09.09.2003 - 1:00 p.m.

The first thing I do in the morning is check my email. I�d barely logged in to the program when there was a woman in my office, a beautiful woman smartly dressed in soft brown pants and a cotton blouse that was beginning to show wrinkles and sweat. In hurried words that sounded of the Carribean and of approaching tears, she asked if this was the library where the unemployment orientation was, because she needed a paper signed, because she needed to turn it in at the office in Waldorf tomorrow.

I don�t know anything about an unemployment orientation. It wasn�t here. I�ve never heard of the library she was looking for.

I would have let her use the phone anyway, but before I could even ask if it was long distance she was on the phone with someone I assumed to be the organizer. I could hear her explaining again as I worked on an email. She was trying to get directions. She was crying, she had one of those faces that is still beautiful when it cries, and I was miserable. I know what to do with a crying friend, but what do you do for a stranger? Pretend she isn�t crying, so as not to embarrass her? Try to offer a hug? What?

�I�m at�Where am I?� she kept asking, and I kept telling her, in a tone halfway between a tutoring voice and the voice I use to calm a skittish animal, �Ask for directions from Route 5.� The phone was eventually handed to me; over the directions coming through the earpiece, I could hear her praying, �Please, God, help me.� After the directions, the voice on the phone told me that this woman wouldn�t make the meeting, that she was already an hour late when they don�t allow late arrivals, and that she�d need to make another orientation. She�d been told this both before and after the directions, but hadn�t chosen to hear. All I could do was try to calm her down a bit and say it again. The voice had gone wry, then: �Fun, isn�t it?�

I made a vague sound of agreement. �I�ll just let her talk to them,� I say. Imagining the range of hysterics a secretary at an employment office must deal with, I glanced across to the tears running down dark cheeks and wondered despite myself if those tears were like the tears I cried in front of my sixth grade teacher because I needed extra credit to pass; I hadn�t been failing because I couldn�t do the work. I�d been failing because I hadn�t realized blowing it off would catch up with me. Certainly I was genuinely, uncontrollably upset, but I think the reason I lost control in those situations was because I knew people would go out of their way to comfort me. By giving me the credit, for instance.

I don�t know why I thought that. I wanted to feel sorry for her, I wanted to remember the sheer panic I�d felt when I�d gone into the wrong building for my speeding-ticket court date. But all I could think about was that it had been an easy thing to build in time to be lost, so that even though it took twice as long as it should have to get there, I still made it in time. All I could picture was the way she was reaching for my phone before she�d even asked, how her words were not �May I,� but �I need,� how she�d picked a small, out-of-the-way office to ask for help instead of the clearly visible circulation desk on the other side.

She�d calmed down while I was on the phone. I handed the woman a stickie with the directions I�d copied down, and I mentioned that it was nearly over, but maybe she could ask them when there was another one. I don�t know if that�s what she was planning to do. She wanted to call information for the number to Maryland�s employment office, which I couldn�t do from my office phone; I don�t have a code for paid calls. But I did it for her on my cell phone, outside, in the ten-foot-square space where the college actually gets service. I could do that much. That number was long distance too, and my cellphone had been on its last battery marker for a while now, so I handed her a second stickie with the number on it, and told her about the nearest payphone I knew of. She thanked me, then she walked off towards the parking lot, still upset, still looking lost and despairing and defeated.

I would give a great deal to help a lot of people, if I could. But it seems like the only things that have ever done me any good have happened in my own head, realizations about a new way to see my life, or to deal with it, or about a coping strategy that really isn�t as helpful as it seems. Most of them have happened because of something someone else has said, but it�s almost always been something offhand, something that�s been said hundreds of times before and ignored. It seems like nothing you say can make a difference until someone is ready to hear it, and I certainly didn�t know what to say to this woman.

I hope she makes the next orientation.

-stonebridge

previous | next