“I’m a music artist you ugly ass bitch ,
mother f*cker.”
Her step, her march was annoyed;
her words sprayed, and soaked me, and the chair I was sitting on.
“I’m alive you ugly ass bitch” her words flew past me, she kept on moving, defending herself loudly as she turned left at the corner, ducking and jabbing, she rounded the curb.
I had crossed that corner only a few moments before her, coffee in hand from the store she was heading toward. Up and down that street in both directions, were slow and steady teams of whooping, clapping, waving, walking survivors and friends of survivors and supporters of loved ones living with, dying from, reshapen by breast cancer, a mostly pink stream down Boylston Street’s sidewalk, taking selfies in synchronicity, wearing pains and sorrows in their feathers– healing, thriving.
A squad car suddenly appeared and parked at that same corner, parallel to the fundraising walkers. The police siren pierced, swirled royal blue. And then another policemen ran past me, following where the first one who had parked his car at the corner; he ran down the Copley Square train station entrance stairs, into the underground. I sat in front of the Boston Public Library. It was seven in the morning, Sunday, late August. The sun was already more than a rise. I took off the sweater I had needed the hour before; I was beginning to sweat. Sometimes coffee brought out my heat which made me perspire and undress.
Not long after the two policemen disappeared down the subway staircase, they emerged. They were at the parked squad car; they had cuffed a man, stood him against the vehicle, spread his legs apart. He had dark baggy jeans and a dark jean jacket on, dark hair and dark skin. They pulled and pushed and shoved him into the car and drove away. Policemen blue lights spun.
Another woman had walked up during all of that, and sat next to and behind me, at another sidewalk table and chair, exactly like mine. There was a dozen table and chairs there.
This woman had long gray and yellow wiry hair, a fat and heavy mop of it, blanketing her from head to ribs. She wore a beige sweater and black leggings. She spoke loudly, animatedly, and I misled myself into thinking she was talking to me. “Oh, I’m sorry, what?” I turned toward her, moved my body and face onto hers. “No” she corrected, “I am talking to them,” and her eyes left mine quickly, shifting on to the police and their capture at their car. She said, “I have a gun,” and smiled.
She had rainbow crocs on, trendy plastic slippers, and her black leggings pinched the flesh at her ankles. Her ankles were red. She had a backpack.
“I do,” she said again, not taking her smile away, “it’s right here”. She moved her left hand onto her left hip and tapped it several times, over and again, staring at me, patting her hip. “What do you think, hmmm?” patting, and smiling.
“And you know what?” she didn’t blink, she said, “I have another gun, right here, on this side,” at which point she moved her hand from her left hip to her waistband at her lower right side belly, “here,” she patted and smiled, “Here. This is the other one in my pants.”
I’m in Copley Square.
When she first said she had a gun, I became afraid. I felt my stomach split and my heart pinch and my lungs shrink. But then, I got weirdly and quickly introspective. With only my eyes, (because I didn’t want to shift my body in any way thinking somehow if I did suddenly move I might startle her into shooting me) I looked around at the other tables by us, and the sidewalk, and the park across the street and the buses and the people walking toward and away and around us like I was taking my last look at all of it, the world, and why I wasn’t sure, but thought to myself right then, I was okay with all of that. It was fine. It was okay. I looked back at her and her eyes were still fastened right on me. And then, “you can kill me, you know,” she said, “if you wanted, you could push me in front of those buses and they could drive right through me and my body will open up and have intestines coming out of me, my guts will be on the road and I’ll be there on the road right there in front of you after you kill me, because you would’ve pushed me and then, I’ll be dead.” And she kept smiling, “because you pushed me.”
My heartbeats slowed and so my breaths slowed and the skin on my arms loosened, and softened, and my fingers uncurled, and I thought finally no – I was not going to die at Copley Square, at least not by her hand, she was not going to kill me right now, because I did not believe she could possibly have two guns. That was my reasoning. And she was still smiling. And she was restless, and heavy and then, appearing to change her mind about something, she stood up which was difficult for her, I watched, but she was getting herself to standing upright and the legs of her chair were not stable, which added to her wobbliness, and her swollen pale hands pressed heavily onto the table for balance, which made the table pitch more, and then she pitched more and gravity messed with equilibrium and frustration and impatience and from her mouth came a sour and heaving breath as she rose, which instantly reminded me of my father’s last breath. She moved toward the Breast Cancer Awareness participants, the pinks.
The day was Sunday.
I was sitting in front of the Boston Public Library. Free to All, was engraved along one arch. It opened its doors in 1895, and on that Sunday, the doors would open at eleven a.m. I decided I would come back later, because I googled it, there were John Singer Sargent murals on the upper floor and John Singer Sargent spent twenty-nine years creating them. I love art.
Portraits. Stories. Resilience. Courage. Pride. Failures. Beauty. Truth.
and fear,
and love,
and the galaxies.
—
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