Did you ever panhandle? Ask for money on the street? One day, too hot and lazy to walk 12 blocks, I decided to see if I could bum the price of a subway token, my wallet being back in the desk of my nice air-conditioned office. So in New York’s Grand Central Station I hesitantly approached an average-type woman, someone like myself, who would surely empathize. Or so I thought. She looked right through me, didn’t even blink, her face expressionless as she side-stepped me and walked on. I felt completely humiliated. And after one more feeble attempt, this time with the male version of the average person, I gave up and walked back to the office. But the experience, miniscule in itself, gave me an inkling of what it must be like to have to beg for your existence, your life dependent on the charity of others.
This winter saw a series of people inhabit the tiny space that houses the cash machines of the bank next door to our office. One couple slept together on a cardboard pallet that couldn’t have been more than three feet in width. It was hard to tell but in their sleep they looked to be in their early forties, their lean weather-beaten, weary faces reminding me of photographs I’d seen of migrant farm workers during the Depression.
The couple’s arrival upsets old “Maude” as I call her, who likes to have the place to herself. A big, heavy-jawed woman, still somehow proud, she hovered in the corner, waiting, watching. She never asks for money but will take it quickly if offered. She will not meet your eye. And I have never heard her speak.
“Maude” with not come in if “Della” is there. “Della” is a perky, sly-eyed woman who chirpingly asks, “Could you spare me a cigarette, Miss?..I’m tired, if I get twenty bucks I can get a hotel room for the night. Can you help me out?” She told me the other night, volunteering the information between puffs on her cigarette, that now security guards from the bank put them out. What’s old “Maude” to do now?
Within a three block area I was asked three times for money today. The third time I heard myself say “I gave already,” hurrying past with mutterings in my head of “I pay my taxes. It’s not my job to worry about them.” And then I felt awful. Guilty and weary and sorry and resentful at the same time at their clutching poverty pulling me down to earth and to the harsh reality that it’s not going to go away.
What do you do? I don’t know what the answer is. I’m just your average person who does a bit. And thanks God that there are people such as Sister Mary Rose McGeady out there who are doing a lot. Most of her life has been devoted to the disadvantaged, the last two years with Covenant House, taking care of the children, the runaways, the discarded, trying to get to them before they become the next generation of street people.
But we can’t just leave it up to the McGeadys of this world. There aren’t enough McGeadys to go around. And much as we may not want to, we have to become involved. So many of us in this country don’t even bother to vote.
The government is there to work for us. We have got to make it work for us.
Following in the Kennedy tradition of caring about human rights, Caroline Kennedy has co-authored a book In Our Defense, the Bill of Rights in Action. As she says it is only by understanding the freedoms that we have and by getting more involved that we will have the kind of country that our hearts’ desire.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the May 1992 issue of Irish America. ♦
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