July 28-August 3, 2005

slant

Exposed

In the city, helping others takes a backseat to personal safety.

by Nancy French

"Hurry up," I urged the children. "We'll miss our bus!" We walked across Market Street and were 30 feet from the stop when the Route 33 bus opened its doors. With as much grace as kids in a three-legged race, we ran — making it in time to see a shabby man chasing passengers into the bus. He flailed his arms and yelled in people's faces as they waited for their ride. I instinctively jerked the kids back, and the doors of the bus closed safely behind the passengers. We were left holding hands in the heat, several feet away.

He screamed as the bus pulled away, and then at all of us who were standing around waiting. A police officer approached the scene, causing him to storm off. The people just kept sitting there on the bench, looking straight ahead and ignoring him, so I took the cue and did the same — pulling the kids toward me and wondering if this urban drama would ever seem "normal."

Once, I saw a woman sleeping on the street without pants or underwear, her legs casually thrown apart. I'd never seen a more wrenching picture of indignity, and it reminded me of our morning Bible devotion: "If anyone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need and refuses to help — how can God's love be in that person?" As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew the fail-safe hypocrisy detector that came in my 6-year-old had been tripped. "Why don't we give money to the homeless?" she asked. The they'll-spend-it-on-alcohol reasoning fell out of my mouth before I realized it, not wanting to probe the implications of stepping over the mentally disabled. I didn't cover the woman. It was hot, she was asleep, and I didn't want to risk it.

The cop tapped me on the shoulder and advised me to take the kids to a different bus stop, farther down the road and away from the man. My grip on their hands strengthened as the man still circled the area. When I was a kid, I wondered what would happen if the giant chandeliers in the church sanctuary fell in the middle of the sermon, figuring I could push the blue-haired ladies from danger's path with no time to spare. In school, I daydreamed about what would happen if there were a fire and imagined breaking open a window while my fellow classmates escaped. Now, my mind races with thoughts about being attacked randomly in the street. Instead of the valiant acts of courage and daring feats, however, I usually end up just getting robbed. There's just only so much you can do while holding the chubby hands of children.

We finally made it to the Please Touch Museum, but my husband called an hour after we arrived. "Do you know why a helicopter's hovering over our building?" he asked. He was looking out his office window and sensed maybe we'd been in danger.

I assured him we were fine. But an hour later, as we were walking home, the kids noticed the still-hovering helicopter all the way from Broad. As we got closer, we saw yellow police tape draped around two blocks of Market Street. There was a police car covered in blood stuffed under a New Jersey Transit bus. Another car was crushed next to Strawbridge's.

"What happened?" I asked the people milling around the police tape. Evidently, a belligerent homeless man stripped naked before wrestling a cop for his gun. The officer shot him four times and bystanders believed him to be dead. Then, in a move that surprised everyone even more than a naked man wrestling a cop on the corner, he somehow managed to steal the police cruiser. Witnesses said it was like a ghost car — the man was slouched down and the car appeared to be without a driver. The car lunged into oncoming traffic, hit a blue vehicle and finally ran into a bus.

I noticed a pile of dirty clothes in front of the bus stop we were at hours earlier. They were marked as evidence. Bullets were strewn around them, circled in orange chalk. A chill washed over me. It was the same location, at about the same time. Could it have been the same man who was circling us earlier?

Then, I had an even more frightening thought — maybe it wasn't.

Nancy French is a writer in Center City. If you would like to respond to this Slant or submit one of your own (750 words), contact Duane Swierczynski, editor in chief, City Paper, 123 Chestnut St., third floor, Phila., PA, 19106 or e-mail Duane Swierczynski.