Beautiful Women and Pigeons

Julianne Pollard

 

            You can tell a lot about a man by what he eats and the women he keeps.  For instance, one look at my lunch and the woman in my apartment, and you’d swear I was on a fixed income.

            It’s lunchtime here at the hospital cafeteria where I work and I’m sitting at a table in the back with a group of other janitors and a security guard who I call my friends.  All of society is stratified and one quick survey of the cafeteria could prove the point.  The rich doctors who lack the time to eat out are sitting up front with the other doctors, in the middle the nurses are sitting with the nurses, the med students are sitting with the med students, the White visitors are with the Whites, the Black visitors are with the Blacks, and us janitors are in the back hoping no one leaves a big mess to clean up. However, it’s my one break in the day to eat and I’ve seen it all before so I can’t wait to pretend to enjoy my typical lunch of black-eyed peas and rice, all brought from home and made with my own hands.

            Even though my friends all earn somewhat comparable salaries to my own, it would appear like they should be eating the same kind of poor man’s supper, but that’s far from true.  Old Ralph who’s worked here for nearly 3 decades and outlived 4 wives, has a tray full of a la carte items that he actually bought from the cafeteria—vegetarian lasagna, lemonade, Caesar salad and a cool slice of egg custard pie.  The grand total, that I spy when he tucks his receipt under his plate of lasagna, comes to $9.12 and he eats like this at least 3 times a week.  Tony, a 13-year employee like myself, has brought his lunch and when I see him pull out a crumpled Ralph’s bag, I feel relieved. Yet, he pulls out Tupperware full of his wife’s homemade fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, candied yams and cornbread.  My stomach audibly growls and I try to cover the noise with loud fake coughing.  Tony’s married and although she’s nothing to look at, she has a stable job and loves him.  Then there’s Herman, the security guard whose selfishness is only second to his girth.  Now, I admit we all make fun of Herman every chance we get, but I have always envied him the most.  If I had the extra cash, I bet I would be just as big as he is.  Today, Herman’s lunch tray looks like he has ransacked a Burger King--  a colossal double cheeseburger, a mountain of chili cheese fries, a slice of seven layer fudge cake that he greedily informs us that he bought from a nearby bakery, a cup of decaf, a handful of Splenda packets, a large coke and a veggie burger.

            Normally, we all sit around and waste our lunch hour talking about 3 topics: Bush, women we can’t afford and The Man or as a more educated person would describe it, racial inequities, but today, I want to know who Herman is trying to fool with his veggie burger.

            “Man, I know you ain’t trying to be health conscious.  What’s up with the fake burger?”

            Herman looks at me completely unbothered while he finishes swallowing his first bite of cake.  He’s one of those people that likes to eat dessert first and this must be an especially good piece of cake because he takes another bite before answering me.

            “Oh, this?” He asks, while gingerly picking up the wheat bun sandwich in his large paw of a hand.

            “Yeah, that.  Who are you trying to fool with it?”

            He laughs a little. 

            “No one, man.  You know I’ve got the sugar, so I’m trying to see how the good for you stuff tastes before I have to eat like that all the time.”

            All Black people from the South know someone in their family who calls diabetes “the sugar” and it sort of tickles me that Herman says it since I know he knows better; we work in a hospital afterall and are far from our roots.

            “Shoot, you should be on dialysis right now with the way you eat.”  Old Ralph chimes in.

            “Old man, don’t you worry about my health.  I’ll be here long after you.”

            “Sure you will if you get about 2 or 3 of them gastric by-what do you call them things?”  Ralph’s memory fails him.

            “Pops, it’s called gastric bypass, but he’ll probably need a one of them quadruple heart bypasses too.”  Finally, Tony gets involved but his mind is elsewhere.

            Herman says some things under his breath and resumes to polishing off his food.

            “I mean, how are you ever going to get a woman looking like that? You can’t see your shoes!  Look at your gut!”  Old Ralph has forgotten about eating his lunch and is fully engrossed in Herman.  Meanwhile, I try not to wonder if Ralph will throw away his uneaten salad and pie.

            “I’ve lost more women under this,” Herman lifts his gut to exaggerate his point, “than you’ll ever have.”

            It’s sad but my mind tries to calculate just how many women could fit under there and reason that Herman just may be right.

            They keep on going back and forth and I fight the urge to snatch Ralph’s pie and eat it on the run.  Forcing my attention to my own food, I try to eat my peas slowly, but I finish in less than 15 minutes and then I see her.

            She’s a dark haired woman sitting close to the large window in the cafeteria on the patio at a table by herself.  That draws my attention because most of everyone is sitting with someone, yapping and eating, enjoying themselves, but not her.  She’s far from ugly and there’s no reason for such a specimen to be without company, yet she is. 

Her head is down and she’s not at all interested in the food on her tray, a bowl of what must be soup, a bottle of water and a large whole wheat bun.  She has a couple of loose napkins on the tray before her and while I watch, a light breeze causes them to blow around her.  Ordinarily, a person would have tried to catch them or place them under something so they wouldn’t blow away, but she does nothing but sit there.  At one point, a napkin blows into her face, hanging in the air next to her chin as if it wasn’t sure whether to float on by or fall to her lap and still not even a twitch from her.  Finally, her hair does what her hands would not, at the behest of a larger gust of wind, her hair flows behind her, then wraps itself gently under her chin and knocks the napkin down and it is forced to fall to her lap.

