That’s A Twenty Well Spent
I gave twenty dollars to a woman on the side of the road today.
I rarely look at the people with cardboard signs and cheap marker ink staining their fingertips. But today was different.
Her sign said: Anything would help, please help me.
I don’t know if I did it because she was a woman, or because she didn’t buy a proper marker that wouldn’t stain her fingers.
As I sat at the light in one of the many wealthy areas of Sarasota, surrounded by Mercedes and BMWs and Lexuses and Cadillacs, I — a woman in a Toyota Corolla — rolled down her dark tinted window and gave a woman in a battered, pink blouse a twenty dollar bill.
As she approached me, leery, I smiled — the kindest smile I could pull across my face.
I’d folded the twenty. I don’t know if I was hoping to surprise her with it or avoid showing the much wealthier people refusing to hand this woman anything, how wasteful I am.
That’s why she’s driving a Corolla and not my Cadillac Escalade, they might’ve said. I “wasted” my money on someone who will drink it or smoke it or inject it away.
But my heart told me to do it. My gut, really.
And I’m done ignoring it. It’s never steered me wrong.
All the poor decisions I’ve made were ones where I rejected another decision, another action my gut wanted me to take, but I was too afraid to try.
But I’m not positive if this exchange was a gut decision, though. It felt more like a, why not.
You have a twenty dollar bill that you’re going to buy an over-priced lunch with because you won’t take the time to pack food each day. This woman might feed her whole family with it.
Or, she might buy a case of Natural Ice light beer with it and drink that for lunch.
It makes me think of the older style movies. Before bad guys had a shitty childhood or were abused or exiled by their peers. Before bad guys had a framework for their badness.
Back when bad guys were just sadistic fucks with no backstory. A sick concoction buried in the belly of a slobbish writer who lived vicariously through his villains.
This woman had a story. She had a reason for standing there under the shade of carrotwood trees sprinkled about the roadway divider.
Why she chose a wealthy area, I’m not sure. Maybe she was testing locations. Or maybe she was just desperate, thinking wealthy people have more to give and therefore she’d do better in that neighborhood.
For all I know she lived in that neighborhood. For all I know, she was wealthy. Rough and sun- and life-hardened, but wealthy. And my twenty dollar bill was merely a tissue to blow her nose with to clear the pollen from her nostrils.
For all I know, though, is that she could have food and water for the next two meals. And that’s enough for me.
That’s a twenty well spent.
I’m Sara Eatherton-Goff, a writer, visual artist, vocalist, tinkerer, and mom-person. I live and write in Seattle, Washington. Check out some of my collective works on my website, and subscribe to my newsletter Life and Other Stories for the most current essays, short fiction, musings, and more.