The Beggar

The young woman was asking for help, probably money. She was approaching us one by one as we stood after 11 p.m. on the platform at Newark’s Broad Street station. I was between trains, transferring from the one which picked me up in Madison, N.J., a frighteningly quiet town after one lives in the borough of Manhattan for seven years, and I was waiting for the train that would take me, blessedly, to Penn Station. The young woman—how young? I wonder now, but then she seemed mostly to be something between a nuisance and a threat—was holding a teddy bear, which would have been a tactical advantage in dealing with most people. Not me. I thought the teddy bear was a bit much and I was exhausted from traveling out to review a play at the New Jersey Shakespeare Theatre—a fabulous production of “The School for Wives” by Molière—and I did not want to hear the spiel. I could not, at that hour on this day of this month, bear to hear her out. So I called to get my messages. I was basically using the phone as a weapon to disengage. I was faking. She knew that. She was on to me. She approached anyway and started her spiel. “No,” I said. She looked angry. “Someday it could be you,” she said.
A legitimate point. If I did not have a partner who would move in with me at the end of next month to pay my mortgage or parents who would let me borrow a bed, I too could be out on the street. Certainly I could lose a home I love. Part of me wanted to call after her and tell her that actually she was onto something and that we had a few things in common. I lost my job. Does she have one? I am having some serious money problems. She must. I just got on the phone with the student loan company to ask for forbearance—and I’m hoping they will be more responsive to me than I was to the woman on the platform.
But I know that my situation is not as desperate as hers. I have a place to sleep. I do not need to harass strangers at the station. I have a precious few people who would take me in—a handful, really…actually I wonder how many—but a handful can be enough. I am lucky, still, but spend a fair amount of time feeling terrified, fearful of the future.
I did not say anything to the woman. She reminded me of my own little terrors, rational and otherwise. I did not like the way she approached people or even, at that hour and in that place. A moment of candor: I have a certain fondness for the place and an irrational hope, but Newark is still largely a mess, even with the cute mayor and the classy baseball stadium and the arts center full of suburbanites. There's a long way to go and this particular train station is not my favorite hangout. I did not like her mean manner or what I suspected was her use of the teddy bear as a prop.
But I do wonder what will happen to her, and to me, and to the 10 percent of the people in this country who do not have jobs.
Someday it could be you.