“Excuse me, Miss?” I hear a voice behind me and I turn around, greeting the wind sweeping across the parking lot and as it hits me squarely in the face, I see an African-American woman approaching me. “Miss, Miss, excuse me. Please don’t curse. Listen I know this is difficult, me approaching you in the parking lot this way. Look at me.  Look, I’m not going to come any closer. Look I’m standing right here”.  I think that is what I hear. I don’t think I’m making it up…the part about this being difficult. I know she is speaking to me and I see her moving toward me. She stops.

What makes a person acceptable? I breathe in and out quickly reviewing my upbringing, my life, the way experiences unfold. It is a choppy stream; all in surges and flashes. She is well dressed. Her hat and coat match. She wears gold rings in her ears. They appear to be good quality. Her speech is clear. She is standing by someone’s car. It’s not my car and she looks directly at me.

“Don’t curse, please don’t curse”, she says again. She begins talking very fast. “I’ve lost my bus pass and I need three dollars. I need to catch Bus number 54 to get back home and I’m wondering if you have any cash?” The wind whips the hair into my eyes and into my mouth as I open it and I am vulnerable. I’m standing in six inches of frozen slush and I can feel the damp beginning to seep into my shoes somewhere and I know there is a small hole on the right side of the shoe and it needs to be repaired.

“I don’t curse”, I offer. My mind runs wildly through the contents of my wallet. I had ten dollars in the fold of my wallet and I used nine of them to buy greeting cards at the store yesterday. I don’t want to lie. I will not lie. I know I have exactly one bill in the wallet and I know that I have change in the side pocket but I don’t know how much. To access that, I must turn around in the slush and risk falling and I am afraid. I must unzip my bag, pull out my wallet and start digging around. I do not know this woman.

“I know this is hard and I know this is a curse, my curse; me, a black woman approaching you in the parking lot”…I think I hear her say this. She is speaking more and more quickly and the wind is whipping and I don’t know who is more uncomfortable and my hair is in my mouth and I’m trying to remove it with gloved hands.

Is she fooling me? Am I being…and a whole litany of words run through my mind…unkind? uncharitable? racist? classist? Is there any other “ist” I missed? Which “ist” is required of me? Get that person in a box. Now I can look at him. Now I can figure her out. I need to make him stand still. I need to see her angles. Don’t move while I unpeel your layers. Stand away from me next to a car belonging to somebody else. Please.

We are engaged in this strange encounter a mere ten seconds. I look at her and say simply, “I don’t have enough cash on me and I don’t curse”. I need to emphasize that. I don’t curse people.  I am cursed when I do not place money in the hands of panhandlers in New York. I do not curse them.

I turn around and head toward the store. She says something up against the wind but I can’t hear her well. I pull the hair out of my mouth. I do not have enough information. I don’t know if a bus pass costs three dollars. I don’t know Bus number 54. I don’t know that I have ever ridden a bus in Rochester. I rode them in New York all the time, but a different set of rules exist in that metropolis. In Rochester, public transportation means something specific. The blast of the heaters sweeps me into the store and I know for sure that my right foot is completely soaked.