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by Sarah Frankfurth
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The morning was tired and grey, the streets
swam in a sinister drugged haze that was utterly devoid of hope. I
slowly picked my way among the trash and vacant faces that slid past my
gaze, and tried to fight back the anxiety that I felt gripping my stomach
and spreading into my chest. I turned a corner and suddenly I saw her, my mysterious
violin player. She was one of
the few things in my neighborhood that gave me joy.
I’d heard her a few times late at night from my apartment.
Her beautiful music rose through the air and above the din of
traffic, sirens, and angry voices and floated into my apartment drawing me
to the window to watch her pace as she played on the corner below. She
bent and turned with the music, lost in her world of sound, and I wondered
what she was doing there. I
couldn’t see her well enough in the shadowy night to form an idea of who
she was or why she was there. She
didn’t appear to be panhandling, since she took no notice of the people
passing by, and surprisingly enough they ignored her as well.
I found that to be the most striking thing about the whole scene.
No one who walked by even glanced at her, yet the music that she
played was so sad and beautiful and so utterly out of place in the
Tenderloin at one in the morning. I
suppose this neighborhood naturally forms that kind of callousness.
You can’t stop to care about anything because it will only end up
breaking your heart. I stared for awhile longer at her solitary figure on the
desolate street and thought of all the people behind the curtained windows
above her whose sleep was being infected by the haunting music of this
lonely woman.
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I heard her a few times after that, always on the same
corner, after dark, pacing and playing for no one, for everyone.
When I would hear her, I’d think about going down to get a closer
look and see who she was, to try to make sense of this, but I never did.
I decided that she was a mysterious present for all of us, a balm
for the wounded soul of the Tenderloin and it was best to leave my
questions unanswered. |
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But today I saw her.
Today those questions were answered.
I turned the corner and there she was crouched on the ground in
front of her open case, cradling her violin in her arms. Her hair was bleached a sickly yellow and the black stockings
that covered her thin legs were ripped.
I felt my heart sink as I looked at her gaunt pale face, the thick
makeup doing nothing to cover her many sores.
Her eyes were vacant as she slowly rocked back and forth in the
clutches of dope sickness and a man stood menacingly above her yelling,
“Fucking get up and play! Don’t
make me wait around if you’re not gonna play!”
I hurried across the street in a daze, wanting to escape from that
corner before I could hear all her sadness and desperation pouring out
through her violin. Or worse
yet, to hear the screech of discordant notes, a definite sign of her
broken body, her broken soul. The
dirty, peeling buildings towered over me and seemed to laugh at my
innocence, my belief that anything here might be free from the taint of
drugs and violence, that not everything was a sign of a wasted life. |
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I slowly made my way home as the clouds darkened and the
rain began to fall. |
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Copyright © 2001 Sarah Frankfurth |
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