You hear her before you see her. Exotic as island spice, the dark woman
wearing bright colors follows the night as it shutters the day.
Cresting the rise and fall of pavement heaved aside by restless earth,
hard pine wheels clack on rough concretean old wooden wheelchair,
wicker back and seat recaned, pine leg rests worn smooth, leaving its
tracks across countless dirt yards swept clean, following ruts in damp
clay, making its way north, then west. To this place. To this time.

Muscular hands knot to bone at the wrists, tendoned arms move sure and
steady as pistons, stroking her forward toward the bloody smear of
sunset that kindles the low highrises to a bonfire for burning the
infamies of the day. Eyes blue as porcelain watch the neons wake,
stretch and beckon with long fluorescent fingers to anyone in search of
anything that will clean up, wash down, fill in, drown out, obliterate
the fear that sweats into the darkness.

The eye of the moon watches her. She levers herself down the narrow
valleys between buildings that rise like seams of baked red clay, where
lives are lived in the air, nesting in small cells like wasps in the
city, hope and despair buzzing against yellowed squares of glass. From
an open window, Etta James seduces the night with a bluesy contralto
voice:

“I have seen the wayward saints of Memphis
The wasted angels down on Stratford Road.”

Hands gripping the wheelrims, she strokes the chair forward to the low
swampy beat of the blues, the haunting weariness simmers in Etta’s
voice. From the doorways, the crevices between buildings, they step
out, refugees who have washed up here, eyes gaunt with hunger for
something more than what they have, muscles tensed against the fear of
what they have already lost. She nods in greeting, recognizing each and
every one.

A young girl steps out between two men, one young, one oldfather and
grandfather, perhaps. She has the blue eyes of a Berber and skin the
color of sandstone in moonlight. She holds out her hand, opens it. In
her palm, a small round object, something milky and blue, like a
cataract filming an eye. A marble. The dark woman takes the offering
with a smile and tucks it into a small leather pouch in her lap. It
bulges with other small gifts. And mystery.

She grips the pushrims of her chair and propels herself forward again.
In the air that parts before her, the scent of cinnamon. In her wake,
the bitter taste of truth. Her voice drifts back: “Light your lamps
tonight, stay home, hold your love fast in your hearts.”