I noticed her as I searched for the building where
my interview was. My thoughts were on direction but something about her
standing there on the corner all alone, holding her sign, made me think of
another time and another place. Even as I parked in the building's lot I
couldn't stop thinking of what makes us do the things we do. If I call myself a
writer (and most days I like to) then the world was my ocean of material and
here was an immediate morsel I couldn't in good conscience ignore. Or so I told
myself. Besides, I had about thirty minutes to kill before my interview. Who
knew what could come from a casual conversation? I had moved here to explore my
writing opportunities and it would be wrong to ignore one thrown in my face.
This inner conversation boosted my confidence that she wouldn't hit me with her
sign if I approached her so I set off around the building to see if she still
stood on the corner. I adopted an air of nonchalance, as if I were just walking
around. It was my disguise.
She was older, maybe even close to my own age. I
smiled as I got close and she smiled back as she walked past me. I realized
engagement would have to be instigated by me. Her sign read "Lord forgive
us and our nation" on one side and "Let God love you" on the
other. An interesting combination. Do we have to be forgiven to be loved?
I stepped back and smiled again. She stopped for a
moment with a hesitancy that I ignored. "Could I ask you a question?"
I said as she stared at me, never letting the sign down. "Is that an
abortion provider? Is that why you're out here?"
"Yes," she replied. "They do
abortions here up to nine months. People come from all over the country to get
abortions here cause there are only three states where they do abortions up to
nine months and New Mexico is one of them. This guy," she pointed to the
building behind her, "has another office in Dallas. They can't do them as
late there so he sends those people over here."
The whole time she talked to me she kept edging
away, back out to the corner to hold up her sign. I found it odd that someone
who would stand on a street corner holding such a sign showed no real desire to
engage someone who walked up to them. I did ask if she had many people stop and
talk to her. She said yes, that "we" have some turnarounds from the
cars passing by. I don't know who the "we" was. Maybe there are
others who are there at times and they do the talking.
I'm not writing this to take a stand on the abortion
debate. It's an issue I have some issues with myself. In my experience I have
found those who protest to be reflections of the trouble within that debate. Sometimes I think we satisfy our own needs
more than others by doing something like standing in front of an abortion
provider with a sign that speaks not to the people passing by but to a vision
of an upset deity. And perhaps there is the root of the problem. Maybe it
wasn't the people passing by she wanted to connect with. Maybe she was making a
point more to her God than to the people going into that clinic. I have to
wonder if she needed to let God know she was on the job and if that wasn't the
real point of her actions. Surely most of the cars passing by on the busy
street in front of her couldn't even read the small print on her sign. And if
they guessed what it might refer to I cannot imagine that many gave it more
than a passing thought, yea or nay. It would, in my opinion, help her cause
more if she engaged in one-on-one conversations with people but that didn't
seem to be something she wanted to do with me. Speaking one on one appeared to
make her uncomfortable.
So I left her to her penance, wishing her luck but
not saying what for. And she didn't ask, just smiled and went back to her
corner. When I drove by after my interview she was gone, her time of servitude
over, I suppose.
