The Unfortunate Twin

When I lived in Soho there was a homeless girl who lived in a Spring Street doorway. She stayed there for about a year, then left.

Today I saw her in the streets of Chelsea.

A couple of years ago she looked really young. I estimated that she was about 16-18 years old at the time. She looks like someone in her mid-20s now.

I haven't seen her since the fall of 2007. At that time, I assumed she was a runaway. She didn't appear to be high and I didn't notice any track marks. She had poise, which made her seem unlikely to have a serious mental illness. She also kept herself in pretty good condition. Her hair was clean and her clothes didn't look frayed. She used eyeliner every day.

As I write this I am chiding myself for associating mental health with poise. Words I rarely conjure are emerging in my mind, such as ragamuffin, and it reflects an association of this situation with my mother and her silly views. It is as if unwelcome opinions my mother expressed when I was a scruffy teenager are being echoed in my statements about this girl and it bothers me. Yet, I know from experience that a person's inability to maintain a certain level of personal hygiene is an indicator of mental illness.

When I had left-overs, I used to pack them up in a bag and deliver them to her. I included disposable utensils, paper plates, napkins, and a bottled beverage. If I had enough food, I packed a bag with two meals so she could share it with a friend or have her own left-overs.

It was awkward to deliver these bags to her. I aimed to give her the bag in a respectful way. Usually the bags were shopping bags of the sort I used to bring my lunch to work. I told her I was giving her the bag because I thought she might want some food, and would list contents of the bag. I would close with something like, "I hope you enjoy it." and walk away.

I didn't expect her to thank me profusely and look upon me as some kind of savior. But I also didn't expect her to just stare at me as if she were my teenage daughter and I was annoying her. The look she gave me must have resembled the look I gave my parents when they lectured the teenage me and I wanted them to know I thought they were horrid people.

I suppose her look was a form of karmic retribution.

When she disappeared, I would pass the empty doorway and wonder what became of her. I liked to speculate that she found a better life, if not a happy ending.

I suppose it isn't surprising that she is back on the street, although I am disappointed to see her in this condition again. What seems more striking is the coincidence that, of the thousands of blocks in New York City, we are once again situated a couple of blocks from each other.

It prompts me to ponder whether our fates are somehow connected. In my self-centered musings she seems to manifest a version of my angry and unhappy teenage self. Perhaps she is the version of me who gave up and didn't pull myself through college. She may be the looking-glass twin version who embodied my fear at the time: sliding through the cracks and ending up on the street.

Or maybe her presence raises the issue that there may have been some sense in my mother's poorly expressed views. There may have been a logic I didn't perceive at the time. Perhaps my mother also feared I would relent; that I would tire and stop working three jobs to cover tuition. I wasn't inclined to regard her remarks about my appearance as anything but criticism because they were critical. My mother wasn't doing anything to help me go to school, so the notion that she really cared that I go to school and make a life for myself wasn't strong.

What I struggle to understand even now is that people are inconsistent and express themselves poorly. As an inconsistent person who also expresses herself poorly, I should grasp this concept easily.

Whatever her opinions of me are, I hope the homeless girl isn't here for long. Not that I want her away from me because I dislike or fear her.

I hope she doesn't return because she has established a life for herself. Whatever got her here must be difficult, and getting off of the street is a major challenge. For what it is worth, I wish her a hundred thousand blessings.

Apartment Envy

There is a lovely apartment across the street from me. It is on the fourth and fifth floors of a brownstone. Its windows face mine, and I can see inside of it as if it is a doll house.

The family that lives there moved in shortly after I moved into my apartment. It is difficult to look at their ample space, shiny new appliances, unpainted and varnished original woodwork and not feel jealousy.

My railroad apartment literally offers a single path of movement in any room. I feel like a rat in a maze. The tile in the bathroom is so cracked and poorly patched, it is a marvel that any piece is intact. My bed slowly slides on the sloping floors of my bedroom from one side of the room to the other. Besides, the individual pieces of wood flooring are warped and popping from the floor. When I put a nail in the wall, the plaster around it often crumbles and leaves a bigger hole.

In other words, it is a typical New York apartment.

Until August, I lived in the spacious Soho loft everyone thought they would live in before they moved to New York. I knew I was lucky to have it and I savored every moment. I also knew I was spoiled and vowed I wouldn't complain when I had to move to the next place that would inevitably be smaller and lack the simple, suburban-standard amenities to which I became accustomed. An electrical outlet in the bathroom, for example.

I have had the misfortune of moving 5 times within New York City in the past 11 years. Now I live in the smallest of all of my New York apartments and it is an adjustment I strive to make with grace.

Each evening, when I pull down the shades of my bedroom before I change into PJs, I can't help but notice the apartment showplace directly across the street from me. It is lit like a stage and about as far as mid-orchestra row K theater seats would be from a stage.

Tonight, for the first time, a new member of the enviable-apartment-family was looking back at me from one of his many southern-facing windows. It was a young Labrador retriever. His front legs were slightly raised on the window sill and he stared at me with his head cocked. Then he barked twice. It appeared that he was alone and eager to interact with me.

I stopped and watched him for a few moments. I smiled and savored the irony. The mansion dog wanted desperately to be in my tenement flat.