night walkers

There are four homeless people that panhandle for money and/or food right outside of the castle everyday. I pass by all four of them on my way to work in the morning, and as I walk by every afternoon, there they sit. One of them is a wanderer. She is the lone female of the group, and insists on roaming each side of the road until she gets what she asks for, or not.

This woman crept up on me the other day as I was minding my own business coming home from the Metro. Now the street directly in front of my house, N Street, leaves little to be desired. I don't walk it, ever. Similar to the creepy dude that sits behind you in your college math class, breathing really hard and occasionally stroking your hair with his pencil though later claims it to be an accident... that's N street.

Then there's M street, which is a single street over (the street directly in front of where all the panhandlers sit), and it's like night and day. M Street houses colorful row homes and rows of beautiful trees and dog walkers who look you in the eye and smile. M Street is like comfort food, like mashed potatoes, really.

M Street is the street I take when I step off the Metro, and it's about a ten minute walk from the DC Metro to the castle. I'm just bee-bopping along, bag slung over shoulder, most likely on the phone to my grandmother, when BAM - I turn the corner and there the lady is, standing in front of me, holding out her hands.

At first, I tried to skirt around her, thinking she was just another pedestrian trying to go somewhere. In fact, she moved purposefully back in front of me and held out her hands again, with crescent moon blue eyes. Wrinkles creep down her forehead in jagged lines, like Pocohontas' river basin. Just around the river bend, yo.

"Do ya have change to spare, Ma'm? Dollars?"

"I honestly don't." I said this...in all honesty. In case she thought I was lying like every other person she'd asked that day, I totally wasn't. Because before her, I had thrown my spare change into the plastic pickle jar which sits in front of a man who plays a different instrument every day by the Metro. I'm easily impressed.

She nodded her head and said 'God Bless', which I thought was nice. She returned to roaming the sidewalks. The others, three aging men, station themselves on the island strip of grass and trees that lines the middle of the road. One shakes a glass jar as if it were a tambourine. He never speaks, just shakes and shakes. Another is in a wheelchair. His beard is dread-locked, which I find particularly fascinating. They only panhandle to the cars, never to the pedestrians.They leave the walkers up to the woman.

I often wonder if they sleep there at night, in the middle of the crossroads, or if the pickings are better elsewhere after dark. I wonder if the woman continuously roams. I wonder if they split their earnings, sit around the island after dark and decide which one is going to walk to Safeway for dinner.

This is why I don't go out alone at night. Too many unanswered questions.