Philadelphia Voices

The Woman with Five Purses “How come you don’t smell nothin’ like urine?”, she asked the man standing in front of her at the stop light in her usual, direct way. “Because I clean up real good,” he replied. “What kind of woman is this?”, he asked himself. “I mean, who asks you about if you smell like piss when they first meet you?” “Where do you clean yourself?”, she asked. He thought that he would say, ‘Under my arms and my private parts,’ but he said, “At the place where I stay.” “So, you have a place to stay, do you? I wish I had one.” He noticed that she carried three purses on her left arm and two on her right arm with two tote bags strapped to her belt. Deciding that he could be as direct as she was, he asked, “Why do you carry so much stuff around with you?” “Because I already said that I don’t have no place to stay and I don’t want to push around a shopping cart. What am I supposed to do? Be an open target with a cart that anybody could steal from? I make my things into little targets that they’d have to wrestle me for. My arms are strong, so I carry my stuff around. Sometimes, it hurts, but only some of the time.” Out of the blue, she said, “I’m attracted to you because you aren’t like all the others. You don’t smell.” He said, “It’s easier to walk down the street with someone who doesn’t smell like a skunk. But, there are reasons why people smell up their clothes. Sometimes, they can’t find a bathroom. They don’t have public bathrooms here like they do in France. My friend told me that you can use a bathroom on the street in Paris and it gets cleaned after you leave. Philly restaurants and shops getting tighter about it; only customers allowed to use their bathrooms. Especially during holidays and tourist season in the hotter months. I understand why, but it sure doesn’t help if you walk the streets and don’t have no place to go.” She replied, “Yeah, sure. But most of the time, street guys get so lazy and drugged out that they don’t even bother to find a place. You see, there’s the difference. If they had money, they could go to some kind of nice public place and be taken care of. And have clean clothes every day.” He replied, “Or they could get taken by social workers or the police to a facility where there’s a shower. They’d probably could get clean clothes there, too.” “You see Charley laying on that grate over there? The guy with the beard and braidy hair and his pants lookin’ like he been in ‘em for a year because of the dirt? He knows he gets attention for things like that. When Charlie feels he’s really soiled, like with shit caked on the backside of his pants, he plops himself down in the middle of the sidewalk on top of a subway heat grate. Sleeps there. That goes on for a day or two until the cops pick him up and admit him to someplace where he can get cleaned up and eat.” She said, “Maybe I should do that.” “Nah. Too dangerous, woman. You would be hurt.” “Why you say that? A woman has a right to lay down in the middle of a sidewalk as much as a man does! Who’re you to tell us what we women do?” “O.K. Try it. See what happens to you. All them cars and people whippin’ by in the day. And all those men tryin’ to harm you at night. Doesn’t seem that anybody would want to do that, but women surely are treated badly when they do stuff like that.” “You harsh. But, I’m still attracted to you. You got any money? Let’s get some food and get down to the park before anybody else grabs a bench.” He said to himself, “It’s been a long, long time since a sister said that she be attracted to me.”