Bird of a Woman

I was making my way into midtown Manhattan from Brooklyn one morning, where I was to interview the notoriously testy architect Robert A. M. Stern, when a tiny bird of a woman clattered onto the F train at Jay Street. She was wearing a dark green garbage bag into which she’d jabbed holes for her head and arms, choosing to drape her scuffed leather jacket over the wire-mesh cart she was pushing, which in truth seemed to be holding her erect, instead of wearing it.

Beneath the jacket were plastic bags in assorted colors that held a cacophony of logos from shops, and just as ubiquitous as in shoppers’ hands on the New York streets, nearly every other one bulging through the cart read “I (Heart) New York” in bold black and red. The woman held two cups. One was Styrofoam and fairly intact. The other had become so misshapen from being squeezed that it had been reduced to a half-round wad of dirty paper.

As soon as the train lurched away from the platform, she began to sing in a quavering voice, “The Lord smiles on me; the Lord smiles on me,” the a-cappella melody poignant given her thin voice that petered off to faintness at the end of each ostinato. Just as haphazardly as she’d started her song, she stopped, in mid sentence, and declared that it would be fine with her if anyone wanted to give her money. I fished six cents from my pocket and tossed it into the outstretched cup, the sound of the coins muffled by the Styrofoam. The guy next to me dropped a clatter of change on top of mine.

She was leaning forward to make her way through the rest of the car when the train left the next station. The velocity of its movement jammed her spine against the metal pole at her back. She hesitated; then made several weak false starts before gaining her forward momentum as the train settled into its loping rhythm. Her shuffling gait gaining little ground, she started to sing again: “The Lord smiles on me; Yes, He does. The Lord smiles on me.”

I still can’t fathom why she backtracked and stopped in front of me, but she did. After a few uncomfortable seconds of being treated to her intense scrutiny, I was relieved when she took a long, slow breath; looked at the ceiling of the subway car, then back at me and sang, “The Lord smiles on you, too,” a staccato rise in her voice accentuating the word “too.” Suddenly, as if awaking from a trance, a wide smile split her plum-colored lips to reveal only two yellowed teeth on the right side of her lower jaw. As she repeated, “The Lord smiles on you, too,” seeming to enjoy the fact that I was smiling back at her, she reached up and adjusted the dirty gray bandana tied around her forehead, which read almost white against her coffee-colored skin. Then, as erratically as her smile had appeared, it left her face and the trance took hold once more.

After a last furtive glance in my direction, she continued on, trudging through the train. Her chorus, “The Lord smiles on me,” ebbed and flowed as the wheeled cart held her bent frame as close to erect as it would stand. I had to stop myself from typecasting this frail woman who appeared to be homeless. If she were a character in a story, there are so many obvious traits that could be pressed upon her, but I wanted to avoid being predictable so I asked myself what aspects of character could I give her that would transcend assumption? What are those unique details that would explain this woman’s complexity and how had her past shaped them? I’d like to know what you think.