            Realizing that I had been staring, I look around to see if anyone has noticed, but no one has.  Old Ralph’s threatening to anonymously call Jenny Craig and report Herman, so there’s still no need for me to pay attention to their conversation even though I had started it.

            I steal another glance at the woman on the patio and am slightly amused to see that pigeons are now clustering near her table.  One pigeon even flies up and lands on the table to get a better look at her food.  Surely, she’ll look up and scare the flying vermin away, but she sits there keeping the bench warm.  My mind conjures up all of the possible scenarios for her nearly comatose posture, then somebody hits me in the arm.

            “Who hit me?” I want to know which knucklehead to hit back.

            “How’s your wife doing?  We can tell she ain’t cooking much,” Tony motions towards my bowl, “so it must be good, huh?”  Tony is tired of talking about how fat Herman is and his eyes are twinkling like they always do when we talk about women other than his wife.

            I don’t answer but swing at his shoulder, which he deflects easily.

            “You never talk about her, man.  It’s like she don’t even exist.  What’s up with that?”  Herman’s done with his lunch except for two fake sugar packets, but he still isn’t satisfied.

            Even Old Ralph is quiet straining his good ear towards me to hear whatever I say.

            I laugh to myself because they always do this each week without fail.  In fact, it’s because of them that I married that girl in the first place. 

            “You’ll talking about the girl from the club?” I keep on stalling.

            “You know who we’re talking about.  She still with you?” Tony asks and from the look on his face, I can tell he thinks that would be a miracle.

            I roll my eyes hard and stop myself when I realize how womanish that is. 

            “Yeah, she’s still with me.”  And I wish she would leave, but I can’t say that.

            They all stare at me real long and don’t talk for a minute, then Old Ralph breaks wind and the silence.

            “So Pocahontas can’t get enough, is that right.”  They all chuckle at this and meditate on how lucky they think I am and what kind of ecstasy they imagine my home life must be.

            They don’t have much fact to base their fictional fantasies on because I don’t talk much and I don’t let them come by my home.  All they know is that she’s young, tan and has long straight black hair and for them, that’s more than enough.  That’s why we call her Pocahontas and that’s what her name sounded like when she was introduced to me at a club.  Admittedly, I’m too old to be at any dance club, but Tony thought it was time that Herman and I hung out with him on one of his PYT, pretty young thing, hunting exhibitions and so I went.

            I had no expectations because us all being about 40 had no reason to imagine any 20-something wanting anything to do with any of us, but my luck turned out to be worse than ever that night.  Within minutes of ordering my first $10 domestic beer, I felt a tap on my shoulder.  So I turned away from the bar and check out these three girls standing before me.

            “Yeah, what do you want?”

            The oldest looking one, maybe 25, who turns out to be a cousin of the middle one speaks up.  “She wants to dance with you.”  She said this and motioned to the shorter middle one.

            I looked at her and the other two and realized that the middle one was the best looking and ask for her name.

            “So does she have a name?”

            The oldest one answered quickly and in the loud atmosphere it sounded like she said “Pocahontas”, however, I later found out she said “Poquita Tonta” which when translated is a better description of me and my life choices.

            At first, I thought I was on top of the world and had just landed myself a Latin honey, but only a month later, her family tracked me down and forced me to marry her. 

            I can handle her siphoning off my money, keeping the roaches in my place company while I work all day, not knowing a lick of English, watching Telemundo in my bedroom until the tv runs hot and eating me out of house and home, but one more mouth to feed will just about kill me.

            The worst part is that I consciously force myself to go home each night.  I have to since the urge to leave her and my situation is so strong, but although I don’t love her, I know she needs me.  That’s a sign of growing old, doing things willfully out of a sense of duty rather than love and a pursuit of happiness.   

            Seeing that my friends have yet to tire of thinking about my wife, I ask Tony about his.

            “Why you want to know about her?  How ‘bout we swap?”  Tony laughs gustily at the idea.

            I look hard at his yams and cornbread and respond.  “Sure,” I throw my apartment keys on the table,” you can have her if you pass your yams over.”

            I reach over for his food, he instinctively holds it close, but I can see his little mind wondering if I was being serious.  I was, but lack the gall to say it, so I look back at the window to see if the dark haired woman is still there.

            She is and the pigeons have taken over her tray and are enjoying her lunch.  That’s life; you’ve got victims, scavengers and predators.  We all fall into some category and I’m definitely done with feeling like a victim and have no desire to be a scavenger fighting over the remnants.

            “Hey, Herman, are they still looking for someone for the night shift in your department?”

            Herman quickly surmises what I want to do and tries to deflect my interest.  If you’ve ever heard of the crabs in a barrel mentality, then Herman would be the King Crab himself.

            “Man, this ain’t no easy job and to apply you have to do it online and you ain’t got no computer.”  He says this with finality and waits for me to change the subject, but I don’t.

            “Well, have you heard of a library before?  They got computers, just tell me what I need to do.”

            He exhales really hard, I’m not sure if it’s because big people normally breathe that hard or because he’s exasperated, but I don’t care. 

            “Don’t be wasting my time or my boss’s, man.  So are you serious?”

            I take one more quick look at that woman outside with pigeons surrounding her and one even about to land on her shoulder.  The birds have knocked over her bowl, soup is dripping onto the tile floor, chunks of carrots, chicken and celery are strewn all over the table, then it sinks in that it’s my job to clean up the mess.

            “For sure, man, for sure. Let’s go right now.”