Member-only story
The Humanity of Homelessness
Humanity isn’t lost when a home is.
The woman stopped. Something behind her on the busy sidewalk pulled at her thoughts like a toy with an invisible pull-string. Pedestrian traffic continued past the woman as she stood, hands clutching her purse. Eyes looking forward, mind looking behind, a decision was made. Turning, she sidestepped a child dragging a wheeled backpack and quickly unzipped her purse. A senior woman, sitting in a nook between sidewalk and bank, focused on crafting small doll chairs out of discarded wood. Unkept gray hair with splotches of color from dirt, not youth, wisped about her tanned face. What youth the elder had left resided in her fingers as they worked the wood like a skilled musician playing an instrument of old.
The younger woman dug into her purse, pulled out a few small peso bills as worn and weathered as the senior in front of her, and extended the money outward. The older woman looked up, hands rolling to a stop, then reached for the money. Less than a standard dollar, she smiled, what teeth remaining glistened as if having absorbed the sheen of teeth no longer present. The younger woman stepped back into the current of pedestrians and was lost from sight, yet the new owner of the old bills continued to smile, her hands clasped together as she offered words of thanks to god or the woman or whoever would stop to…
