An old worn up bag lady stumbles on the invisible crack in the payment. Like an ancient gray bird hardly moving on her old ugly swollen legs, she mumbles something known and heard only by herself.
She crawls into a dingy hole that is her room in a run down apartment as old and shabby as herself. Nothing but old and rusty things in her room. Nothing valuable, nothing nice, dust and cockroaches everywhere. Pile of dim plastic dishes in the sink, old wooden box with a stained cloth on it for a table, two old mattresses on top of each other is her bed in the corner, no sheets, old torn blanket.
Was she always like that? Where are her children if any? Or some relatives to lend her a helping hand, to provide a better place to live and some healthy food? Why does she have to live like that? Alone in this dirty room. A small pension can be enough if you have a decent place to live. I cannot help but wondering, did she work when she was young? Has she lost everything that she had, got robbed, got sick? I don't know. Her face keeps its secrets, all it says,"I am sick and poor, I do not have anything."
Yes, but poverty does not have to be like that - ugly, dirty, hopeless. I look at her, wondering if my fate is going to be like that. If I live to an old age, am I going to be that ugly, lonely and poor? Can I prevent it? Not the age but poverty bothers me, that hopeless poverty, "no way out" kind of poverty. Or is it just her choice? To be independent from anybody and everybody, to have minimum and do not care? Just to move along until the last leaf of her life falls down. Why? Do we need all that? Is there any sense in that life? I pity and I resent her.
I cannot help thinking about my own age. What am I going to do when I am going to be old and helpless and cannot work any more? It is already $5 for a loath of bread. Am I going to starve? Are my children going to care? Can I do something now? Or is it too late? I do not want to be like that. I do not want to be like her. I do care.
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