On my last Wildflower entry, I mentioned how I blew the opportunity to offer guidance to a younger woman, who clearly had never been told how to dress professionally while job hunting in person. The universe recently gave me a chance to redeem myself during my trip home from work earlier this week. No sooner than I stepped of the train, I noticed a young women with thick shoulder length hair, dressed in a black one piece which was see through at the mid-driff.
We were outside and it’s summer, so no big deal right? Normally I wouldn’t have looked longer than two seconds but this young woman didn’t look too comfortable in her sexy ensemble. She was pregnant, and appeared lost. I watched her ask a man about a particular bus route, who was clueless on where to direct her, but made sure to include that “she looked good pregnant”.
I took a deep breath and asked the karma gods to send her in my direction, and out of reach from late night metro creeps. She finally came towards me and explained that she was on her way to a friend’s house but wasn’t sure how to get there, wasn’t from Baltimore, and didn’t have a cell phone. Initially, I thought she should follow me on the bus route and give me her friend’s address so I could GPS it. But something told me not to leave her.
I told her that she could come with me home so I could drop off a few things, and then give her a ride to her destination. I gave her something to eat and tried my best to tell her in an offhand way to spill the beans.
“Girl, you can’t walk around Baltimore lost by yourself, especially at night time. Why didn’t your friend pick you up or call a cab for you?”
Her “friend” who she was headed to visit turned out to be her unborn baby’s father. She was dressed in a tight outfit while six months pregnant because she had been released from jail earlier that day, and had to leave wearing what she had at the time she was arrested. Originally from Brooklyn, she was in Maryland visiting relatives and picked up a friend who failed to tell her that he was carrying firearms. So she was arrested for four months, car impounded, and without a plan.
Scary. Not only was this girl locked up because of someone she most likely didn’t know well in another state, but she was about to become a mother, with a man she didn’t seem to know much about. It’s easy get up in the morning, grab starbucks, and complain over slight inconveniences when the sister next to me may have it tens times worse. We really don’t know what’s going on in the next person’s life.
What if I just gave her that “What the hell is she wearing look”, and turned up the volume in my headphones and kept it moving? Would she have made it to her destination safely, or had a horrific night fighting off creepers in one of the countries toughest cities? Maybe her brief encounter with me didn’t add up to anything significant in the long run, but what if it did? She couldn’t have possibly felt cared for when the father of her unborn child didn’t even secure a stress free way home, knowing she was in unfamiliar territory.
It’s easy to look over and think “Get it together boo”, but if I didn’t have awesome parents, the fact that I could be in those same shoes was hard to ignore. If this was three years ago I’d probably be writing a vent post about how sick I am of the ratchets making it hard for women like me. But that wouldn’t help me or the woman that looks like me in close proximity.
But the main question is who’s really checking for black women besides other black women? No one if you ask me. We’re all worth the extra time and compassion, even that lost single mom in the system.
Image Source: Model Beverly Peele – June 1989.
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Laik
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