Street

Watching people on the street is interesting.

On the car ride home I spied the usual group of kids crowding at the streetlight corner, waiting to cross. Some of them pull rolling backpacks and rush along the wavy concrete bobbing up and down.

It's an ethnic mix, as always--a number of Hispanics, a black kid or two, and perhaps the occasional whitey. I usually take note of these kids because of the great variance between them, in height, weight, dress, mannerism, race--there are lots of variables. I found that once you drive by the junior high the kids all begin to look the same.

I remember a pink-shirted brunette, maybe five years old. Her stomach rounded on top of her legs almost as if she were pregnant, and her hair was wrapped in two wispy pigtails sticking from the sides of her head. Short and little.

A few steps after her was a thin woman with ratty, dirty blond hair, about 40. I'd never seen an adult without a child on this street corner. Her old frosted jeans tapered across her long calves to her thin ankles, and a black jean vest wrapped over her slouching chest to reveal thin pockmarked arms, spotted with sun and years of age.

Upon a closer look it was painfully obvious she'd probably jammed needles into those pockmarks. Drug junkie. Skinny and wasted and walking saggedly swift, past the fat little 5 year old. They seemed of different worlds.

"She looks like a coke addict," I remarked in the car.
"Yeah, she's definitely a smoker," Ann nodded. Her eyes followed the druggie and my eyes followed Ann. The two women had the same skin, the same frame, the same forward slouching shoulders of the tall and thin. They could've been sisters.
"Or it could be heroin."
"Yeah."

More kids filtered past, so young and taut-skinned. The light turned green, we drove past in contemplation.

I had no idea how to end this one, but felt like describing it.