A few hours ago, I realized I forgot to buy C’s music books. She started piano two weeks ago and after the first lesson, not only did her teacher tell me which books to buy, she wrote the music store’s name, along with the days and times it’s open. I was in a rush that week, too much to do, and completely forgot about the books until I took Chloe at her second lesson. The teacher, Titianna, a Russian woman (need I say more?), nodded silently when I tried to explain, but it was pretty clear she thought I was a flake. I just knew she was saying all sorts of nasty things about me in Russian: ‘No vonder the child can’t play the piano. Vith a mother like that, it’s a miracle the child can tie her shoes! Vat kind of woman vould bring her child to lessons vithout the proper books?!’

So you can understand why, when I realized earlier today that I’d forgotten to buy the books again, I panicked. I couldn’t show up at Tatiana’s without the goods. I must have called half a dozen music stores only to find that they were all closed on Sundays. Luckily, I found one store, downtown near Union Square, that was open until five. That was at 4:15. I jumped in the car.

But this post isn’t about music books. This post is about what happened to me AFTER I bought the music books and headed back to the parking garage.

The first thing I noticed about Dee Dee was that she looked like a small bird. She was petite, at least compared to me, and looked frail inside the yellow sweatshirt which complimented the yellow undertones in her skin. She couldn’t have weighed more than one hundred and ten pounds. Her wavy hair was going gray hair and she’d pulled it away from her face with a clip of some kind. I had no idea how old she was. She could have been in her early forties or her mid fifties–it was impossible to tell because her tawny brown skin had barely a wrinkle. But it was her eyes that took me by surprise. They were red rimmed and terribly watery, as though they were infected or were result of hours spent crying. She was walking sort of hunched over and appeared to be lost, like she wasn’t exactly sure how she ended up on the corner of Powell and O’Farrell, in the midst of all those bustling tourists on a late Sunday afternoon.

As I crossed the street, she fell in step with me and our eyes met briefly. We nodded in recognition the way black people always nod to each other in public, it’s one of the unspoken rules, and I noticed in a back-of-the-brain sort of way that she was looking me over. But I had a lot on my mind. I’d spent most of the afternoon at another high school open house. My novel was giving me trouble. I had a stack of bills on the desk that were waiting to be paid. So I didn’t give Dee Dee much more thought until we were inside the garage and she approached me.

“Can you give me a ride?” She sort of swerved over to to me and blurted out the question.

“Excuse me?”

“I really need a ride. I tried to catch a cab but he took all my money and all the battered women’s shelters in the city are full. I found one that’ll take me and my daughter, but no cab will take me because I don’t have the twenty-five dollars it’ll cost to get down there.”
At that point, she started to cry, or not really cry, but sort of moan and mumble, like she was struggling to hold herself together.

You see some interesting characters on the streets of San Francisco, and if you stop long enough to listen, you’ll hear some pretty interesting stories. Like the homeless guy who always waved to me as I exited the Sutter Stockton garage. I use to see him every week, then all of a sudden he was gone. When I saw him a couple of months later, I rolled down my window, asked him where he’d been and he explained that he’d had an office job for a while, but preferred selling Street Scene newspapers even though he didn’t make as much money because at least he was outside. Or the couple who advised me not to cross the street in the middle of the block at Harrison and Fifth Street because they’d seen two people get hit in that very same spot. When I thanked them, then mentioned that they were living under the freeway and asked if I could spare a dollar. I gave them five because, after all, they practically saved my life. Or the man who was holding up a funny sign that made me laugh because it was so honest, so I gave him the entire spinach quiche I was planning to take to my writing office.

Maybe it’s the expression on my face that pegs me as someone who’s interested in people’s lives. Or maybe I just look like a sucker. Either way, I suppose Dee Dee figured I’d at least listen to her story.

My first thought when she approached me was, “well, I’ve never heard this one before. She’s pretty good. And who’d ever think to beg for money in a parking garage?” But something about the way she was fretting, the way she really did seem to struggle to hold herself together, to keep herself from crying even though her eyes were brimming with tears, made me think she wasn’t conning me.

