STALLED

This evening I met a moment that I'll carry with me always.

As I leave rehearsal, I discover that I’m down to my second-to-last token. I walk to the TD at the corner of Dundas & Bathurst and withdraw $20 to purchase some when I get to the subway. I stick the bill in an old envelope that I pull from my bag, and shove the envelope into my jacket pocket. After standing at the bus stop for over 10 minutes as it gets progressively colder with no blue light in sight, I elect to skip the bus and take the Dundas streetcar instead. My plan is to get off at St. Patrick station but nearing University, I have to go to the bathroom. I know there is a food court above Dundas station, so I decide to go over to Yonge instead. As I enter the washroom, I take my headphones out of my ears and step into the stall next to her. My ears reuniting with the world around me, the sound stops me cold.

From inside her stall with the door closed, there is crying. She is on the phone, lamenting quietly that the shelter wouldn’t let her stay, and that she is alone and doesn’t know what to do. She says “Why couldn’t they let me sleep on the floor? I’m pregnant. I didn’t need a bed. I just needed a place to sleep. I’m not going back to him. I can’t go back.” 

I cannot hear what is said on the other end, but she is quiet for a bit, save for the volume of her tears. Finally she speaks again, her voice still low. “I just need $18 more for the bus... it leaves in an hour and a half... I guess I’m going to stand on the corner and beg people... I’ve seen people do it... they do it everyday... I don’t have no choice... I need to go to my mum’s. I’m not going back.” 

Despite the softness of her speech, what rings loudly is that she is scared of this man. I do not know if the violence is physical or emotional or both, but I hear it in every word that punctures the air we share.  She says “He done it” and “He done that” several times, and her voice trembles. It is clear that abuse of some shade has been felt and fled.  She is so scared that she is willing to stand on a street corner and beg strangers for money -- money for a bus ride that will take her and her unborn as far away from him as her meager means will allow.  

By now I’m out of the stall and washing my hands, but I can’t bring myself to leave. Her conversation over, she has hung up the phone and all I hear now are the whimpers.

It's been a long day.  I just want to leave this washroom, buy those tokens and head home to an evening lacking in complication. 

But I am not walking out.  I stare at my reflection in the mirror - not a habit in which I regularly engage - listening to her fear-baked solitude and fatigue.  Jesus I can be horrid sometimes.  Heaven forbid I put aside my desire for a drama-free zone long enough to take in for a few minutes what this woman is living.  She is pregnant, penniless, lonely and scared.  I am merely self-centered and tired.

Her whimpers are the backdrop to every story I have been told about a "him" who inflicts damage.  I am hurtled backward to my days as a rape crisis counsellor, and following that, to my time as Producer of V-Day Toronto and National Coordinator of One Billion Rising.  Those years were the once upon a time during which I routinely found myself up-close and personal with women who poured their pain into the chalice of my confidence.  It was nothing for me to be approached or written to by survivors of violence telling me their stories.  Since stepping away from that role, that has abated.  As the whimpers stay soft in the room but roar inside my brain, I see that although my activism has not waned, it has morphed into something else.  My direct connection to the women for whom I fight is no longer as immediate.  I have begun to fight more for them and less with them.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, but in this moment it feels like perhaps the engine has stalled.  The reflection staring back at me confirms that the embodiment of the fight has become a different entity, and that this is a moment in which I must reach back and touch the immediate.   

She steps out of the stall.

As our eyes meet in the mirror, I reach in to my jacket pocket and spin towards her.  Face to face, I see how tattered and dirty her coat is.  She appears to be in her twenties but wears many more years in her stance and on her face. 

“This is for your bus,” I say, holding out the envelope. "Go to your mom."

She looks stunned.  "I - I didn't think anyone could hear me..." she says.  I hand it to her and we hug, but it's an awkward one -- perhaps because there is now a third person in the room stepping behind another stall door.  Before I have a chance to say another word, she begins repeating once again “I just can’t try with him anymore... I just can’t make it with him anymore... The shelter wouldn't let me stay... I just can’t do it anymore... I just can’t...” 

I have words for that shelter.

I never learn what her name is.  But she knows mine.  The old envelope in which I stuck the money had previously contained a card from someone.  It says "Tanisha" on it.  I know that I will not hear from her ever again, and that she likely wouldn't be able to find me even if she wanted to.  But she won't want to, because her thank you is a weak one and although she means it -- it is evident that her gratitude is muted slightly by the weight of her embarrassment.  Part of me wishes that she could let me know when she and her baby arrive safely. We leave the washroom and I ask her where she's going.  "Manitoba", she says.  As we head down the escalator, she asks if I can direct her to the bus depot.  I walk her to the doors leading back outside and point her in the direction of Bay St.  I tell her to take care of herself and she's gone.

Manitoba Mom... Manitoba Moon... your baby and grandbaby are running to you.  They are fleeing a man who scars.  They are fleeing a man whose presence hurts.

Please greet them with kindness.

TT