In Plain Sight: What I Wish I Could Unsee
What Should We Do For Our Most Vulnerable?
We were on our way to the movies in suburban Sacramento on a Saturday evening at dusk. We had rolled to a stop in the middle of a six-lane street.
These streets are like small freeways intersecting suburbia, with neighborhoods nestled on the other side of retaining walls to keep the road noise away from residents in their single-family ranch homes.
I eyed her on the corner, on the sidewalk close to the street with her shopping cart. A Starbuck’s and other businesses in the corner strip mall behind her, strip malls or gas stations at all the other corners of the intersection.
It was early April, a chill in the air, yet all she had on was a dirty white tank top and some ill-fitting, loose running shorts. Her legs were scrawny and bare, her sneakers tattered. Her hair was dirty and disheveled and pulled back into a haphazard pony tail. I could not make out the features of her face, but at a distance her complexion was dark and weathered.
The shopping cart beside her was not overloaded with all her worldly possessions, but contained something essential. She kept moving, going from one end of the cart to another, lifting up a sheet of plastic to peek at contents underneath. Was she looking for a jacket? Was she cold?
The more we watched in those few seconds, the more unsettled she became. Frantic. Back and forth. Back and forth. She was on the small sidewalk right next to the busy freeway-street where cars would whiz by. No cover for her.
And then, before she did it, I knew why she was frantic. I knew she had to go.
“I think she might drop her pants,” I told my partner. My chest tight for her.
A car pulled up next to us in the left turn lane and blocked our view of her. The lights long at the massive intersection. I took my foot off the brake, let my car inch forward so she was again in our line of sight.
And in those few seconds where she was invisible to us, she had found a paper soda cup in her cart, and something resembling a paper towel. And right there, in plain sight, on a busy suburban intersection, she had dropped her shorts and was squatting, defecating, trying to aim her shit into that paper cup, attempting to clean herself in full view of traffic.
I can’t unsee it.
I can’t unsee her.
Something I never imagined I’d see in the middle of my suburban bubble.
She was not in one of the makeshift encampments that pop up along smaller corridors of my usual commute, where there is cover of shrubbery or trees at the edges of a parking lot or strip mall. Where tents with tarps and walls of shopping carts delineate temporary urban homesteads created by the unhoused.
This was one woman, alone, agitated, desperate to relieve herself, and not right in her mind.
She shat as my dogs do — wherever they need to. I with my little poop bags ready to collect their waste. She did as they did, but had enough mind collect her own, leave no trace as if she was in the backcountry, but there was no place to dig a hole in the urban hardscape.
So she aimed for the target, as climbers do when they shit on rock ledges, high above the earth, and pack it away. Left no trace.
She was still distressed, likely mentally ill, no filter of modesty, and yet she was conscious not to not leave that waste behind.
The light turned green and traffic began to move. I glanced at her again as I drove away. Heartbroken and sickened for her. At her circumstance, at our community, our local county, that this is happening. That someone this vulnerable, would relieve themselves in the middle of an intersection.
It’s hard to believe that despite how much money our state has spent, we have found so few solutions for the unhoused, especially those whose minds are not clear.
For who in their right mind would not seek cover, privacy for this biological need that most of us dread to do even in front of our closest relations?
We need to act. To find safe places for persons like her. The trick is having ones like her accept it when it is offered. If she were to refuse, would it be a mercy to compel her to a safer situation? Is it ethical? A violation of her autonomy? Or an act of compassion we hope she might be able to understand after some care, after some help, after some treatment.
I am not sure what the answer is, but we need to do more. More than I did. Which was to drive by.
© Lilliana Méndez-Soto 2024. All Rights Reserved.
