9:00. In one hand I carried a briefcase full of papers and scripts and in the other, a plastic bag containing half a loaf of bread, a container of sliced turkey and a container of cheese; I hadn’t had time to make a sandwich that morning and had been spending too much on lunches recently so I decided to bring all the materials with me to make a sandwich at work.
As I exited the building into the surprisingly hot air I noticed an old Korean woman standing in the middle of the broad sidewalk. She was short, with greasy hair and ragged clothes but she stood firm with a straight back and a smile on her face. I could tell right away that she was homeless and, being in a fairly uncharitable mood, I quickened my pace and hoped she wouldn’t place the guilt on me of having to deny her inevitable plea for money. I approached and then passed her without eye contact and breathed a small sigh of relief as my peripheral vision had caught no sign of her turning towards me.
"Excuse me, sir, is that food in your bag?"
I stopped, caught. I turned back to her and replied that yes, it was. "Would you mind making me a sandwich?"
Would I mind making her a sandwich? Of course I would mind: this is my food and I don’t want to miss The Office and besides, I don’t have a knife here to cut the bread anyway. But then again, I suppose she asked for food and not money and I can always get more food and oh hell, I guess it’s the right thing to do.
So I smiled at the old Korean woman and put my bags down and squatted on the sidewalk to assemble her food. I tried to take care ripping the bread with my bare hands so that they would vaguely resemble real slices, not wanting to half-ass the effort now that I had committed. "I’m sorry, I haven’t introduced myself," she said as she squatted beside me. I was immediately taken aback because when she spoke she did so clearly and with confidence, not with the shy voice I had been expecting. "My name is Betty."
Betty. She has a name. And she is a person. And I never would have known it, never would have asked, never would have engaged her in a normal, civilized human interaction. "Hi," I replied while wiping my hand on my dress pants before shaking hers, "my name is Dave." I stacked all of the remaining turkey I had onto the bread and asked her if she wanted cheese, because some people don’t and it seemed decent to ask. She did and I handed her the completed sandwich.
"This is an astro-sandwhich," she said, laughing at her own joke. It was a beautiful laugh and I laughed with her even though I didn’t really get it. "Do you want money for this?" she asked.
"Of course not."
"Don’t I need to pay?"
"Really, it’s not a big deal, enjoy it."
Then she pulled a few crumpled dollars and loose change out of her pocket and repeated, "Please, let me pay you."
I looked fully into Betty’s face for the first time. The skin of her cheeks and nose was surprisingly smooth and clean but around the edges of her face it seemed older and was caked with dirt. The darker borders seemed to fade into her jet-black hair and there was an equally black line on her gums that appeared whenever she smiled, which was often. Her dark eyes seemed to dance as we spoke and I found myself incapable of feeling one emotion above all others: pity. I couldn’t feel pity for Betty because she felt none for herself. Her insistence on paying for her food, on earning her keep, on not just being another charity case hit me in a way I hadn’t expected.
I reached out and accepted her dollar.
My brother told me I was an awful person to do so when I told him this story on my drive home. I am still conflicted about this but ultimately, I think what Betty needed almost as badly as that food was some validation that she still has a part to play in society, that she can still function in the daily give-and-take of this world rather than being thrown out as some wasted beggar. There was a refutation in her pride, her determination to show her worth, of the belief that anybody could simply be cast aside or dismissed.
As I drove home, I passed a young black teen sitting and talking with a middle-aged Hispanic woman at the bus stop. He was dressed in hip hop attire and she more conservatively but they were both smiling and clearly enjoying their conversation. A few blocks later, driving through West Hollywood, I saw hundreds of men and women assembling for a rally to celebrate the day’s Supreme Court ruling overturning the ban on gay marriage in California.
I can’t help but to feel that the tide is turning. I can’t help but to feel hopeful.
This is an amazing country and one of endless possibility, but we have to fight for it. Too many Betty’s are too quickly dismissed by people like me, too often we’re told that different races can’t get along, and that being a gay citizen means being a second class citizen. This is America, the land of opportunity. I love my country for what it is, what it represents but most of all, for what it could be.
YES WE CAN.