I always used to see her by the 7. She was easy to miss, because she shared space with Bible thumpers who owned the area above the Times Square platform.The walls were covered in posters that had unfriendly exhortations scrawled on them: “Repent or burn in hell.” I felt like I should have more options. The red-faced proselytizers paced and shouted at me in Spanish then reprised the diatribe in English, which, in my case, meant I had to hear the likelihood of my eternal damnation twice.
I don’t know if it was because she just showed up one day or because I had become desensitized to the cross that I noticed her: a shriveled Asian woman sitting at the bottom of the incline, hidden in slavish obscurity. She hugged her shins while resting her face on her knees.
When I walked over to her, I noticed a forlorn coffee mug, dirty and partially filled with pennies and nickels, at her feet. I couldn’t be lieve that people could look at this woman and only spare small change. I reached into my wallet and gave her a dollar. Everything about her was gray and drab—dress, shoes, hair, the cup—except that smile that shored up the sagging wrinkles on her face, a smile that persisted in spite of gravity and destitution.
I was commuting from New Jersey to NYU at the time, so I had to pass her every time I went to my class. I’d go underground at Port Authority and walk to Times Square, where I would pick up the 7 train that would take me east to the 6.There were easier ways to get to where I had to go, but I had gotten used to this route, and I had gotten used to seeing her. She could almost pass for a statue until you left her some change, after which she would come to life, that refulgent smile slowly dawning on her face.
Eventually, I landed a job at a PR firm a block away from Bryant Park, obviating the need for the subway. Every day I negotiated the walk from the Port Authority to the Hippodrome Building on Sixth Avenue, bobbing and weaving while the infinite permutations of human ballistics unfolded in the rush hour of Times Square, never thinking that she still might be there, 100 feet beneath me.
One day, I was rushing through the train station on my way to meet a friend when I spotted her hunched figure in the corner. She was as faithful as a stone column, in the same exact position in the same exact location. I walked over to her, dollar bill in hand, and considered sitting down and asking her name. I’d ask if she wanted to have a meal with me in an effort to understand how such a kindly old woman could end up in such a lowly state. But I was late to meet my friend, so I stuffed the dollar bill in her cup and sped off.
That’s how it went for months, maybe even years. I’d live my life, never giving this subterranean woman a thought, enmeshed in the carefully calibrated balance of career and social life. But whenever I went underground, I’d start to wonder if she was still around, if she had made it these past few months. Sometimes, I would go out of my way to check in on her. And there she always was. Until one day she wasn’t.
At first, I thought I had confused the spot. It had been a while since I went there, but I knew I was lying to myself—I knew that spot as well as any, and she never budged. Maybe security had been harassing her, forcing her to move. Maybe I had come at a different time than usual. Maybe she was in the bathroom. After all, it was humanly impossible for a person to stay in a single spot at all times. Still, I feared the worst.
I felt guilty. It’s easy to give the cold shoulder when the person asking for help is a complete stranger, but I had established, at least in my head, some sort of quasi connection with her. She had become for me an avatar of sage grandmotherliness. Still, I did nothing. I never even spoke to her. I had wasted my chance to do something.
It might’ve been a year before I saw her next. I practically sprinted toward her and when I got to her, she looked up at me expectantly. I wanted to tell her how I had been wondering where she was, how I had seen her there in that same spot over the years. I wanted to know if she remembered me too. I wanted to ask her name and where she came from. But I didn’t know where to begin. I felt silly, so I reached into my wallet and handed her whatever money I had. She took the money, and we held hands for just a moment.
I only realized that I had given away my bus money when I got to the gate. I went to the New Jersey Transit ticket dispenser, but the machine was having difficulty reading my debit card. I tried a few dispensers, but none of them worked. Finally, I decided that I’d have to take out cash from the ATM booth and ask someone to break a twenty for me, but the cash machine wouldn’t accept my card either. The magnetic strip must’ve been damaged.
I had no choice. I parked myself by the gate for the 126 bus to Hoboken, and when someone walked by I asked, “Do you have any change?”
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