I went over, hence the change in title. This is an experiment. Feedback welcomed.

Bag Lady
By Neil Beynon

I confess there are days when I do not feel like writing. Days when the page flashes a white neon tundra at me and the cursor blinks accusingly at me. On these days I fear it – whatever it is – has gone for good and panic wraps its steely arms around my chest.

Bad form I know but still: it’s true.

As I sit here struggling to think of something to say, something new to grab your attention, my mind wanders, it pulls at the thread of memories past, picks them up, turns them around, looking for new ways to stitch them, new patterns that might entertain. One by one they are discarded like used tissue.

I type a sentence. Something to hook my attention. I let it sit there, its naked serifs flapping in the wind. This is going to be hard.

The memory when it comes is not picked up. It invades.

It begins with a smell. A faint whisper at the edge of my nostrils, an odour dancing on the slight swells and troughs of the air as it curls around you like a silent, invisible gas. It is the smell of dust undercut with bad perfume and urine, shot through with notes of faeces. It is the smell of old age. It is the smell of death barely postponed…

#

…It is the smell of the old woman pressing against me before I can even get to the paramedic. She is bleeding. Her forehead is a mess of grey skin, pink flesh and blood. The woman’s movement is so violent she gets blood all over my uniform. And dirt, her right hand leaves dark smudges all over my uniform; I won’t get them out, no matter how hard I wash.

“Don’t let them take it,” she exhales in my ear. Her breathe could strip enamel and it leaves me feeling giddy as the paramedic separates us, helping her to sit down. She is clutching something, a small bundle of rags, to her chest with her left arm. The paramedic makes the mistake of touching the bundle in trying to help her to rest easier and earns a swift cuff from her free arm.

It leaves a welt on his cheek, red and angry, as he stumbles backwards.

“Jesus,” he says.

“Looks like you’ve made a new friend Matt,” I reply.

Matt is a good paramedic and he doesn’t give me shit like a lot of them do. That he’s here is a good sign: calm under fire. I can feel the crowd watching me as I lead Matt to one side, the old lady with his partner.

#

I delete the line. It was a stupid hook: melodramatic and self-indulgent. The starkness of the page is hurting my eyes, a migraine loitering with intent and so I look out the window at the street.

There are kids playing. Harmless, shrieking and laughter but it jars against the inside of my skull, jacks my shoulders up. And I never used to be like this so…

#

“…so what happened?”

“Apparently, she’s been wandering round all day,” says Matt. “Then some kids turn up, start jeering at her, trying to take the bundle off her, throwing things at her and she goes down hard. She cracked her head on the curb by the looks of it.”

“Right,” I reply. I know the answer before I ask but I need to none the less. “And no one said anything to the kids?”

“No,” says Matt. “No they didn’t. And they’re long gone. As soon as it gets serious they all run.”

“OK,” I reply. “Is she ok to give a statement?”

“Probably not,” he said. “But give it a go.”

I turn to talk to the old woman then stop.

“Why is she talking to the bundle?” I ask Matt.

“She thinks it’s a baby,” he replies.

It does in fact look baby shaped. My eyebrow must have risen to full mast because Matt continues: “It’s not a baby, just some rotting vegetable she’s picked up somewhere along the line. She won’t let go of it.”

#

I select all the words I have just written and delete them. Hollow things unworthy of the save command. I look up vegetables on Wikipedia. I can’t find the one the old woman had. I do see a pumpkin. I hate pumpkins, even the smell of them is…

#

…is turgid and I do not wish to experience it close up again. That fetid stench is wafting from the woman, if she were in a cartoon green lines would be streaming off her. Still, a job is a job.

My throat is burning by the time I’m within a foot of her.

“Hello,” I say. “What’s your name?”

“Hello,” she replies.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Ann,” whispers Matt.

“Ann,” I repeat. “Ann, can you tell me what happened?”

“Trolls,” she says.

“Sorry?”

“Trolls,” she repeats. “Pigmy trolls attacked me, tried to take my baby. Please don’t let them take my baby.”

Her free hand grips my arm with surprising strength and attempts to bend my will to hers.

I step back, extricating myself with care. There were no trolls here, just children without the empathy to leave an old woman at home, depressing but hardly a newsflash.

This woman’s mind fractured a long time before she cracked her skull on the concrete and I don’t have time to piece it together. I look at the crowd. No one meets my eyes but that’s ok, I’m looking for something else.

#

Trolls…I could write about trolls. I wrote about them once but no one else much liked it. The thing about trolls is they are metaphorically limited. A trope that is hard to use outside a specific context.

I look at the news, hoping for inspiration. Instead I see the bag lady staring up at me from the local. I don’t remember it being that bright but…

#

The sun glints off the window of the ambulance. The glare makes me blink.

“Alright,” I say to Matt stepping back. “You can take her. I can’t get anything sensible out of her.”

“We’ve been trying,” he replies. “We can’t get her in the ambulance without taking the bundle off her and she goes mental every time we try.”

“Goes mental?”

“Ha ha. You know what I mean,” he said pointing at his face.

“Can’t you just let her keep it?”

“It’s a biohazard,” he replies.

“It’s a bloody vegetable,” I reply.

“I agree, still I can’t take it in the van,” he replies.

“Then just take it off her,” I say.

“Tried,” he says, pointing at his face and then his arm, a set of teeth mark lining his wrist.

“Oh for f***’s sake,” I reply.

It only takes two paces to return to her. I pull the bundle gently but firmly from her grasp without warning or asking. Subsequently I am out of range again before she registers what’s happened. The vegetable stares up at me from the rags. It looks like a deformed and rotting turnip, surface slick with something that looks like milk. It smells worse than she does.

Ann screams long and loud. Expletives rain down on me like a flash flood. Then the threats: she’ll kill me, she’ll die, she’ll…I’ve stopped listening. Instead, I drop the bundle in a nearby bin.

#

My arse is numb from sitting too long. Still no words. I stand and run my fingers through my hair, some of it comes away in my hands, a little bit every day, soon I’ll have to bite the bullet and shave it all off. Funny, I never thought I’d be bald. Then again I never thought I’d be a lot of things.

That shopkeeper, the one with the CCTV camera, had an awful comb over. He was about as much help…

#

…the shopkeeper sends me away with: “Sorry mate, it’s just a…what is it called…deterrent. No tape. Tape costs money.” There is an awkward beat where I decide that it isn’t worth an argument and turn on my heel.

The street is quiet when I come out. The crowd’s gaze turns on me once more, a hostile look, an accusing look full of unspoken words. I look around for Matt.

I find him in the back of the ambulance. His face is set as he presses down on the woman’s sternum, as if he’s trying to force her back into her body. I watch as his colleague swings shut the door. I’m still watching as the ambulance pulls off, lights flashing blue on blue.



#

The woman died.

It wasn’t her head. She’d had cancer for a long time. The doctors couldn’t understand how she’d been walking around given the pain she must have been in. She just shut down: no ones fault.

I close the laptop. I can beat my mind against the page as long as I want but it won’t let go of that bundle, and trapped behind it are the words.

But there you have it: Some days I just don’t feel like writing.

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