Little Labors

How the puma affects others, two

We live at the intersection of Penn Station, the Port Authority, and the Lincoln Tunnel. Very few babies make their home in this area, while a relatively high number of men without homes make their homes here. Between the front door of our building and the butcher shop at the corner there lives a very slim Hispanic man who sometimes sweeps the sidewalk, and who sometimes helps the catering company next door move their boxes, and who sometimes just stands around. Once I saw him directing buses out of the nearby bus parking lot. He is sometimes well, and smoking a cigarette and making conversation with the catering and food cart and garment guys on the block, and he is at other times not well, and half-asleep on the sidewalk. When I first moved to the neighborhood, one afternoon when I walked by him, and he was sitting on the sidewalk, leaning against the wall of the butcher shop, he spat on me and shouted, “Ugly!” After he spat on me a second time, I took to crossing the street to avoid him, especially when I was pregnant, and generally more cautious than usual.

But in those first couple months at home with the puma, the environment around me blurred, like in those photos taken with the f-stop set just so, and one day I didn’t notice this man who lives on our block, and so I didn’t cross the street to avoid him, I instead walked right by him, and I heard someone shouting at me — it was him shouting at me—“God bless you! What a beautiful baby boy. Take care of that boy.” This has consistently been his response to our passing ever since. Even though the puma now occasionally wears a dress. Now, when we walk by, he and the little girl invariably exchange a high five. But not really invariably. When he is smoking, he suggests that she not come too near.