THE GIRL UNDER THE BLACK UMBRELLA. Loving Her instead of Judging Her.
She called her the girl with the bags. The first time she had seen her was through her windshield, then a half-second later looking sideways through her driver’s side window; later again, maybe two seconds later, through her rearview mirror. Then she was gone. The girl with the bags, on the side of the road, had surprised her. She didn’t know her name, so she shamefully labeled her. The girl of an unknown age, seemed small, crouched low and hidden behind her bags. Had she not seen the umbrella swaying and leaning, she wouldn’t have known there was a girl at all. The bags were hefty ones, at least ten of them, maybe fifteen; some were black, some white, some green, and all were bulging. Two or three of the extra large garbage sacks were piled in a rusty, well used, metal shopping cart. The cart was parked diagonally on the sloping, curving, white concrete sidewalk. On the sidewalk floor were more bags, knotted and cinched with the plastic black and red drawstrings that came sewn into the plastic sack. The bags were intentionally arranged, side by side, one on top of another creating a barrier, an above ground bunker of sorts. On her way from here to there, she wondered what was in those bags? The girl was shielded and invisible, but only to herself. She was shrouded, but brazenly exposed. The road by which she had set up her dwelling was a busy one, a four lane thoroughfare stretched along the southern edge of a southern city. Her chosen route exited to golf courses and neighborhoods mostly; middle to upper class homes nestled among mature southern oak trees and manicured yards. Her space on the sidewalk, however, was naked and vulnerable, lacking in shade and privacy. The girl with the bags, and a rusty shopping cart, were on exhibit, unguarded, and abandoned. Behind her mobile home of hefty bags and her collapsed black umbrella sat a church, a magnificent church. The landscaped view of her backyard rolled with acres of mowed, trimmed, and perfectly shaped shrubs and hedges, with a vast carpet of greenery leading to a grand cathedral. The scene was puzzling, mixing up the stereotypical, brainwashed, image of inner-city homelessness with this mismatched picture of a girl, the girl with the bags. Through her windshield the scene had swiftly unfolded; she had tapped her brakes like an on-looker memorizing a collision, slowing and coasting by the girl with the bags, on the side of the road. She accelerated, leaving an invisible trail of exhaust and pollution, adjusting her rearview mirror to memorize the image as it disappeared into the distance. Her mind whirled with wonder and pressed hard with sadness. Her imagination, however, blazed, quickly taking out its pencil and filling in the blank pages of this oblivious and neglected girl’s unknown and untold story.
The surprise had faded. That initial, startling, off-guard, paper-thin, reaction slowly and quickly evaporated, giving way to a roster of deep, thick feelings; feelings that lingered and tapped her on the shoulder each time she drove up and down that busy thoroughfare. Time would stop, thoughts screeched, as she commonly passed the girl with the bags. She had seen her six, maybe seven, times now hiding in plain sight along the side of the road. Sometimes the bulging, heaping pile of hefty bags would be moved, cunningly relocated a half of a block east or west of the original picture. More often, the girl with the bags, and the rusty shopping cart, would cross the busy four-lane highway, distancing herself from the church, and reconstructing her bunker on the parallel sidewalk. The sheltered girl with the black umbrella was no longer a surprise, she expected her now…hoped for her. She was never proud as she stared mysteriously towards the girl through the window of her midsize SUV, with leather seats and a full tank of gas. She wondered if she should stop, if she could make a difference for the girl with the bags on the sidewalk? The etch and sketch in her mind drew a painful, burdened journey of tiny girl; a lost voyage of hurt and helplessness that presently led to a grocery store and just enough change to purchase her luggage, a single box of hefty bags. She mulled over her choice of scenery; a landscaped, tidy highway that rushed through upper-class neighborhood entrances and lavish church corners. The girl with the bags crouched on the sidewalk day after day, miles from accessible bathrooms, restaurants, and friends. She was alone; staring, she humbly hugged the cringed girl from the driver’s seat of her SUV, she felt vastly empty. She wondered why she didn’t move her luggage off the sidewalk and into the shade? The August sun was hot and relentless with temperatures that simmered and cooked the white barren sidewalk that housed the girl with the bags. She prayed she wasn’t punishing herself. She hoped that her glaring openness wasn’t a cry for help. The somber notion landed heavy on her heart. She could hear the girl screaming now, “look at me! Im here! Im alone, I’m scared, and I need help!” She imagined hundreds of cars, trucks, motorists, passengers, bike riders, dog walkers… all passing by her, neglecting to notice the tiny girl, blindly gawking at her sordid, bulging, hefty bags.
She closed her eyes, squeezing her eyelids tight, in an effort to erase the image of the lonely, scared, girl with the bags, on the side of the road. Shame and disgust washed over her, as her own buried secrets and wounds pricked at her goose pimpled arms. She too carried bags; stuffed down, unrevealed, unspoken, bags of guilt and disgrace. Her mind began to count the bulging, cinched sacks of hurt and sadness she had collected in her lifetime. The pile far exceeded the number of bags that sheltered the small girl on the sidewalk. She wondered what her day to day would look like if she carried and dragged all of her bags on the outside, instead of stuffing them down hard on the inside. She questioned how her coworkers, friends, her family would look at her, or if they would even see her at all? She wondered.
