Karma
I was walking from Davis Square back to my apartment on Saturday evening after an afternoon in Cambridge. We've had a string of recent armed robberies and assaults on campus, so I've been trying to keep money for taxis when I'm coming home late by myself. But this time, I figured, it wasn't even 10 yet; there were lots of people and lights, so I clicked my red patent heels and tapped on home. It was a nice evening for a fifteen-minute walk.
Not five minutes down College Avenue I noticed a small black woman clad in a hoodie and peasant skirt, carrying two large shopping bags. She walked slowly, bending over at every turn. At first I thought she was heading back from a long shopping trip -- Porter, maybe (I too drag those bags if I have to walk that far from Shaw's Supermarket). I pictured her gray-haired and wrinkled. A shopping trip gone on too long.
I always walk fast, so I passed her quickly, even in my tallest heels. But as soon as I did, I noticed she had stopped in the middle of the street and set the bags down. Paused for a second. Two. Four. So I -- naively or instinctively, or because I was in a good mood, I'm not sure why -- turned around, too. "Do you need help?" I said.
"Oh, they're really heavy," she answered.
"It's okay," I said. "May I?"
She gave me one of the bags. "Take this one." I picked it up easily with one hand -- it felt like a pair of shoes, a box of stuff -- a few soft drinks, maybe. We started walking together, and I was careful not to let the bag hit the top of my shiny red shoe.
"It's not heavy at all," I said.
"Really?" the woman replied. "You must be quite a strong one."
"Not really," I said. Thought for a minute. "I guess I carry a lot of books." I don't.
"Do you know where the Methodist Church is?" the woman asked.
There's nearly a dozen churches on College Avenue and of course I don't pay attention to what kind they are nor differentiate between all the different sects. I remembered a Methodist one, though, because it was large and stony and ugly. I'd often thought of it as a cold building when I walked to the train station. "I'm not sure," I replied, "I think there should be one up ahead, if we keep going straight."
"They told me there's a shelter there. It was supposed to be nearby." The woman looked at me.
She was younger than I thought she was. She must have been only in her late 30s, and I had taken her to be over 50. Her hair was unkempt, but it was still black. She didn't have very many wrinkles. Still, she had dark rings around her eyes and she bent over the way grandmothers do -- like they're trying to see what's beyond the horizon, but their glance ends up only tracing the tips of their shoes.
"Do you think I could get food there?" she asked me. Like I would know.
I realized, of course, that she was homeless and that I, in one hand, was carrying probably everything she owned. A minute before, I was worried about scuffing my red patent shoe. Now I was worried about other things. But I kept my voice steady.
"I'm pretty sure you could," I assured her. "I don't know. But I would ask at least."
She talked to me about something or other; I don't remember what. But soon enough, we arrived at the doors of the big Methodist Church on College Avenue, the very same ugly building I'd passed many times before. The front doors were closed. I noticed once again that they looked so black and ominous for some reason, and nothing at all could make me want to go in there. I told the woman that I thought it was closed.
"They never open the front doors of churches," she said. "Those big large doors. Takes too much effort to open them. There shouldn't there be another entrance?"
The only possible way to any other entrance would be through the side street -- a dark, alley-way type of throughway that bordered somebody's yard with large hedge bushes. To myself, I paused brief second. Bad things happen to well-intentioned people in alleyways. And then the Tufts Police sends out a "notice from public safety to the Tufts Community" email about it to the entire university with obvious suggestions like "do not walk home at night alone. Call the Tufts Police."
Said one half of my brain: give her the bag and say goodbye at the corner. It could be an organized setup. Said the other half of my brain: help her out. It's the decent thing to do. And if you die or get attacked, at least you'll be thinking you were doing something worthwhile. That's lame, said the first half of my brain. Could be, shot back the second half. But even then, the articles in the Tufts University Daily would be about you. You believe in righteousness at heart, said the second half.
"I guess there must be another way," I said. "Let's go see."
"I really don't want to take you out of your way, miss," said the woman.
"No, no," I said, this time for her, not for me. "It's not a problem at all." Because it wasn't, really.
We walked together through the alleyway. She didn't attack me suddenly and no hooded men sprung out of the bushes with AK47s or Chinese water torture instruments.
We reached a small light in the side of the church and went up a few steps, at the end of which was a door. A sign that said "shelter". I pulled on it -- locked.
"There's a bell," said the woman, to the right of the sign. "Ring the bell." I pressed it and heard footsteps inside. Soon someone would come out and let her in.
"Okay," I said, placing the bag on the step near the door. Stepped down. "There you go. Have a nice night!" My job was done.
She didn't answer immediately -- only after I had already walked a couple of steps back towards College Avenue, heels clicking away.
"Thank you," she yelled after me. "Bless you, my child! Bless you!!!"
I got back to my apartment absolutely uneventfully, surfed the Internet, watched TV, chatted with the roommates, went to bed, and forgot about it. Only afterward, a few days later, somewhere somebody mentioned "karma" and I wondered why I did it, or even why I stopped. I'm not the kindest person in the world sometimes. But I was in a good mood. I was alive. I had two arms. I stopped to help this lady and came back to my room and warm bed, patent shoes in one piece. She, probably, spent the night in that terrible church and carried her bags somewhere else the next day.
She's a believer; I'm not. She's poor and miserable; I'm not. She hadn't asked anything from me, and I hadn't given anything to her. For me, the moment was one of philosophical reflection. For her, the moment was of survival and the whim of a stranger. For the duration of those meager 8 minutes, we couldn't have been farther apart.
Later I remembered, for some reason, an old "Friends" episode -- the one where Phoebe and Joey argue whether there are any unselfish "good deeds". Every good deed, Joey said, is in itself selfish -- because it makes the doer feel good in comparison to the other person's misfortune. Phoebe disagreed; the goodness was a mere side effect, she argued, of doing whatever one did. Ultimately, I think, I agree with Joey.