I asked her to repeat her story, and that’s when she told me that she was trying to get to a battered women’s shelter. She’d reported her husband on Monday for beating her and the cops had hauled off to jail. But the Sherrif’s deputy (or someone in law enforcement) had just called to say someone was posting her husband’s bail and he’d be home in two hours. They advised her to get to a shelter, but all the shelters in the city were full. She’d found one that had room for her and her three year-old daughter but no taxi would take her because she didn’t have the money. Her husband had taken it out of the bank. She said something about him taking her rings too, but she didn’t care about that. She just wanted to get out before her husband came home. The shelter had a bed for her if she could only get down there.

“Down where?” I asked.

Dee Dee unfolded a piece of notebook paper on which she’d written the shelter’s name and address . . . It was in San Mateo.

This is what goes through your mind when it’s five o’clock on a Sunday afternoon and you’re downtown, standing in a parking garage, listening to a battered woman’s story:

1) gee, I don’t think she’s conning me because she’s really about to cry now.
2) it’s five o’clock. I wonder how bad the traffic is on the 101?
3) I wonder where her daughter is.
4) okay, she must be telling the truth because her voice is shaking and now it just cracked and she’s wiping her face.
5) I wonder how badly did this guy beat her.
6) how many battered women’s shelters are there in San Francisco?
7) I don’t know any battered women . . . at least I don’t think I do.
her sweatshirt and jeans are so clean. And wow, her tennis shoes are really white.
9) I know that feeling . . . no, not the battered part, but feeling as though you don’t know where to turn.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll give you a ride. Just let me get my car.”

I didn’t actually learn her name was Dee Dee until we were headed up Geary towards her apartment. She lived in a building at the corner of Geary and Jones, on the fringe of the Tenderloin. We needed to get her daughter who was sleeping at a neighbors.

“I’m Natalie, by the way.”

“I’m Dee Dee.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, because she’d started crying again. “I’ll take you down there. It’s going to be okay. I’m a mom too.”

We’d probably gone two blocks when Dee Dee looked in the backseat and realized I didn’t have a car seat for her daughter. “It’s a three-hundred and eighteen dollar fine,” she said. “The only time a child doesn’t have to be in a car seat is if they’re in a cab.”

I didn’t know that. I immediately regretted throwing out C’s old car seat when we cleaned the garage.
I told Dee Dee I was willing to take the chance. My windows were tinted. We could strap her daughter in the backseat and no one would know. But she was adamant. If I didn’t have a car seat, a cab would be safer. I admit to being a little suspicious. Who was to say she wouldn’t just take the cab money and run? Maybe she didn’t even have a daughter. But she was still so shaken. I mean her whole body was trembling–and not in a drug induced sort of way.

“Okay, I’ll give you money for a cab.”

When we got to the corner of Geary and Jones, Dee Dee ran up to her apartment to check on her daughter while I searched for an ATM machine. By the time she met me back at the car, I’d found one (no easy feat in that part of town) and had taken out sixty dollars. Dee Dee had mentioned that she didn’t have any money and I knew the cab ride would eat up almost thirty bucks. I just couldn’t send this woman and her daughter out into the world with a dollar fifty in her pocket. She was a bit calmer now, and I stood with her on the corner while she called the shelter to tell them she was on her way. And that’s when she did something that convinced me (not that I really needed further convincing) she was telling the truth: She asked me to write down my phone number and promised to call when she got her things together and was in the cab.

I gave her the money, we said goodbye, and I drove away before she went back up into her apartment. Some people would have hung out their in car until they saw Dee Dee come down with her daughter and climb into a cab, and I admit the thought occurred to me. I stayed long enough to take this picture of her building, then I got in my car and drove home, because I figured at that point, what did it matter if she was telling the truth or not? Not to sound sappy of anything, but in the end, we were two women, two mothers, more or less the same age, who were just trying to hold it together and get through the day. I happened to be in a position to help her out, and I hope she’d have done the same for me. Whatever she saw in my face that made her approach me, I’m glad she did.

I was on Geary and Filmore when my phone rang. It was Dee Dee, telling me she and her daughter were getting in the cab.

And just about an hour ago (right now it’s 11:40), my phone rang again. It was Dee Dee, apologizing for the delay. It had taken her all this time to get processed at the shelter, but they’d made it. She thanked me again and I wished her luck. I thought about telling her if she ever needed help again, she should feel free to call, but then something told me she would. She has my number.