Juxtapose

Every Tuesday I have a part-time job that I work. I have a client, an older lady who I call Mrs. Allen, to whom I am a companion/personal assistant. She's 73 years old, has thin white hair that she curls at the ends and wears in a high ponytail held up with a barrette, and is always dressed to the nines in a skirt, blouse, hose, and black leather flats. Mrs. Allen is blind - blinder, in fact, than a bat, especially since bats aren't really blind at all - and she lives by herself in a little apartment in the city next to mine. She does everything for herself; she cooks, bakes, and mends and washes her clothes. I just go over her house every Tuesday from 11 AM to whenever she's done with me (usually 2:15) to clean her house, read to her, get her mail, take out the trash, go over the Market Basket flyer, and take her to the store. Her apartment complex is only a hop and a skip (not even far enough for the "jump") from Market Basket. So every Tuesday, she asks me to read her the whole foodstore flyer, which takes all of twenty minutes. She makes me tell her everything that's on it, even though her shopping lists never exceed ten items at a trip, and those ten are always some variety of the following:

+Radishes (with good greens, because she eats the leaves too)
+Kale
+One jar Teddie unsalted natural peanut butter
+Ten green beans (have to be fresh)
+Two Moro oranges
+Cheddar cheese
+One avocado
+Two bananas (must be small)
+One can of sardines
+A pear
+Dates
+Baby arugala/bok choy/spinach
+Sugar snap peas

Occasionally, when she's feeling like a change, she wants to get a loaf of cocktail bread, or maybe a box of Ellio?s Pizza. The Pizza I still haven?t been able to figure out, so don?t ask. So every Tuesday, I make up the list of five things that she wants, and pretty much rain or snow, little shriveled up Mrs. Allen and I get all bundled up (if it?s wintertime) to make the trek to Market Basket. It?s funny how much one ten minute walk to the food store in freezing weather can mean to a little old lady. She loves to go. In the pits of winter, I?d come on a Tuesday morning, only to find her already in her jacket and scarf-hat (one of those hoods that?s knitted onto a scarf). I?d say, responsibly, ?Mrs. Allen, it?s very cold out there, you know. It?s snowing too. Are you sure you want to go out?? I always got the same answer: ?Well, I have my waterproof shoes on, and when I lived in ________ (she?s lived in many different places, so she names whatever cold one she can think of at the time), it was MUCH colder than this.? So we trudge out, rain or snow or sleet or hail, down the three flights of apartment-building stairs, and out the foyer and into whatever weather there is that day. We navigate around the enormous cracks in the sidewalk that are made by the roots of an ancient tree planted by the side of the street long before any asphalt was ever laid, and I tell her, ?Step up here,? or, ?here?s the downslope,? and we usually make it there intact.

It?s funny the looks I get from people while we walk, but overall, I love it when people smile. I don?t really care if they think it?s funny that I?m walking this little cloudy-eyed senior along in the freezing weather just to get an avocado and exactly ten green beans, as long as they smile. One time, a police officer that was watching the road as phone company guys were doing utility work said hello and commented on the lovely weather. Another time, an old man stepped aside so that we could walk by on the sidewalk so that I didn?t have to step Mrs. A off of it in order to pass. He was so respectful ? no huge grin or jovial comment ? he just stepped aside, held out a hand as if to say, ?After you, ladies,? and went his opposite way.

But my favorite is this man that I see every week. He gets all the carriages out of the parking lot to bring them into the store. All day. He?s maybe twenty-five years old, he always wears a hat, his skin is so dark that his navy blue Market Basket shirt almost blends into it, and he?s probably three inches taller than me. I see him all the way from across the parking lot, pushing carriages, and he always smiles at me from across it. I can tell, because his smile is huge and white against the brown of his face, and I know that he knows me from walking by him every week at the same time for so many months. Something about him is so kind. I know nothing about him, but it?s always that I?m on my way in or out with Mrs. Allen when I see him. If I?m on my way out, I say a ?Good morning,? and he nods his head and says ?Good morning? back with his soft I-don?t-know-what-it-is-but-it-sounds-African-French accent and a smile. If I?m on my way in, he?s usually on his way in too with a huge line of carriages he?s pushing into the building from the lot. I always slow down long before I get to the automatic door, because I don?t want to push in front of people with a blind lady on my right arm. For that matter, I don?t want to push in front of people without a blind lady on my arm. But then, he always stops wherever he is to leave me room enough to pass through with Mrs. A; and he and waits. He smiles this gorgeous smile that makes me think that he is a genuinely lovely person inside (one of those people who would ask you how you?re doing and really want you to tell them the truth), and nods his head to me to go ahead. I always say, ?Thank you very much,? emphatically, smiling and lowering my head with an uncharacteristically demure shyness as we walk through the doors. Maybe it?s because I am shy, deep down, under my outgoing exterior that I?ve so long cultivated against the grain of my childish, overwhelming self-consciousness, that I smile and am not able to look directly into such kind eyes. Or maybe it?s because that guy, whoever he is, represents the most respectable of hardworking and humble men that are so rarely seen anymore around here. But whatever the case may be, despite the fact that I am not known for doing so in any other circumstance, I am quite sure that as I walk past him and his many carriages and through the motion-sensing door with Mrs. Allen in tow, I blush an embarrassingly noticeable shade of red.