How I Became an Angel

A couple of days ago, I was putting groceries in my trunk when this lady comes hobbling about with bags and all.

Can you help me please- she says. I've got both my eyes stuck in the trunk so I don't look at her in the eye and catch sympathy. I play that internal monologue that gets me a ticket out of guiltsville-- "there are shelters for the homeless, services for the destitute, soup kitchens for the hungry, and if I spare some change she'll just buy the next drink to self-destruction..."

A lot of times that monologue never works anyway and I end up sparing a dime. But as she speaks, I recognize she's from somewhere in Africa. She also asks for something very specific. "I need $9.47 to get my medicine from the pharmacy because my insurance card has not arrived and my friend cannot pay for it and..." The story was stitched together desperately, tearfully, with shame written all over her face.

I was now looking at her, because what beggar asks for $9.47? I'm used to "gimme a quarter." I ask her what pharmacy. We walk together right across. At the counter, sure enough, the pharmacist tells me her meds are there. She went out begging only for enough to cover the pain meds. I could tell she was in a lot of pain by how she was walking. It cost exactly what she said.

I asked them what the total for all her meds were and I paid for them. I ask her if she had food in her house, she says yes, she had a little rice left that she's been eating for three weeks. We did food shopping, even went to an African store where they sold something called kenkey that she was truly grateful for. Having your people’s food in exile is always the next best thing to being home.

I ask her where she lived and as I drive her there, she tells me her sob story. A US legal resident who had completed her nursing course and soon after suffered a stroke, worked briefly at a food store and got laid off on account of her inability to stand for long hours. She was now surviving hand-to-mouth, sometimes simply went out to beg. Her two housemates were tired of bailing her out, and deep depression had become her daily companion.

What about family? I asked. She said she had five grown children, land and a husband back home in Ghana where she had been a teacher before winning the Green Card lottery. Yes, she was free to go back any day, but she dared not think about it because they had lovingly nailed her to the cross of expectations and placed on her a thorny crown of American dreams that pierced her flesh. The blood of festered hopes, desolation and failure dripped down her mahogany face and caked up at her tired feet. Over the years that she had spent crucified on that cross, it had become extremely painful to bring herself down from it as the nails of a clan’s misplaced needs had burrowed deeper and deeper.

Painting by Karni-Bain Bai, Carl (Nude).
The bottom of life's travails lays you bear.

She was a mother bearing an impossible burden on her broken shoulders, for a family thousands of miles away. Yet she still wanted to hang on to the hope that her Jesus will work it out and she’ll be able to bring two of her kids to college so they may have a brighter future. I believed those kids had a better shot right where they were in Ghana, unless they ventured out into the world without depending on her.

I told her she must find the strength to go back home, no matter how broken she was. I tried to assure her that those who love her will forgive her and take care of her. But she was still too terrified of her perceived failure, of being a source of great disappointment.

She said to me, “You must understand this is no ordinary encounter. This morning, I had reached my wit’s end. I prayed for three straight hours with great anguish. Then I decided to just go out like an animal in the wild. I needed my pain medication desperately. When the pharmacy would not give it to me, I cried and cried, and that’s when I went out and saw you putting in your groceries. I took courage, carried my shame with me and approached you. Don’t you see, you’re the angel my Jesus sent. May God abundantly bless you and your house.” She wept saying this.

I forced the water heaving from my bosom back inward so it wouldn’t spill out from my eyes. It got caught in my throat and made a painful knot there. I turned away, because I knew the only reason I had upgraded this particular do-gooder opportunity from the careless sparing of a dime to taking care of a broken soul was out of bias: that she was African. I was no one’s angel. We all make false claims on our resumes.