Maria

Our downstairs neighbor, Maria, works at the Long Island College Hospital just a block north of our building. She is a delightful lady, hardworking, always has a kind word for me. I can’t say the same for my roommates who when I first moved in referred to her as “Sword Lady,” since she had come up to yell at them, mostly in Spanish, during a very loud party brandishing what they described as a sword.

Not too long after I heard this story, I struck up a conversation with her and learned that she was from Colombia, that most of her family was still there and that she has two children who live in other states. She returns to Colombia once a year or every two years and sends money regularly. She can’t wait for her retirement and thinks she has saved enough to buy a small house in New Jersey. Her son and his wife will soon give birth to her first grandchild.

Last night, as I was walking home from the supermarket, I saw Maria hobble around the corner with a gentlemen carrying her bags. She had fallen in the street between blocks and thankfully he’d been there to give her a hand (it had been raining and Hicks Street is a one-way, two-lane thoroughfare to a freeway entrance). She appeared to have landed on her left knee, a knee on which she has had three surgeries in the past few years. I helped her get her bags up the stairs; she’s up just one flight, but she made her way very slowly.

And that made me wonder. What does a person do who’s been here for 20 years, whose two children live in other states and whose family lives in Colombia? What if she were seriously injured? What if she’d been hit by a car? I myself have been in a few near misses with cars, mostly on the Upper West Side, where cabs and trucks race down one-way streets at what seems like freeway speeds. And those were with a full walk signal. You could disappear in this city and people might not notice for days, weeks even. I suppose it’s possible that could happen anywhere, but I think I’ll check in on Maria more often now.