“Let me buy you dinner,” I declare, my voice much less bold than the spoken words. My voice is quiet, quivering, nearly suffocated by the sounds of the city: taxis passing by and blasting their horns at commuters who jaywalk across Fullerton; the automated message Attention customers. An outbound train, from the Loop, will be arriving shortly, followed by the imminent arrival of the brown line on the platform above us; the sound of the baby’s cry. People pass by, chatting and laughing loudly into cell phones; a forgotten rumble of thunder rolls through the darkening sky.
“No thanks,” she says. There’s a bitterness to her words. It would be easier for her if I dropped in my twenty and continued on my way. Easier now, in this moment maybe, but not when the hunger begins to eat away at her insides, when the baby’s inconsolable crying makes her snap. She stands and reaches for the leather suitcase, shuffling the baby in her arms.
“It helps,” I say, quickly, knowing she’s about to make a run for it, “to lay them on their stomachs sometimes. Like this.” I motion with my hands. “It helps with the colic.” She watches my hands go from upright to horizontal and she nods—to some extent—and I say, “I’m a mother, too,” and she sizes me up and down, wondering why I don’t just go. Like everyone else, drop in my change and go.
“There’s a shelter—” I begin.
“I don’t do shelters,” she interjects. I envision the interior of a homeless shelter: dozens upon dozens of cots lined in a row.
She’s incredibly tough on the exterior. Hardened and rebellious. I wonder if inside she feels the same. She wears the same torn jeans, the same army-green coat, the same lace-up boots. Her clothing is grungy, wet. Her crooked hair carries a slick look, greasy, having not been washed in some time. I wonder about the last time she enjoyed a warm shower, a good night’s sleep. The baby, too, from what I can see is far from clean.
I consider Zoe on her own, on the streets. Homeless. The vision, purely hypothetical, makes me want to cry. Zoe, with her saucy exterior and sensitive, defensive interior, begging for spare change beside the “L.” Prepubescent Zoe with a baby of her own in three or four inconsequential years.
“Please let me buy you dinner,” I say again. But the girl is turning and walking away, the baby slung over her shoulder awkwardly, fussing and thrusting her teensy body about. I’m consumed with desperation, with this need to do something. But the girl is moving away from me, swallowed up by rush hour traffic on Fullerton. “Wait,” I hear my voice say. “Please stop. Wait.” But she does not.
I drop my bag to the moistened sidewalk and do the only thing I can think to do: I shimmy out of my raincoat, fully waterproof and lined, and at the corner of Fullerton and Halstead—where she waits anxiously for a green light to cross the plugged street—I drape the coat over the baby. She delivers me a dirty look.
“What are you—” she starts, accusatorily, but I retreat a step or two so she can’t undo the one thing I can think of to do. The cold air rushes my bare arms where I stand in a short-sleeve tunic and useless, lightweight leggings.
“I’ll be at Stella’s,” I say as the light turns green, “in case you change your mind,” and I watch as she joins the mass exodus of people crossing Fullerton. Stella’s, with its All-American cuisine and pancakes twenty-four hours a day. Completely unimposing and modest. “On Halstead,” I call after her, and she pauses, in the middle of the street, and peers over her shoulder at me, her visage hazy in the glow of oncoming traffic. “On Halstead,” I say again, in case she didn’t hear.
I stand there at the corner, watching until I can no longer see the army-green coat for all the people, until I can no longer hear the baby’s cries. A woman bumps into me and at the same time we say, “Excuse me.” I cross my arms, feeling naked in the brisk air—more fall-like than spring-like—and, turning onto Halstead, hurry to Stella’s. I’m wondering if the girl will show, wondering whether or not she knows where Stella’s is, whether or not she even heard me.