OH GOD!!!

Tonight has been one of those nights when I've felt like a failure. News like this is hard to swallow and even harder to live with when there's not much to distract me.

"OH GOD!!!"

The woman that belongs to the wheelchair resting at the base of the stairs is screaming to no one in particular, throwing her words into the cold night air. I have come to know her as Sunshine's friend.




Sunshine is another peculiar woman I run into from time to time, when I'm on my stoop processing my day. For reasons I have yet to discover, she keeps her electric blue Huffy mountain bike chained up outside the front entrance of the building. Rather than keeping it inside where it would remain safe from the elements, she keeps it out front. She uses her bike daily and yet it takes her at least 5 minutes to chain and unchain it from the light post. All the while she coaches herself in a sort of jagged jazz like rhythm that sounds like an angry Nazi swatting at a Jew.

She walks like the grandmother from The Aadam's Family, hunched over speaking a language that I do not understand. I suppose it's english, but I have yet to hear syllables strung together coherently enough to make an actual word, let alone a complete sentence.

Each time I see her, she appears as if from nowhere with a determination in her crooked stride. Her ratty blonde hair hangs down low, nearly touching the ground and swings violently and unnaturally as she walks. It covers the whole of her face, and so I have never actually seen what she looks like. I imagine her to have a haggard, wind worn face. I attribute the scars I assume she has to an adolescence riddled with acne.

Eric and I call her Sunshine because of the hooded sweatshirt she wears regardless of the weather. The oversized black hooded sweatshirt has a bedazzled back. The shiny press on decorations form the image of the woman she must have looked like in her youth. Across the top, the name "Sunshine" is written in beads to look like airbrushed lettering. And so, we call her Sunshine.

Sometimes I see her with an African American man who actually understands her enough to converse with her. He nods in agreement to everything she says replying always with, "Shit. I know. I know."

Most often, she is with a woman who I have begun referring to as The Woman In The Wheelchair, or simply, The Woman. She has the same brittle build as Sunshine. But her hair is jet black and cut just below her chin. It's thick and unkept and looks like a furry helmet on her head. She has the same speaking problem. Naturally, they are a perfect fit. The have what sounds like very serious conversations, but I cannot make out a single word. They look like two infants in adjacent strollers pointing to ducks wading in a nearby pond. They know what they are saying, but everyone else would be hard pressed to translate any of it.

The Woman In The Wheelchair uses, you guessed it, a wheelchair to get from A to B. Far more confusing than their language is the manner in which The Woman uses her wheelchair. First, she plops into it, hard and fast amid moans and shouting. Then she uses her feet, yes her feet, to move her forward. She just walks really slow with her feet, and crosses her arms on her lap. How this helps her in any way is beyond me.




Tonight, I was sitting on my stoop and I heard a howling moan from just inside the entrance. I turned to see what or who was moaning and saw her standing there staring out at the street before the both of us. She mumbled to herself and then came bursting out of the door with another loud howl. I turned back to my book and pretended to read. She stood there sort of crying and moaning the way someone would had their husband of 50 years just suffered a sudden and fatal heart attack.

She took a deep breath and then took a step down, "OH GOOOOOOODDD!!!" She shouted at the top of her lungs and for the first time in months I understood her perfectly. She did that with each step until she was at the base of the stairs, stopping halfway only to repeat her cries in repetition like someone was holding a gun to her head. "OHGOD-OHGOD-OHGOD-OHGOD-OHGOD!!"

She finally plopped herself into her wheelchair accompanied with the usual moaning and mumbling. She used her feet to turn herself in the direction of the approach. Then without warning, she started shouting a string of obscenities, so coherent and loud that I could hear her over my iPod.

"FUCK-SHIT-COCK-BITCH-MOTHERFUCKER-CUNT-SHIT-GODDAMN-FUCKING-SHITTING-FUCKING-FUCK-OHGOOOOOOOODDD!!!"

Then she made her way down the rest of the sidewalk. Every few steps she would pause and let out a shriek or an 'oh god'. When she reached the edge of the perpendicular sidewalk, she shouted "WHYYYYYYYYY?!" so loud it made me jump. Then she said it over and over. "WHY-WHY-WHY-WHY-WHY-WHY???!!!!"

I nodded my head in agreement. I knew, maybe not exactly, but I knew of the pain in the delivery of that word sometimes. Why?

She went on like that until she decided to continue towards her destination. I heard her continue the screaming and moaning all the way down the sidewalk until she was out of ear shot. I can only assume it continued and I have no clue where she was headed.

And I got to thinking. We, the two of us strangers, we were feeling the same things and pleading the same phrases. And just like her, I will brave this night alone.