dRATS!

Okay not cool, not cool at all. I took the train, AGAIN. This time from 42nd street to 34th and caught the express Q to Brooklyn. Walked amid cat calls from cars to my friend Monique DeBose's farewell party. After an amazing a capella singing circle which included some impromptu spoken word from a NY school teacher, I was off to a party of someone that works at the United Nations. So instead of paying 25 in a cab from Brooklyn to gentrified Spanish Harlem, Rita a medical resident at the Brooklyn Hospital walked me to the 4, 5 train so I could take that to Harlem. No problem, right? RATS! I was the only one on the platform and I thought I was in the subway scene from the WIZ, where the walls start coming to life with that do do dooo do doo do music in the background. The rat was sizable, not the cat size that I heard about but sizable. He scurried towards me and was not afraid. I almost started running but I stomped my feet and he paused but not in the way I would have liked. Has somebody been feeding these guys? He was like a little dog wanting to nibble. He reluctantly went away but again, not fast enough.

After going to 86th street and switching to the 6 to 110th and Lexington I sat again to a woman and her cart and her man staring at me.

"You are beautiful!"

"Thank you"

"I love the pink in those shoes and I have the perfect nail polish for them, that color is all wrong"

She was right, the red I had did not match the shade of pink in my shoes but it did match the red in my dress and nothing I had on really matched. And besides, I don't match fingernail polish to shoes!

"I wish I had that nail polish I would give it to you. It would look good! You look good girl, look at you all dressed up" she sized me up as I did her. Definitely recovering or on drugs, definitely a hard life. I wasn't afraid but I was cautious. This is why I don't ride the train was the thought I had but at the same time she wanted to engage, I just wanted to make sure she didn't get off at my stop.

She went on to tell me that she had been in prison, been stabbed several times-which she showed me both on her neck and abdomen, once weighed over 300 pounds, had lost her kids and was trying to get them back, back in recovery after a drug relapse, was a punching bag for her boxer husband, was qualified for her first apartment that she got a 500 stipend to furnish it, that she to knew how to sit like me but didn't like to anymore and that kids used to beat her up when she was young because she was too prim and proper.

"You should write a book! I wish I had some money because I wanna do something with you!"

I said, really knowing that this is another reason I will be a star but then if I am a millionaire would I ride trains and have these random amazing encounters? Maybe I would do it once a month for good measure.

"I was working on a book! I am gonna write one but my computer got a virus because I was turning it on and off the wrong way and I lost everything, but there was an editor and I gotta get to a computer so I can find him again because I sent him all my stuff and I hope he has a copy" she languished with her New York/Spanish accent.

She then went on to recite poetry that bought tears to my eyes.

"I wrote that one in prison"she blankly proclaimed.

"How could you remember it so well?" I was curious.

"These are the ones that come from me, from my soul, they have meaning, that's how I remember, It's from my heart"

She went on to recite another one about the hold that drugs had on her and her pleads to God to free her from that grasp that kept her from everything she held dear. I have had the same pleas the same concerns the same questions as her and I felt her humanity in this moment. Though not drugs, the demon that she named crack has many forms and functions, be it food, drugs, cigarettes, men, bad luck...you get it. We all come here to move beyond something and this was her SOMETHING.

"You not from the city are you?" She already knew the answer.

"No Georgia" I don't know why I said this but I wanted to be from the place she thought I was from. New Jersey just didn't seem to fit. Why would I be so different if I was from New Jersey and to her I was different.

"Yeah, I can tell you haven't been through it like, me but we all have what we have that's why I don't make no excuses, we all go through stuff"

And indeed we do, I had a lot in common with the recovering crack head. My time came to get off the train and before I could say goodbye she said, "Maybe we will see each other again but remember you are a beautiful woman! I hope the best for you."

I wanted to hug her but thought to myself, 'Mattilyn lets not loose it!' So I just replied, "You are an amazing person, who are you?"

"I am nobody"

"No you are definitely somebody"

"I came up out of the cracks"

I thought of the rat coming up from the tracks onto the platform, making its presence known.

"You are definitely somebody" I repeated to her

"Nobody is better than anybody else"

"You are so right"

"God bless you"

"And God bless you"

"Take care"

"I will" and I was off in Spanish Harlem, being followed by a guy in red who I am sure I could have mothered and through the danky streets to an amazing Oasis in the hood, a rooftop party. Amid the chaos we all reside.